Born: September 17, 1859
Died: July 14, 1881
AKA: Henry Antrim, Kid Antrim, Henry McCarty
One of the most famous outlaws of the Old West, Billy the Kid never robbed a bank or a stagecoach and probably killed no more than a half-dozen men. However, when the man responsible for killing the Kid wrote a sensationalized book about him, fact and fiction became forever blurred.
Everyone has heard of Billy the Kid—but no one knows who he really was. It’s generally accepted that he was born in the slums of New York City, although other sources place his birth in Indiana. (One version of Billy’s life claims that he was born in Ireland to a peasant father and Native American mother.) William Bonney was probably an alias (assumed name), that he took later in life. Some authorities believe that his real name was Henry McCarty—the son of Patrick Henry McCarty and Catherine Devine McCarty. The couple also had an older son, Joseph.
Billy’s father died sometime in the 1860s—possibly while fighting in the Civil War (1861–1865). Billy’s widowed mother moved West, and eventually married a man named William Antrim.
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