Boothill Graveyard

ARTICLE ON OLD TOMBSTONE BY LENORA BRIMMER

Old timers seldom agree on the legend of just how Boothill Graveyard inhabitants found themselves under their present cryptic epitaphs. The versions often varybut the stories buried under Boothill's mounds depict an era of boom and violence and drama in Arizona's unparalleled history. And to visit the old cemetery in Tombstone is to recapture the pioneering spirit of the Frontier. As you wend your way among the sunny, stone-covered graves, there is in the invigorating air more a spirit of life than of death the swift-moving life that was Tombstone in its booming days as a mining town. They didn't all "die with their boots on" but frontier life made them ready and willing to, if necessary. The epitaphs, though seemingly disconnected in names and fates, are actually the jig-saw pieces that make up the picture of the early West.

Boothill's first group of rock-covered graves mark the climax of the most famous and oft-recounted ClantonEarp feud: "Tom McLowery, Frank McLowery, Billy Clanton-'Murdered on the Streets of Tombstone'."

The marker has quotations around it, for that is the much-debated opinion of the Clanton sympathizers. According to them, the boys were definitely murdered without a chance to defend themselves by the vengeful Earps and Doc Holliday. There had long been bad blood and it was becoming increasingly evident that there would soon be no room for both factions to remain in town. The climax came with the shooting in the O. K. corral. Game young Billy Clanton was shot through the heart with the bullet that pierced a letter in his pocket from his sweetheart.

There were hearings after the gunplay, for as Tombstone's old timers will assure you, it was a "law-abidin' town." There were always preliminary hearings after "difficulties" and consequent "killings." Murder was a word to be used with caution.

Billy Claiborne, a "killer" cowboy who was present at, but took no part in the feud, was put to bed with a shovel in Boothill at the insistence of colorful Frank Leslie, known as Buckskin Frank, and a killer in his own right.

Frank was tending bar at the Oriental when Claiborne came in, offensively drunk. Before long Billy was force-fully ejected and, highly indignant, left to arm himself with a shotgun. He was determined to see to it that Leslie never put him or anyone else out of a bar again.

But a friend warned the bartender that Billy was waiting outside. Leslie got out his .45, laid his burning cigar on the polished bar, slipped out the side door and to the front along the adobe wall. He sighted his quarry, calmly called, "Billy." The boy turned, and promptly fell forward with a bullet through his heart. Buckskin Frank is said to have gone back inside, finished the still-burning cigar, and casually remarked to a waiting customer, "He died nice."

Boothill visitors always find themselves drawn to one marker over a group of graves. Five names are listed, and then the two words: "LEGALLY HANGED." It is such a capsule commentary on the grim law of the frontier. It was all properly lawful, this first legal hanging in Tombstone, for the stars of the performance had been accused of robbing the payroll of a mining company in near-by Bisbee and indiscriminately murdering practically everyone in the vicinity.

Invitations to the hangings, dated March 28, 1884, were very properly extended by the Sheriff, admitting guests to witness the execution of Daniel Kelly, Omer W. Sample, Jas. Howard, Daniel Dowd and William Delaney, at one o'clock P. M. at the Court House, Tombstone, Arizona. They were exclusive invitations, too, and distinctly marked "Not Transferable!"

There could be nothing indefinite about the event, for it had been preceded by one of those cases where the Law of the Courts happened not to appeal to the people -and the Law of the Frontier had to step in.

Bob Heath, party to the outlawry which resulted in his five pardners' legal execution, got special treatment. He had been the first one "tried." A verdict of second-degree murder was brought in. The following dawn found him dangling on the spinning twine swung from a limb outside the Court House. And the jurors were personally warned to expect similar treatment should any more such verdicts be forthcoming!

However, if the mob happened to be on the other side. Marshall White's marker in Boothill reads:

The story of a young, tempestuous frontier can be read in the grave-markers at Boothill Graveyard in Tombstone.

"Shot by Curly Bill." But there is no marker there for Curly, though he he was resisting arrest when he fired. During the preliminary hearing one of the Earps gave the acquitting testimony that Curly's gun had gone off "by accident."

Each grave in the windswept cemetery carries interred within its own special brand of romance and adventure.

The visitor who stops beside the marker: "Billy Grounds-Died of Wounds," is reading not only the final words on a story of frontier justice, but may be looking down on the clue to buried treasure.

Grounds, and his sidekick Zwing Hunt, attempted a getaway from Tombstone after committing robbery and murder. The reckless rustlers stopped at a ranch just nine miles from town for reinforcement. Not finding the rancher at home, they stretched their luck a bit too far by sending back to town for $75 the man owed them. He informed the Sheriff, and the outlaws were wounded trying to shoot their way out of the subsequent roundup by the Law. Back at the hospital Grounds lasted awhile, thanks to some buckshot lodged in the silk cowboy handkerchief tied around his neck. Hunt survived him and escaped from the hospital only to be killed by a band of Apaches in what is now know as Hunt's Canyon.

Their story has been best preserved by contemporaries steeped in the lore of the Old West and searching for treasure in Skeleton Canyon. Hunt and Grounds are supposed to have ambushed a party of Mexicans there who had been smuggling silver dollars and bullion out of Mexico. It is claimed that they killed the entire party and buried the spoils in the canyon.

Burying treasure, hell-raisin', shootin', lynchin' and dyin' with yer boots on have remained the most colorful pieces in the picture of this town too tough to die. But they are outnumbered by the quiet pieces that fit together to form the background. The visitor who lingers for a moment in Boothill pays tribute to the good people who made up that background. Some died peacefully and some did not, but these were the pioneers who came to the mining town to work and live and enjoy these rolling hills surrounded by the Whetstones, the Burros, the Mules, the Huachucas and the Dragoon Mountains.

It has been asserted that in 1881 there were only forty killers in all of Tombstone. Forty killers can raise a lot of what it takes to give a town the reputation of being plenty tough but they left ample room for the thousands of law-respecting, worthy citizens in that riproaring vicinity. They're in Boothill, too; buried with honorable mention just north of the outlaw section.

There are no boots in the corner of Boothill which houses the erstwhile Chinese members of Tombstone "society," who originally came to the boom town as cooks and laundrymen. Mrs. Ah Lum, or China Mary, Chinese angel of the camp, lies in a stone-walled grave, surrounded by those of Hop Lung, Foo Kee, and Tong Kee. Nearby is that of Quong Kee, who came to Tombstone penniless and died a ranch owner.

Dutch Annie, though known as the Queen of the Red Light District, was buried in this section in full splendor and glory. She was accompanied to her grave by a thousand buggy cortege. Prominent businessmen and officials, along with loyal members of the underworld, made up the procession. They came to pay tribute to this camp angel who had staked many a miner down on his luck and given him his start. Her grave, long unmarked, has

Tombstone of today, a health center whose fame is growing greater, was once famed for violence and Sudden death: now been identified. But the pomp of her final send-off is belied by the simple epitaph: "Dutch Annie—1883."

Continuing with the background picture, there were the Al Bennetts. They were of Tombstone's most beloved citizenry and remained inviolate during the town's toughest flare. But Mr. Bennett and his friend Ben Scott now lie under a common epitaph in Boothill which reads: "Ambushed by Apaches." Actually, only one of them met his fate as a direct result of Apache action.

One day Bennett and Scott started out under the turquoise skies of Arizona with a load of freight for Mexico. They were ambushed by the Indians. Scott, shot only in the arm, managed to get the badly wounded Bennett into hiding and rode off for aid. Bennett was rescued from his hiding place the following morning and taken to Fronteras in Mexico. His wounds proved fatal and he was buried there. Scott, who was brought back to Tombstone, recovered.

Perhaps the most impressive tombstone in all the graveyard is that of a quiet background character who outlasted most of his contemporaries, good, bad and indifferent. He was Sheriff Slaughter's former negro servant, and a quick resume of his history is engraved there for all to see: "JOHN SWAIN (SLAUGHTER). Born June 1846. Former Slave who came to Tombstone 1879. Died February 8, 1946. Erected by the Personnel at Fort Huachuca and Friends of Tombstone in Memory of a Worthy Pioneer."

Though elaborate tombstones are scarce, most of Boothill's inhabitants were treated to decent, if unmourned, funerals. Even those "unknown" early seekers of fortune who shot and were shot during the period when the Old Bird Cage Theatre, still a famous spot, was in its highstepping prime. There was usually someone to stake 'em to some final attention before they were carried to a grave "just six by three." This would indicate a dearth of boots underground in Boothill.

But one pair of boots is surely down below with Johnnie Blair. Smallpox, not gunpowder, was his nemesis.

Johnnie's cowboy buddies had him quarantined in the cabin of an immune Mexican woman out on the mesa. After several days, the nurse came to inform the cowboys at their safe distance that Señor Juanito was "muy muerto." They decided to gamble for mortician honors.

The loser rode to the cabin door, threw a lasso around the feet of the blanketed body, and galloped to the scooped-out grave, bouncing Blair in unceremoniously. The others stood by to shovel a rapid-fire funeral for Johnnie. The Boothill marker reads "Died of Smallpox. Cowboy Throwed Rope over Feet and Dragged him to his Grave."

Two most colorful characters in the overall picture pop up with frequency on what might be called the credit side of Boothill's rather terse epitaphs. These are the names of two men who avoided ending up there themselves -though their careers filled many of the present mounds. ent mounds.

John Slaughter died miles from Tombstone on his peaceful ranch in San Bernardino. For four years as Sheriff of Cochise County, Slaughter wasn't often bothered with taking prisoners. Once he ran a troublemaker out of town, it was a fair bet the man wouldn't turn up in any other town, either. He riddled Tombstone into a place of law and order from the business end of his pearlhandled six-shooter.

And Doc Holliday, the "coldest-blooded killer" in all of Tombstone's hot-blooded days, was a sadly disappointed man when he realized he was dying of tuberculosis at Cottonwood Springs, in Colorado. The last thoughts of this picturesque desperado in no way paralleled those of the Clanton boy whom he had helped on his way to Boothill Graveyard.

"I had offered odds of eight to five," lamented Holliday, "that I'd cash out some day at the end of a six-shooter. Tough to lose that bet."

His dying words were, "This is funny." As it wasfor Doc to die in bed with his boots off.

On a hill among the cholla and prickly pear, overlooking the old graveyard, stands the final tribute to the man who actually stretched the original canvas which brought Tombstone, and consequently Boothill, into the picture.

Ed Schieffelin, Tombstone's godfather, shunned burial in Boothill Graveyard. He left instructions to be buried on the site of his old lookout, where he had first discovered traces of the rich ore which started the prospect-ing pioneers' pilgrimage to that fabulous part of the country.

In spite of much debunking and discouragement on the part of his friends and advisors, he had set up camp on this highest hill in the vicinity where no enemy could approach unseen and where he considered himself "good for twenty Indians." Schieffelin had been warned when he set out from Fort Huachuca that instead of a mine he would find his tombstone.

"This is my tombstone," was his smug reaction when he hunted for silver on the spot that is now Schieffelin's Monument. And here he lies as he first arrived his pick and shovel and canteen buried with him.

Boothill Graveyard has passed through a history of its own. During the Tombstone mining boom and for many years beyond, the men in their "just six by threes," and those who entered with flourish, lay undisturbed under their piles of stones on the brush-grown hill.

Then with the relentless passage of time and its forgetting on the part of new generations, much of the gar-bage waste was hauled from the Town of Tombstone and dumped on the outlaw cemetery.

In about 1925, there was a movement on the part of history-conscious Arizonans to pay tribute to its frontiers-men, worthy and wicked, by removing the accumulated litter of tin cans and other debris. The Boy Scout Troop of Tombstone joined in to perform its good deed.

Recently, Boothill had a determined champion in its self-appointed caretaker, E. C. Nunnelley. Steeped in frontier lore of the '80s, he handed down many a Boothill yarn to visitors of the graveyard. Late in 1946 he became the cemetery's most recent inhabitant when he was buried among the riproaring pioneers whose guardian-ship he had assumed.

Many of the original epitaphs of the men who died with their boots on were "collected" by souvenir hunters before Mr. Nunnelley took the old graveyard under his wing. But some of those remaining still spin their laconic yarn of poetic justice.

"Red River Tom Shot by Ormsby." "Bronco Charlie -Shot by Ormsby." "Ormsby-Shot."

With or without their boots on, the ghosts of Boothill lost a staunch earthy champion when they took Mr. Nun-nelley in as one of them. He was fond of pointing out the cemetery across the road, where what he called the "do-gooders" of Tombstone were buried.

"For my money, I'll take Boothill," he said. And he did.