Ned Buntline

Ned Buntline
Born Edward Zane Carroll Judson
(1821-03-20)March 20, 1821[1]/1823[2]
Harpersfield, New York, US
Died July 18, 1886(1886-07-18) (aged 63–65)
Stamford, New York
Occupation Dime novelist; author
Spouse(s) Seberina Escudero, Annie Abigail Bennett, Marie Gardiner, Katharine Myers Aitchison, Lovanche L. Swart, Anna Fuller
Children Mary Carrolita Briggs, Irene Elizabeth Brush, Alexander McClintock, Edwardina McCormick, Irene A. Judson, Edward Z. C. Judson, Jr.

Edward Zane Carroll Judson, Sr. (March 20, 1821[1]/1823[2] – July 16, 1886), known as E. Z. C. Judson and by his pseudonym Ned Buntline, was an American publisher, journalist, writer, and publicist. In his largely fictionalized biography, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, author Stuart Lake credits Buntline with having commissioned from Colt's Manufacturing Company a Colt Buntline Special that he gave to Wyatt Earp and four other famous Western lawmen in thanks for their help with contributing "local color" to his many dozens of western yarns. But modern researchers have not found any supporting evidence of the gun's existence prior to the publication of Lake's book from secondary sources or in available primary documentation.

Early life

Judson was born in Harpersfield, New York,[1] near Stamford. He moved with his parents to Bethany, Pennsylvania, in 1826 and Philadelphia in 1834. His father, Levi Carroll Judson, was a lawyer[1] and wanted Judson to be a clergyman.[3]

Naval and military experience

In November 1834, Edward Judson ran away to sea[1] as a cabin boy and the next year shipped on board a Navy ship. A number of years later he rescued the crew of a boat that had been run down by a Fulton Ferry in New York's East River.[1] As a result, he received a commission as midshipman in the Navy from U.S. President Van Buren on February 10, 1838, and was assigned to the USS Levant.[1] He later served on the USS Constellation and the USS Boston.[1]

As a seaman, he served in the Seminole Wars, though he saw little combat. After four years at sea, he resigned. During the Civil War, he served as an enlisted man in the 1st New York Mounted Rifles and rose to the rank of sergeant before he was dishonorably discharged for drunkenness.[4]

Early literary efforts

Judson's first literary efforts began with a story of adventure in the Knickerbocker in 1838. He spent several years in the east starting up newspapers and story papers, only to have most of them fail. An early success that helped launch his fame was a gritty serial story of the Bowery and slums of New York City titled The Mysteries and Miseries of New York. He was an opinionated man, and strongly advocated nativism and temperance; he also became a leader in the Know Nothing movement. In 1844, he adopted the pen name "Ned Buntline" (buntline being the nautical term for a rope at the bottom of a square sail).[4]

In 1845, Buntline's Cincinnati venture Western Literary Journal and Monthly Magazine was facing bankruptcy, and he fled from Ohio. In Eddyville, Kentucky, he collected a $600 bounty for single-handedly capturing two murderers. He moved on to Nashville, Tennessee and used the money to start his own magazine, Ned Buntline's Own.[4]

Buntline had a romance with the teenaged wife of Robert Porterfield in Nashville in 1846. On 14 March 1846, Porterfield challenged Buntline to a duel, and Buntline killed him. At Buntline's murder trial, Porterfield's brother shot and wounded him. This allowed Buntline to escape in the chaos. He was subsequently captured by a lynch mob and hanged from an awning. He was rescued by friends, and the Tennessee grand jury refused to indict him for murder.

In 1847, Boston publisher and dime novel author Maturin Murray Ballou paid Judson $100 to write The Black Avenger of the Spanish Main: or, the Fiend of Blood, a melodramatic and violent pirate novel. This was followed the same year with The Red Revenger; or, The Pirate King of the Floridas.[5][6] Subsequently Buntline moved Ned Buntline's Own to New York City in 1848.[4]

He was one of the instigators of the Astor Place Riot through his columns and his association with New York City's notorious gangs of the early 19th century. That riot left twenty-three people dead, and he was sentenced to a $250 fine and a year's imprisonment in September 1849.[7] After his release, he devoted himself to writing sensational stories for weekly newspapers, and his income from this source is said to have amounted to $20,000 a year. He was later involved in a nativist riot in St. Louis, while he was a member of the Know Nothing Party.

Although a heavy drinker, he traveled around the country giving lectures about temperance, and was an ardent Republican until the election of 1884, when he refused to support James G. Blaine. It was on one of his temperance lecture tours that he encountered William F. Cody.[4]

Wild Bill Hickok

Buntline was traveling through Nebraska when he heard that Wild Bill Hickok was in Fort McPherson. Buntline had read a popular article about Hickok and hoped to interview him and write a dime novel about him. He found Hickok in a saloon and rushed up to him saying, "There's my man! I want you!" By this time in his life, Hickok had an aversion to surprises. He threatened Buntline with a gun and ordered him out of town in twenty-four hours. Buntline took him at his word and left the saloon. Still looking to get information on his subject, Buntline took to finding Hickock's friends. It is likely that this is how he first met "Buffalo Bill".[8]

Buffalo Bill

Ned Buntline, Buffalo Bill Cody, Giuseppina Morlacchi, Texas Jack Omohundro, 19th century

Buntline took a train in 1869 from California to Nebraska, where he had been lecturing on the virtues of temperance. It was there that he met William Cody who was with a group of men who had recently participated in a battle against the Sioux and Cheyenne.[9] Traveling with William Cody, Buntline became enamored with the gregarious man and would claim that he devised the nickname "Buffalo Bill" for the hero of his serial novel Buffalo Bill, the King of the Border Men, published in the New York Weekly beginning 23 December 1869.[10][11] Originally, Buntline was going to cast Cody as a sidekick to "Wild Bill" Hickok, but found his character more interesting than Hickok's. Buntline presented Cody as a "compendium of cliches"; however, this did not stop New York Playwright Frank Meader from using Buntline's novel as the basis of a play about Cody's life in 1872. In that same year, Buntline and James Gordon Bennett Jr. invited Cody to New York City, where Cody saw the play at the Bowery Theater. In December of that year, Buntline wrote a Buffalo Bill play of his own called Scouts of the Prairie starring Cody himself, Texas Jack Omohundro, Italian ballerina Giuseppina Morlacchi, and Buntline.[12] For some time, six-year-old Carlos Montezuma also was featured in the show as Atzeka, the Apache-child of Cochise, being the only genuine American Indian on stage, while his adoptive father, Italian photographer Carlo Gentile, was hired to produce and sell promotional cartes de visite of the cast members.[13]

Cody at first was a reluctant actor, but then decided that he enjoyed the spotlight. Scouts of the Prairie opened in Chicago in December 1872 and starred Cody. It was panned by critics, yet the play was a success nonetheless. It was performed to packed theaters across the country for years. Cody served as a scout for the Army in the summer; when campaigning stopped for the winter, he would head to the stage. Buntline's play served as a training aid for Cody's later Wild West show.[12]

Later work

Love at First Sight: or the Daguerreotype, a Romantic Story of Real Life by Ned Buntline (Lerow & Co., Washington St., Boston, c. 1847)

Buntline continued to write dime novels, though none was as successful as his earlier work. Later in life, he embellished his military career, claiming to have been chief of scouts in the Indian Wars, with the rank of colonel, and to have received twenty wounds in battle. He also used the following pseudonyms: Captain Hal Decker, Scout Jack Ford, and Edward Minturn. He settled into his home in Stamford, New York, where he died of congestive heart failure in 1886. He was once one of the wealthiest authors in America, but his wife had to sell his beloved home "The Eagle's Nest" to pay his debts.

Buntline's novels often had unintended consequences. Some avid readers became thrilled with the exploits even of western outlaws. As a result, the novels glamorized crime. Female bandits Little Britches and Cattle Annie, for instance, read dime novels which allegedly aroused their interest in the Doolin gang and may have propelled them into a youthful life of crime.[14]

The Buntline Special

Main article: Colt Buntline

According to Wyatt Earp's biographer Stuart N. Lake, Earp and four other well-known western lawmen - Bat Masterson, Bill Tilghman, Charlie Bassett, and Neal Brown - each received a Colt Single Action Army revolver as a gift from Ned Buntline. The revolvers were said to be chambered in .45 Colt with 12-inch barrels, a removable shoulder stocks, standard sights, and wooden grips into which the name "Ned" was ornately carved, and they allegedly came to be known collectively as "The Buntline Special". According to Lake, Earp kept his at the original 12" length, but the four other recipients of the Buntline Specials cut their barrels down to 7½".

Lake spent much effort trying to track these guns through the Colt company, Masterson, and Earp's contacts in Alaska. Researchers have never found any record of an order received by the Colt company, and Buntline's alleged connections to Earp have been largely discredited.[15] Schillingberg states that there is solid proof that Buntline was in the Eastern United States during the time when the presentation was supposed to have happened, and presents a lengthy and detailed case to disprove the Buntline Special legend. There is also no evidence that Buntline wrote about the occasion, and Buntline wrote about everything.

In Massad Ayoob's Greatest Handguns of the World Volume 2, Ayoob states, "Historians debate whether Wyatt Earp owned a 'Buntline Special' (author is inclined to believe that he did), but Colt manufactured many in the latter half of the 20th Century." [16]

Portrayals in popular culture

Portly, comedic character actor Richard Eliot (who wondered, "Why don't you kiss her instead of talking her to death?" in It's a Wonderful Life) played "Major" Ned Buntline in the 1935 film Annie Oakley with Barbara Stanwyck in the title role. Actor C. Lindsay Workman played the role of Buntline in the ABC/Warner Brothers western television series Colt .45, in the 1959 episode entitled "A Legend of Buffalo Bill," with Britt Lomond as Cody. In the story line, while investigating a series of raids on the railroad, series character Christopher Colt, portrayed by Wayde Preston, meets Cody, who offers to sell Colt .45 pistols. The episode falsely implies that Colt gave Cody his nickname of "Buffalo Bill.[17]

From 1955 to 1958, actor Lloyd Corrigan played Buntline in several episodes of the ABC western series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, starring Hugh O'Brian.[18] Burt Lancaster played Buntline (a.k.a. The Legend Maker") in Robert Altman's 1976 film Buffalo Bill and the Indians.[19]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Johannsen, Albert (1950). The House of Beadle and Adams and Its Dime and Nickel Novels: The Story of a Vanished Literature. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. pp. 56–62, 167–176.
  2. 1 2 Pond, Fred E. (1919). Life and Adventures of Ned Buntline. New York: The Camdus Book Shop.
  3. ↑ Donaldson, Alfred Lee (1921). A history of the Adirondacks. New York: The Century Co. p. 118. Retrieved July 22, 2012.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 McIver, Stuart B. (1998). "Hanging Mr Buntline". Dreamers, Schemers and Scalawags Volume 1 of Florida Chronicles. Pineapple Press Inc,. pp. 3–8. ISBN 978-1-56164-155-0.
  5. ↑ Neil Rennie, Treasure Neverland: Real and Imaginary Pirates, Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 162-164.
  6. ↑ Ned Buntline, The Black Avenger of the Spanish Main: or, the Fiend of Blood, Boston: F. Gleason, 1847.
  7. ↑ Trager, James (2004). "1849". The New York Chronology: The Ultimate Compendium of Events, People, and Anecdotes from the Dutch to the Present. HarperCollins. p. 106. ISBN 978-0-06-074062-7.
  8. ↑ Gidmark, Jill B. (2001). Encyclopedia of American literature of the sea and Great Lakes. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 222–223. ISBN 978-0-313-30148-3.
  9. ↑ Streeby, Shelley (2002). American sensations : class, empire, and the production of popular culture (2. [print.] ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 3. ISBN 9780520223141. Retrieved 25 August 2015.
  10. ↑ DeForest, Tim (2004). Storytelling in the pulps, comics, and radio: how technology changed popular fiction in America. McFarland. p. 17. ISBN 978-0-7864-1902-9.
  11. ↑ Streeby, Shelley (2002). American sensations : class, empire, and the production of popular culture (2. [print.] ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 9780520223141. Retrieved 25 August 2015.
  12. 1 2 Joy S. Kasson (2001). Buffalo Bill's Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History. Macmillan. pp. 20–23. ISBN 978-0-8090-3244-0.
  13. ↑ Cesare Marino, The Remarkable Carlo Gentile: Italian Photographer of the American Frontier (Nevada City: Carl Mautz, 1998), pp.43-47.
  14. ↑ "Cattle Annie & Little Britches". ranchdivaoutfitters.com. Retrieved December 26, 2012.
  15. ↑ Shillingberg, William B. (Summer 1976). "Wyatt Earp and the Buntline Special Myth". Kansas Historical Quarterly 42 (2): 113–154.
  16. ↑ Massad Ayoob's Greatest Handguns of the World Volume 2. F. W. Media Inc. Retrieved November 5, 2012.
  17. ↑ "Colt .45". ctva.biz. Retrieved December 22, 2012.
  18. ↑ "Full Cast and Crew for The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp". Internet Movie Data Base. Retrieved January 23, 2013.
  19. ↑ "Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (1976)". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 27 April 2014.

Further reading

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ned Buntline.
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Tuesday, March 29, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.