Historical sleuthing corrects fabrications in Billy the Kid’s story

I didn’t think any more could be written about Billy the Kid because eager Billy buffs have scoured every speck of data about the state’s favorite bad guy. But last year Kurt House and Roy B. Young published “Chasing Billy the Kid: The Untold Story of the Manhunt for William H. Bonney.” They introduced a new character into the Billy pageant, Frank Stewart, and corrected the historical record. Lately, they even arranged for the forgotten Stewart to get a tombstone.

What we’ve read for years is that on Dec. 23, 1880, lawman Pat Garrett led the posse that tracked down and caught Billy and his gang at Stinking Spring and took them to Las Vegas and then Santa Fe. In July 1881, after Billy’s dramatic escape from the Lincoln jail, Garrett shot Billy in Fort Sumner.

House and Young ask us to rewind that movie to 1880 and the first capture. Garrett and fellow lawman Frank Stewart together led the posse to Stinking Spring, east of Fort Sumner. However, later on Garrett became the long hero in an autobiography he crafted with a ghost writer; they played down Frank Stewart’s role. A third lawman, Charlie Siringo, also wrote a book barely mentioning Stewart. Those “lesser lights,” wrote House and Young, stole from Stewart his rightful recognition.

The project began with a gun.

House, a gun collector and firearms expert, acquired a factory-engraved, pearl-handled Colt revolver. The Colt’s provenance was excellent. It was one of a pair of guns given to Stewart by a Las Vegas hotel owner grateful for the Kid’s capture. House wanted to know more and enlisted his friend Young in the research. Over the next five years the two historians documented an extraordinary life.

“Neither Roy nor I were interested in Billy the Kid,” House said in video posted on the WWHA website, but with a better understanding of Frank Stewart, they wanted to set the record straight.

They learned that Frank Stewart was an alias for a German immigrant named John Wallace Green, born Oct. 23, 1852. In this region Green became a livestock detective in the 1880s when rustling was rampant, and that was probably why he took the alias of Frank Stewart. The success of the 1880 posse that captured Billy led many men to claim they took part when they didn’t, House said. He and Young determined exactly who was there and listed them in an appendix.

“My research on the chase and capture of Billy the Kid has revealed that Pat Garrett overstated his role in the events of November-December 1880,” Young wrote. “Charlie Siringo’s self-aggrandizing book, ‘A Texas Cowboy,’ is worse. Evidence shows the important role of cattle detective and Deputy U.S. Marshal Frank Stewart.”

Stewart would later be a railroad detective, a deputy sheriff and a ranch foreman. When he married at age 48 he used his given name. He died at age 83 on May 11, 1935, and was buried in Raton without a marker.

House and Young traveled to Raton last year to find the lawman’s resting place, but despite meetings with local experts – local historians, cemetery sextons, funeral home directors, and city officials – they couldn’t identify the plot. With the help of the cemetery sexton, they chose “a most desirable unused plot… to honor Stewart/Green with a grave marker,” according to their news release.

Recently, the Wild West History Association installed a grave marker in Raton, completing the process. The marker reads: “John Wallace Green/ Alias Frank Stewart/ October 23, 1852 – May 11, 1935/ He captured Billy the Kid December 23, 1880.”

It might be 142 years late, but Frank Stewart finally got his due – and a 423-page book.

This article originally appeared on Las Cruces Sun-News: Historical sleuthing corrects fabrications in Billy the Kid’s story