Regulators

Comment by Steve McCarty on June 16, 2010 at 2:48pm

I think that these photos were in a collection of Ferrotypes gathered by Sallie Lucy Chisum Robert. There is some provenance to support my hypothesis. Valid provenance or no, doesn't this fellow look like Juan Patron? I think so.

Comment by Steve McCarty on June 17, 2010 at 10:23am

Note how much the man in between the two women looks like the man with the dark background. We know that Mike Cosgrove bought Billy, Rudabaugh and Billy Wilson new suits so that they'd be presentable for trial. I think there is a pretty chance that these two men are the same fella and Billy as well. You decide.

Comment by Steve McCarty on June 18, 2010 at 9:06am

No one seems to care much about my little pictures and apparently I have become a piariah within the BTK community. People tell me over and over againn that I have no right to declare these pictures authentic, because the provenance doesn't come up to "their" standards. My opinion is that I identified many of the Ferrotypes as soon as I found them, if me, then why not them?

Now, certainly I cannot identify many of the images, because there are none others out there to match mine to, and only four have the names written on the picture itself. They are John Jones (murdered by Bob Olinger), Joe Smith (a fighter alongside Billy in the Five Day War), Angie Clouse (I don't know anything certain about her other than she lived in Missouri.) and Louis Latour (don't know anything about him either except that he was married had chldren and lived in Chicago at one time.)

None of the other Ferrotypes have anything written upon them, but if they were Sallie's pictures she knew who the people were.

Comment by Steve McCarty on June 18, 2010 at 10:22am

Thanks Jeff:

Yeah, I have experienced the pitfalls of touting this collection! You know, it has taken me three years to gather the photos that I now have, not all being from the same source, but many taken by the same photographer.

As soon as I found a dozen or so, I drove to Cave Creek to show them to BBB. He liked them. He asked where I found them. "Oregon" I replied. Then he said, "You know, Billy the Kid was never in Oregon". I said yes. Then he left the room. Nice fella however.

With the help of Dave Turk I found the local Chisum family, and visited them; there are several. Some are Chisum's and others are Phillip's. Ara V. Chisum married Wayne E. Phillips in Oregon in 1920. Her sons, Wayne and Fred recalled the collection...at least some of the pictures. I haven't spoken with Fred for three years and I think he has passed. Dave Turk went out to inverview him, but said he was too ill to see visitors.

I hesitate to go too public with the Phillips family, because the have been very kind to me, and they like living alone, on the large ranch away from everything but their cattle. They don't even have a phone! They live in a beatiful new ranch house. The cut and skinned the logs themselves and built the place with their own hands. They know about Sallie Chisum, etc., but they are up to their eyeballs with the operation of their ranch and the tale of the Chisums is old hat to them. Actually they couldn't care less.

They have hundreds of old photos, many never before seen of Chisums. Since the death of "Old John" (as they call hiim) the family has been in constant turmoil over land, items of value, and inheritances. Frankly they have been a one another's throats since the late 19th Century and they are so today.

So I show, up. They explain to me that "You know more about our family that we do." They showed me part of their spread, their picture archive and fed my wife and I supper. (take out Chinese!) I showed them the collection and they asked, politely, if I would give them back. They recalled when they were sold and knew that I owned them fair and square. I considered it, and still am. However when we opened the family "trunk" the first thing Jeff Phillips said was "Where's all of the money and jewelry". A cousin had beaten him to it and taken them, and if the pictures were in there they may have been taken and the collection sold piece meal. That, in my eyes, would be a sin. I want the collection to be kept in one piece. I did give them enlarged copies however.

As for the historical community? I'm not sure that I want to jump threw their hoops. If I was to ask the Phillips/Chisums to accompany me to a notery with a note ascribing to the veracity of the collection they'd say, "What do you want us to do? Why? We're too busy. We've got several thousand head of cattle you know." And so they do, with the machinery to run a large ranch. They work constantly from dawn to dusk. I've been with them. They live way out in the middle of nowhere. The movie "Paint Your Wagon" was filmed near their place.

So part of me says, "Screw the historians". I've found these great pictures and they can believe them or not. I don't really care. After all I own the originals." You know what one of the best part of owning this collection is? When I hold one of the pictures I know for a fact that the person depicted held them too. My picture of a younger Billy was in Sallie's collection until soon before she died in 1934. I suspect that it is the one that some historians say Billy gave to her. I have the one she gave to him (if she did). That's very cool, and I feel honored to own the collection.

If the historians don't want to buy into the group, so be it. It's their loss isn't it.

Thanks for listening.

Steve

Comment by Steve McCarty on July 9, 2010 at 4:01pm

Look at these last two pictures. The one in the album I took in the George W. Morgan collection in Viroqua, Wis, where the photographer lived. The last and second and larger image is the same man! This picture I purchased in an auction in Minnesota. Along with the second picture I found a man dressed in the same shirt and tie (I think) as my picture of BTK. That is also a Morgan picture. I also think one of the pics is Richard Brewer, which is also a Morgan picture. (stop that moaning!!)

So my question is, was there someone who was an acquaintance of Brewers' in Wisconsin and also accompanied him to Lincoln?

If there was then this man is probably that fellow.

Now come on someone! I need a little help here!

Comment by Steve McCarty on July 29, 2010 at 4:50pm

Note how similar these Ferrotypes are. All young men, and at least three I recognize as being McCarty, Brewer and Folliard. Since G.W. Morgan also took a bunch of Ferrotypes of the Chisum family I suspect these were taken when the Regulators arrived at the Chisum ranch soon after Tunstall's murder. I have no evidence except that we see Brewer alive and kicking. He didn't have long to live.

It's also interesting to see how young these men were. The pictures look all the world like high school year book shots. The Kid, was you can see, was disarmingly youthful. The boys were dressed to the nines, but some share clothing, so they may have doned some duds that Morgan had in his wagon. He worked from a wagon between 1871 and 1882, when he stopped taking tintypes. He retired back to Tennessee a decade later and died there in 1904.

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