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Benjamin Thompson (1843-1884) was a famous lawman and gunfighter of the American frontier. He was an associate of many of the best known figures of the wild west including Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp, and Doc Holliday. His friend Bat Masterson claimed that Ben was the best man with a gun that he had ever known.

Ben was born on November 2, 1843 at 4.35am in Knottingley, Yorkshire. He was the oldest of five children born to William and Mary Ann Thompson. The family immigrated to America in 1851 and settled in Austin, Texas.

In 1860 Ben and his younger brother Billy signed up with the Texas Rangers. When the broke out they fought for the Confederacy as cavalrymen. In 1863 he was married to Catherine L. Moore.

In 1865 Ben killed a man who had threatened him with a shotgun. He was arrested by the Union Army but escaped and fled to Mexico where he served in the forces of the Emperor Maximilian until the fall of the government the empire in May, 1867. Unable to remain in Mexico, Ben returned to Texas.

In September 1868 ben was sentenced to prison for shooting and wounding his brother-in-law, James Moore. Moore had struck Ben's wife Catherine who was then pregnant. Catherine gave birth to the couple's first child, Benjamin in 1869. The following year Ben received a pardon from President Grant and was released.

Ben turned his efforts to gambling. In 1871 he moved to Abilene, Kansas where he opened a gambling house with his friend Phil Coe. He brought his family out to be with him and went to meet them in Kansas City, Missouri. Unfortunately he and his wife and son were all injured in a buggy accident and Catherine's arm had to be amputated. To make matters worse, he learned that Phil Coe had been killed in a gunfight with Wild Bill Hickok in Abilene.

Through the remainder of the 1870's, Ben drifted from town to town in Kansas, mainly working as a gambler. During this time he befriended a number of the other famous gunmen of the time. In 1879 he joined a group of gunmen assembled by Bat Masterson to represent the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad in the Railroad Wars of New Mexico and Colorado.

He returned to Texas in 1879 where he befriended Buffalo Bill Cody. The two engaged in a number of public shooting competitions, Cody using a rifle and Ben, amazingly, holding his own with pistols. From 1880-1881 he served as town marshal of Austin and arrested the notorious gumman Johnny Ringo for his activities in the so-called Mason County War.

Ben's growing problems with alcoholism troubled his later years. In 1880 he became involved in a feud with the owners of the Vaudville Theater in San Antonio, Texas which culminated in a gunfight in which he shot and killed gambler Jack Harris. He was exonerated but Harris' partners in the Vaudville never forgave him.

On March 11, 1884 Ben and his friend King Fisher went to the Vaudville. Fisher was also a friend of the owners and was attempting to mediate between them and Ben to end the feud. The meeting turned out to be an ambush and Ben and King Fisher were killed.

Sources

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Ben Thompson ]

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