"Go west young man and grow with the country,” wrote one news reporter, and, at 17, Jack Swilling went west to do just that. Born John William Swilling on April Fools’ Day in 1830, in Anderson County, South Carolina, Jack and his brother, Barry, landed first in Georgia. There, Jack enlisted himself as a musician under the name Jackson W. Swilling. The brothers fought in the Mexican-American War and were discharged soon after, in 1848. They returned home to enlist in the Georgia Cavalry.

September 2013
In This Issue:
More In This Issue
- Rough Drafts 9/13
- What did U.S. lawmen think of the North West Mounted Police?
- When a famous gunfighter came to town, would most folks have recognized him?
- How did Hollywood create those resonant gunshot sounds in 1940s and 1950s B-Westerns?
- Western Horizons
- Opening Shot Dissected…
- The Lone Ranger Luggage Fiasco
- The Pies Have It
- Butter Me Up
- Long Road Home for Buffalo Bill Indian
- Who is Alice Paul?
- The Edge of Perfection
- The Final Camel Charge
- Jack Swilling
- Lights, Camera, Miracle?
- Great Movie (and TV) Hats
- The Lone Ranger Luggage Fiasco
- A Ride on the Wild Side
- Frontier Cavalry Trooper
- Dirty Words in Deadwood
- Skull in the Ashes
- Night Riders in the Tallgrass
- Max Evans’s Favorite Nature Reads
- On the Trail of Solomon Butcher
- Queen of the Cowtowns
- September 2013 Events