biography
| name: |
Judson, Edward Zane Carroll
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pseudonym Ned Buntline
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1823–86)
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| biography:
| Adventurer and writer, born in Stamford, New York, USA. His adventurous life was obscured by his own fabrications, but he seems to have run away to sea as a youth, and after some soldiering and trapping in the American West he tried to launch a career as a publisher and editor in New York City (1844). That venture failed, and he may have escaped a lynching after being accused of a murder in Nashville, KY (1846). Back in New York City, he started up another magazine, Ned Buntline's Own, and began publishing the first of some 400 ‘dime novels’, most published under the name Ned Buntline. He then spent a year in jail for his role in starting the Astor Place riot (May 1849). In the 1850s he was one of the organizers of the American Party, the so-called ‘Know Nothings’, who were opposed to ‘foreigners’ and Catholics. He enlisted in the Union army (1862) but was apparently dishonorably discharged (1864). About this time he met William F Cody, and christening him ‘Buffalo Bill’, began to write books featuring his exploits. Judson also wrote a play, Scouts of the Plains (1872) that Cody, and later ‘Wild Bill’ Hickok, starred in. He spent his last years back in Stamford, NY. A genuine 19th-c rogue, he preached temperance, wrote hymns, and had four wives while achieving his dubious feats and writing his crude tales. |
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