biography
| name: |
Bean, Roy
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| |
known as Judge Bean
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (?1825–1903)
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| biography:
| Frontier figure, born in Mason Co, Kentucky, USA. He left Kentucky for California in 1847, and seems to have spent the next 15 years in such enterprises as gold seeking and cattle rustling. He joined a band of Confederate irregulars during the Civil War, then followed the railroad construction crews as a saloon keeper and gambler. In 1882 he settled in the Texas camp of Vinegaroon, had it renamed Langtry after his idol, the English actress Lillie Langtry, and set himself up as justice of the peace, ‘the law west of the Pecos’. Holding court in his saloon, ‘The Jersey Lily’, he threatened to use his six-shooter to enforce his notion of justice. In 1898 he gained national attention for staging a boxing match on a sandbar in the middle of the Rio Grande (to avoid the ban on boxing in Texas), featuring the heavyweight champion, Bob Fitzsimmons. |
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