WITNESS AT THE O.K. CORRAL: TOMBSTONE’S BILLY ALLEN LE VAN.
By John D. Rose.
Billy Allen Le Van, from the
Le Van House photo by C.S. Fly,
courtesy of the Robin Andrews
Collection. Image enhancement
by Kevin Pyles.
Telling the story of Billy Allen Le Van is long overdue, especially in light of the focus on one of the most famous events in all Western American History, the gunfight near the O.K. Corral. In the wake of this event, the Spicer Hearing was held as the Earps and Doc Holliday were called to answer for the deaths that occurred October 26, 1881 on a Tombstone street. Frank and Tom McLaury and young Billy Clanton died as a result of the shootout, and the Spicer Hearing harvested testimony from those in Tombstone who saw the fight from different vantage points, as well as those who witnessed related events that preceded it.
Whereas it is clear that there was acrimony between Ike Clanton and Wyatt Earp, the allegiance of differing supporters and critics was not always so clearly defined. Billy Allen Le Van offers a contrast to this “one side against the other” paradigm. Billy became acquainted with many people while in Tombstone, including some who were identified with the cowboy faction. And at the Spicer hearing Billy testified on behalf of the prosecution, but also told the proceeding, “My relations with the Earps have been the best, always – always friendly…” There is no record of problems between Billy and the Earps and Holliday before the fight, in fact, they were business partners in a local mining claim.
After deserting from the Civil War, Billy Allen Le Van later married and moved to Georgetown, Colorado. Years later Billy would flee the Colorado justice system as well. And yet, this man on the run also built one of Tombstone’s finest hotels where he once protected a battered wife from her abusive husband. He partnered in a mining interest with Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, and testified against them at the Spicer Hearing. Billy helped with bail for two men that the Earps had arrested for the robbery of the Bisbee Stage, and one of these men, Frank Stilwell, would later be shot to death by Wyatt Earp. Most who went west were simply ordinary people who rose up to extraordinary circumstances and prevailed. Many came in hopes of greater economic opportunity and adventure, as well as a chance to satisfy their own curiosity, or perhaps that one big break that would change it all for them. There were also those who went west to leave trouble behind them. It is possible that Billy’s own westward migration touched on all of the above considerations.
William Henry Harrison Le Van was born in Lockport, Niagara, New York, on November 30th, 1839, the ninth of thirteen children, to Thomas Jefferson Le Van and Anna Mary Kissinger. His mother was pregnant with him during William Henry Harrison’s presidential campaign. This and perhaps a family affinity for presidential names may well explain the choice of title that he was given, even though Harrison held office a scant 31 days. His parents had grown up in Allentown, PA, and would have known well the story of that city’s founder, William Allen. Later in life, when an alias was of use to him, Billy Le Van would take this founder’s name as his own, becoming Billy Allen, and at other times, Billy Allen Le Van.
Billy served in the Civil War, but later deserted. The authorities were unable to arrest him, and he married and headed west to Georgetown, Colorado. But as Billy settled into family life with his first wife Gertrude and their children, she would come to visit a local doctor in Georgetown as she wasn’t feeling well. He would advise her to travel back to New York State in hopes of a reversal of her declining health. Tragically, this much needed reversal was not forthcoming.
“Mrs. Levan, wife of William H. Levan, of this city, died at Lockport, in the State of New York, on the 25th day of February, at the age of 26 years. Mrs. Levan, accompanied by her two children, left here [Georgetown]…her physician having recommended a change of climate, but she gradually advanced towards the grave, and died as above stated. Deceased was a noble wife and a Christian mother, beloved by all who knew her, and her death will be mourned by the many. Mr. Levan has our deepest sympathy in view of his irreparable loss.”
Whereas it is clear that there was acrimony between Ike Clanton and Wyatt Earp, the allegiance of differing supporters and critics was not always so clearly defined. Billy Allen Le Van offers a contrast to this “one side against the other” paradigm. Billy became acquainted with many people while in Tombstone, including some who were identified with the cowboy faction. And at the Spicer hearing Billy testified on behalf of the prosecution, but also told the proceeding, “My relations with the Earps have been the best, always – always friendly…” There is no record of problems between Billy and the Earps and Holliday before the fight, in fact, they were business partners in a local mining claim.
After deserting from the Civil War, Billy Allen Le Van later married and moved to Georgetown, Colorado. Years later Billy would flee the Colorado justice system as well. And yet, this man on the run also built one of Tombstone’s finest hotels where he once protected a battered wife from her abusive husband. He partnered in a mining interest with Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, and testified against them at the Spicer Hearing. Billy helped with bail for two men that the Earps had arrested for the robbery of the Bisbee Stage, and one of these men, Frank Stilwell, would later be shot to death by Wyatt Earp. Most who went west were simply ordinary people who rose up to extraordinary circumstances and prevailed. Many came in hopes of greater economic opportunity and adventure, as well as a chance to satisfy their own curiosity, or perhaps that one big break that would change it all for them. There were also those who went west to leave trouble behind them. It is possible that Billy’s own westward migration touched on all of the above considerations.
William Henry Harrison Le Van was born in Lockport, Niagara, New York, on November 30th, 1839, the ninth of thirteen children, to Thomas Jefferson Le Van and Anna Mary Kissinger. His mother was pregnant with him during William Henry Harrison’s presidential campaign. This and perhaps a family affinity for presidential names may well explain the choice of title that he was given, even though Harrison held office a scant 31 days. His parents had grown up in Allentown, PA, and would have known well the story of that city’s founder, William Allen. Later in life, when an alias was of use to him, Billy Le Van would take this founder’s name as his own, becoming Billy Allen, and at other times, Billy Allen Le Van.
Billy served in the Civil War, but later deserted. The authorities were unable to arrest him, and he married and headed west to Georgetown, Colorado. But as Billy settled into family life with his first wife Gertrude and their children, she would come to visit a local doctor in Georgetown as she wasn’t feeling well. He would advise her to travel back to New York State in hopes of a reversal of her declining health. Tragically, this much needed reversal was not forthcoming.
“Mrs. Levan, wife of William H. Levan, of this city, died at Lockport, in the State of New York, on the 25th day of February, at the age of 26 years. Mrs. Levan, accompanied by her two children, left here [Georgetown]…her physician having recommended a change of climate, but she gradually advanced towards the grave, and died as above stated. Deceased was a noble wife and a Christian mother, beloved by all who knew her, and her death will be mourned by the many. Mr. Levan has our deepest sympathy in view of his irreparable loss.”
Grave marker for Gertrude Le Van, courtesy of the Robin Andrews Collection.
Original cabinet card photo of Georgetown Colorado, contained within the collections of John D. Rose.
In the wake of Gertrude’s death, Billy left his children with their maternal grandparents to be raised by them. He remained in Georgetown, alone. And eventually his name was reported in the local press for criminal activity. The stabilizing anchors, his wife and children, were gone. In the Georgetown winter of 1877, Billy was named along with three other men charged with the theft of ore that was placed in front of a local bank. “Through the vigilance of our night policeman, Mr. McGaw, an arrest has been made of four persons charged with being guilty of stealing the ore in front of the First National Bank…Their names are W. Cook, Ed. Green, Chas. Perchman and W.H. Levan. They all waived examination, before Justice Roberts, and stand committed in default of $500 bail each, except Levan, who has given bail…”
In May of 1878 Billy stood in a Colorado court room charged with salting ore. Silver ore provided ample opportunity for honest workers to make a good living. Those who attempted to take advantage of the system would incur the ire of the working man and the honest mine and mill owners. But these were not concerns Billy Le Van thought about before he committed his crime. He knew he was guilty, and his conscience weighed upon him. It would seem he had a natural tendency to revert to the truth, but an inability to fully weigh potential consequences.
“In the case of the People vs. Wm. H. Le Van, ore salting, the prisoner withdrew his plea of Not Guilty, and pled Guilty.” Surprise took over the court room, and even the presiding Judge wanted Billy to understand the gravity of what he was saying. This guilty plea would mean time in the penitentiary. “Judge Beck read the law to him, but Levan persisted in the latter plea.” Seeing his client’s reversal of conscience, his attorney quickly addressed the court in hopes of reducing what could be a hard sentence.
“Judge McCoy, his counsel, plead for leniency in his case…” Billy did as well, attempting to draw a distinction between himself and his partners in crime. In a memorable statement, “…Levan remarked while…he knew he did wrong, he was not so bad as other parties involved in the crime.” Le Van’s courtroom epiphany would lead him into a local jail cell, from which he would escape. He was then apprehended, and he escaped yet again. But with his second escape he appears to have learned that staying in the territory where his crimes were committed wasn't conducive to his personal freedom. He would flee Colorado for a new boom-town where silver may have seemed in endless supply, that would later be known more for its troubles rather than its riches. They called the place Tombstone.
Records show that Billy would make his appearance in the form of a registered mining claim in the Tombstone District known as the Hattie Mine, located on April 24th, 1879. This leaves a missing gap in his whereabouts from July of 1878 to April of 1879. It is unknown whether or not Billy had tried other places before settling in Tombstone. He was undoubtedly looking for a new home that didn’t have knowledge of his Colorado crimes. And press reports in 1878 about Tombstone had begun to stretch across the west. Miners and those who catered to them in Georgetown would have known well about this promising camp. Word traveled fast from community to community, especially among towns with related livelihoods. While living in Tombstone, Le Van would later make the acquaintance of a man who came to Tombstone with a similar hardship in his personal history. Wyatt Earp had also lost his first wife earlier in his life, and the event appears to have destabilized him for a time. After Urilla died, Earp found himself up on charges of horse thievery, one of the more serious infractions of the day.
Both men arrived in Tombstone and set about making new lives for themselves, and they would find a number of connections as they knew each other, as well as mutual acquaintances, both friend and foe. The story of Billy Allen’s and Wyatt Earp’s involvement in the Intervenor Mine began on January 27th, 1881, when Allen and newspaperman Ridgley Tilden made a claim to this property that they named the Last Decision. Tilden and Allen had both been charter members of Tombstone’s first fire department, along with John Behan and Wyatt Earp. Established in September of 1880, it was referred to at the time as “Tombstone Hose Co. No.1,” and would later be called Tombstone Engine Co. No. 1.
The Last Decision was largely located atop the Intervenor Mine. Arguably this was a polite form of “claim jumping,” but it was a serious error to labor and invest in a mine that had incomplete filings proving rightful ownership. Billy and Tilden may have been looking for mines that they believed had not complied with these procedures. This could explain why they chose the Intervenor, which had not completed its necessary filings.
The claim made by Allen and Tilden measured 1,200 feet by 300 feet, and was marked at each corner by a monument of stones. It was “Filed and recorded at request of R. Tilden Feby 8th A. D. 1881 at 8:30 A.M.” by Charles Drake, Pima County Recorder in Tucson. “This claim is a relocation of 1200 feet of the Intervenor claim and shall be known as the Last Decision Mine.”
Billy and his partners filed suit against the Intervenor on August 6th, 1881, and summonses were issued on September 20th, 1881. By then, the Earp troubles with the cowboy faction were reaching a boiling point. In particular, the Earp involvement in the arrest of Frank Stilwell and Pete Spence relating to the Bisbee Stage robbery only added to the escalating tensions.
Back in February 1881, eight months before the Gunfight near the O.K. Corral, Allen and Tilden would attracted a diverse cast of investors to purchase interests in the mine: Wyatt Earp, John H. “Doc” Holliday, James Leavy, and W.F. Lowery purchased “an undivided two-thirds part of the whole of that certain mining claim known as the Last Decision” Mine which is part of what was formerly known as the “Intervenor Mine situated about one quarter of a mile southwesterly from Tombstone” for two hundred dollars, on February 5th, 1881. These four new partners believed that they were “…owners by purchase in mining conveyances, from said locators Tilden and Allen all of the said Last Decision Mine excepting the interest still held by said locators…” (Allen and Tilden). The fact that Allen and Tilden sold shares to Earp, Holliday and others on February 5th, 1881, indicates that they actually sold these shares three days before they recorded their original claim. Although selling shares of this claim should have followed and not preceded its recordation, no one could accuse Allen and Tilden of not moving quickly to capitalize on it. In June, this group sold an undivided ½ interest to P.T. Colby and M.A. Smith.
But in May, the new owners were escorted bodily off the premises of the Last Decision, by none other than those representing the interests of the Intervenor Mining Company. Their complaint to the court asserted that “on the 9th day of May 1881, Defendants [Intervenor Company] unlawfully and without right and without the consent of the plaintiffs or any of them entered into the possession of the above-described premises and ousted the plaintiffs therefrom and have ever since held possession of said premises from plaintiffs...”
It may be one of the great Earp/Tombstone ironies that among others, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday were “ousted” from the Intervenor/Last Decision site without any violence, gunplay or fatalities.
The end result of all this wrangling was that the shares of the Last Decision Mine owned by Allen, Tilden, Earp and Holliday were sold to the Intervenor Mining Company. Earp and Doc Holliday sold their shares of the Last Decision to the Intervenor for one dollar on December 30th, 1881. The dismissal of this case was filed on July 3, 1882. By this point the Earps and Doc Holliday had left Arizona in the wake of Wyatt’s vendetta ride.
When Billy testified for the prosecution at the Spicer Hearing, he chose to call himself Billy Allen, due to his Colorado crimes, and was sworn in using his alias. Although Earp attorney Tom Fitch suspected that Billy was using an alias in court and hiding from Colorado legal troubles, he was unable to corner Billy into admitting this. Later, when the Spicer Hearing was well behind him, he would return to using his true name, Le Van, at the time of his second marriage. This raises speculation that his second wife would not take his alias as her married name. (The timing of this new union was close to the opening of his hotel, thus the name Le Van House, rather than the Allen House on Allen Street.)
Billy Allen Le Van has the ironic distinction of being partners of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday in the Last Decision Mining claim, as well as a friend of Frank McLaury’s. It was Billy who told Frank on October 26, 1881, that Wyatt had recently struck his brother Tom in the hours preceding the gunfight. Earp controversies aside, Billy would also find love in Tombstone, marrying Belle Crowley, who had been advised to move to Tombstone by her former boarder from her Sacramento Boarding house, Ham Light, who also witnessed the gunfight. Belle Le Van’s descendant, Robin Andrews, who tenaciously tracked Billy's story before, during, and after his Tombstone days, asked the author to write the book about her family’s remarkable history. Because of Robin Andrews’ treasure filled collection and outstanding research, we can all share in the life and times of not only this witness to the O.K. Corral, but one family’s story in the west.
In May of 1878 Billy stood in a Colorado court room charged with salting ore. Silver ore provided ample opportunity for honest workers to make a good living. Those who attempted to take advantage of the system would incur the ire of the working man and the honest mine and mill owners. But these were not concerns Billy Le Van thought about before he committed his crime. He knew he was guilty, and his conscience weighed upon him. It would seem he had a natural tendency to revert to the truth, but an inability to fully weigh potential consequences.
“In the case of the People vs. Wm. H. Le Van, ore salting, the prisoner withdrew his plea of Not Guilty, and pled Guilty.” Surprise took over the court room, and even the presiding Judge wanted Billy to understand the gravity of what he was saying. This guilty plea would mean time in the penitentiary. “Judge Beck read the law to him, but Levan persisted in the latter plea.” Seeing his client’s reversal of conscience, his attorney quickly addressed the court in hopes of reducing what could be a hard sentence.
“Judge McCoy, his counsel, plead for leniency in his case…” Billy did as well, attempting to draw a distinction between himself and his partners in crime. In a memorable statement, “…Levan remarked while…he knew he did wrong, he was not so bad as other parties involved in the crime.” Le Van’s courtroom epiphany would lead him into a local jail cell, from which he would escape. He was then apprehended, and he escaped yet again. But with his second escape he appears to have learned that staying in the territory where his crimes were committed wasn't conducive to his personal freedom. He would flee Colorado for a new boom-town where silver may have seemed in endless supply, that would later be known more for its troubles rather than its riches. They called the place Tombstone.
Records show that Billy would make his appearance in the form of a registered mining claim in the Tombstone District known as the Hattie Mine, located on April 24th, 1879. This leaves a missing gap in his whereabouts from July of 1878 to April of 1879. It is unknown whether or not Billy had tried other places before settling in Tombstone. He was undoubtedly looking for a new home that didn’t have knowledge of his Colorado crimes. And press reports in 1878 about Tombstone had begun to stretch across the west. Miners and those who catered to them in Georgetown would have known well about this promising camp. Word traveled fast from community to community, especially among towns with related livelihoods. While living in Tombstone, Le Van would later make the acquaintance of a man who came to Tombstone with a similar hardship in his personal history. Wyatt Earp had also lost his first wife earlier in his life, and the event appears to have destabilized him for a time. After Urilla died, Earp found himself up on charges of horse thievery, one of the more serious infractions of the day.
Both men arrived in Tombstone and set about making new lives for themselves, and they would find a number of connections as they knew each other, as well as mutual acquaintances, both friend and foe. The story of Billy Allen’s and Wyatt Earp’s involvement in the Intervenor Mine began on January 27th, 1881, when Allen and newspaperman Ridgley Tilden made a claim to this property that they named the Last Decision. Tilden and Allen had both been charter members of Tombstone’s first fire department, along with John Behan and Wyatt Earp. Established in September of 1880, it was referred to at the time as “Tombstone Hose Co. No.1,” and would later be called Tombstone Engine Co. No. 1.
The Last Decision was largely located atop the Intervenor Mine. Arguably this was a polite form of “claim jumping,” but it was a serious error to labor and invest in a mine that had incomplete filings proving rightful ownership. Billy and Tilden may have been looking for mines that they believed had not complied with these procedures. This could explain why they chose the Intervenor, which had not completed its necessary filings.
The claim made by Allen and Tilden measured 1,200 feet by 300 feet, and was marked at each corner by a monument of stones. It was “Filed and recorded at request of R. Tilden Feby 8th A. D. 1881 at 8:30 A.M.” by Charles Drake, Pima County Recorder in Tucson. “This claim is a relocation of 1200 feet of the Intervenor claim and shall be known as the Last Decision Mine.”
Billy and his partners filed suit against the Intervenor on August 6th, 1881, and summonses were issued on September 20th, 1881. By then, the Earp troubles with the cowboy faction were reaching a boiling point. In particular, the Earp involvement in the arrest of Frank Stilwell and Pete Spence relating to the Bisbee Stage robbery only added to the escalating tensions.
Back in February 1881, eight months before the Gunfight near the O.K. Corral, Allen and Tilden would attracted a diverse cast of investors to purchase interests in the mine: Wyatt Earp, John H. “Doc” Holliday, James Leavy, and W.F. Lowery purchased “an undivided two-thirds part of the whole of that certain mining claim known as the Last Decision” Mine which is part of what was formerly known as the “Intervenor Mine situated about one quarter of a mile southwesterly from Tombstone” for two hundred dollars, on February 5th, 1881. These four new partners believed that they were “…owners by purchase in mining conveyances, from said locators Tilden and Allen all of the said Last Decision Mine excepting the interest still held by said locators…” (Allen and Tilden). The fact that Allen and Tilden sold shares to Earp, Holliday and others on February 5th, 1881, indicates that they actually sold these shares three days before they recorded their original claim. Although selling shares of this claim should have followed and not preceded its recordation, no one could accuse Allen and Tilden of not moving quickly to capitalize on it. In June, this group sold an undivided ½ interest to P.T. Colby and M.A. Smith.
But in May, the new owners were escorted bodily off the premises of the Last Decision, by none other than those representing the interests of the Intervenor Mining Company. Their complaint to the court asserted that “on the 9th day of May 1881, Defendants [Intervenor Company] unlawfully and without right and without the consent of the plaintiffs or any of them entered into the possession of the above-described premises and ousted the plaintiffs therefrom and have ever since held possession of said premises from plaintiffs...”
It may be one of the great Earp/Tombstone ironies that among others, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday were “ousted” from the Intervenor/Last Decision site without any violence, gunplay or fatalities.
The end result of all this wrangling was that the shares of the Last Decision Mine owned by Allen, Tilden, Earp and Holliday were sold to the Intervenor Mining Company. Earp and Doc Holliday sold their shares of the Last Decision to the Intervenor for one dollar on December 30th, 1881. The dismissal of this case was filed on July 3, 1882. By this point the Earps and Doc Holliday had left Arizona in the wake of Wyatt’s vendetta ride.
When Billy testified for the prosecution at the Spicer Hearing, he chose to call himself Billy Allen, due to his Colorado crimes, and was sworn in using his alias. Although Earp attorney Tom Fitch suspected that Billy was using an alias in court and hiding from Colorado legal troubles, he was unable to corner Billy into admitting this. Later, when the Spicer Hearing was well behind him, he would return to using his true name, Le Van, at the time of his second marriage. This raises speculation that his second wife would not take his alias as her married name. (The timing of this new union was close to the opening of his hotel, thus the name Le Van House, rather than the Allen House on Allen Street.)
Billy Allen Le Van has the ironic distinction of being partners of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday in the Last Decision Mining claim, as well as a friend of Frank McLaury’s. It was Billy who told Frank on October 26, 1881, that Wyatt had recently struck his brother Tom in the hours preceding the gunfight. Earp controversies aside, Billy would also find love in Tombstone, marrying Belle Crowley, who had been advised to move to Tombstone by her former boarder from her Sacramento Boarding house, Ham Light, who also witnessed the gunfight. Belle Le Van’s descendant, Robin Andrews, who tenaciously tracked Billy's story before, during, and after his Tombstone days, asked the author to write the book about her family’s remarkable history. Because of Robin Andrews’ treasure filled collection and outstanding research, we can all share in the life and times of not only this witness to the O.K. Corral, but one family’s story in the west.
On the document above, line four reads William Allen; line six is his original partner on the Last Decision claim, Ridgely Tilden;
line eight reads J.H. Holliday; and line nine reads Wyatt S. Earp. Courtesy of the Robin Andrew’s Collection.
NOTED EARP RESEARCHER AND EXPERT JEFF MOREY ON Witness at the O.K. Corral: Tombstone’s Billy Allen Le Van.
I’d like to thank the many who have purchased the Le Van book, and who have offered such kind words about it. Among the many that have done so, I’d especially like to acknowledge Earp expert and researcher, Jeff Morey. I’ve long held respect for his talented and insightful research abilities, and Jeff’s decades of devotion to this pursuit have enriched all who enjoy this intriguing story. I am humbled by his praise for Witness at the O.K. Corral: Tombstone’s Billy Allen Le Van. In a response to Robin Andrews, whose remarkable research made this book possible for me to write in the first place, Mr. Morey wrote “I do want to congratulate you and John Rose on the great new Billy Allen book. It is a truly wonderful contribution!” –Jeff Morey
ROBIN ANDREWS REGARDING Witness at the O.K. Corral: Tombstone’s Billy Allen Le Van.
Robin Andrews, whose remarkable family history and stellar research made this book possible, said the following of this book. “I am very pleased to announce that Billy Allen Le Van’s biographic story has been told in its entirety. “…I have been researching the lives of Billy Allen Le Van (aka Tombstone’s Billy Allen) and his future wife, Belle Crowley (my great-great grandmother), for a long time (since 1998). Posters close to me knew after several years, that there was enough research material, mined out of the archives of Arizona on Billy Allen Le Van, to create a book. I started looking for someone willing to write that story.
“I was looking for a very good story teller. I have the attention span of a gnat, so I needed someone’s writing that could keep my attention and interest so others like me would enjoy the book as well. That was important to me. Then I felt this person needed to be an excellent historian of southern Arizona and one who could author a non-fiction old west biography and still give dimension to the characters in Billy’s story. I was asking a lot, I know. I knew much about the lives of Billy and the people in his family, even the gunfight, but not enough about other citizens, historic events, politics, organizations, businesses , and things like that, to do this story justice. I knew that my friend, John D. Rose of Sierra Vista, Arizona, met these requirements and more.
“After John Rose’s book, ‘Charleston & Millville, A.T., Hell on the San Pedro’ came out, I knew that John would qualify as an excellent choice to write Billy Allen Le Van’s biography, but would he do it? I knew he had other very important projects he was working on, but I hoped that someday in the near future that he would take on this daunting project of mine. I asked John if he would write Billy Allen Le Van’s book and John said yes. I think you too will be glad he said yes when you read this book. John has honored us with a great Tombstone story and includes many images from his own fabulous ephemeral type collections related to Tombstone. “He wove the stories of Tombstone citizens throughout the Le Van’s life story in Arizona, making it a balanced and extremely interesting account. He was meticulous in his efforts to honor the rules of non-fiction story telling, but brought those characters to life.
Oh, and of course, the very famous Tombstone gunfight is featured in this book as are all the players of that event, including Billy Allen as the first witness to testify at the Spicer preliminary hearing that followed. Don’t go without this book on your Arizona History/Gunfight at the O.K. Corral bookshelf. Trust me, it’s a good one.”-Robin Andrews
“I was looking for a very good story teller. I have the attention span of a gnat, so I needed someone’s writing that could keep my attention and interest so others like me would enjoy the book as well. That was important to me. Then I felt this person needed to be an excellent historian of southern Arizona and one who could author a non-fiction old west biography and still give dimension to the characters in Billy’s story. I was asking a lot, I know. I knew much about the lives of Billy and the people in his family, even the gunfight, but not enough about other citizens, historic events, politics, organizations, businesses , and things like that, to do this story justice. I knew that my friend, John D. Rose of Sierra Vista, Arizona, met these requirements and more.
“After John Rose’s book, ‘Charleston & Millville, A.T., Hell on the San Pedro’ came out, I knew that John would qualify as an excellent choice to write Billy Allen Le Van’s biography, but would he do it? I knew he had other very important projects he was working on, but I hoped that someday in the near future that he would take on this daunting project of mine. I asked John if he would write Billy Allen Le Van’s book and John said yes. I think you too will be glad he said yes when you read this book. John has honored us with a great Tombstone story and includes many images from his own fabulous ephemeral type collections related to Tombstone. “He wove the stories of Tombstone citizens throughout the Le Van’s life story in Arizona, making it a balanced and extremely interesting account. He was meticulous in his efforts to honor the rules of non-fiction story telling, but brought those characters to life.
Oh, and of course, the very famous Tombstone gunfight is featured in this book as are all the players of that event, including Billy Allen as the first witness to testify at the Spicer preliminary hearing that followed. Don’t go without this book on your Arizona History/Gunfight at the O.K. Corral bookshelf. Trust me, it’s a good one.”-Robin Andrews
Award winning researcher and author Robin Andrews. Photo courtesy of Robin Andrews.
The above information is in part excerpted from Witness at the O.K. Corral: Tombstone’s Billy Allen Le Van, by John D. Rose. For more on this legendary story and other research breakthroughs, this book is available at https://www.createspace.com/5258114 as well as Amazon.com. The cover of this landmark book on Billy Allen Le Van, the Gunfight near the O.K. Corral, Tombstone A.T., Belle Le Van and her family history, and so much more, is viewed below.
Over 130 years after his Tombstone days were behind him, Billy Allen Le Van's story was released in February of 2015, in the above entitled book.
Copyright, John D. Rose, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018.