William Bill Tilghman
William “Bill” Tilghman was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, on July 4, 1854, to William and Amanda Shepherd Tilghman. He was the third of six children. William, Bill's father, was born in 1823 on the eastern shore of Maryland. The Tilghman family is descendant from Richard Tilghman, who came from County Kent, England, and Lord Baltimore, the founder of the Maryland Colony. During the Civil War, William Tilghman Senior, served as a sharpshooter in the northern army.
In 1871 after the family moved to a homestead in Atchison, Kansas, Bill left home at the age of fifteen. As a young man growing up, Bill had no formal education through the school system. But he was well trained in all the skills that were necessary for life on the frontier. Tilghman took a job as a buffalo hunter, supplying meat to the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad crews. He was very successful as a buffalo hunter and, over a period of five years, claimed to have killed 12,000 bison. While Buffalo hunting, Bill had frequent and violent run-ins with Indians. He liked to hunt near the Indian reservation located west of the Oklahoma territory. This was an area of the reservation where white men, especially hunters, were forbidden to enter, just as the Indians were prohibited from venturing east. During one of the Indian skirmishes, Bill's older brother Richard, who was hunting with him, was killed. The Indians would frequently cross into Kansas and attack buffalo hunters or raid their camps and steal the provisions. Bill had no issues with shooting any of them that posed a threat. In 1872, he left his camp to go hunting and while he was away, the Cheyenne raided it, stealing and burning everything he owned. While most clearheaded people would count themselves fortunate and move on, Tilghman sought justice. He resupplied his camp, hid out, and waited. Not long afterward, a Cheyenne raiding party returned to steal from him again. Only this time, Tilghman turned his Sharps rifle on them. Of the seven raiders, he killed four and scared off the remaining three. |
Tilghman once proclaimed after an Indian fight, "Don't get frightened... and remember that we are in Kansas and that those dead Indians were nothing more than thieving outlaws. They have no right to be off their reservation, and if any more of them come around before we are ready to leave, we will start right in killing them."
After his stint as a buffalo hunter, Tilghman—a lifelong teetotaler—opened a saloon in Dodge City, Kansas. Known as the Crystal Palace Saloon, the establishment did reasonably well for Tilghman and his business partner, but an old friend from his buffalo hunting days encouraged Tilghman to sell out and seek another line of work. The friend's name was Bat Masterson and the new line of work was to become a deputy sheriff of Ford County, Kansas.
After his stint as a buffalo hunter, Tilghman—a lifelong teetotaler—opened a saloon in Dodge City, Kansas. Known as the Crystal Palace Saloon, the establishment did reasonably well for Tilghman and his business partner, but an old friend from his buffalo hunting days encouraged Tilghman to sell out and seek another line of work. The friend's name was Bat Masterson and the new line of work was to become a deputy sheriff of Ford County, Kansas.
Order Book: Buffalo DaysBuffalo Days, Legends of Dodge City, is about outfits of buffalo runners who traveled in and out of the Arkansas River Valley from 1870 to 1872. The book is a collection of individual stories of how men became legends of their experiences, founded at times by luck, but mostly on their skills to survive.
These are the stories of personal legends established out of solid character and the will to endure, making them unique to American lore. Here are the hunters such as Charles Rath, Josiah Wright Mooar, Jim White, Thomas Nixon, HooDoo Brown, Bill Tilghman, and Billy Dixon. The fully illustrated book is the second in a series of frontier books by Michael King based on the historical records of individual characters and their actions to become remembered as legends. These are the stories of legendary men told by the citizens of a fledgling town born out of the prairie that became known as Dodge City, Kansas. Many of the stories captivate the adventure, excitement, and experience of the Old West, tell the facts behind the individuals who were the founders of Dodge City and the events for which they participated in a less dramatized way. It is also the story of the greatest slaughter of any animal history: the great Bison herds of America. Michael King dramatically retells twelve distinct narratives of the great buffalo slaughter with striking, intelligently researched text and recollective illustrations and photographs. Michael King eloquently and graphically describes all aspects of the hunt and the hunters, including the beginnings of a town on the plains called Dodge City. |