Billy the Kid's Real Name: Henry McCarty

Quick answer: Billy the Kid is widely documented under the childhood name Henry McCarty. Encyclopaedia Britannica says scholarly opinion is divided over whether that name or William H. Bonney, Jr., used later and at trial, was his true name (Encyclopaedia Britannica; Texas State Historical Association).

Real name and early life

Britannica says he went as Henry McCarty as a child and was born on New York City's East Side, giving a tentative date of November 23, 1859, marked as uncertain. The Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) Handbook of Texas says the date and place remain debated, but that evidence presented by Jack DeMattos convinced historian Robert M. Utley he was born to Patrick McCarty and Catherine Devine on September 17, 1859, in New York City. This page records that conflict rather than choosing. William H. Bonney is well attested as the name he used as an adult. A hypothesis that he was Ollie L. "Brushy Bill" Roberts, who died in 1950 in Hico, Texas, appears in both accounts; neither treats it as fact.

TSHA says his mother married William Antrim in Santa Fe in 1873 and later died of tuberculosis in Silver City. Britannica describes a childhood move from New York through Kansas and Colorado to New Mexico after his father's death. Both agree he was in New Mexico as a teenager.

Career highlights

Britannica says that in his early teens he fell into thievery and lawlessness in the Southwest. TSHA places him in New Mexico's Lincoln County conflict after he went to work for John Tunstall, and notes his later implication in Sheriff William Brady's killing. In December 1880 Sheriff Pat Garrett captured him, Britannica records. Tried for murder in Mesilla in April 1881, he was found guilty and sentenced to hang, then escaped jail on April 28. Garrett found him at Pete Maxwell's ranch in Fort Sumner and shot him on the evening of July 14, 1881. Britannica adds that although he claimed to have killed 21 men, the actual number is likely less than 10. TSHA cautions that early published lives, including Garrett's 1882 Authentic Life of Billy the Kid, mixed error and legend.

Death

He died July 14, 1881, at Fort Sumner, shot by Garrett, and was buried in the old military cemetery there, both record.

Name notes for searchers

Henry McCarty is the childhood name used in standard reference works; William H. Bonney is the name he used later. He is known as Billy the Kid. Searchers looking for the outlaw killed at Fort Sumner in 1881 are aiming at the same person.