Spanish American War Medal

[mckinley412]

I'm thinking Billy would have been 13 by the time the arrest happened and if we even want to go into how young a child will be arrested then there are plenty of modern day examples, I guess from 5 and up... handcuffs, everything,. But I think Brushy gave his birthday right the first time. 1861

[wannabe12]

So this thread got a little off topic, when I started it I was searching the Service Medals list from NARA for Brushy. After 16,650 names Brushy is not here. That is the entire list for that particular medal being awarded. I will search the Campaign Medals list also, just in case whoever printed the picture of the Service Medal in books about Brushy did not know there was more than one type awarded.

[mckinley412]

Can you post the names? I know that's a tall order. I will post a list of alleged aliases here. (And yes, I really wish I would have made notes next to where some of these came from and people are probably gonna have questions but if it wasn't an alleged alias for Billy or Brushy then it wouldn't be on here. None of this stuff like Jimmie Simpson and Jimmy McDaniels are just coming from some modern idea such as someone thought he might be Jimmy McDaniels, but these are from old sources that mentioned these as aliases for Billy/Brushy, with the exception of John Murphy which came from Edward Daniels more recent book.)
Kid/Billie Antrim (or Antrum)
Jimmy McDaniel
Johny Murphy
Billie Cramer
Hugo/Texas Kid
William Henry Roberts
Austin Antrim/Antrum
Billy Conley
Billy Coyle
Billy Donovan
William Bonnie OR Bonne
Rattlesnake Bill
The Kid Bandit from Mexico/New Mexico
Ollie L. Roberts
Ollie Henry Roberts
Oliver Pleasant Roberts
Oliver Partridge Roberts
Henry McCarty
Michael McCarty
McCarthy
William H. Bonney
W. H. Bonney
Jimmie Simpson

[nmjames]

mckinely412:

Some of the names come from old newspapers. Billy Conley, Billy Coyle and Billy Donovan come from a newspaper article back in 1881 talking about Billy the Kid's Castle. The name of the article was The Story Of An Outlaw. It was in several newspapers back in August 1881. It was a made up story by someone named Mr. Duncan. It was from the Philadelphia Times, August 3, 1881. On August 6, 1881 from Lamy, New Mexico came the following : I see you copy the long and absurd sketch of "Billy the Kid" and his fictitious "castle." furnished by the Philadelphia times. If you need to know the newspapers and dates, I can PM them to you.

[mckinley412]

I don't think all of that article was made up because he describes the round castle like the Torreon but obviously it was a different one at another location and it says Billy was from Texas which makes sense and that his parents were from Nova Scotia which I have talked about before. But actually parts of this story were used in different stories and not all of these stories matched exactly. I know I've heard the fancy dress in two different stories that were described the same way, had to have been by Mr. Duncan. Do you know any other similarities such as the kid said he was born in Texas or maybe several differences? T'would be interesting to compare all of the same-ish several stories. Go ahead and PM them to me. Thanks.

[mckinley412]

I was reading on wikipedia that out of all the Rough Riders only two officers were killed and Brushy also mentioned two officers being killed. It says 31 Rough Riders were given discharges not including disability discharges. Perhaps, Brushy is one of these 31. So far, I just now emailed spanamwar.com to see about getting a list of the 31 but if anyone else can find another way to try that would be helpful. I didn't see any names that stood out on their list of Rough Riders. If we do find a list of the 31 nobody should be ruled out based on age as Brushy could have been born between 1859 and 1879. I was questioning whether Brushy was actually a Rough Rider or perhaps got assigned to another unit but it says that only the Rough Riders saw action there so going by Brushy's story, he saw action which means he was a Rough Rider.

[Texas Truth Teller]

Jul 16, 2020 15:48:23 GMT -5 mckinley412 said:

I was reading on wikipedia that out of all the Rough Riders only two officers were killed and Brushy also mentioned two officers being killed. It says 31 Rough Riders were given discharges not including disability discharges. Perhaps, Brushy is one of these 31. So far, I just now emailed spanamwar.com to see about getting a list of the 31 but if anyone else can find another way to try that would be helpful. I didn't see any names that stood out on their list of Rough Riders. If we do find a list of the 31 nobody should be ruled out based on age as Brushy could have been born between 1859 and 1879. I was questioning whether Brushy was actually a Rough Rider or perhaps got assigned to another unit but it says that only the Rough Riders saw action there so going by Brushy's story, he saw action which means he wa'ss a Rough Rider.

Medals for the Spanish American War have been discussed previously.  Brushy memorabilia included a Spanish American War medal.  Photos of that medal reveal that it was for service during the Spanish American War.  It was not for service in Cuba.

[mckinley412]

Jul 16, 2020 16:24:20 GMT -5 Texas Truth Teller said:

Jul 16, 2020 15:48:23 GMT -5 mckinley412 said:

I was reading on wikipedia that out of all the Rough Riders only two officers were killed and Brushy also mentioned two officers being killed. It says 31 Rough Riders were given discharges not including disability discharges. Perhaps, Brushy is one of these 31. So far, I just now emailed spanamwar.com to see about getting a list of the 31 but if anyone else can find another way to try that would be helpful. I didn't see any names that stood out on their list of Rough Riders. If we do find a list of the 31 nobody should be ruled out based on age as Brushy could have been born between 1859 and 1879. I was questioning whether Brushy was actually a Rough Rider or perhaps got assigned to another unit but it says that only the Rough Riders saw action there so going by Brushy's story, he saw action which means he wa'ss a Rough Rider.

Medals for the Spanish American War have been discussed previously.  Brushy memorabilia included a Spanish American War medal.  Photos of that medal reveal that it was for service during the Spanish American War.  It was not for service in Cuba.

TTT, Cuba was the Spanish-American War.  

fcit.usf.edu/florida/lessons/s-a_war/s-a_war1.htm

Although most of the fighting took place in Cuba, the first major battle was not fought there. It was fought half way around the world in the harbor of Manila. Manila is located in the Philippine Islands, which were then ruled by Spain. The U.S. fleet, led by Commodore George Dewey, defeated the Spanish fleet there.

Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders went to Cuba to help in the fighting. The Rough Riders were a group of cowboys and college athletes. Theodore Roosevelt later became governor of New York and then president of the United States.

The Spanish-American War lasted only a few months and was over when Spain signed a peace treaty giving the United States control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippine Islands, and Guam. Cuba, however, became an independent country rather than a U.S. territory.

[mckinley412]

And I did find the two officers that were killed and they both were shot at the same time which would match Brushy's story. They were given orders not to shoot but ...I will post down below so you can read.

Rough Rider David Leahy wrote:
Orders were given to be down but not to return the Spanish fire, as their exact position was not yet known. Here we were compelled to remain for a period of three hours, the bullets whistling over our heads amongst the trees and some of them cutting the grass close beside us. It was indeed a trying position, but none of the boys murmured.

It was while in this position that Capt. O’Neil of Troop “A” was killed and Lieut. Haskell of “F” Troop was mortally wounded.

Finally the order to move forward was given and was indeed readily obeyed. Our next position was on the road leading to the left of the ridge. Here a halt was called while the field officers surveyed the ground and decided upon the movement to be made by each troop. In front of the Spanish works and between us and them was an open field 300 yards in width.  ---END---

hmmm

but it looks like this was the time they took San Juan Hill and Brushy would have probably mentioned that if he was there for such a famous event.

[mckinley412]

And I knew this seemed too easy, I just found a newspaper that mentions a Rough Rider Captain Capron was killed at the Battle of Las Guasimas which means more than just two officers were killed so hopefully there will still be just 31 discharged soldiers to look through if they can be found.

[mckinley412]

Update:  Daniel A. Edwards sent me the following:

In the old days the "character" portion of your discharge papers was at the bottom. If you got a bad character report guys would cut it off. Brushy wasn't discharged. The officer that handed him his enlistment papers cut off the bottom part of his discharge papers, making it look like Brushy would have done it to hide something negative, which he did not. That's what a 'bob-tailed" discharge was.

Here is on the discharge "In Paul Dickson’s book, War Slang…we read: “bobtailed. Dishonorably discharged; from the practice of removing (“bobbing”) the portion of discharge papers that confers honor. Dickson, Paul. War Slang…Pocket Books, 1994, page 44. Also the act of cutting off the discharge below the character section denoted “no character.”

The sniper incident is also mentioned in Tom Hall's book "The Fun and Fighting Rough Riders" published 1899.
"It is equally certain that they had posted guerrillas in the trees under which the regiment had deployed who fired on us from the rear. In fact one officer came back from his troop to protest that some other troop of "ours" was firing on his from the rear. It was explained to him that there was no troop which could fire on him from the rear as all were at that time on the line." Lt. Tom Hall- The Fun and Fighting Rough Riders published 1899



I don't believe Brushy was discharged. I think he completed his service and mustered out with everyone else in Montauk, NY

[mckinley412]

I would like to add just to be as thorough as possible that anytime you leave the service it is considered a discharge and the reason I say that is because many people think discharge only refers to something negative such as a dishonorable discharge.

I agree with Mr. Edwards analysis but I also see that a bobtail discharge was slang during the Indian Wars for a dishonorable discharge. Although, I don't think Brushy received a quote unquote dishonorable discharge I believe sometimes people are honorably discharged early from service under negative circumstances.

So does anyone think he may have been discharged early? I don't have the book to read over what it says exactly. And it sure would be nice to have just a few (31) early discharges to look through with the chance of finding Brushy.

Also Mr. Edwards mentioned Brushy was a scout and that it may not have qualified as seeing action. This was in response to some things I brought up about something wiki said which is that only Rough Riders saw action which I'm not sure if that is true or not. I was questioning whether or not Brushy was actually a Rough Rider or assigned to some other unit in Cuba who were not Rough Riders. Originally I assumed he was in battle at some point because he was blamed for people being shot but I was unaware that this incident he was referring to was a sniper incident.

I'm going to leave this alone for a minute, I was unaware that somebody else was so far ahead in researching this.

I have looked at records of maybe 4 Oliver Roberts and maybe 1 W.H. Roberts who received dishonorable discharges from the Spanish American War but nothing stood out as being Brushy but I will have to go through them again someday as I don't remember if I looked at them with an unbiased eye. Sometimes I forget that debunking Brushy is just as important as proving he was Billy.

Does anyone else have any input or ideas?

[Deleted]

I'm in the minority here, but, I believe that the medal is a reproduction that was used in the Buffalo or Pawnee Bill shows. Genuine medals have serial numbers or makers marks on them to determine who was the recipient of the medal or where the medal was made. From what I gather no such marking or serialization was on the medal otherwise it'd of been denoted.

Mind you, Brushy did claim to have worked for both Buffalo and Pawnee Bill, and both men did do reenactments of the battle of San Juan Hill, and they were both sticklers for historical accuracy at least when it came to costumes and props.

I know very few people accept that theory, and that's okay. Btw, the Uncle Kit letter was a fraud. I forget the historian who investigated the matter but it was written in Uncle Kit's own handwriting and the date of April 1st is a dead giveaway that Uncle Kit was pulling a prank.

Jesus Christ Almighty God bless you all 😊

[mckinley412]

Ohhh,,, I doubt it was a fake letter. I heard the person who has it doesn't want anyone to see it. It was typed in the book exactly as it was written. And all the characteristics match Brushy's other two pages of writing which you can find in this group. It would be highly unlikely that Uncle Kit would want to fake a letter from OL Roberts. It would be highly unlikely Kit would skip periods at the end of sentences, capitalize letters that don't need to be, start out sentences with lower case, etc, as if he studied OL Roberts handwriting down to the T. There are a lot of people who think they can just match handwriting or do facial recognition and usually they can't. Lots of people write letters on April 1st.

But anyway, in the last hours since my last post I have looked at all the Rough Riders and read a bunch of stuff and looked a bunch of people up. I didn't find anything on a William J. Roberts from company L to rule him out but long story short, it seems to be a dead end. I'll post a couple sites that might be helpful, this first one is alot of the guys from Oklahoma
genealogytrails.com/oka/RoughRiders-Oklahoma.htm

and Roosevelt's book, mustered out roll etc. starts at 324
books.google.com.ph/books?id=QfwLAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&redir_esc=y#v=onepage

[MissyS]

Oct 7, 2018 18:38:00 GMT -5 mckinley412 said:

Can you post the names? I know that's a tall order. I will post a list of alleged aliases here. (And yes, I really wish I would have made notes next to where some of these came from and people are probably gonna have questions but if it wasn't an alleged alias for Billy or Brushy then it wouldn't be on here. None of this stuff like Jimmie Simpson and Jimmy McDaniels are just coming from some modern idea such as someone thought he might be Jimmy McDaniels, but these are from old sources that mentioned these as aliases for Billy/Brushy, with the exception of John Murphy which came from Edward Daniels more recent book.)
Kid/Billie Antrim (or Antrum)
Jimmy McDaniel
Johny Murphy
Billie Cramer
Hugo/Texas Kid
William Henry Roberts
Austin Antrim/Antrum
Billy Conley
Billy Coyle
Billy Donovan
William Bonnie OR Bonne
Rattlesnake Bill
The Kid Bandit from Mexico/New Mexico
Ollie L. Roberts
Ollie Henry Roberts
Oliver Pleasant Roberts
Oliver Partridge Roberts
Henry McCarty
Michael McCarty
McCarthy
William H. Bonney
W. H. Bonney
Jimmie Simpson

I wanted to add another possible alias name Billy the Kid may have used, and that’s “William Bruner”. What I found was Peppin obtained arrest warrants in June 1878 for 10 men, what I’m finding of names in those 10 men it’s including “William Bruner; alias Kid, alias Antrim, alias The Kid.” So William Bruner may be a possible alias according to the way it was listed referencing Billy the Kid. I could not find a William Bruner that fought in the LCW? I’m wondering where the name came from?