By John P. Wilson In its 11 May 1881 issue, the Santa Fe Daily New Mexican included the following intriguing paragraph regarding Billy the Kid: “Newman’s Semi-Weekly gives a long account of the Kid and his career, which is not very complimentary to the subject of the story. Some…
By William H. Wroth The outlaw called “Billy the Kid” was born Henry McCarty about 1859, possibly in New York City. By 1866 he was living with his widowed mother Catherine McCarty and elder brother Joseph McCarty in Marion County, Indiana. His mother soon took up with and eventually…
On December 14, 1868, New Mexico Supreme Court Justice John P. Slough responds to Legislative Council censure from Col. William L. Rynerson, who was a member of the legislative assembly from Doña Ana County. Among the slurring remarks made, he noted that Rynerson was "a thief of the army,…
By Miguél A. Torrez The years following the 1846 Mexican-American War brought New Mexicans adversity through the loss of land and political exploitation by Anglo Americans. Many struggled to adapt to American ways. For others, it proved extremely challenging. The descendants of Nicolas de Espinosa were a Nuevomexicano family…
by Suzanne Stamatov In the early morning hours on Saturday, 2 February 1980, inmates at the Penitentiary of New Mexico near Santa Fe overwhelmed four correctional officers during a routine inspection in one of the dormitories. These inmates immediately took the officers hostage and then ran to another dormitory…
1 By Robert Torrez New Mexico's history is full of marvelous stories about ordinary people who happen to end up in the historical record when they get caught up in extraordinary circumstances. As we leaf through the stories of such individuals, one often wonders how much of what has…
By David Correia From February 1889 until the summer of 1891 a clandestine organization of night riders known as Las Gorras Blancas cut the fences and burned the barns of ranchers enclosing the Las Vegas Land Grant commons and destroyed railroad ties and burned bridges in a related effort…
By Robert Torrez Former New Mexico State Historian On the morning of September 24th, 1896, two condemned prisoners were led out of the Rio Arriba County jail in the northern New Mexico village of Tierra Amarilla. Moments before, the two men had received the Last Rites from the…
By Robert Torrez Former New Mexico State Historian New Mexico was an integral part of the "Wild West" era. The Santa Fe Trail, William "Billy the Kid" Bonney, Pat Garrett, Elfego Baca, and many other names we associate with these frontier times had their beginnings during New Mexico's territorial…
On Tuesday evening, February 19, 1889, Ada Hulmes, the piano player at Silver City's Monarch saloon, shot and killed John V. “Jack” Brown, a Silver City carpenter and also the fire chief of that town in southwestern New Mexico Territory. As reports of the killing spread, people flocked to…
