Hi -

I'm trying to find information about Dave Neagle and would appreciate any leads you might be able to share with me - journal articles, magazine articles, books, websites, newspapers, etc.

I first got interested in him when I read about Panamint City, California - which I had the fortune to visit in October of 1962. Now that I'm retired, more than 40 years later, I'd like to return to the interest in ghostowns that I had when I was in college.

I'm wondering now if there was more than one Dave Neagle showing up in this time period. The one I was asking about was in Pioche, Nevada, and in Panamint City, California, in the 1870s. He may have gone on to Darwin and then on to Bodie, but I can't confirm that right now.

I think that this was the same man who ended up in Tombstone in the Earp era - cited in Casey Tefertiller's (1997) "Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend" - but I'm not absolutely sure.

Neill C. Wilson writes in "Silver Stampede: The Career of Death Valley's Hell-Camp, Old Panamint" (Glorieta, NM: Rio Grande Press, 1987 reprint of a 1937 book) that the Neagle in Panamint in 1874 was 27 years old when he arrived from Pioche. That would have made his birthdate in 1847.

I have found some other websites describing a Dave Neagle who was born in 1847 and died in 1925 in Oakland, California.

But in looking at a US Marshall site,

http://www.usmarshals.gov/history/neagle/neagle5.htm
-and-
http://www.usmarshals.gov/history/neagle

I get the information that he was 35 in 1889 - which would make him born in 1854. And a law journal site with an article about the Field assassination attempt says that Neagle was born in San Francisco in the 1850s:

Judicial Vendetta: California Style
Dow Votaw Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Dec., 1959), pp. 948-961

I wonder if I'm tracking two different people or if this is just another case of stories, mixed-up information, and error.

What do you think?

I am particularly interested in any information about Neagle before he surfaced in Tombstone, and particularly before he drew attention to himself in a gunfight with Levy in Pioche, Nevada, in 1871.

Thanks in advance for anything you might be able to share with me.
Gary

Dave Neagle has a two and a quarter page biography in the Cochise County Stalwarts by Lynn R. Bailey and Don Chaput, Western Lore Press 2000. There is also a good section of notes listing where there information came from.

Ed Francis

Dear Ed - Thank you! I'm guessing that this is exactly what I'm looking for. I've ordered a copy from Amazon.com

I really appreciate your thoughtfulness.

All the best.

Gary

Was so interested to read your post. I have been researching ghost towns in eastern California and Nevada: Aurora, Bodie, Darwin, Panamint, Pioche, and others.

I have come across Dave Nagle. Have an article about him from the San Francisco Chronicle after the Terry shooting.

I visited Panamint about 1971. Was looking at a website on it recently, the road is impassable now.

Just got the Silver Stampede book a few days ago. Am particularly interested in the Bark Ashim chapter.

Would love to talk to you.

Catherine Stiles
res0792z@verizon.net

The Tombstone Epitaph newspaper(1880 thru 1899) is
available to view at the genealogybank.com database
online(subscription required) There are seventy nine
mentions/articles of/about policeman Dave Neagle in the
Tombstone Epitaph alone,many more hits in All the
Arizona newspapers at that database.

Early Tucson,Phoenix and Prescott newspapers are
also available at that source. Neagle shows up in those
newspapers as well. Keyword search engine
works well,remember to play with the spelling,ie
Nagle/Neagle/Neagls Some public libraries carry the
database and make it available to cardholders. Good database! covers all US states.