1. John Henry Tunstall was an English-born rancher and merchant in Lincoln County, New Mexico, United States.
17 Facts About John Tunstall
1. 2.
John Tunstall competed with the Irish Catholic merchants, lawmen, and politicians who ran the town of Lincoln and the county.
3.
John Tunstall was the first man killed in the Lincoln County War, an economic and political conflict that resulted in armed warfare between rival gangs of cowboys and the ranchers, lawmen, and politicians who issued the orders.
4.
Furthermore, John Tunstall's father "worked in trade", with business interests in both Canada and in the United Kingdom, and would, for this reason, have been looked down on and excluded from polite society.
5.
John Tunstall spent six months investigating the profits of sheep ranching before he decided instead to shift his inquiries to Santa Fe, the capital of the Territory of New Mexico.
6.
John Tunstall arrived in the territorial capital of Santa Fe on August 15,1876, following a weeklong and exhausting journey from San Francisco, first by railroad and then from a painful post atop a horse-drawn "jerky", which kicked dust in his face all the way down the last 220 miles of the Santa Fe Trail.
7.
In Santa Fe, John Tunstall met Scottish-Canadian lawyer Alexander McSween, who told him of the potentially big profits to be made in Lincoln County, which was being rapidly settled.
8.
John Tunstall wrote about how he would soon raise the Tunstalls from the middle class to the highest levels of British polite society.
9.
John Tunstall recruited gunfighters of his own, half a dozen local ranchers and cowboys who disliked Brady, Murphy, and Dolan.
10.
One of John Tunstall's employees was the 18-year-old William Bonney, who was later dubbed "Billy the Kid" when leading a gang of his own.
11.
John Tunstall's hands galloped off through the brush to a hilltop overlooking the trail.
12.
John Tunstall first stayed with his horses, then rode away but was pursued by the three deputies.
13.
Either way, the shooting began and John Tunstall died instantly when hit by two rifle bullets, one in the chest and another that ripped through his brain.
14.
John Tunstall proved sympathetic to their cause and swore them all in as special constables to bring in Tunstall's killers.
15.
John Tunstall had lived in Lincoln for about 18 months before being killed by Deputies Morton, Hill, and Evans.
16.
John Tunstall's letters reflect his ambition, biases, and youthful arrogance and high-spiritedness.
17.
John Tunstall's gun is held by the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds, UK.