I’ve recently been doing some family history research in an attempt to verify the validity of some of the relationships revealed to me through the BYU tool “Relative Finder” and Ancestry.com’s app “We’re Related”. It seems I have the western gun fighting days and years following pretty well covered with probable cousins such as Butch Cassidy, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Jesse James, Davey Crockett and Clyde Barrow.
Today’s new discovery from We’re Related, which I’m currently researching for validation, tells me that James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok is my 5th cousin 5 generations removed through my Strait family line. My maternal grandmother (Nannie Becker Flanders’s) mother was Emma Cornelia Strait. This chart shows my connection to Wild Bill Hickok.
Also this week I was notified on We’re Related that Martha Jane Canary was my 5th cousin 4 generations back. Martha Jane was better known as “Calamity Jane”, who at one time tried to convince people that she was the wife of Wild Bill Hickok. No documentation has been found to prove that claim. This chart shows my cousin connection to Calamity Jane:
As you can see, this relationship is from my maternal grandfather Milo Flanders’ ancestral line. If Calamity Jane had indeed been married to Wild Bill Hickok, I could say my Grandpa Flanders’ cousin was married to my Grandma Flanders’s cousin. For now I’m just content to consider that Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane were my cousins.
1 comment:
My husband and I visited Deadwood because I love Wild Bill and I bought a booklet that stated that he was never involved with her. He was more interested in the pretty women and never had a shortage of them. Wild Bill and Calamity Jane may have crossed paths on a stage coach ride. She was in love with him and wanted to buried next to her Bill. I guess it was a good thing that he died before her and had no chance of refuting her story. She also was a very interesting person, I bought a little booklet about her too.
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