From Medal of Honor to Exile

Eben Stanley was a man of many parts.

Eben Stanley won the Medal of Honor in 1873, showing his bravery in a fight with Apache warriors at the Battle of Turret Mountain in Arizona. That was the high point of his life.  In the early 1880s, he married Mary Elsie Slinkard—the sister of Ike, Phin and Billy Clanton. Stanley was soon riding with his brothers-in-law, rustling and robbing and generally raising mischief.

Things got so bad that authorities in the St. Johns area told him to leave the territory—or else. Stanley and family moved to New Mexico where he died in 1904.