Tales Behind the Tombstones Read online

  Theatrical shows were very popular in San Francisco. The various playhouses were always filled with bored miners looking to be amused. As the need for entertainment grew, more performers came to town daily. Variety shows sprung up overnight and featured acrobats, singers, and slapstick comedians. Child actors were held in particularly high regard because they reminded the miners of the sons and daughters they had left behind to search for gold.

  The Crabtrees moved to the mining community of Grass Valley, California, in 1853. Mary Ann reasoned that Lotta would be able to earn a substantial amount entertaining the lonely miners who were working claims around the rich foothills. Mary Ann enrolled Lotta in the only dance school in Grass Valley. The classes were conducted in the annex of a tavern, and many of the prospectors who stopped in the saloon for a drink gathered around to watch Lotta twirl across the tiny stage. Tears would well up in their eyes as they thought of their own children, and they would shower the tot with chunks of gold and other gifts of appreciation.

  Lotta’s natural talent and beauty attracted not only the attention of the miners but that of the notorious Lola Montez as well. She thought the child had great potential. Lola lived a few doors down from the Crabtrees’ home, and she spent many hours teaching Lotta some of her dance steps and how to ride a horse. She adored Lotta and let her play in her costumes and dance to her German music box. She pleaded with Mary Ann to let her take the energetic child to Australia with her to tour the country. Mary Ann, who was expecting another child at the time, refused. She was, however, encouraged by Lola’s interest in Lotta. She enrolled Lotta in more dance classes and added singing classes to her studies. By the age of ten, Lotta was one of the most talented children in the Gold Country. She had a wonderful voice, possessed a great sense of comic timing, and was a master of such dances as the fandango and the Highland fling.

  In an effort to capitalize on her daughter’s abilities, Mary Ann decided to join forces with a gentleman who managed a saloon where traveling players often appeared. The two put together their own company of musicians and actors and set off to tour the mining camps with their pint-size gold mine. Lotta was well received wherever the troupe went, and she earned thirteen dollars a night dancing and singing. After a few months and hundreds of dollars later, Mary Ann was convinced that Lotta’s act could earn more money in big-city theaters. She then moved her daughter back to San Francisco.

  Lotta performed at variety halls and amusement parks and soon became known as the “San Francisco Favorite.” She was twelve years old and the sole support of her family, which now included two brothers.

  Lotta Crabtree was a popular star and in constant demand. By 1863 she was earning more than forty-two thousand dollars a year. Mary Ann was a smart businesswoman and invested her daughter’s money in real estate. She walked the streets of the towns Lotta performed in and bought up vacant lots she believed would be highly sought after as the town grew. Lotta had no head for finances and counted on her mother to pay all her bills and support her act.

  In 1871 Lotta decided to take a break from performing and travel to Europe. While abroad she learned to paint, studied French, and took piano lessons. She drew attention everywhere she went. She would dress in white muslin and blue ribbons and drive a pony cart up and down the streets admiring the scenery.

  She returned to America and the theater in 1875 and continued portraying children and younger parts in comical performances. She loved making people laugh and is considered by most historians as one of the theater’s first comediennes. Lotta loved animals, and when she finally returned to her beloved San Francisco to perform in yet another play, she purchased a fountain at the intersection of Kearney and Market Streets and donated it to the city so thirsty horses would have a place to get a drink.

  Lotta retired from the theater at the age of forty-five. She was tired and wanted a chance to rest and enjoy the money she had made. When her mother died in 1909, she was beside herself with grief. She moved to Boston, where she lived a quiet, almost reclusive life. The remaining years of her life were spent painting and giving her money away.

  Lotta Crabtree died of arteriosclerosis in 1924 at the age of seventy-seven. She left her estate, estimated at four million dollars, to veterans, animals, students of music and agriculture, needy children at Christmastime, and needy actors. She was buried next to her mother in Woodlawn Cemetery in New York City.

  Nellie Cashman d. 1925

  “I have mushed with men, slept out in the open, washed with them and been with them constantly, and I have never been offered an insult…”

  —NELLIE CASHMAN, 1905

  Ellen Cashman is recognized by historians as one of the most generous and wealthy individuals in the history of America’s Old West. Lured across the continent by the news of the discovery of gold, Ellen, or Nellie as she was more commonly known, came looking for a fortune and found a higher purpose.

  She was born in County Cork, Ireland, around 1850; the actual date is unknown. Her parents were struggling farmers devastated by failed potato crops. In addition to the financial strife, the Irish-Catholics were being persecuted by the British rule of the country. The bleak situation contributed to the death of Nellie’s father, and left with two children and no viable means of support to raise them, Mrs. Cashman set sail to America with her daughters. She had heard job opportunities in America abounded and that food was readily available for everyone. When the three arrived in Boston, they found the city overcrowded with immigrants. Competition for work was fierce, but life in Boston was an improvement over their previous circumstances.

  When Nellie was old enough to be employed, she was hired as a bellhop at a posh Boston hotel. One of the many hotel guests she met and conversed with was Ulysses S. Grant. Grant was impressed by her ambition and encouraged her to “go west” where young women were needed to help settle the wild frontier. It was a suggestion she took to heart and vowed to do one day. Over the next few years, she saved her money for the trip, and in 1869 Nellie and her sister and mother boarded the Transcontinental Railroad bound for San Francisco. Her ultimate destination was anywhere there were rich mining camps.

  Nellie first traveled to Virginia City, Nevada, where silver and gold finds were making multimillionaires out of prospectors. She found work as a cook, and the grateful argonauts paid handsomely for her meals. In 1872 she used the income to purchase a boardinghouse.

  When news of a rich find in northern British Columbia reached Nellie’s ears in 1879, she packed her things and left Nevada. Once she reached the diggings along Dease Lake, she bought another boardinghouse and a restaurant.

  Nellie had a head for business and a heart for the hurting and needy. She consistently offered help to down-on-their-luck miners, orphans, and widows. She organized a rescue mission for prospectors trapped in the snow and gave out free food and clothes. Her selfless giving earned her the nickname the “Miner’s Angel.”

  In the fall of 1878, she relocated to Arizona where she started another successful restaurant in Tucson before making her way to the booming silver town of Tombstone. Nellie established two businesses in Tombstone, a boot and shoe store and a grocery store. The venture thrived and the entrepreneur used a portion of the profits to build churches and support hospitals. She was civic minded and never without a cause to back or a charity for which to raise funds.

  For a while Nellie was content to stay in Arizona. Her sister and her sister’s five children were now living in Tombstone.

  Nellie divided her time between her family and her new business pursuits, a cafe and a boardinghouse. By 1883, however, Nellie was on the move again, this time to Baja, California. Reports of the rich placer goldfields prompted her to visit the area. When the trip proved to be unprofitable, she returned to the Southwest. Tragedy struck Nellie’s world in early 1884 when her widowed sister died of tuberculosis.

  Nellie was left to raise her nieces and nephews, a responsibility she cherished. The task was daunting, but it did not keep her from her
charity work or efforts to civilize the territory. She was against public hangings and fought tirelessly to stop local government from making them a form of entertainment.

  From 1885 to 1897 Nellie bounced from one boomtown to another, buying and selling businesses and building a substantial bank account. On July 17, 1897 Nellie joined the Klondike gold rush and traveled to Dawson City, Alaska. She grubstaked a handful of miners and opened a cafe and supply store. She made a fortune selling supplies to eager prospectors. She never turned away a miner who didn’t have money. She made sure they were cared for regardless of their means.

  Nellie lived in the cold Yukon Territory for seven years. During that time she worked isolated mines with her nephew, driving her team of sled dogs from one claim to another.

  In 1924 Nellie came down with a severe cold, which developed into pneumonia and sent her to a Fairbanks hospital. She was released within a few weeks, but she never fully recovered. The persistent ailment took its toll and contributed to the benevolent businesswoman’s death. Nellie Cashman passed away on January 4, 1925.

  Because Nellie had been so well known, newspapers in San Francisco, Tucson, Fairbanks, and Denver reported on the pioneer’s death. Some called attention to her talent as a business-woman and others highlighted her kind heart and nursing skills. The Yukon Midnight Sun in Dawson, Alaska, called Nellie the “miner’s saint.” They described her generous nature in glowing terms.

  She never wavered in her devotion to her church, and her faith in her chosen creed was absolute and unfaltering, and we may not doubt that, amid those lessening circles of latitude in her meditations upon the bright promise of immortality she sometimes recognized a happy smile of the silent passing of the soul, in the unique splendors of the Arctic midnight sun when sunset merged into sunrise and a new day burst gloriously upon the page of time without even a shadow of farewell to the day that seemed not to have an end. Even so let us hope that to Nellie the pale shadow of death was but the weird drawing of the day eternal.

  Nellie Cashman was buried next to her sister at Ross Bay Cemetery in Victoria, British Columbia. She was seventy-five years old. She is remembered in history books as a woman who possessed the unquenchable spirit of the Old West.

  Pearl Hart d. 1925 or 1955

  “She flirted with the jury, bending them to her will.”

  — JUDGE FLETCHER DEAN AFTER A JURY

  ACQUITTED PEARL HART OF HER CRIMES, 1900

  Armed with a .44 Colt pistol and dressed in a man’s gray flannel shirt, jeans, and boots, Pearl Hart rode off into the hills around Globe, Arizona, to rob an unsuspecting stagecoach. The petite twenty-eight-year-old woman had a cherublike face, short dark hair, and hard, penetrating little eyes. The white sombrero perched on her head was cocked to one side and cast a shadow over her small nose and plump cheeks.

  While her accomplice seized the weapon the stage driver was carrying, Pearl lined the passengers alongside the road and relieved them of the more than $450 they possessed. Before the lady bandit sent the shaken travelers on their way, she provided them with one dollar. “That’s for grub and lodging,” she told them. Once the stage was off again, Pearl and her partner in crime rode out in the opposite direction.

  The brazen daylight robbery that occurred on May 30, 1899, had historic significance. It was the last stage ever held up, and Pearl Hart was the last stage bandit, female or otherwise, to perpetrate such a crime. When news of the theft reached the public at large, Pearl became an overnight celebrity.

  Born in Ontario, Canada, in 1871, Pearl was raised in a respectable middle-class family and attended the finest boarding schools in the town of Lindsay. Toward the end of her scholastic endeavors, she met the gambler Fredrick Hart and began a romantic relationship. Pearl was sixteen years old and the affair scandalized the school. The pair eloped in the spring of 1889.

  The marriage was a volatile one from the start. Hart had a bad temper and drank a lot. He frequently took the losses he experienced at the poker table out on Pearl. The two argued constantly. During a trip to Chicago in 1893, the young bride managed to escape her abusive husband. She found work at the Wild West exhibition at the World’s Columbian Exposition. She fell in love with her job and the history of the American West and its legends. Pearl was particularly enamored by the tales of highwaymen and road agents. She studied their tactics and dreamed of following in the footsteps of the James Gang.

  In 1895 Hart caught up with his wife and begged her to forgive him. Pearl did, and the couple briefly reunited. Frederick worked as a bartender and hotel manager, and Pearl settled down to a life of domesticity. But after the birth of their second child, Hart returned to his old habits and started carousing, drinking too much, and abusing his wife. Pearl left him with her children in tow.

  Now in her mid-twenties, Pearl traveled back to Canada, where she took on a series of odd jobs to support her family. Fascinated with the American West, she occasionally drifted to mining camps in Idaho, Montana, Colorado, and Arizona. In Benson, Arizona, she began seeing a miner named Joe Boot. Boot had a devil-may-care attitude and criminal tendencies Pearl found appealing. They discussed famous robberies and wondered aloud if they had the talent to pull off such crimes.

  A letter from Pearl’s mother explaining that she was desperately ill and needed money to help purchase medicine reached her daughter in early 1899. Pearl tearfully shared her mother’s dire situation with Boot, and he suggested they get the funds needed to assist her by robbing a stage.

  There weren’t many stages running in Arizona in the late 1890s; trains were now the primary means of transportation. Boot pointed out that a stage hadn’t been robbed in some time and that no one would be expecting it to happen. She agreed, and the pair decided to over take the coach that ran from Florence to Globe. Joe had learned that the passengers were primarily businessmen who always traveled with large sums of money.

  The holdup went smoothly, but their escape plan was fraught with complications. They got lost in the woods surrounding the crime scene and were eventually apprehended by a posse sent to arrest them. Pearl Hart and her cohort were charged with highway robbery, and their trial took place in Florence. News of Pearl’s crime and the hearing were reported in newspapers throughout the country. For a while she was arguably the most famous woman in the world. The first jury found that the daring Mrs. Hart was a victim of circumstances and granted her an acquittal. The judge was furious with the verdict and ordered a second jury to be appointed. After warning them not to be swayed by the fact that she was a woman, the jury found her guilty. Pearl was then sentenced to five years in jail.

  The bandit Pearl Hart served eighteen months of her sentence and was released on December 19, 1902. She left Arizona for Missouri and settled in Kansas City with her younger sister. The two wrote a play about Pearl’s criminal exploits entitled The Arizona Bandit. The play closed after a handful of performances by the author herself.

  There is some dispute over the date the famous lady thief died. Some historians believe she passed away in 1925 in Kansas City. Others suggest she died in Arizona in 1955. The debate over the actual year of her death began with a courthouse clerk in Pima County, Arizona. According to the government employee, an elderly, feeble Pearl Hart visited the courthouse in 1925 and asked for a tour of the building. The clerk recognized the woman as the infamous bandit, and when he asked her if she was Pearl Hart she didn’t deny it. Pearl informed the man that she had been tried and convicted of robbery in the courthouse and wanted to see the place again before she died. The clerk speculated that Pearl passed away shortly thereafter.

  A newspaper writer conducting a census in the rural area around Globe, Arizona, reported that he interviewed Pearl at her home near the Christmas Mine outside Cane Springs in 1930. The spirited woman had married a rancher named Calvin Bywater and was living a peaceful life spent keeping a diary and tending to her garden. When he asked her where she had been born, she replied, “I wasn’t born anywhere.” After learning the reformed
outlaw just wanted to be left alone and live out her days in quiet anonymity, he persuaded competing newspapers to leave her in peace. According to the same census taker, Pearl eventually died from complications of an addiction to morphine.

  Pearl Hart’s body lies in an unmarked grave in a small cemetery located at the base of the Dripping Springs Mountains near Globe.

  Lillie Langtry d. 1929

  “I resent Mrs. Langtry. She has no right to be intelligent, daring and independent as well as lovely. It is a frightening combination of attributes.”

  — GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, JUNE 12, 1884

  Twenty-three-year-old Lillie Langtry’s striking looks inspired poets to write sonnets about her grace and pen-and-ink artists to sketch her elegant profile. She was known as a “Professional Beauty,” one of a handful of women in England with such arresting features they were invited to the finest soirees just so guests could admire them. Langtry was a tall, curvaceous lady with titian red hair, and portraits of her sold in shops for a penny.

  Emile Charlotte LeBreton was born to William Corbet and Emile Martin LeBreton in October 1853 on the Isle of Jersey, a few miles off the coast of Saint-Malo, France. She was the only daughter in a family of six children. Her mother called her “Lillie,” which fit the beautiful child with lily-white skin.

  Her education included studies in history, the classics, and early theater. By the time she turned age twenty, she had developed a love for theater and a strong desire to leave her birthplace and see the world she had read so much about.