Volume 16 , Issue 7

Harry Longabaugh (Sundance Kid)

There was a young easterner, and one of Cassidy's recruits, who was a transplanted Pennsylvanian named Harry Alonzo Longabaugh. Longabaugh fell in love with the American West through the exaggerated and often-fictional accounts in periodicals. Harry arrived in the West, and became known by the romantic sobriquet "the Sundance Kid."

If the truth be told, Longabaugh spent more time working honest jobs than robbing banks and trains.

Harry Alonzo Longabaaugh (1865-Nov. 7, 1908) was better known as the Sundance Kid, an outlaw and member of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch, a name given to the Bunch by the Pinkerton Detective agency who pursued the Wild Bunch.

Longabaugh was born in Mont Clare, Pennsylvania, in 1867, the son of Pennsylvania natives Josiah and Annie G. (Place) Longabaugh. Harry was the youngest of five children, mostly of English and German ancestry and part Welsh. When Harry was 15 years he traveled westward on a covered wagon with his cousin George. It was 1887, Harry stole a gun, horse and saddle from a ranch in Sundance, Wyoming. He was captured while attempting to flee, and convicted and sentenced to 18 months in jail. After his release from jail, Harry went back to being a ranch hand. In 1891, Harry was 25 years, and working at the Bar U Ranch, in Alberta, Canada.

Who was the woman in 1909 that asked Frank Aller (US Vice-Consul in Chile) for assistance in obtaining a death certificate for Longabaugh. No such shop, certificate was issued and the woman's identity is unknown, but she was described as attractive, leading to speculation that she was Longabaugh's girlfriend Etta Place>.

Who Was Etta Place

It has been suggested that Etta real name was Ethel, and one speculation was she had been identified with Ethel Bishop. In the 1900 census, Bishop's occupation was given as an unemployed music teacher, and she was 23 years of age, born in West Virginia, in September 1876. This Ethel Bishop hypothesis neatly combines the stories that she was a schoolteacher or that she was a prostitute in one person, some seem to state.

There is another conjecture that Etta was a cattle rustler named Ann Bassett (1878-1956), who operated with the Wild Bunch. Both Place and Bassett were attractive women, with similar facial features, body frame, and hair color. A Dr. Thomas G. Kyle at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, had previously performed many such comparisons for government intelligence agencies, and conducted a series of tests on photographs of Etta Place and Ann Bassett. His conclusions was that there could be no reasonable doubt they were the same person. Their features matched and both had the same scar or cowlick at the top of their forehead.

BUT . . . the dates do not match up when alleging she was Ann Bassett. Bassett was a former girlfriend of Parker's and there were several documents to show that Bassett was in Wyoming during much of the time when Place was in South America. Bassett was arrested for rustling cattle, and also entered her first marriage while Etta Place was in South America with Longabaugh and Parker. There is evidence that from 1902 to the summer of 1904 Etta Place was in South America, whereas in 1903 Ann Bassett was arrested and incarcerated in Utah.

Who was Etta (Ethel) Place? There have been various claims, in addition to those already mentioned, about her life after Longabaugh died. One claim is that she returned to her life as a school teacher, living the remainder of her life in Denver, Colorado, while another story claims she lived the remainder of her life teaching in Marion, Oregon. Others speculate that she moved to San Francisco, California a year before Cassidy and Sundance were allegedly killed. we find no evidence or claim to support these conjectures, whatsoever.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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