Billy the Kid was a famous Old West outlaw. How his Indiana ties shaped his roots and fate

In the mid-1860s, as Indianapolis swelled with throngs of Civil War soldiers and newcomers, an Irish immigrant guided her two young sons home down graveled streets.

One of the boys would become a gambler and dealer who mingled with high-rollers at tables around the country. The other would become a Wild West legend.

He would amass a group of loyal friends, steal cattle and horses, escape jail in astounding fashion and aggravate powerful men whose names would never be as well-known as his.

He would be Billy the Kid.

While the outlaw became famous in the New Mexico Territory, the Kid’s lesser-known connections to Indiana played a large, if under-acknowledged, role in his upbringing and fate. Billy spent some of his childhood years in post-Civil War Indianapolis, where the addresses of his mother and the Hoosier who became his stepfather offer insight into the family's dynamics and westward migration.