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The Notorious Men of the Wild West

Khalid Elhassan December 4, 2019 32 min

27. From Grifting to Robbing

Brazen Bill Brazelton in action. True West Magazine

William “Brazen Bill” Brazelton’s (died 1878) began his criminal career as a conman. He was born in San Francisco, orphaned at an early age, and grew up as a street urchin. In 1876, he arrived in Prescott, Arizona, where he claimed that he would stage a show during which he would eat a wagon wheel. Brazelton got the good people of Prescott to pay in advance to attend, then left town to bring the rest of the show’s crew and stagehands. He never returned.

A year later, in September of 1877, Brazelton graduated from grifting to armed robbery and held up his first stagecoach. Wearing a mask, he forced the driver to get down and secure the lead horses by the bit. He then ordered a passenger to throw down the express box, break it open with an axe, and hand him the contents. Over the following year, Brazelton committed about eight more stagecoach robberies in Arizona and New Mexico.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.