Etta Place
sv...@cox.net
Butch Cassiday fame. I'm always struck by how beautiful she
was,especially for those days. She seems to have dropped out of sight
before Butch & Sundance were supposedly killed,and she was never heard
of again as far as I know. Anybody know more?
Randy in Phoenix
Todd
Woman ain't any better looking these days, believe it or not.
--
Todd
Steve Grimm
Etta's final days have not been discovered. Richard Patterson in his book
"Butch Cassidy - A Biography" provides a good summary of the rumors and
quest for Etta Place:
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Of all the persons closely involved with the Wild Bunch, Etta Place re-
mains the most obscure. Etta by far was the best looking of the Wild Bunch
consorts; some would say even beautiful. A photograph of her and Long
abaugh in 1901 shows a smallish, shapely woman with a warm, intelligent
face and a quiet elegance-hardly the sort of woman who would relish the
role of sidekick to a trail-hardened outlaw. But almost nothing is known
about the real Etta Place.
It is unlikely that Etta Place was her real name. However, Ed Kirby, one
of Longabaugh's biographers, claimed to have uncovered undocumented
evidence that Etta's mother was Emily Jane Place of Oswego, New York,
that she was related to the family of Harry Longabaugh's mother, Annie G.
Place, and that Etta and Harry knew each other in Pennsylvania before
Harry came west.
Donna Ernst suggests that Etta's first name was really Ethel (a name she
was using in early 1901), and that the name Etta came about later as a
result
of her visits to South America, where the Spanish pronunciation of Ethel
would have been "Etta." Dan Buck agrees about the Spanish pronuncia-
tion of Ethel-in fact, it was he who came up with the idea-but he be-
lieves that the name Etta was probably the result of a clerical error in the
Pinkertons' files.
There is also the theory that Etta was Ann Bassett of Brown's Park, the
early girlfriend of Butch Cassidy who, with her sister Josie, competed for
his affections. However, in later years Ann had many opportunities to tell
the world of this fact and she never did.
According to another story, Etta's real name was Laura Etta Place
Capel, the daughter of George Capel who also went by the name George
Ingerfield. According to this story Capel was killed in 1892 while living in
Arizona, and Etta, then only sixteen, ended up at Fannie Porter's sporting
house in San Antonio. Butch Cassidy supposedly found her there, felt that
she was worthy of a better environment, and took her to Price, Utah,
where he placed her with a "good Mormon family" by the name of
Thayne. At the Thaynes' place Etta took the name Ethel or Hazel and, be-
fore becoming involved with Harry Longabaugh and the Wild Bunch,
taught school for a while.
The above is a variant of a story that surfaced in 1970. That year a man
claiming to be Harry Thayne Longabaugh, the son of Harry Alonzo Long-
abaugh, went around insisting to anyone who would listen that Etta Place
was a woman named Hazel Tryon, a half-sister of his mother, Anna Marie
Thayne. He said that after he was born in 1901, Etta (Hazel) took up with
his father, eventually deserting her own children and running off with him
to South America. The younger Longabaugh also said that Etta had been
married two other times, to a "Johnnie" Johnson and to a man named
Smith. He said that in later years she attempted to locate the two children
she had abandoned but was unsuccessful. He claimed that Etta finally set-
tled in Marion County, Oregon, where she died in 1935.
On the other hand a Fort Worth newspaper editor, Delbert Willis, was
convinced that Etta Place was a Fort Worth prostitute named Eunice Gray.
Willis, who had interviewed Gray many times, said that she told him that
she had originally come from Missouri. Gray lived to be eighty-one and
died in a hotel fire in Waco, Texas, in January 1962. Although Willis appar
ently was convinced that Gray and Place were one and the same, he pro
duced no concrete evidence to support his idea.41 Willis's theory was pur
sued by Fort Worth historian Richard F. Selcer for his book on the "Hell's
Half Acre" district of that city, but without results.
In 1990 a lady from Wisconsin named Fish reported that she was pretty
sure that Etta was her father's second cousin. According to Mrs. Fish, her
father told her that the girl, who was from Door County, Wisconsin, "got
mixed up with a bad crowd." Not only that, said Mrs. Fish, but the girl's
father (Mrs. Fish's uncle) was found murdered in 1894, and it was rumored
that the guilty party was none other than Harry Longabaugh.
Also in the early 1990S Wild Bunch researcher Jim Dullenty thought he
may have had a promising lead on Etta Place. He received a call from an
outlaw enthusiast named Jesse Cole Kenworth who had what Dullenty be-
lieved was interesting information on Etta's identity. According to Ken
worth, Etta could be traced to Florence, Arizona. Dullenty was ready to
pack up and meet Kenworth for a trip to Florence when Kenworth broke
off contact.
Some writers believe that Etta eventually ended up in Denver, Colorado.
Gail Drago even supplied an address: 619 Ohio Street.45 The late F. Bruce
Lamb believed that Etta might have come from the Denver area. Following
these leads, author Donna Ernst, a tireless researcher, combed the census
and other public records in that city but came up empty-handed.
Another rumor tied Etta to the Parker clan in Utah. She was supposed to
have been Butch's cousin, Amy Parker, who was born in Kanosh, Utah, in
1879 and grew up in the town of Joseph in southern Sevier County. This
would have made Amy about the same age as Etta, and apparently there
was some resemblance between the two women. Joseph, Utah, is less than
fifty miles from Butch's parents' home in Circle Valley, and, as this story
goes, Butch knew her when they were young and he later introduced her to
Harry Longabaugh.
What may be a variant of this story is one proposed by a Salt Lake City
researcher, Steve Lacy, who claims that he has information that Etta was a
schoolteacher who married a relative of Butch's and later resided in Leeds
Utah. He says that Etta's last name was Harris and that she lived
until January 1959.
What appears to be the most interesting lead in the search for Etta's
roots came from additional digging by Donna Ernst. At least one Pinker-
ton detective who had been assigned to find the Wild Bunch believed that
Etta's parents lived in Texas.49 Picking up on this, Ernst had the 1900
census
records for Texas searched for every Ethel born between 1875 and 1880 who
lived in or near Fort Worth or San Antonio.50 (She chose these two cities
be-
cause they were two of Harry Longabaugh's favorite hangouts.) Ernst also
searched old city directories and marriage, death, and tax records. Women
named Ethel who had large families were tossed out. Eventually all of the
Ethels were eliminated except one, and that one was an almost-perfect
match. Her name was Ethel Bishop, and she lived in San Antonio with four
other women-all young and single-at 212 South Concho Street, just
around the corner from Fannie Porter's den of pleasure. In one of the direc-
tories Ethel had listed herself as an unemployed music teacher; however,
like Fannie's place, the building at 212 South Concho Street was a bor-
dello.
Ernst then conducted a nationwide census search but it turned up little
further information. She did find two Ethel Bishops in the 1880 census for
West Virginia, both of whom roughly matched the San Antonio Ethel. In
writing to persons named Bishop that were living in West Virginia, Ernst
was encouraged by a letter from a man who wrote "the past is best left in
the past anyway" and included a confusing family tree on the back of his
letter. But before Ernst could probe the matter further the man died.
Utah outlaw writer Kerry Ross Boren has suggested that Butch may
have had stronger feelings for Etta than is generally believed. Boren claims
that his source for this information was his (Boren's) grandfather, Willard
Schofield, who supposedly knew Butch. Boren says that sometime shortly
before Butch, Longabaugh, and Etta fled to South America, Butch spent an
evening in the saloon in Linwood, Utah, where his grandfather tended bar.
Boren says that his grandfather recalled that Butch t lked quite a lot about
Etta that night. "He talked about her like he thought an awful lot of her.
He didn't come right out and say anything, but I could tell that he was anx
ious to tell someone about it and he spent nearly an hour just telling about
things she did."
Moo E. Calyentay
spammen...@home.com says...
>
>What do you mean "beautiful ... for those days"?
>
>Woman ain't any better looking these days, believe it or not.
I'd have to agree. Just "better fed" - unfortunately...
Gerald Clough
I think a lot of it is that the promoted ideal changes over the years,
and, at least in her photo, Etta Place (or whatever her name may have
been) stands up reasonably well today. Plus, photographic technology was
such that it encouraged stiff poses, and the orthochromatic emulsions of
the day didn't flatter complexions. And, of course, alongside
hard-working western women, she probably has an advantage. Good-looking
woman, of course, but not a prodigy. In the standing pose, she is also
at an angle and in clothing that don't come off looking as bulky as
modern clothing and therefore tends to make her look more fashionably
thin and more relaxed than many other 19th century women appear in their
photos.
What I really think we think when we see her photo today is that we
would buy that image as a photo of a modern actress playing Etta. She
mostly just has the advantage of having had a photo survive that "works"
in the modern view.
--
-----------------------------------------------------------
Clo...@Texas.Net
"Nothing has any value unless you know you can give it up."
-----------------------------------------------------------
Moo E. Calyentay
>In the standing pose, she is also
>at an angle and in clothing that don't come off looking as bulky as
>modern clothing and therefore tends to make her look more fashionably
>thin and more relaxed than many other 19th century women appear in their
>photos.
Can you imagine today's lady wearing those
corsets of Etta's days? And the high, lace-up
boots, bustles, hoop skirts and other items
in fashion then?
Hmmmm. On second thought, all it would take
is for one of today's fashion designers
to re-introduce such items in an annual showing
of new fall or spring fashions...
