Adding to our knowledge of Cochise County history, March 27, 2012
By Mark Dworkin (Thornhill, Ontario)
This review is from: Charleston & Millville,A.T. Hell on the San Pedro (Paperback) The author is due great credit for advancing the knowledge of Cochise County's colorful history (think Wyatt Earp and the O.K. Corral). In this first systematic study of Charleston and Millville, Arizona Terriory, he has utilized a wide array of primary source material and his vast collection of important documents, photos, et al, accumulated over many years of studying the area.
Readers will be interested in his take on the Johnny-behind-the-duece section, an event central to the Earp legend, and a controversial topic among Earp historians. In this section of the book, the author's conclusions are balanced and merited by the evidence he presents.
The author also humanizes and shows the centrality of the cold-blooded killing of young Martin Peel to the Earp story, a murder committed by cow-boy opponents of Earp, a terrible slaying too often dismissed as a minor sideshow. The descriptions of the effects of his son's death on Peel's father and friends were particularly moving- I don't recall reading about such reactions before. Linking the Peel killing to the Curly Bill Brocius shooting by Earp should challenge many previously held conclusions about the events of those times. Other sections I especially liked were the stories of Charleston earthquake, and of James Wolf and his relationship with Alfred Henry Lewis's Wolfville Tales.
This is a work that anyone interested in Tombstone and Wyatt Earp needs to read for a fuller picture of the tumultuous legendary events of the early 1880s in southeastern Arizona.
By Mark Dworkin (Thornhill, Ontario)
This review is from: Charleston & Millville,A.T. Hell on the San Pedro (Paperback) The author is due great credit for advancing the knowledge of Cochise County's colorful history (think Wyatt Earp and the O.K. Corral). In this first systematic study of Charleston and Millville, Arizona Terriory, he has utilized a wide array of primary source material and his vast collection of important documents, photos, et al, accumulated over many years of studying the area.
Readers will be interested in his take on the Johnny-behind-the-duece section, an event central to the Earp legend, and a controversial topic among Earp historians. In this section of the book, the author's conclusions are balanced and merited by the evidence he presents.
The author also humanizes and shows the centrality of the cold-blooded killing of young Martin Peel to the Earp story, a murder committed by cow-boy opponents of Earp, a terrible slaying too often dismissed as a minor sideshow. The descriptions of the effects of his son's death on Peel's father and friends were particularly moving- I don't recall reading about such reactions before. Linking the Peel killing to the Curly Bill Brocius shooting by Earp should challenge many previously held conclusions about the events of those times. Other sections I especially liked were the stories of Charleston earthquake, and of James Wolf and his relationship with Alfred Henry Lewis's Wolfville Tales.
This is a work that anyone interested in Tombstone and Wyatt Earp needs to read for a fuller picture of the tumultuous legendary events of the early 1880s in southeastern Arizona.