Wallace and the Kid: The Hoosier Connection

By: The Man Behind the Mask

The subject apparently didn’t come up during their communications, but Lew Wallace and Billy the Kid did have something in common.

Both spent time in Indiana.

Wallace was a native of the state, and he came from a prominent Hoosier family. His father served as governor in the 1830s, and other relatives were elected to various state and national offices. Most of Lew Wallace’s time was spent in Brookville, Fountain County, or Crawfordsville, Montgomery County, both in east-central Indiana.

The Kid’s story is a bit murkier. Records from 1866 show Henry McCarty, his brother Joe and mother Catherine living in Indianapolis along with William H. H. Antrim (who wouldn’t become the boys’ stepfather for several years). By 1870, the group had moved to Wichita, Kansas.

Some folks believe that the McCartys may have been in Indiana much earlier than that point—there’s even a certain school that believes Billy was born a Hoosier. But the evidence is lacking, spurring researchers to check all sorts of sources for a hint of where Billy the infant and very young kid spent time.

Still, Wallace and Billy lived only about 40 miles away from each other in the late 1860s. And the older man made frequent trips to Indianapolis on business. So who knows, maybe the two passed each other on a street a decade before their March 1879 tete a tete.