1. Ellen Liddy "Ella" Watson was a pioneer of Wyoming who became known as Cattle Kate, an outlaw of the Old West, although the characterization is a dubious one, as subsequent research has tended to see her as a much maligned victim of a self-styled land baron.
Ellen Watson was abducted from her home and lynched along with her husband by Bothwell and some other ranchers he had incited against her.
Ellen Watson's life has become an Old West legend and inspired a number of television and film accounts.
The eldest of ten surviving children, Ellen Watson helped at home and attended school, learning to read and write in a small one-room building.
Ellen Watson had brown hair, blue eyes and a Scottish accent, inherited from her parents.
In January 1883, Ellen Watson fled back to her parents' home.
Ellen Watson moved to Red Cloud, Nebraska, 12 miles north of her family's homestead.
Ellen Watson worked at the Royal Hotel for a year while establishing residency and then filed for divorce.
Ellen Watson disliked Cheyenne and in late 1885 or early 1886 followed the railroad to Rawlins, Wyoming, where she began working as cook and waitress in the premier boarding-house in town, the Rawlins House.
Ellen Watson quickly hired Watson to cook at his restaurant; customers paid 50 cents each for a meal.
Ellen Watson fenced about 60 acres of her land with barbed wire, but this would not have been enough grazing area for her small herd.
In July 1889, just as the spring roundup was ending, Ellen Watson branded her cattle.
On July 20,1889, a range detective, George Henderson, was cited by Bothwell in a meeting with other ranchers as having seen that Ellen Watson had rustled cattle.
County Sheriff Frank Hadsell and Deputy Sheriff Phil Ellen Watson arrested Albert Bothwell and five other men for the two murders.
Ellen Watson immediately went to the Cheyenne Daily Sun and then other papers controlled by the WSGA.
Ellen Watson is the only woman to have been hanged in Wyoming.
Ellen Watson received a lot of information from her family and eventually used his research in writing a biography of Watson.
Ellen Watson's relatives erected a marker in 1989 at her grave site to commemorate her death.
The story of Ellen Watson is told in the song The Cattle Thief by Wayfarer on their 2023-released American Gothic.