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When Billy Was A Kid, part 1

© Mary Trotter Kion

Billy the Kid, as he came to be known in later years, was born about 1859. Though records are sketchy, his birth is believed to have taken place either in Indiana or New York and thought to be in the Irish area of one of those two places. Billy, of course, wasn't his real name and some folks think of him as William Bonney, figuring the "William" is where the "Billy" came from. But Billy or William wasn't what The Kid's mother, Catherine, named him at birth.

Henry McCarty was The Kid's rightful name. The Billy the Kid handle was hooked onto him a few years later, as a teen, when he first started hanging out with older men.

Billy had a brother named Joe. Whether Billy was older or younger than his brother is also just about anyone's guess, with some folks making one guess while others take the opposite opinion. You might argue that birth records could answer the questions, as well solve exactly where and when Billy was born. But there is just one little problem with that theory. Around about the suspected time of Henry McCarty's birth there were more than one Catherine McCarty of Irish descent who had given birth to two sons who also had been named Henry and Joseph. Evidently there wasn't a record of the marriage of Billy's parents since Billy's father seems never to have been identified, though some do some do state just who he was. Here, again, is a good case af one guess being as good as another.

Catherine McCarty called herself a widow, as very well she may have been. And this indicates that Billy and his brother, in their earliest years, grew up with out a real father. It must have made some sort of negative impression on little Billy, seeing his mother struggle to provide for himself and his brother in a time when women hadn't many more rights than Negro slaves. There were few choices of employment for women in the mid-1800s as well. What job opportunities there were for women produced a considerably lower wage than what her male counterpart earned. Unless a female on her own was endowed with an education, such as it would have been, or came from a wealthy family she didn't have a lot of choices. Being a school marm or a domestic worker was about the extent of her opportunities. Of course there were always situations to be had on the seamier side of society but whose to say, or criticize, how the Widow McCarty provided for her youngsters.