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William Brady
Like Emil Fritz, Lawrence Murphy, and James Dolan, William Brady was born in Ireland, emigrated to the U.S., enlisted in the U.S. military, and was stationed at Ft. Stanton before he began his civilian life.
He'd known Fritz and Murphy since 1864, when the three of them were officers at Ft. Sumner. Like Fritz and Murphy, Brady had been commandant of Ft. Stanton, too.
Unlike lifelong bachelors Fritz and Murphy and longtime bachelors James Dolan and John Riley, Brady was a happily married man (to a young widow, Maria Bonifacia Chavez, of Corrales, N. M., since Nov., 1862), a loving father (the couple eventually would have nine children), and since April, 1868, had quickly and quietly sunken roots in Lincoln County when he established a 320-acre farm four miles downstream of Lincoln on the Rio Bonito he later named Walnut Grove.
If there was any common notion expressed about rising to positions of power and influence in Lincoln County and getting rich, it all ended in April, 1878, in Lincoln, as Brady, the Lincoln County Sheriff, and his deputy lay dead in the street and three weeks later J. J. Dolan & Co.'s Big Store closed for good.
Brady's death was a pivot point in the Lincoln County War. It was front-page news. It was boiling on the political front burners not only in Santa Fe but all the way back to Washington, D. C. For Billy the Kid, who was indicted and convicted of Brady's murder, he was wanted for the remainder of his short, young life.
What prompted the ambush of Brady? Nobody knows. But in a rambling 1937 interview, a former Regulator, Francisco Trujillo, then age 85, recollected a meeting 59 years earlier at John Chisum's Jinglebob Ranch. Two days before Brady's death, according to Trujillo, (Lincoln lawyer Alexander) "McSween, said, 'As soon as I arrive (in Lincoln), Brady is going to try and arrest me and you shouldn't let him get away with it. If I'm arrested, I'll surely be hung and I don't want to die, while if you kill Brady you shall earn a reward.'"
The first of eight children, William was born in Cavan, Ireland, on Aug. 16, 1829. After his farmer father died in 1846, he became head of the household. Brady left his widowed mother and siblings in the summer of 1851 and emigrated to the U.S. In New York City, he joined the U.S. Army that July.
The brown-haired and blue-eyed Brady, who was fair-skinned and stood 5' 9" tall, served two five-year enlistments in cavalry units in Texas and New Mexico. In Aug., 1856, Brady and his unit were assigned to Ft. Craig, N. M. There they were sent out on patrols against the Mimbreno Apaches and the Navajos. Brady was mustered out a sergeant at Ft. Craig in March, 1861.
During the Civil War, Brady reenlisted in Albuquerque as an infantry lieutenant that Aug. Although he twice served under Col. Kit Carson, he saw no action.
In Feb., 1863, Brady and his unit were assigned to rebuild Ft. Stanton, which the Confederates had partially destroyed in two years earlier. The work took six months. Soon afterward, Brady was promoted to Capt., and shortly after that his first child, William, Jr., was born in Corrales.
He was named commandant of Ft. Stanton in April, 1864. In June, 1865, when some 200 Navajo and Mescalero Apache warriors suddenly fled Ft. Sumner's internment camp at the Bosque Redondo, newly breveted Maj. Brady led 80 cavalry troops in a relentless, 20-day, 463-mile long pursuit. Brady and his men tracked them down and defeated them in the San Andres Mountains.
When Maj. Emil Fritz took command of Ft. Stanton in Oct., 1865, Brady was named commandant of Ft. Selden, N. M. In May, 1866, he was transferred to Ft. Sumner. There he was mustered out of service that Oct.
In Sept., 1869, Brady was elected to a two-year term as Lincoln County's first Sheriff. In Sept., 1871, he was elected Lincoln County's first member of the Territorial House of Representatives.
Afterward he returned to tend to his growing family and farm at Walnut Grove. In April, 1876, he became the court-appointed administrator of the Fritz estate, but resigned the position five months later, shortly before winning election to a second two-year term as Lincoln County Sheriff.
Brady and his slain deputy, Hondo farmer George Hindman, were buried in the nearby Lincoln Cemetery. A short time later, they were reburied on the Brady family farm at Walnut Grove. There a headstone and a pile of rocks today mark Brady's final resting place. Next to his grave, a pile of rocks marks Hindman's grave.
James Dolan's Generosity
When Brady's widow, Maria, eventually realized that her children wanted nothing to do with farming Walnut Grove, Lincoln merchant and rancher James J. Dolan, who had bounced back financially from the Lincoln County War, approached her with an offer to buy it.
Dolan was nobody's fool. Maybe Walnut Grove was a nugget worth the purchase and subsequent sale. But maybe there was a generosity in the Oct., 1887, transaction, too. Maybe he felt indebted to the slain Sheriff, husband, and father. Maria, then age 49, still had children at home; her youngest was still only a boy of nine.
Maria, who was couldn't read or write, sold him 320 of Walnut Grove's 400 acres, which included the Brady farm, orchards, and vineyard. Dolan, on the other hand, paid off the Brady family's debts; transferred Maria's remaining 80 acres to her children; and deeded to Maria a 120-acre ranch on the Rio Ruidoso in nearby San Patricio. There in May, 1898, she died, six days after her 60th birthday.
Sources:
Lavash, Donald R., Sheriff William Brady: Tragic Hero of the Lincoln County War (Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 1986).
Nolan, Frederick, The Lincoln County War: A Documentary History (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1992).
Nolan, Frederick, The West of Billy the Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998).
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