Billy the Kid
William H. Bonney, known as Billy the Kid (), was the prototype of the American western gunslinger. He was the youngest and most convincing of the folk hero-villains.
On Nov. 23, , William Bonney was born in New York City but moved as a young lad to Kansas. His father soon died, and his mother remarried and moved west to New Mexico. Having killed a man for insulting his mother, Bonney fled to the Pecos Valley, where he was drawn into the cattle wars then in progress. He became a savage murderer of many men, including Sheriff James Brady and a deputy, and scorned Governor Lew Wallace's demand that he surrender. "His equal for sheer inborn savagery," wrote journalist Emerson Hough, "has never lived." Such statements sent Bonney's reputation soaring and won him the nickname Billy the Kid.
Enjoying such notoriety, Billy the Kid gave no quarter to a hostile world. Condemned to hang, he heard a Las Vegas, Nev., judge say: "You are sentenced to be hanged by the neck until you are dead, dead, dead!" "And you can go to hell, hell, hell!" Billy spat back for an answer.
There are few facts about Billy the Kid's career that can be verified. It is known that women foun
James "Diamond Jim" Buchanan Brady
James Buchanan Brady () has been immortalized in the folklore of the Gilded-Age for his meteoric rise to high society from New York’s poorest slum and especially for his collection of more than 2 million dollars’ worth of diamond adornments, which earned him the nickname “Diamond Jim.”[1] Brady rejected the lure of the saloon that was customary to many New York Irishmen and made his fortune selling machine parts for Manning, Maxwell and Moore.[2]
Like many of his contemporaries, Brady also collected art. Rose Lorenz ran auctions with a tyrant’s hand behind the scenes at AAA but was known to indulge certain elements that were considered riffraff. Diamond Jim, unlike his elitist friend Stanford White, would drop in at the auction house after making a lucrative $1,, business deal or dining on one of his excessive meals at a neighboring restaurant. Brady’s taste in art bordered on vulgar with his collection of cattle paintings, as well as countless undraped females rendered in both paintings and sculptures. [3] Although their public personas were distinct, Stanford White and Diamond Jim shared a true friendship, an
Diamond Jim Brady
James Buchanan ("Diamond Jim") Brady (August 12, –April 13, ), was an American salesman of railroad equipment who became wealthy during the Golden Age of railroad expansion at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century but who is remembered today only as America's (and perhaps history's) greatest trencherman. His legendary appetite and reputed feats of gargantuan eating were widely celebrated during his lifetime and, as the years have passed, have only grown in the telling. Never married, although he was known for consorting with another famous personage of the Gilded Age, the singer Lillian Russell, a voluptuous beauty nearly as large as Brady himself, he endowed various institutions with millions of dollars, including Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, where the James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute still bears his name.
American tall tales
Americans of the 19th century, particularly those in the frontier areas, had a reputation for, and enjoyment of, notable exaggeration in both their humor and their descriptions. It may be that this affection for the tall tale, such as those about Paul Bunyon, Davy Crockett, and
The (Mostly) True Legend Of &#;Diamond Jim&#; Brady
Besides all of its immortal horses, legendary jockeys and masterful trainers, what makes Saratoga Race Course a one-of-a-kind horse racing venue is the countless larger-than-life personalities—the owners and high-rollers—who’ve frequented its stands. One such character is the legendary James Buchanan Brady, better known as “Diamond Jim.” When I first heard about Brady and the outlandish tales associated with him, I essentially pegged him as a fictitious character. While some of the stories of Brady’s excesses and exploits have been embellished or outright debunked, others have held water, providing authenticity to Diamond Jim’s iconic stature.
A true “rags to riches” story, Brady grew up poor, working as a telegraph messenger before acquiring his voracious appetite for the spoils of wealth. Born in New York City in , Brady eventually secured work through the New York Central Railroad system. He went on to a lucrative career as a railroad-car builder and made shrewd moves on Wall Street that garnered him a fortune reported to be north of $12 million. With that enormous wealth came a penchant for diamonds. According to some rep
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