The Upham tintype of Henry McCarty, aka William Bonney aka Billy the Kid, the sole authenticated picture of the famous outlaw, sold at Brian Lebel’s Old West Show & Auction in Denver on Saturday for $2.3 million. The pre-sale estimate was $300,000 – $400,000, but Florida billionaire, alternative energy investor and America’s Cup winner William Koch finally took it home for eight times that amount.
According to one of Billy’s old girlfriends, the tintype was taken by a traveling photographer on the street outside Beaver Smith’s saloon in Fort Sumner, New Mexico in 1879 or 1880. One of the things that makes it such an iconic image of Billy and the old West is that it’s not a posed and polished studio portrait, but rather captures the Kid wearing his crumpled hat, thick sweater, thoroughly lived-in boots and baggy pants, with his 1873 Winchester carbine rifle in his left hand and his Colt .45 single action revolver in a holster on his right hip. (This picture is the reason Billy the Kid was widely thought to have been left-handed during much of the 20th century, when in fact tintypes are mirror images so really he was holding the Winchester in his right hand.)
The camera used to take the photo was multilense, so four identical pictures were made at the same time. This is the only one known to have survived. Billy gave it to his cattle rustling colleague Dan Dedrick, who claimed he was present when the photo was taken, and who in turn gave it to his nephew Frank L. Upham in the 1930s.
The image was already famous by then. It was first printed in the Boston Illustrated Police News, January 8, 1881, when the Kid was still alive and in the Santa Fe jail that he would break out of, killing two deputies. The year after that Pat Garrett, the sheriff who had shot the Kid dead three months after that jailbreak, published the picture in his biography The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid.
As famous as it was, within a few decades the original tintype appeared to be lost. It wasn’t until 1986 that the Upham family announced that they had lovingly kept their tintype of Billy the Kid and that they were donating it to the Lincoln County Heritage Trust in New Mexico. That is the only time the tintype was ever on public display.
There was a stipulation, however, that if the Trust ever dissolved, then ownership of the picture would revert to the Upham family. The Trust ceased to exist in 1998 and the tintype went back to the Uphams. They put it up for auction Saturday along with an 1880 tintype of Dan Dedrick, six other pictures of Dedrick and his family, plus letters and documentation, all included in the lot.
Koch intends to loan the iconic picture to several small museums before taking it home to “just enjoy.”
Every post on this blog offers some new insight or fascinating discovery. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen the picture of Billy the Kid and never once noticed that he was wearing a big puffy sweater. It never ocurred to me that them thar cowboys would ever stoop to a bulky knit fashion statement. I guess that watching Gunsmoke for all those many years blinded me to this curious detail.
Really???? 2.3 million???? For a picture??? Why do rich people have to be insane???
If it’s any consolation, I thought it was a shirt for years, too. It wasn’t until I saw the tintype in high res while writing this entry that I saw that ribbed knit on the shoulders and sleeves. Dan Dedrick is sporting classic Gunsmoke fashions, though. 😉
:skull:
He IS wearing a shirt, same style as Dan Dedrick, with a vest on top and then an unbuttoned cardigan-sweater on top of that.
Id like to know what’s that on his chest under his bandana, looks like an Indian necklace?
Great to see all the detail, would love to see it in a museum.
PALS
The motif on hie shirt is – probably – an anchor. Go for Bob Boze Bell’s book about BTK + you will see that.
yo tengo una foto de billy the kid con una rubia hermosa a un lado dee el sentado con su winchester su colt su porta balas de pecho su sombrero pa;uelo y ella apuntandole ala cien con otra pistola foto de 1800 contactenme
Henry Antrim was known to have blue eyes. Take a look at the tin-type.
“[I]n the Santa Fe jail that he would break out of, killing two deputies.” This is, of course, incorrect. So many times you read “Billy escaped from jail, killing his two guards.” Where he was kept awaiting execution bears no resemblance whatever to a jail. He escaped from c o n f i n e m e n t .
not from jail. And, needless to say (?), he escaped in Lincoln town, not SFe.
I was going through some old pictures that i got from my grandmother one of the pictures shows two men with the names biily the kid and pat garrett. I am trying to find out how i can see if the pictures are the real ones. The facial features on the one i have a very similar to the two i have seen of billy the kid. Can anyone help me.send me in the right direction.
The whole photo-of-the-Kid business is a real quagmire. There have been quite a few sorta possible Kid pictures surfacing lately. Of course, it all dominos back to “the only authentic” photo of him. All the other portraits are touted according to how much resemblance it bears to the “approved” one. I did some digging around, looking for the source of that “official” designation. There is nothing but a long oral tradition that supports the claim. There are IMHO other reasons to suspect that it is not he. Whether or not you believe that the picture is genuine is largely an article of faith at this point. So, even if your photo is a dead-on match of the “real” one, the question remains: Just who is this person?
Rick, I believe that I can ID your picture of who may be Billy and Pat Garrett. You can email me at: Stepmccarty@outlook.com. I know what the kid looked like, I think, better than anyone. If you would like,you can email me and request a copy of my pics of the kid and you can match them to yours. You will want to find out where your picture came from, possibly who owned it before you. My pictures of the kid were owned by Sallie Chisum, so provenance is good. I have a bunch of Sallie’s photographs, mostly tintypes.
Billy had clear blue eyes with brown rims and little brown spots in the cornea. His hair was brown and very wavy/curly. Curls fell over his forehead. His complexion was clear. He had a very light beard, more like peach fuzz. Billy’s mouth was narrow with full lips and he would close over slightly protruding teeth, which were really more twisted that buck. One slightly overlapped the other. He had well shaped ears and detached lobes. Billy was a nice looking young fellow and extremely youthful in appearance. While small, he was a powerful young man for his size and a wonderful athlete. He constantly smiled and laughed easily. He had a clear, fine tenor singing voice and he loved to dance.
Billy was confined in the upstairs room of the old Lincoln County Courthouse that had been the Murphy/Dolan store. There were five other prisoners held with him, but they were locked in rooms. Billy was held in the court room, chained either to the floor or to his bed. When I first visited the building, years ago, there was a steel ring in the floor, but I do not know if it was authentic or a later addition. I suspect the latter. It is no longer there. He was guarded by two men, J.W. Bell and Robt Olinger. Olinger took several prisoners across the road to eat lunch in the restaurant in the Wortley hotel. (Some stories say he ate “dinner”, but one must recall that dinner, in those days, meant lunch.) The shootings took place in the early afternoon. Billy shot Bell and then Olinger as he came running across the road.
Sallie Chisum owned a least two pictures, both tintypes, of the kid. I own most of her collection of photos, including those two. They were taken about three years apart..maybe a little less and the younger of the two, when held up to the “Upham” photo matches perfectly. Email me and I’ll send them to you. Sallie’s collection is pretty amazing and contains many of her family and friends which includes several Regulators. I found them in a little antique store in Oregon. After some years of searching I found Walter Pitzer’s heirs who used to own the collection. They sold it in a yard sale! I’ll be happy to send you copies of any that you would like to see…please don’t request all of them…there are a bunch.
Oh, now I understand David! LOL. The jail in Lincoln was a pretty miserable place. It was a hole in the ground covered by some sort of wooden shanty. A ladder was lowered down into the hole and after the prisoners climbed down there the ladder was pulled up. It would fill with water sometimes. By the time the kid was held in Lincoln that old pit jail was no longer in use.
Both of my pictures of the kid that I own show his clear blue eyes. One in particular shows them clearly. One can even see their color and the brown rims around the cornea.
Billy used to enjoy square dancing with Sallie Chisum. Dances were held often and young people would come from all around to join the fun. They would sometimes stay for a few days, like a large sleep over. They would dance until dawn. Sallie mentions in her diary that she and Billy, whom she called “Willi” would sit in chairs outside to cool off. I suspect that on evening while sitting in the gathering chill the kid complained of the cold. I think that Sallie must have run into the house and returned with her uncle’s sweater. His name was Pitzer Miller Chisum, who went by his initials PM. By this time he had left the South Springs Ranch. Billy took the sweater and kept it, Sallie didn’t care, PM had already left (He eventually returned) This is the sweater, I think, we see in the Upham photograph.
That photograph is the forth most valuable photograph extant. I don’t know what the other three are though.
But… correct me if i’m wrong, if this tintype is the correct one, and he has his colt hanging on his LEFT side, doesn’t that imply that indeed he used his left hand to shoot and therefore is to be considered left-handend?
The photo was made by a process which produces a reversed (mirror) image. He was right handed. It’s interesting to note that this “only authenticated” photo of the Kid is “authenticated” o n l y by oral tradition.( “He said that he said that he was told by someone who said it was he.) I believe that the Koch Bros. bought a $2.3 million pig in a poke (and I’m working to prove it.)
Well, Mr. Snell if you are working to dis-authenticate the Upham pic of the kid then you are barking up the wrong tree. That tintype pic is indeed Billy Bonney aka William Henry McCarty. I have a tintype of him that is almost full face, very clear and when matched to the Upham photo they make a perfect match. Email me and I’ll send you a digital copy. The photo that I now own was Sallie Chisum’s. She collected tintypes of her family/friends. She gave the collection to her niece, Ara V.Chisum (Ara was also Sallie’s mother’s name). After Ara’s death in 1974 her collection was sold. It ended up in a local antique store where I purchased it…Sixty pictures, mostly tintypes. I’ll be happy to share some with you.
The key that tells us that the Upham pic is a mirror image is the loading gate on the Winchester. It is on the wrong side. No one noticed it until the 1950’s, thus the movie “Left Handed Gun”. Billy was right handed. He parted his hair on the left side. He had wavy, almost curly brown hair and blue eyes. His front teeth were slightly twisted. He usually closed his mouth over his protruding incisors if he thought about it. Billy was not a very large man, but he was well formed, athletic and generally considered as handsome. The girls went crazy for him and visa versa. He liked to sing and dance and sit around the camp fire telling stories.
A cogent element with the Upham picture of the kid is that it was not very well made. The tintype has deteriorated to a large degree. Rust spots show through and the edges are chipped. It was probably made by an apprentice. The Pic of Billy that we usually see today was found within the artifacts of the Upham family who were related to Dan Dedrick, a friend of the kid. Speculation has it that the Kid gave his picture to Dan who passed it on to his uncle somehow. I (possibly) have the picture that Dan exchanged with the kid. Sallie Chisum ended up with it. It is in very similar poor condition as is the Upham image and may have been taken by the same tintyper. Dan is also full standing.
BTW: the photos of the kid and Dedrick (I am not sure he is Dan, but maybe a brother.) published within this site are shown about actual size. These historic tintypes are tiny, but because they were made with a wet plate process they can be extremely clear, with no grain and they enlarge beautifully. The depth of field was very narrow, and originals are often out of focus, children are blurred, they moved. Exposure time was around 10 seconds. They usually used a camera that made several images at once on the same sheet of polished iron. After the image was developed and dried it was cut into individual photographs. In the case of the Upham image, each picture was one of four. Cost was a quarter for the lot, 7 or 8 cents each.
Well, Mr. McCarthy, I quote from an excellent Billy site cautioning against the many “other” photos of the Kid which have surfaced since “The Big Sale:”
“These purported photos HAVE NOT been professionally researched and evaluated by real photo analysts, historians, and Billy the Kid experts, but yet they are being presented to the public as authenticated based entirely on opinion by unaccredited parties.” I maintain that is also true of “The Big Photo.” It’s “authenticity” derives completely from “…unaccredited parties.” It is said that this image was first published in the Boston Police News on Jan. 8,1881 – six months and six days b e f o r e the Kid’s death. I have trouble conceiving of who/how it got to Boston from Nowheresville, NM, and why. I also wonder about the Las Vegas Gazette reporter’s description of him (in the train interview). Read that, then look at the photo: a match? I can’t see one. To me, the fact that one photo sorta or even greatly resembles “The Big Photo” means nothing at this point. I will posit that the only completely truthful statement that can be made is: “If received wisdom avails, that’s the Kid.”
Hi David: Have you seen my photos of the kid? If you contact me at stepmccarty@outlook.com I’ll send them to you and we can discuss. Not long after Tunstall’s death the Regulators showed up at the South Springs River Ranch (as Sallie called the place) in the spring of 1878. The tintyper, George W. Morgan was on site and he took tintypes of Sallie herself, others in her family too. Morgan worked his biz from a wagon from 1870 to 1882 which covers the time Sallie’s collection were taken. (Morgan probably did not take all of the pictures, there were other tintypers in the area, one named Thompson. Since a photo of Brewer is in the mix of photos it was taken before 4 April of that year. I suspect that the Upham picture was taken at about that time too since Billy is wearing an old sweater with PM Chisum’s initials sewn into the lining are visible. Billy was hanging around Sallie in early 1878. She, of course, fell in love with Wm. Robert and probably forgot all about the kid, who was an outlaw and she knew it. She married the German banker’s son. However, she collected and saved at least two photos of Billy and I own them both, finding them with 58 or so other pictures that had been in her collection. The pics of Billy were taken about 2.5 years apart, th second showing an older Billy wearing a new suite and posed inside a jail cell. That pic I think was taken on the morning of 27 Dec, 1880 as a mug shot. I have no idea how Sallie ended up with it, with it are tintypes of Billy Wilson and Dirty Dave Rudabaugh also sporting their new Mike Cosgrove provided suits. Because of similarities in the Upham and Chisum pics of the younger Billy I think they were taken within a few days/week apart. Cheers.
Mr. Snell: I have stopped trying to elicit professional confirmation about my photographs it has been impossible for me to do. However, I have located the Chisum family who owned the collection and recall some of the photographs. I am encouraged by the fact that Sallie’s collection is so complete. It includes photos of: Sallie, her mother, father, sister and two brothers.I have several pictures of Sallie’s mother’s half sister, Texana Neubern. Many of her children. The South Springs ranch. Sallie and her husband, several of him. John S. Chisum and who must be Tom Towry and family. I have Lily Casey, Eliza Jane Hestor, even Matilda Davis, Helena Coe, Phobe Brown Coe, George and Frank Coe, Tom Folliard, Doc Scurlock, Yginio Salazar, Charlie Bowdre, John Middleton (I think) Frank McNab (five of them), Godfrey Gauss, Alex McSween, Sheriff Brady, Bob Olinger, Barney Mason and Juan Patron. Several others that I found within the personal photo album of G.W. Morgan who took many of the tintypes and that include John Tunstall and JJ Dolan.
More data re/Sallie Chisum’s collection of tintype photographs. Sallie separated from her first husband, Wm. Robert in 1890, their divorce final in either 1893 or 95, I see both dates. Heir Robert moved south to SW Kansas and purchased the XIT ranch, he arrived with 3000 head of Chisum bred short horned cattle. The two boys, John and Fred accompanied their dad. After the divorce Sallie moved to Santa Ana to live with her brother there, but she returned to Roswell. Sallie’s niece, who was her brother’s daughter, moved along with her mom, Inez Chisum, and two brothers James and Oscar, first to Santa Ana and then to Troutdale, Oregon soon after Sallie’s brother and Inez’s husband, Walter Pitzer died in 1919. Sallie’s niece was named Ara Vitella Simpson Chisum and she and Sallie were “close”. Ara met and married Wayne E. Phillips in Oregon and moved onto the Phillips family ranch in eastern Oregon. At some point Sallie gave her collection to Ara who showed some of the photos to her two boys, Fred and Wayne whom I interviewed. Their families still live in eastern Oregon. I drove to their ranch. There I was shown many New Mexico related Chisum items. Letters, books photographs. They explained to me how the collection of tintypes were sold. They ended in a local antique shop where I found, recognized and purchased them. Pretty neat, huh.
I want to add that owning these Chisum related tintypes photographs is an honor. I know, for instance, that each and every person depicted once held that very same photograph that I now own. I have pictures of Sallie Chisum and the kid and I think they may have exchanged them. I read years ago that Billy had indeed given a picture of himself to Sallie. If the exchange took place, Billy must have returned Sallie’s picture to her after he learned that she was engaged to marry Wm. Robert. The boy did have scruples. I own both of these tintypes and holding them causes my imagination to soar. The feeling is almost magical.
INGO: If you really want to get into the story of Billy Bonney then you must travel to Lincoln, New Mexico. No longer an actual city, but a gathering of buildings along either side of the main road that runs thru “town”. The Lincoln County Courthouse and the Tunstall store are still there and in good condition. In the LCCH there is a life sized enlargement of the Upham Billy photo that you can take a picture of. Lots of ruins. Several museums in the area and in Fort Sumner and Ruidoso.