He played a prominent role in a frontier feud.īilly the Kid first earned his reputation as a gunslinger in 1878, when he participated in a bloody frontier war in Lincoln County, New Mexico. Before long, he fell in with a rough crowd and turned to petty crime and thievery.Ī wanted poster for Billy the Kid, circa 1877.
Left in the care of an absentee stepfather, the future gunslinger spent the next year living in foster homes and boarding houses. Henry quickly adapted to life in the rugged territory and became fluent in Spanish, but his sickly mother died of tuberculosis in 1874, leaving him an orphan at the age of just 14. Raised by a single mother, he moved to Wichita, Kansas, as a boy before later migrating west to New Mexico in the early 1870s. Little is known about Billy the Kid’s early days, but he was most likely born Henry McCarty in the Irish slums of New York City sometime in late 1859. Here are nine fascinating facts about this legendary Old West figure: 1. Bonney (his given name was likely Henry McCarty), he lived a short, but eventful life that included at least nine murders and a brazen jailbreak. Before his untimely death at the age of 21, Billy the Kid built an infamous reputation as a gunslinging, cattle-rustling outlaw.
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