Completed Projects
Thanks to the contributions of kind-hearted people and our unwavering devotion to preserving the past, we have been able to lay three tombstones on the final resting places of Jose Chavez y Chavez, James Carlyle, and Frank “Windy” Cahill. Back then, I helmed an alliance called Billy the Kid’s Historical Coalition which made it possible for us to safeguard the rich history of an American icon, known as Billy the Kid. As the (former) President and Vice President of the Coalition, I am filled with deep gratitude for being able to produce for the people who love western history.
With all the successes we have achieved, it is with regret that we announce our decision to end our partnership with the Billy the Kid’s Historical Coalition due to personal reasons. We thank everyone for their support and encourage you to visit all the pages on this site!
The final resting place of James Carlyle had been left without proper recognition for over a century, with only the large stones from the Greathouse station’s foundation marking his grave. However, thanks to the generous donations of $1,300, a new headstone was commissioned and installed. We obtained permission from the property owner before proceeding with the project. Those who contributed to this initiative had their names recorded in a ledger at The Lincoln County Courthouse in Carrizozo, NM. It is worth noting that this project was solely funded by the donors, who made significant contributions over the spring of 2022.
The previous headstone of Jose Chavez y Chavez was removed by a family member approximately 20-30 years ago. Thanks to the generous contributions of many donors through a donation and membership program of a non-profit organization I founded, the necessary funds for our initial project (Chavez) were quickly raised. In October of 2021, a new headstone, crafted by Serenity Stone in Los Lunas, NM, was erected for Chavez y Chavez.
Chavez y Chavez was put to rest with a new headstone in October 2021
Headstone made by Serenity Stone Los Lunas, NM
The grave of Windy Cahill was initially adorned with a stone many years ago, but unfortunately, due to the passage of time, the words inscribed on the old stone have become illegible. However, the old stone will be preserved and showcased at an upcoming museum exhibit. In October 2022, a new marker was respectfully placed at the Bonita cemetery in Arizona, to ensure that Windy Cahill’s final resting place is well-distinguished and properly honored.
Headstone made by Ark Valley Memorial at Rocky Ford, Colorado
The Demise of James Carlyle (click)
The Demise of James Carlyle
by J. Young
On November 15th the Kid with Dave Rudabaugh, Billy Wilson and a few others were on a trail between Las Vegas and White Oaks and stopped by Jim Greathouse’s ranch station to rest and “whiskey” Jim Greathouse bought some of the 16 horses they were traveling with, probably stolen from Alexander Grzelachowski as the stories say.
A few days later the crew pulls into White Oaks and places the remaining horses at The Dietrichs Livery stable. A story or two will tell you that the gang went into a general store for supplies and left without paying. It’s possibly true, it also says that if they did have any phony money it probably wasn’t much more than what was owed to Wilson for the stable. Barney Mason, a known snitch, saw the boys had gone straight to Sheriff Will Hudgens. Sheriff Hudgens gathered a posse, including JW Bell and James Carlyle, a friend to the Sheriff and deputized blacksmith. I don’t see any evidence that Agent Wild was in the posse but he may have been. Reports say that the posse tracked them to Coyote Springs and opened fire on them while they were setting up camp killing 2 of their horses. The gang fled riding doubles and were tracked to the Greathouse Station and surrounded the house. Joe Steck, the cook, stepped out of the house startling the Posse. They raised their guns and Joe surrendered himself. Sheriff Hutchens hands the cook a note to take to Billy
The Cook Joe Steck recalls;“I took the note in and delivered it to the one I knew to be Billy the Kid, “He read the paper to his compadres, who all laughed at the idea of surrender.”
He returned outside along with Jim Greathouse with a message from inside refusing a surrender. One of the Posse yells out for Billy Wilson to surrender himself, Wilson refuses and asks James Carlyle to come in and talk. Sheriff Hudgens agrees to let Carlyle go in and tries to talk the boys into surrendering. Greathouse remained outside with the posse as Carlyle entered the house.
Once Carlyle got inside, it was just before noon. Carlyle was searched for weapons and sat down. Inside the boys are planning to wait until dark and are planning to make a break for it.
Steck remembers the Kid forcing Carlyle to drink so much that just after noon, he was “under the influence of liquor and insisting on going out.” A couple hours go by and someone yells from outside; “come out or we will shoot Greathouse” Silence for a minute until posse-man Joe Eakers “accidentally” fires his weapon. During the shot Carlyle panics, thinking that they killed Greathouse and jumps through a closed window landing in the snow, filled with bullet holes.
“I stopped and turned, when, crash, a man came through a window, bang, bang, the man’s dying yell, and poor Carlyle tumbled to the ground with three bullets in him,” Joe Steck recalls.
The men in the posse claim Billy’s gang shot Carlyle from inside. Billy later claimed it was the posse shooting Carlyle as they were scared when he leaped through the window.
Later the boys were able to just ride out of town unharmed as the posse, most likely the accidental killers of Carlyle, skinned out. They returned the next day, buried Carlyle and burned The Greathouse station to the ground.
The Death of Windy Cahill (click)
After being ran out of town for theft and mischief, in his spare time, young Billy still frequented camp Grant. Gus Gildea, recalls “Billy was often bullied by Windy. So-called this because he was always blowing about one thing or another. When the kid came into camp Grant, Windy would abuse him. He would throw Billy on to the floor and ruffle his hair, slap his face and humiliate him before the other men in the saloon. Yes, the Kid was rather slender… and the blacksmith was a very large man.”
On the eve of August 17th 1877 Gildea witnessed Billy come into town that night; “He dressed like a country Jake with store pants on and shoes instead of boots. He wore a six gun stuffed in his trousers. While he was in the saloon he got into an argument with Windy Cahill. But during this argument Cahill called Billy a pimp and threw him down three times. Enraged, Billy called the blacksmith a son of a bitch and reached for his new six-gun.” The Kid forced the .45 pistol into Cahill’s belly and pulled the trigger. Billy got up, ran outside and mounted John Murphy’s racehorse and fled the scene.
The following day August 18th 1877 Cahill wrote a statement, “I Frank Cahill, being convinced I am about to die, make the following my final statement. My name is Frank P. Cahill I was born in the county and town of Galway Ireland; yesterday August 17th 1877, I had some trouble with Henry Antrim otherwise known as kid, during which he shot me. I called him a pimp and he called me a son of a bitch. We took hold of each other, I did not hit him, I think I saw him go for his pistol, and tried to get a hold of it, but could not and he shot me in the belly. I have a sister named Kate Conden living in San Francisco.”
Soon after his statement Cahill died and Miles Wood convened an end quest at the Hotel de Luna. Gus Gildea and other witnesses said the Kid had no choice; he had to use his equalizer but the jury decided that his method of self-defense was criminal and unjustifiable and Henry Antrim alias Kid is guilty thereof.
A few days later a friend of John Murphy’s rode into town on Murphy’s horse. He explained that The Kid asked him to return it.
Miles Woods concludes, the Kid skipped out to New Mexico, for several months he participated as a fighter in the Lincoln county war. Four years later he fell under the guns of sheriff Pat Garrett. The boy grew quickly into Billy the Kid, a giant in folklore, and of the American southwest.”
The Full Story Here…
https://palsofbillythekidhistoricalsociety.com/the-drifter/
The peaceful passing of Jose Chavez (click)
On November 23, 1897, Jose Chavez y Chavez became inmate #1089 at the Territorial Penitentiary. He stayed there until January 11, 1909, when Governor George Curry pardoned him at the age of 57. Chavez received the pardon due to his heroic act of saving a guard’s life during a prison riot.
After his release, Chavez returned to Las Vegas and spent his remaining years with friends. On July 17th 1923, Chavez peacefully passed away at the age of 72. Reportedly while holding the hand of Liberato Baca (who was possibly the only man to face Chavez in a gunfight and survive), he died peacefully in his own bed. Chavez’s final resting place is in a small private cemetery in Milagro, New Mexico.
Photos (click)
Videos (click)
As President of BTKHC, one of my objectives was to locate and provide a fitting headstone for Lincoln County Regulator Henry Brown. I maintained constant communication with the Kansas Historical Society and Caldwell cemetery to ensure we made consistent progress towards achieving our goal. To be continued…
The Henry Brown Project
About ten years ago an attempted exhumation of Henry N. Brown was conducted. An archaeologist and professor from Wichita State University attempted to exhume the remains of Henry N. Brown in order to mark his burial spot with headstone, but came up empty.
Pals of Billy the Kid’s Historical Society has been working with The Kansas and Caldwell Historical Societies, The Caldwell City Cemetery and a professor from Wichita State University to locate and mark the final resting spot of Lincoln County Regulator Henry N. Brown.
We need more information on this case, if anyone has any more information than what is posted here then please contact us!
The Story
Henry Newton Brown was born in 1857 at Rolla Missouri (Phelps County). Henry was orphaned by his parents and left in the care of relatives in Rolla. Brown also had a sister living somewhere in Iowa. When he was seventeen, he headed west to become a cowboy. Brown’s build was of a small frame body to a medium build, brown hair and blue eyes. He turned up in Colorado, working some ranches before drifting south to Texas. While in northern Texas, Brown killed a man in a gunfight at a cow camp he was working and moved on to New Mexico Territory, where he soon became involved in the Lincoln County War. Fighting on the side of the McSween-Tunstall faction, known as The Regulators. Brown befriended Billy the Kid, and after the war, rode with the gang rustling cattle and boosting horses. After the gang showed up in Tascosa, Texas with some cattle and horses to unload, they disbanded. Henry Brown decided to stay in Texas.
In 1880 Brown took a job with Captain Willingham Barnes, as deputy sheriff of Oldham County, Texas. Some reports suggest Brown was fired for picking fights with drunks. Brown moved on to Oklahoma, where he worked several ranches before making his final move to Caldwell, Kansas.
In 1882 Marshal Batt Carr hired Henry Brown as a deputy town marshal of Caldwell, Kansas. He was re-appointed 3 times as deputy, eventually taking the lead position as Town Marshal. Brown ruled the town with an iron fist and was often quick to use his guns to end encounters. In fact his old boss Captain W. Barnes once said “The only fault found with Brown as an officer is that he was too ready to use his revolver or Winchester.”
Marshal Henry Brown had the complete trust of Caldwell’s citizens who felt comfortable with Brown keeping things in order in the rather rough town. They also liked the fact that Brown did not drink, smoke or gamble.
When Brown gunned down two outlaws in the streets of Caldwell in 1883, The Caldwell Post bragged that Brown was “one of the quickest men on the trigger in the Southwest.”
So impressed were the town’s citizens, that they presented him with a new engraved Winchester rifle.
Brown later hired Ben Wheeler, aka: Ben Robertson, aka Ben Burton to work as his deputy.
The marshal continued to serve the city well and the Caldwell Commercial Newspaper called Brown “cool, courageous, gentlemanly and free from vices.”
In early spring of 1884 Brown married a local woman, named Alice M. Levagood. The couple purchased a house and furnishings and seemingly settled down. However, unknown to his wife and the citizens of Caldwell, Brown had been living beyond his means and debts were piling up.
Henry Brown, along with his deputy Ben Wheeler and two other former outlaw friends out of Texas named William Smith and John Wesley, planned to rob the bank in Medicine Lodge, Kansas.
The lawmen, under the ruse of traveling to Oklahoma to apprehend a murderer, left Caldwell, and met up with Smith and Wesley, and headed to Medicine Lodge.
On April 30, 1884, Brown, carrying the same rifle he was gifted by the citizens of Caldwell, entered the bank with the other 3 men just after it opened and demanded the cash. When Bank President E.W. Payne reached for his gun, one of the men shot and killed him. Although cashier George Geppert had his hands up, he too was shot. However, before he died he managed to stagger over to the vault and closed the door. Their robbery attempt failed, so the gang quickly mounted their horses and fled with an angry mob right behind them. About 4 miles southwest of town the posse trapped them in a dead end at Cedar Canyon. Brown and his men were backed into a water hole and were standing about waist deep in cold water. After a two hour shootout and standoff, Brown asked for protection if they would surrender. The mob agreed and out came Brown first followed by the rest at about 1 pm. They were taken to the Medicine Lodge and by 3 pm they were in dry clothes, fed, photographed and placed in jail, which was just a small home owned by a deputy sheriff. Outside, close to 300 citizens were getting riled up and wanted to lynch the would be robbers. Henry Brown wrote his wife a letter in the meantime asking her forgiveness and letting her know she could sell his things if he was to be killed.
At about 9:00 p.m. the mob broke in and demanded the prisoners be turned over to them. The deputy refused but was overpowered by the mob. As the prisoners attempted to dash for freedom, Brown was shot and killed first, his body was riddled with bullets. Wheeler ran for about 100 yards when he was hit with three rifle balls in his back, his right arm was shredded with lead and his fingers were shot off. Wheeler’s screams were reportedly heard from over a half mile away. Wheeler was mortally wounded but was dragged along with Wesley and Smith to an elm tree just outside town and hanged. The bodies of the criminals were buried in the ground at Medicine Lodge.
The Caldwell city representatives; Ben Miller, Harvey Horner, Lee Weller and John Blair went to Medicine Lodge to investigate the matter. They learned that bodies of the dead were wrapped in blankets and buried in pine boxes at the local cemetery. They requested to exhume the bodies of Calwell marshals; Brown and Wheeler and were granted. The men took note that the expressions on the faces of the recently deceased were as natural as if they were just asleep. There is a story that Brown’s widow showed up with a wagon to retrieve his body. The corpse of Henry Brown was taken back to Caldwell and buried in The Caldwell City Cemetery. His grave is currently unmarked and should not be confused with a soldier who is buried there with the same name.
If anyone has any more information about the burial(s) of Henry Newton Brown, please contact us!
