Jim Levy (Leavy): At The End of a Trail of Violence

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Pioche, Nevada, 1885

Abilene. Cripple Creek. Deadwood. Dodge City. Tombstone. There are towns with more famous names than that of Pioche, Nevada, but historians have verified that Pioche was as rough and tough as any other town in America's Wild West.

Although Pioche's Jim Levy (also spelled Leavy) wasn't as famous as Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, or Doc Holliday, he did develop a reputation as a man who was skilled with a six-gun and someone it was dangerous to cross, and Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson considered him a skilled gunfighter.

He started his career as a gunfighter in hope of inheriting $5,000. In a gunfight with fellow miner Mike Casey, Thomas Gosson (also spelled Gasson) was fatally wounded. His dying proclamation was to will $5,000 to anybody who killed Casey.

Pioche, Nevada

In the 1871 gunfight that occurred between Casey and Levy, in front of Freudenthals' General Store, Levy wounded his adversary, putting Casey out of his misery by pistol-whipping him, an act that earned Levy both a pistol shot to the jaw from one of the dead man's friends and the money Gossan had bequeathed to Casey's killer.

In Pioche, in January 1873, Levy was also involved in another duel to the death, this time against Thomas Ryan. Due to a lack of evidence needed to prosecute Levy for murder, the gunfighter was released. Sometime during the next two years, he left Pioche.

On March 9, 1877, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Levy became involved in yet another gunfight, this time against Charlie Harrison. Like Levy, Harrison had a history of violence, having killed several of foes. Insults Harrison made about the Irish during a card game in which Levy was also a player infuriated the Nevada gunfighter, and the men agreed to settle their score outside. They later faced off in front of Frenchy's Saloon.

Although Harrison got off the first shot—or the first few shots—his aim was inaccurate. Levy's was not, and he shot Harrison in the chest. To finish the job, Levy approached his fallen foe and shot him again. Witnesses took umbrage at this second, needless exhibition of Levy's skill, but he was never prosecuted for killing Harrison.

Tucson, Arizona

In Tucson, Arizona, Levy came to the end of his trail. This time, his dispute was with John Murphy, who was dealing cards in a faro game at the Fashion Saloon. The men agreed to settle their differences in a gunfight the next morning. 

Instead, Murphy and his friends, Bill Moyer and Dave Gibson, encountering Levy just after midnight as he approached the Palace Saloon's front door, opened fire on Levy, assuming the gunfighter was armed.

Levy believed the shots had been fired from within the saloon and fled outside—a mistake that cost him his life, when he ran straight into his enemies' gunfire. Although Murphy, Moyer, and Gibson were arrested and held in jail for killing an unarmed man, they escaped, and Murphy and Gibson evaded capture. Moyer was arrested and sentenced to life in prison.

Commodore Perry Owens

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Commodore Perry Owens

Like many other figures of the Old West, Commodore Perry Owens worked at a variety of jobs. Life on the frontier was fluid, so a man had to be flexible and willing to try his hand at a number of ways to earn a living.

Born in Tennessee on July 29, 1852, Owens left his home on the family farm to travel and to live, first in Indiana and then in Texas, where, beginning in 1870, he worked as a cowboy, before traveling to New Mexico, settling at Navajo Springs in 1882.

Sahrps 45-60 Buffalo Rifle

Owens was an expert shot and carried a 45-60 Sharps buffalo rifle with which he was an accurate shot to a distance of one mile. He also carried a Winchester rifle and two handguns. He was in charge of a stagecoach station on the Navajo reservation, where, from time to time, he had brushes with Indians.

The abandonment of the station caused Owens to drift south to Cottonwood Seep, Arizona, where he drove cattle and raised horses and became a deputy sheriff of Apache County on November 4, 1886; ten months later, he was elected the county's sheriff on September 4, 1887.

Andy ("Cooper") Blevins

As sheriff, Owens shot it out with a houseful of outlaws when he rode out to the Blevins' house in Holbrook, Arizona. Not only was Owens's quarry, Andy (“Cooper”) Blevins home, but so were Sam Houston Blevins, John Blevins, Mose Roberts, and Mrs. John (Eva) Blevins. Other woman might also have been inside the house. Owens's target wasn't about to submit to arrest, and a shootout ensued between Owens and the desperadoes, during which Owens, firing five shots with his Winchester, “killed Cooper, Roberts and Sam Blevins and severely wounded John Blevins.”

After his term as Apache County's sheriff, Owens was employed by the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad and then by Wells Fargo. After a stint as a U. S. deputy marshal and, from March 25, 1895 to December 31, 1896, as the sheriff of Navajo County, Arizona, he became a businessman in Seligman, Arizona, possibly as a saloon operator. He died on may 10, 1919, and was buried in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Tombstone Entertainment: The Birdcage Theater

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

One of the challenges faced by Billy Hutchinson and his wife Lottie, the owners of The Birdcage Theater in nineteenth-century Tombstone, Arizona, was how to make their business appealing to their customers, the region's miners, cowboys, and ranchers.
 

In 1881, before wedding Lottie, Billy had spent considerable money—$600—to build the theater. Now, he had to offer incentives to customers to keep them coming back for more. Fortunately, Billy had worked in show business, and he had the answer: “entertaining shows, refreshing drinks, games of chance, dancing, private conversation[,] and adult comfort.”

The eclectic “entertainment” offered by the theater wasn't exclusively theatrical. Prostitutes, who worked behind the drawn curtains of the “elevated boxes” suspended from the ceiling, also kept the establishment's patrons entertained at $25 per night. (Private rooms in the basement went for $40 per night.) 

Uncle Tom's Cabin was performed at The Birdcage in June 1882. Not all of the action went as written in the script:

Chaos occurred when little Eliza was being pursued by Simon Legree and his bloodhound while crossing the icy river. An inebriated cowboy, caught up in the drama, pulled his sixgun and plugged the dog. The audience was outraged and pounced on the clueless cowboy who was finally rescued by a peace officer and hauled off to jail. The next day the cowboy, now sober and repentant, offered his horse to the troupe as recompense for the dog.

In addition, The Birdcage Theater featured wrestling matches, one of which, between Peter Schumacher and Professor Dan Milo, occurred on February 6, 1886, each party receiving $100. Admission to the floor was 50 cents; for reserved seats, a dollar. The match was advertised in the town's famous newspaper, The Tombstone Epitaph, two days before the event took place.

The variety of entertainment that The Birdcage featured virtually guaranteed there was something for everyone, “including leg shows, bawdy humorists, and fast-paced variety acts.” The variety acts featured such performers as The Happy Hottentots and their “Grotesque Dancing, Leg Mania, and Contortion Feats”; Mademoiselle De Granville, “The Female Hercules,” who claimed to have “an iron jaw” and picked “up heavy objects with her teeth”; comedians, including “the Irish comic duo of John H. Burns and Matthew Trayers, the comic singer Irene Baker,” and comedienne Nola Forest; “a serious opera singer” Carrie Delmar; acrobats and trapeze artists; Ella Richter, aka Mademoiselle Zazel, “the Human Cannonball”; masquerade balls attended by transvestite entertainers David Walters and Will Curlew; and “The Flying Nymph,” who “flew” across the theater “on a rope.” 

The Human Fly was certainly “one of the most unusual” performances:

. . . women (dressed in the usual theatrical tights and abbreviated costumes) walked upside-down on the ceiling over the stage. It was not an illusion—they actually were suspended above the stage . . . . The trick was that their shoes had special clamps on them that fitted into holes bored into the ceiling to support them . . . . In another version “the human fly” women wore suction cups on their feet as they walked up and down on a platform high above the stage.

As one might suppose, such acts were dangerous. In both versions, one or more of “the human fly” performers died when equipment failed.

Among the other unusual entertainments the theater boasted was a 24-hour poker game that continued non-stop for eight years, five months, and three days, during which $10 million were bet. To be admitted to the game, a player had to be willing to spend at least $1,000. Those who tried their hands at the game include Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson, Diamond Jim Brady, and George Hearst. The house took 10 percent of the winnings, so, over the years that the game lasted, The Birdcage received a whopping $1 million! 

Eddie Foy, Sr.

Lotta Crabtree

Among other entertainers who performed at The Birdcage were Eddie Foy, Sr., Lotta Crabtree, Lily Langtree, and Lola Montez. However, despite the entertainment the theater offered, the frequent shootings and low company prevented many women from patronizing the establishment, and, despite the weekly Ladies' Nights on which women were admitted free of charge, “respectable ladies in Tombstone never went near the Bird Cage.”

Lillie Langtree

 

Lola Montez

The Birdcage Theater is something of a time capsule. Located at the corner of Allen Street and Sixth Street, it survived the devastating fire that swept through Tombstone in the early 1880s because it was built entirely of concrete, and, “when it closed its doors in 1889, everything inside was left in place”; in 1934, when the doors were opened again, “Tombstone found itself with a perfect window into its past.”

 

AUTHENTICATED: New Tintype of Morgan Earp, Louisa Earp, Doc Holliday, and Mary Katherine Horony

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Seated, second row, second to left, Morgan Earp; beside him, to his left, Louisa Earp; to Louisa's left, "Big Nose Kate"; to her left, Doc Holliday. Souce: Bidsquare.

Click the image to enlarge it.

The recent authentication of an April 24, 1881, tintype showing Morgan Seth Earp (1851-1882), Morgan's wife Louisa Alice Houston (1855-1894), Doc Holliday (1851-1887), and Doc's common-law wife Mary Katherine (“Big Nose Kate”) Horony (1850-1940) has excited Western historian, novelists, and fans. The tintype may have been taken on Morgan's thirtieth birthday.

The rare tintype, measuring 4.875 inches long by 3.375 inches wide, was authenticated by forensic expert Kent Gibson of Los Angeles, California, using facial-recognition software.

Gibson has also authenticated images of other figures of the Old West, including those of Wyatt Earp, Annie Oakley, Pat Garrett, Jesse James, Frank James, Butch Cassidy, The Sundance Kid, Doc Holliday, John Wilkes Booth, Fred Waite, Fred Noonan, Bat Masterson.

Morgan Earp. Source: Find-a-Grave.

Click the image to enlarge it.

Six months after the tintype was taken, the famous Gunfight at the OK Corral occurred, on October 26, 1881, at 2:30 PM. Morgan and Doc fought alongside Morgan's brothers, Wyatt and Tombstone marshal Virgil, against Frank McLaury, Tom McLaury, and Billy Clanton. The next year, on March 18, Morgan was assassinated in Campbell & Hatch's saloon and billiard parlor, an incident that precipitated Wyatt Earp's and Doc Holliday's vendetta ride.