“Getting rid of family heirlooms is a hopeless endeavor for many of us,” Katy Roberts wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post last week. Roberts began researching the value of her grandfather’s old revolver, which she inherited from her brother. Her discovery sheds light on an even more valuable heirloom that we all continue to cling to in American culture: a glorified vision of the Wild West.
“America remembers and even reveres the gunslingers, cold-blooded killers and rogues of the Wild West,” Roberts said, “but it forgets other people who were no less fearless but more committed to keeping the peace and establishing churches.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry noted in a 2011 essay for the Texas Observer that just in the 1970s, when he felt the “Western myth” should “have no relevance at all anymore,” “the drugstore cowboy spirit became a minor national trend, and boots became trendy in New York.”
“The West, by and large, is a beautiful place,” McMurtry said in a 2014 interview with National Public Radio. “There are all these beautiful spaces, all these running horses. It’s a poetic imagery, and it’s been around for a long time.”
McMurtry wrote “Lonesome Dove” as an anti-western about a cattle drive in the late 19th century, the story of three men who have been friends for a long time and become involved in an adventure.
“It’s by no means a masterpiece,” he told Texas Monthly Magazine in 2016.
“I just wanted to write a novel that would demythologize the West. Instead, it became the main source of Western mythology. Some things cannot be explained,” he said.
Roberts waded through the glitz and gloom of legends about rampant lawlessness in Kansas, Missouri and Texas after the Civil War. Stories abounded about Jesse and Frank James, Cole Younger, James B. “Wild Bill” Hickok, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson and Texas outlaw John Wesley Hardin. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine fueled the growing mythology with articles about their supposed exploits.
Eventually, Roberts discovered that her grandfather’s gun came from his foster family. George Nelson “GN” Moses and his wife, who had no biological children, helped support local orphans and took in her grandfather when he was a toddler.
Moses is also surrounded by legends. He joined the Union Army in 1861 at the age of 17 and lost his right index finger during a battle in Tennessee. Still considered an excellent shot, he was recruited by a Union militia after the war to track down Confederates who were still causing havoc in Missouri. Among them was the notorious Archie Clement, the leader of a gang that included the young James brothers.
A small group of militia tried to capture and arrest Clement, but the plan went awry and a fierce firefight ensued. Moses shot “Little Archie” and severely crippled him. According to various sources, the outlaw’s last words were: “I told you I would never surrender.”
Moses later served as sheriff in Great Bend, Kansas, where he helped to oversee its settlement. He also served as mayor several times and built a successful trading company with his brother.
In his eulogy in the Great Bend Tribune in 1911, he was described as “one of the best known peace officers in the West,” who “never boasted of his exploits” and “never exaggerated the part he had played in previous incidents which were his fault.”
Another Wild West magazine, The Frontier Times, published fantastic stories about glorified Texas “heroes,” including special editions about many of the leaders of the Battle of the Alamo.
Among the many characters featured, I found my great-grandfather, Alonzo Rees, who also indulged in nostalgic folklore. A 1915 San Antonio Express article describes how Rees became friends with the Reverend Andrew Jackson Potter, who was described as a “fighting minister of the Texas frontier.”
“One day Potter and I were in Kerrville on business,” Rees said. “During the day, a would-be desperado, ignorant of or underestimating Potter’s fighting qualities, persistently tried to cause trouble with the preacher.”
The troublemaker “made an insulting remark to Potter, who quickly drew his pistol and was about to shoot the man when I grabbed him by the arm and held him until his assailant moved out of the way.”
The fascination with the glamour of the Wild West still casts a shadow over the true stories of people like GN Moses and Alonzo Rees. Roberts discovered, for example, that guns owned by famous people are worth more. The same revolver as her grandfather’s, but owned by Jesse James, sold for $230,000 in 2009.
Roberts concluded that true value has little to do with folklore, and yet we cling to that heritage, the glory of the Wild West. “What matters is the courage of the forgotten” people and the true stories that come to light beyond the glitz and dust.
