Photographs are not only beautiful and interesting, but also windows into the past. Casual pictures taken of a New York street scene in 1946, ho hum at the time, are fascinating today.

In the fall of 1877, a teenage girl named Sallie Lucy Chisum traveled from east/central Texas along with her widowed father, two younger brothers and a servant or two to New Mexico Territory. There her family moved in with her famous rancher Uncle, John S. Chisum. Sallie, a spunky blond, met Billy Bonney, aka Billy the Kid. They danced together, mostly square dances, and took wild rides along the Pecos River bed. When asked about Billy's checkered other life Sallie was quoted as saying, "He was always in the pink when he was with me."

Photographers known as tintypers traveled the countryside selling little photographs. They often used a four lens camera that imprinted a single processed sheet of an extremely thin iron, with four nearly identical images. These were dried, varnished, and cut into individual photographs. The price was usually a quarter for the lot.

Tintype photography was high tech in those days and Sallie, wanting to be hip, collected pictures of her family and friends. Included where pictures of Billy the Kid and his pals who formed a gang called the Regulators. Their reason for being was to avenge the cold blooded murder of their employer, a 24 year old Englishman named John H. Tunstall. Soon before Sallie died, she gave her collection to her niece, her brother's daughter. She stored it in her attic where it was forgotten.

Decades after the death of Sallie's niece her house, which had been locked up, was opened by some of her family and it's contents sold in a yard sale. The little tintypes, now long forgotten were tossed into old donut boxes. They ended up in a local antique store where they were put on display for sale. I came along and recognized who they were of. It took me years to identify all of them and today I've id'd most of them.

Below, we see Sallie Chisum ca. 1878, Sallie and her first husband, William Robert and herself, and Billy the Kid. He is about 18/19 but he looks younger. His apparent youth disarmed his enemies. A big mistake. When this picture was taken, probably in late March 1878, he had already killed three men.

[stepmac]

Since some of you are following the tale of these pictures I'm going to post two more. The first you have seen here before. It is the pic of the younger kid, probably taken in March of 1878 at the South Spring Ranch, which is where Sallie Chisum was living, along with her father, brothers and famous rancher uncle, John S. Chisum.

Billy's picture includes the photographer's name and address. He had an address in Wisconsin, but he must have traveled to New Mexico...since that is where his pictures were taken and it is where Sallie lived. Below is a tintype that my sister-in-law told me about. "There are some tintypes for sale at Goodwill Industries" and she gave me the email address. I looked them up. There were five of them. Too small to see any details, but they looked about right. I was the only one to bid. Cost me $7.50 each.

Below is one of the pictures and the pic of the kid. Compare them to oneanother and tell me what you can deduce about the two tintypes. What you are doing btw, is what I did and it took me years of hard study and thinking and reading to come up with my solutions. In the original the photos are the same size and color. The one of Billy is embossed the name of the photographer along the bottom. Nothing is written on the frame of the other.

Now you try, what can you deduce from comparing the two ancient tintypes?:

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Last edited by stepmac; 02-05-2013 at 02:22 PM.

[stepmac]

Looking at the above pics of the two young men. Remember the faces in the originals are the same size and about the same color. What can you learn from comparing these two ancient photos? They were found more than a 1,000 miles and two + years from one another.

[stepmac]

Well, I guess not too many folks want to enter my contest. Oh well.

There are many things that are similar between these two tintype portraits.

I'll give just one: They are wearing the same tie.

[philjame]

Dear Stepmac:

I live in Las Cruces, NM, and am FASCINATED by Billy the Kid, the Regulators, John Tunstall, Alex McSween, Lincoln, NM, any southwestern history regarding Billy the Kid. My husband and I have taken day trips and found the John Tunstall murder site in Tunstall Canyon. It was quite a journey to get there but well worth the trip. We also located the little Blazer's Mill Cemetery in Mescalero and have located Dick Brewer and Buckshot Roberts' graves. We intend to do a day trip to find the site of Blazer's Mill.

I accidentally happened upon Pentaz Forums and must say that I am absolutely thrilled to have come upon your thread about Billy the Kid. I am still reading all of the posts and looking at the photos that you have. I can't tell you how amazed I was to see the photos of John Tunstall (what a handsome young man) and Alexander McSween (also handsome).

I don't know when your book will be published but I would love to purchase a copy. You have some of the most wonderful history here and I am sooooo glad that you have shared it.

Obviously I have no idea of who you are or how you knew about Sallie Chisum or remembered any of these people, but thank you for posting it here.

Best wishes to you on getting your book published!

Sincerely,

Mrs. Jamie Phillips
Las Cruces, NM

[daacon]

Wow that's a few lessons in there fascinating. Thanks for sharing.

[tommylee42]

Two photos of Ab Saunders sold at a Heritage Auction in November and I think that one of the photos that you have and think is Billy is actually Ab Saunders...thoughts

[daacon]

Wow so much information - very informative and interesting.

[Kerrowdown]

Interesting piece of social history, thanks for posting an interesting read.

Wow! Thank you for posting the photos and details! I've always been interested in Billy the Kid.
These photos are classic. It's neat to see how far portraits have become...these older ones have a legacy to them maybe because they were so rare and special to take.

Thanks!

[shootseven]

The photos look nothing like the people Step claims they are. No Billy the Kid/Lincoln County War historian believes they are these people; none.

[normhead]

The photos look nothing like the people Step claims they are. No Billy the Kid/Lincoln County War historian believes they are these people; none.

I'm interested in your references.

[luftfluss]

You Tube

You Tube

[shootseven]

I'm interested in your references.

First, provenance. According to the owner/threadstarter: " I walked into a little antique store and found, over time, about 60 photographs. That's not too unique, but then, after years of study and travel, I found who they were and how the collection happened to arrive in that little store." I take it from this that there was no clear paper trail of ownership of the photographs (if there was, that should have been kept with the photo album). Without provenance, all you have is a bunch of old photographs, nothing more. Without provenance it's very, very difficult to prove who anyone is. What is the proof this is Sallie Chisum's photo album? I see none.

Secondly, there's no mention of any identification accompanying any of the tintypes. Seems like the story is the owner "proved" is was Sallie Chisum's photo album and then identified the others just because they sort of looked like someone famous Chisum had some contact with in her life. Of course, this would never be proof of anything, but let's play the look-a-like game for a moment, shall we?

Stepmac claims this is John Tunstall:


Does that person look anything like the actual John Tunstall?:


There are plenty of other Tunstall photos you can view in any number of Billy the Kid and Lincoln County War books; and they have solid provenance (they came directly from Tunstall's family; his sister was alive until the second half of the twentieth century).

Stepmac claims this is Bob Olinger:


Does that look like this man (the real Olinger)?


I can play the they don't match game all day but I'll stop there. There are photos available of many of the people stepmac claims identify, so if anyone wants to look at more those should be easy to find.

And, to go to another of Stepmac's quotes, "My major frustration is that most of the "experts" don't believe the collection. It is too amazing to be true, I guess. These experts have made their name by owning BTK related photographs and they guard their positions jealously." The old if they don't believe my claim they must have an agenda excuse. No, most of the experts have not "made their name by owning BTK related photographs," they have made their names based on knowledge, research, and peer-reviewed publications. The reason the experts have dismissed this is very simple: there is no evidence that the people in the photographs are who the owner claims they are.

Sadly, since the only authenticated image of Billy the Kid sold for $2.3 million in 2011, we've been inundated with photographs that people claim are Billy the Kid, usually with some photo "expert" to say why yes, that is Billy the Kid! We'll be getting another taste of this when the National Geographic Channel airs a documentary this fall about a supposed photograph of Billy the Kid playing croquet (again, from what I understand, no provenance at all, just some photo some guy found at a garage sale in California and he thought one of the men in the photo looked like Billy the Kid, so it must be him!), and undoubtedly they'll find some "expert" to say it's him. The want of money (or simply the want to own something important) drives a lot of people to lie to others, or themselves, about photographs like this. The part that troubles me is that, in this internet age, may people read those lies and just accept them as fact.

[normhead]

Someone get some facial recognition software. For the bottom one, I'd say possibly. For the top one, not as likely... but, I once did a model shoot with the learning annex in Toronto. The model they hired was worth $800 an hour, and the reason she could command that much, although I couldn't see it while I was shooting her, was that she looked like a different person in almost every image. So, personally, I think the verifiable historical research might be valuable. A picture with historical context and notes known to be a person, is clearly better than one that could be of anyone.

A friend of mine once picked up a box of images of mostly unknown people in stereograph images. Most of them unknown people and you could have claimed they were of anyone. However, there was one of the battle field a little Bighorn, remarkable in how unremarkable it was, it was just a field with a few dead horse lying around. the soldiers and native warriors must have already been removed, and one of Lincoln, and those two brought my friend a payout of over $1000 on a 25$ investment. So there is definitely money to be made selling old images, especially if you can attach a famous name to them.

I'd be interesting in hearing arguments and counter arguments. But to course, that would be way too academic.