Who was Etta Place?
She was the lover and maybe a spouse of Harry Alonzo Longabaight, born in Pennsylvania, also referred to as “Sundance Child”, and a peripheral worker of the Wild Bunch, the Outlaw gang, which was additionally led by Robert Leroy Parker, also referred to as “Butch Cassidy”. However little is understood about their origins, and fewer about what occurred to her after Sundance and Butch in South America.
Larry Pointer, writer of the guide 1977 On the lookout for Butch Cassidywrote that Etta's id is “one of the fascinating puzzles in western historical past”.
Place was in all probability born in 1878 and was described as a “traditional good look” as an grownup, with a gorgeous smile and a complicated camp, an outline that was confirmed by a portrait in full size of her and lunba baugh-of loads of saying the marriage image of the couple in February 1901 in Joseph B. de Younger. She spoke in a fashioned manner and knew easy methods to cope with a rifle.
She had hit Longabaugh one or two years earlier and may need been concerned in a number of the wild robberies, exhausted a financial institution prematurely or recorded the group's horses throughout a theft. However the New York image, the historian Thom Hatch wrote in his 2013 guide The final outlaws“References to actual excessive -goals, carriage rides and evenings within the theater.”
Even her identify might be fallacious. “Place” was the lady's identify by Longabaugh's mom Annie and Sundance typically used the alias “Harry Place”. It was suspected that she had used the primary identify “Etta” in South America after Spanish spokesman had falely exercised “Ethel”, which was probably her precise identify or not. The pinkertons described them in a different way as Ethel, Eva, Rita, Etta and Betty Worth.
In a letter to pal David Gillespie shortly after June 2, 1899, the gang close to Wilcox, Wyo. The pinkertons, who spent loads of effort and time to observe the wild bunch, at all times believed that Etta was out of Texas, which inserts her recognized expertise with horses and firearms. In 1906 William Pinkerton, his detective, requested for Fort Price, the police chief of this metropolis, “to seek out out who this girl is”.
Based mostly on the best identify of concept, Ethel Ethel and she or he got here from Texas, researcher Donna Ernst put collectively a listing of all ladies named Ethel between 1875 and 1980, which have been born in or round Price and San Antonio. Over time, she eradicated everybody as a candidate for the youthful ETTA location.
Besides one.
This was Ethel Bishop, who lived with 4 different ladies in a nicely -known wild bundle assembly level, in all probability close to the infamous Madam Fann San Antonio Pleasure Palace. One other repeated story signifies that Butch Etta saved from a brothel on the age of 16. Longabaugh biographer Ed Kirby believes that the daughter of an Emily Jane Place from Oswego, NY, was, who was in some way associated to Sundances mom. Others have advised that Etta was certainly Colorado Rancher Ann Bassett, a wild bunch of workers, who is understood that he labored with sister Josie for Cassidy's affection.
May Bassett even have gained consideration?
In all probability not. Bassett Hirum had married Henry Bernard till 1903 and in the identical yr he was arrested (and later acquitted) as a result of it was in South America.
On February 20, 1901, after they posed for his or her portrait, place and Longabaugh, the HMS rose Herminius In New York, Argentina, Argentina, was triggered on March 23. With them it was Cassidy to make use of the alias “James Ryan” and declare to be etas brother. In 1902, Place and Longabaugh briefly acknowledged that Etta handled an unknown illness and in 1904 the household in Pinkerton once more believed that they visited household in Texas. In 1906 the place returned to the states, probably due to their sickness. Sundance returned to South America, the place most historians imagine that he and Butch died with troopers in Bolivia at a shootout from 1908.
Within the meantime, Etta disappeared.
A number of researchers have proposed that she grew to become brothel operator in Fort Price beneath the identify Eunice Grey. However in an article in October 2010 Wild west Donna Humphrey-Donnell observed that she had seen an alleged portrait of the younger grey, and the lady on this picture was positively not the identical girl who was seen within the well-known New York portrait of Etta Place and the Sundance Child.
In 1909, an unimaginated girl requested who tailored to the outline of Etta, a diplomatic US official in South America for assist in acquiring the loss of life certificates from Longabaug. However she by no means returned to his workplace. Nevertheless, the incident proves that the place is barely alive in 1909.
Since then, different theories have appeared: Etta was the spouse of the legendary boxing conveyor Tex Rickard; that she moved to Paraguay and married once more; This Londa bubh had survived the 1908 shootout in Bolivia and was fortunately lived with the place in Alaska. that Etta died within the earthquake in San Francisco in 1906; Or that she was both killed throughout a home dispute or took life in Argentina within the Twenties. In 1970 Cassidy's sister Lula Parker Betensen advised Betensen Los Angeles Occasions Reporter that her brother in Bolivia had not been killed just like the thought and that Etta had spent her days as a faculty trainer in Denver.
In the long run we solely know that she was a reasonably girl who was as soon as a romance with the Sundance Child after which disappeared from the perimeters of historical past.
Nothing extra.
To this present day, comparable unimaginable tales about Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Child, tales that relate to their escape from the Bolivian shot and their subsequent life somewhere else within the west or in South America.
Just like the theories that encompass themselves across the ETTA place, they’re unfounded and possibly fallacious.
However tempting.
This text initially appeared within the spring version 2024 by Wild west Journal.