Wild Bill Hickok

Wild Bill Hickok married Agnes Thatcher Lake, a 50-year-old circus proprietor in Cheyenne on March 5, 1876, at the age of 38.

Hickok was playing poker at Nuttal & Mann's Saloon in Deadwood, in the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory on August 2, 1876. A former buffalo hunter, Jack McCall, entered the saloon and shot Hickok point-blank in the back of the head, killing him instantly. Almost the entire town attended the funeral, and he was buried in the Ingelside Cemetery.

Wild Bill Hickok was born as James Butler Hickok on May 27, 1837, in Troy Grove, Illinois, US, to William and Polly (Butler) Hickok. He was raised in a rural farm and grew up to be a brave and tough boy.

He proved to be a good shot from a young age and was soon recognized locally as a skilled marksman. At the age of 18 he picked up a fight with a boy called Charles Hudson, during which both fell into a canal. Hickok feared that he had killed Charles and fled home to evade arrest.

He moved to Leavenworth in the Kansas Territory in 1855. At that time there was a violent conflict going on in the region over whether slavery should be permitted there or not. Hickok joined the antislavery Free State Army of Jayhawkers, serving under General James Lane.

It did not take long for the brave and sturdy Hickok to gain a reputation as a campaigner for fairness, and he earned a position as a constable in Monticello, Kansas, in 1858.

Around this time he was injured in a bear attack which left him bedridden for six months. He moved to southern Nebraska in the summer of 1861 to work at the Pony Express station at Rock Creek.

The American Civil War broke out in April 1861 and he signed on as a teamster (an outfitter or packer) for the Union Army in Sedalia, Missouri. He served as a wagon-master for some time and it was also reported that he operated as a Union spy in Confederate territory.

An incident happened in 1861 that would greatly add to the reputation of this extraordinary marksman. Hickok, along two other men, Horace Wellman and J. W. Brink was involved in a deadly shootout with David McCanles that resulted in McCanles’ death. All the three men were tried for murder but judged to have acted in self-defense.

Wild Bill Hickok was one of the early “Heroes of the West”, reputed to be an extraordinary gunfighter with a sense of fairness and justice. He was very famous as a lawman who established law and order in the most lawless towns on the frontier and best remembered for his services as the sheriff of Hays City and marshal of Abilene.