How History Unfolds on Paper: Important Americana from the Eric C. Caren Collection, Part X

Topeka, Kansas, December 14, 1925. Autograph notes on rectos only of six lined sheets, signed by Connelley on final sheet. Residue from removed paperclip in top left corner of first sheet.

William E. Connelley (1855-1930), an American writer, historian, and school teacher, spent 42 years collecting and researching material on James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok (1837-76), for his posthumously published book, Wild Bill and His Era. As President, and then Secretary, of the Kansas State Historical Society, Connelley had access to a wide trove of documents related to the old American West and gunslinger and folk hero Wild Bill Hickok. Upon Connelley's death in July 1930, he left behind an extensive manuscript on the frontiersman, which was then completed and published by his daughter. As she indicated in the editor's note for the book, "Much that is valuable has been removed, and much that was left has been condensed."

The notes above, penned by Connelley, appear to possibly be one of many vignettes he gathered while researching Wild Bill Hickok (which involved extensive interviews with individuals who knew Hickok directly or indirectly). In this account, Connelley retells the recollections of a Curtis Phillips of Sapulpa, Oklahoma. As a young man, Phillips lived at Rock Creek Station in Jefferson County, Nebraska, the site of Wild Bill's notorious July 1861 gunfight with the McCanles Gang. Phillips's story offers perhaps an alternative motive for the shooting. According to Curtis, a man named Hughes lived at the station at the time, along with his "trifling brother-in-law," Mason. Mason had established a nearby homestead and borrowed cattle from the McCanles brothers. The subsequent events are somewhat unclear, but it appears a postal worker in the area, who had also wanted the cattle, was refused by the McCanles gang. In response, the gang had Mason arrested for cattle theft. This arrest enraged Mrs. Hughes, Mason's sister. Connelley notes that she and Wild Bill were close friends. Feeling scandalized by her brother's arrest, she urged Bill to seek revenge, and Bill obliged by killing McCanles a few days later.