Maysville Kentucky Blog

The Maysville Kentucky Blog is your guide to the beautiful and historic small town of Maysville Kentucky, snuggled into the rolling hills along the Ohio River. Though this blog has been discontinued, you can get your Maysville Kentucky fix over at Ken Downing's Mason County Kentucky Blog @ http://masoncountyky.blogspot.com

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Follow Up On Billy The Kid's Maysville Connection

I bumped this comment up to its own post because I think its really cool. One of our readers, Martha Poe Walls, responded to the article "Maysville Kentucky: Six Degrees From Billy the Kid" from our August 2006 Issue. As you may recall from the post, it was about Maysville's connection to the death of Billy the Kid through Maysville native John William Poe, who had accompanied Pat Garrett to Pete Maxwell's ranch the day Billy the Kid was shot by Garrett. Walls is Poe's 1st cousin, twice removed.

Martha Poe Walls said...

My brother sent me the link to this blog, and I really need to thank him. I've enjoyed reading, found the article on John William Poe neat, since my brother and I are 1st cousins twice removed from him. We still have family in Maysville, our father grew up there in the early teens and twenties on Pleasant Ridge. This is a great site for someone looking for Maysville history, or just looking into the day to day goings on in Maysville.

Please continue writing, we're eating up your words, and liking every one.

Thanks Martha! We'll keep on telling stories as long as there's folks willing to read them. The greatest reward in writing this blog is finding people like yourself, scattered across the world, but tied to Maysville Kentucky.

I also wanted to say thanks for giving me an excuse to do a follow up on this story. One thing that stuck out when re-reading the account is this line: "Waiting outside, Poe saw William Bonney (Billy the Kid) enter the ranch house, though he did not recognize him." I feel that may be important because I've always been intrigued by the idea, famously covered in the movie Young Guns II, that Billy the Kid wasn't actually killed that day, but instead was allowed to escape by Pat Garrett.

Poe watched someone enter the ranch, but didn't recognize him as William Bonney. That seems odd. You would think that someone like Poe would have recognized Bonney since he was directly connected to those involved, even if he had never met Bonney in person. Did Garrett intentionally kill someone else and pass him off as Billy the Kid so that Bonney could escape? Did Poe realize this? Is this one line from the account evidence of the idea that Billy the Kid survived with help from Garrett? The truth is probably lost to history.

posted at 3:58 PM by Jeremy Parnell   respond to this post   email post to friend   permanent link: Follow Up On Billy The Kid's Maysville Connection   print post

2 Comments:

Jeremy said...

Great link Ken, thanks (as always). I don't know if the full story about Billy the Kid has ever been told. I just find it interesting that Maysville has a connection to it. I am always amazed by these discoveries because we're kind of a small town. To have so many connections to such a variety of historical events is just plain weird.

12:53 PM
Ken Downing said...

Anyone interested should check this out. Very interesting



http://www.aboutbillythekid.com/Last_Days.htm

11:17 AM

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