John Henry Tunstall (6 March 1853 – 18 February 1878), born in London, became a rancher and merchant in Lincoln County, New Mexico, United States, where he competed with Irish Catholic merchants, lawmen, and politicians who ran the town of Lincoln and the county.
John Tunstall - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_TunstallJohn Henry Tunstall (6 March 1853 – 18 February 1878), born in London, became a rancher and merchant in Lincoln County, New Mexico, United States, where he competed with Irish Catholic merchants, lawmen, and politicians who ran the town of Lincoln and the county.
- March 6, 1853, Hackney, London
- First man killed in the Lincoln County War
- February 18, 1878 (aged 24), Lincoln County, New Mexico
- rancher and merchant
John Henry Tunstall was a rancher and merchant in Lincoln County, New Mexico, who dared to compete with the Murphy & Dolan Mercantile and Banking Company, which resulted in the Lincoln County War. Born in England on March 6, 1853, Tunstall emigrated to Victoria, British Columbia, Canada in 1872, where he worked at the Turner, Beeton & Tunstall ...
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Long simmering tensions in Lincoln County, New Mexico, explode into a bloody shooting war when gunmen murder the English rancher John Tunstall.
Tunstall had established a large ranching operation in Lincoln County two years earlier in 1876, stepping into the middle of a dangerous political and economic rivalry for control of the region. Two Irish-Americans, J.J. Dolan and L.G. Murphy, operated a general store called The House, which controlled access to lucrative beef contracts with the government. The big ranchers, led by John Chisum and Alexander McSween, didnt believe merchants should dominate the beef markets and began to challenge The House. Tunstall, a wealthy young English emigrant, soon realized that his interests were with Chisum and McSween in this conflict, and he became a leader of the anti-House forces. He won Dolans and Murphys lasting enmity by establishing a competing general merchandise store in Lincoln. By 1877, the power struggle was threatening to become overtly violent, and Tunstall began to hire young gunmen for protection, including the soon-to-be-infamous William Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid.
Early the next year, The House used its considerable political resources to strike back at Tunstall, winning a court order demanding that Tunstall turn over some of his horses to pay an outstanding debt. When Tunstall refused to turn over the horses, the House-controlled Lincoln County sheriff dispatched a posse-with William Morton, another House supporter, at the head-to take them. Billy the Kid and several other Tunstall hands were working on the ranch when they spotted the approaching posse. Outnumbered, the men fled, but they had not gone far before they saw Tunstall gallop straight up to the posse to protest its presence on his property. As Billy and the others watched, Morton pulled his gun and shot Tunstall dead with a bullet to the head.
Although he had not worked for Tunstall long, Billy the Kid deeply resented this cold-blooded murder, and he immediately began a vendetta of violence against The House and its allies. Lincoln County became a war zone, and both sides began a spree of vicious killings. By July, The House was prevailing, having added McSween to its lists of victims. However, fighting would continue to erupt sporadically until 1884, when Chisum died of natural causes, and The House finally regained full control of Lincoln County. By that time, Billy the Kid had already been dead for three years, gunned down by Lincoln County Sheriff Pat Garrett.
But, one of the men—John Tunstall— refused to turn tail and run. Tunstall, the 24-year old rancher the other men worked for, decided to stand his ground. Wealthy and adventurous, Tunstall arrived in New Mexico Territory in 1876 with entrepreneurial dreams and a burning ambition to achieve success on the wide open range of Lincoln County, an ...
John Tunstall is a middle aged man who opens a general store in Lincoln in direct competition with Lawrence Murphy. John has a soft spot for outcasts and employs quite a few men that no one else would. He offers his 'boys' a roof over their heads, food, clothes and good honest work. He also encourages them to learn to read, write and better themselves. John takes a young Billy Bonney under his ...
Feb. 18, 1878; near Parjito Cutoff, Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory---Early in the morning, John Henry Tunstall, along with his ranch-hands Dick Brewer, Billy the Kid, John Middleton, Henry Brown, Robert Widenmann, and Fred Waite (in a wagon) begin herding nine horses from Tunstall's Rio Feliz ranch to Lincoln, forty miles away.
John Henry Tunstall was born 6 March 1853 in England. He arrived in Lincoln, New Mexico in 1876. There was one mercantile and banking outfit in the entire canyon, Murphy and Dolan, and Tunstall felt that they were taking advantage of the townsfolk, and the surrounding ranchers.
- London, City of London, Greater London, England
- March 6, 1853
John Tunstall passed away on November 9, 2019 at the age of 87 in Washington, North Carolina. Funeral Home Services for John are being provided by Paul Funeral Home - Washington - Washington, and ...
John Nelson Tunstall John Nelson Tunstall, age 77, of Knoxville and formerly of Oak Ridge, passed away Wednesday, May 9, 2018 at the University of Tennessee Medical Center. He was born May 10, 1940 in Raleigh, North Carolina, the son of George Ellis Tunstall Sr., and Lena Mae Ferrell Tunstall.
Nov 25, 2014 · Genealogy profile for John de Tunstall John de Tunstall (1246 - 1302) - Genealogy Genealogy for John de Tunstall (1246 - 1302) family tree on Geni, with over 200 million profiles of ancestors and living relatives.
- Eda Tunstall, William de Tunstall
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