W. B. "Bat" Masterson was born William Bartholomiew (nee, Barclay) in Iberville County, Quebec, Canada on November 26, 1853. Bat was the second of five children.
According to Masterson, writing in the third person in his book Gunfighters of the Western Frontier (1907), he gained his nickname later in life;
"It was as a hunter he won his name of 'Bat', which descended to him, as it were, from Baptiste Brown, or 'Old Bat', whose fame as a mighty nimrod was flung all across, from the Missouri River to the Spanish Peaks, and filled with admiration that generation of plainsmen which immediately preceded Masterson upon the Western stage."
Bat Masterson moved to Kansas in 1871, when he and his family settled near the small farming community of Sedgwick (near Wichita, KS), along with a family friend, the buffalo hunter, H.H. Raymond. The Masterson family had previously farmed in New York and Illinois. That fall and winter, 18-year-old Bat headed west to hunt buffalo. With his 19-year-old brother Ed, he camped with hunters working along the Salt Fork River in present Comanche and Barber counties, Kansas.
Read Full Article »