What was Paladin’s first name on Have Gun-Will Travel?
Charlie Henshaw
Macon, Georgia
The show’s creators, Sam Rolfe and Herb Meadow, preferred to have their knight errant remain an enigma. The popular television and radio shows began and ended with him being called Paladin. A novelist named Frank Robinson later gave him a name, Clay Alexander, but that was after the show. Many Paladin fans disapproved.
Marshall Trimble is Arizona’s official historian and vice president of the Wild We

True West September 2018
In This Issue:
Features
Western Books & Movies
More In This Issue
- Fire in the Hole!
- Adventures in the Apache Country
- Americas First “Astronauts”
- Bodie, California
- A Not So Heroic End
- Joe Mundy Rides Again
- Cap Mossman: Boss of the Hashknife
- Like Ducks to Water
- Sneak Attack on the James Farm
- Remington’s Last Six-guns
- Riding for the Hashknife
- Bank Robbery at Telluride
- How did Frontier Ladies Curl their Hair?
- Arab Berbers Ride Hard
- I Will Always Be Your Friend
- Viva L’ouest!
- A Hero on his Last Run
- A Dandy of a Man
- John Slaughter and the San Bernardino Ranch
- The Youngers of Missouri: Part Two
- The Youngers of Missouri: First Blood
Departments
- Did Old West Saloons Have Refrigeration?
- What History Has Taught Me: Erik J. Wright
- Fort Smith, Arkansas: Where the Old West Begins
- What was Paladin’s first name on Have Gun-Will Travel?
- Western Events for September 2018
- Mexican Marvels
- Pursuing Outlaw Sam Bass
- How Tough was Longhorn Meat?
- The Youngest Prisoner
- Did “Big Nose Kate” Carry a Gun?
- History in Ink
- Why did Cavalrymen Wear their Pistols with the butts Forward?
- The Mother Lode Spirit
- Upping the Ante