Lorinda Reese Jameson (alias Etta Place) is the main character of Etta: she is a Philadelphia socialite educated in fine schools, but also a crack shot and champion horsewoman. When her father shoots himself, his debts to The Black Hand leave her vulnerable to disfiguration and murder.
Under the assumed name Etta Place, she goes West to make her living and there falls in with the Hole-In-The-Wall Gang and its brooding second in command Harry Longbaugh, the Sundance Kid.
As imagined by Etta author Gerald Kolpan, Lorinda and her past are entirely fictional.
', 'But although Etta Place herself was an actual historical figure, any actual history about that figure is scarce, indeed.
There is almost no factual information about Etta, only stories and theories. It is not known if "Etta Place" itself was a real name or an alias.
There is even plenty of doubt as to whether Etta was the Sundance Kid\'s lover or Butch Cassidy\'s or both or neither.
The only facts that seem to be universally agreed upon are that Etta was extremely beautiful and often dressed in the manner of an Eastern horsewoman.
', 'According to a Mrs. Bishop, wife of the President of the Bank of the Nation in Rio Galleos, Argentina (which Etta helped rob), she was a "sweet" young girl. Mrs. Bishop also admired her English saddle and fine riding clothes.
Although to this day there are some who claim to be related to her or to know her true identity, the facts about the mystery woman of the Wild Bunch have eluded historians for 100 years.
', 'Harry Longbaugh was probably a farm boy in his native Pennsylvania. There are some who believe that Etta got her alias from Harry\'s mother\'s maiden name. He had two brothers, Elwood and Harvey.
Harry came west with his cousins George and Mary Longenbaugh (yet another spelling of the family name) around 1883. The little group became homesteaders in Durango, Colorado. Harry is believed to have met Butch Cassidy while both were cowboys at the LC Ranch in Cortez, Co. They began their outlaw career shortly thereafter.
', 'Harry might have gotten his nickname after spending eighteen months in jail in Sundance, Wyoming for horse theft.
Harry, Butch and the Hole-In-The-Wall gang were very successful bandits. They robbed trains and banks, often for large amounts of money.
Much as they appear in Etta, they were about as close to Robin Hoods as outlaws could be, seldom stealing from those who couldn\'t afford the loss and often helping ordinary people in need.By 1908 Butch, Harry and Etta were running a cattle ranch
', 'in Cholio, Argentina. Around 1909, Etta and Sundance returned to the United States so that Etta could be treated for appendicitis. However, Harry returned to South America without her and shortly thereafter, Etta Place disappears from history.
Butch and Sundance were killed in a gun battle with Bolivian Federales in November 1908, although legend has it that one or both men lived on, possibly into the nineteen-forties.
', 'The man who would become Butch Cassidy was born on a cattle ranch and became a broncobuster early on in life.
His nickname is thought to be the result of an early apprenticeship to a butcher. His surname was cribbed from Mike Cassidy whom Butch met in Circle Valley, Utah in 1882. Mike is credited as having taught
him how to shoot.
Historically, Butch is known as the most softhearted of all the Western owlhoots.
There is no record of his ever having killed anyone during his long criminal career and there are documented instances of his having helped the poor and unfortunate.
', 'His gentle nature, however, did not stop him from blowing up the mail cars of trains with dynamite. The Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy were killed in November 1908 after a mine robbery near La Paz, Bolivia.
', 'The woman who would become "The First Lady of the World" was born into a wealthy but troubled family.
Her father, Elliott Roosevelt, was an alcoholic who was eventually declared legally insane and died in an asylum when Eleanor was eight. Two years later, her mother succumbed to diphtheria.
Eleanor grew up an orphan, shunted from relative to relative, always feeling insecure and ugly.
', 'She gained a measure of confidence at finishing school in England where she became the protege of it\'s formidable headmistress, Mademoiselle Marie Souvestre.
In 1905, Eleanor married her distant cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They would have five children together.
Still, the marriage was a difficult one, partly due to Franklin\'s infidelities.
', 'When Franklin was elected president in 1932, Eleanor became the most effective and visible First Lady in history, helping a dispirited country cope with both the Great Depression and the Second World War. After the president\'s death in 1944, Mrs. Roosevelt became a famed author, lecturer and the first United States ambassador to the United Nations.
There is no evidence whatsoever that Eleanor Roosevelt ever met Etta Place.
', 'With the death of his mother in 1876, Harvey and his brothers Lonnie, Johnny and Hank went to live with an aunt in Missouri. He made his living as a cowboy and horse breaker but got into trouble and eventually ended up at Hole-in-the-Wall and in the gang of George "Flat Nose" Curry. It\'s thought that Harvey\'s alias came from his association with Flat Nose.
On December 27, 1894, Kid Curry killed his girlfriend\'s father, Pike Landusky in a brawl. Thus began years of train robberies,
', 'bank jobs and escapes from various jails. In the years that followed Curry headed his own gang and later rode with both Black Jack Ketchum and Butch Cassidy.
During his criminal career, he killed at least five men and perhaps more and was widely feared as a cold killer.
Although in Etta Curry is killed in a unique showdown with the Sundance Kid, the historical record indicates that he actually committed suicide on June 17, 1904 after
', 'being surrounded by a large posse in Parachute, Colorado. With no hope of escape, Curry put a gun to his head and fired. Still, there are those who claim he escaped and later joined Butch, Sundance and Etta in Argentina.
Although Logan was ruthless, there is no evidence that he was the sexual sadist he appears as in Etta; and the exact nature of his relationship with the book\'s beautiful leading lady remains unknown.
', 'Laura Bullion, like Etta Place, was a full-fledged member of the Hole-In-The-Wall Gang; a true female outlaw.
Except for her unusual speech pattern (a product of the author\'s imagination), she is probably the character in Etta who is the most accurate in terms of history.
She was born near the town of Mertzon in Irion County, Texas. Little is known of her family but she is believed to be of German and American Indian stock. As in the novel, Laura was romantically involved with the
', 'bandit Ben Kilpatrick, "The Tall Texan." In 1901, she was convicted of train robbery and spent three and a half years in prison, a fact about which she writes Etta in the novel.
In 1918, Laura moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where she assumed various names and worked as a seamstress and drape maker.
She died of heart disease at the Shelby County Hospital in 1961. She is buried in Memphis\' Memorial Park Cemetery.
', '', 'Siringo was the Pinkerton Detective agency\'s most famous hunter of outlaws. In his time, he was known to have brought in many a bandit; though probably not the number he would later claim. He was a pioneer in the practice of undercover work and even infiltrated The Wild Bunch itself for a time.
Siringo retired from Pinkerton in 1907 and much of his reputation is based on the books he wrote at that time: A Cowboy Detective and The Further Adventures of A Cowboy Detective.
', 'He is also the author of Two Evil Isms: Pinkertonism and Anarchism. In this work he attacked his former employer as an evil influence, even accusing the agency of committing voter fraud by claiming it had instructed him to vote eight times in an election for governor of Colorado.
Charlie Siringo ended life as a ranger in New Mexico. His last book was the 1927 Riata and Spurs, which contained both fact and fiction involving his exploits.
', '', 'Bill Cody was the only boy in a family of five sisters. Following his father\'s death in 1857, Bill became the man of the family and took many jobs to make ends meet, including rider for the Pony Express.
In 1863, Cody became a scout for the
U.S. Cavalry and a famed Indian fighter. He eventually made enough money to
buy a saloon and hotel in Kansas but
soon gave it up to scout again, this
time for the railroad.
One of his responsibilities was to provide meat for the workers and he claimed to have killed over 4000 bison in his mission. Hence the nickname Buffalo Bill.
The dime novelist Ned Buntline made Cody famous by publishing numerous exaggerated accounts of his exploits. When the Transcontinental railroad was completed, Cody began a lucrative trade in buffalo hunting tours for the rich. In 1882, Bill began what was to become
', 'the wildly successful Buffalo Bill\'s Wild West, an extravaganza of cowboys and Indians that played all over the US and Europe.
Cody died an alcoholic at the age of 70.
Unlike the character in Etta, there is no evidence that Buffalo Bill ever suffered from chronic hemorrhoids or employed either Etta Place or Peg Leg Elliott.
', 'After the death of her father in 1866, Phoebe Ann Mozee, the fifth of seven children, began shooting to put food on the table for her large family.
Phoebe started winning local shooting competitions as a girl and eventually became the nation\'s most well known sharpshooter, breaking record after record.
', 'Annie could shoot a hole in a dime at ninety feet and once picked off 4, 472 glass balls tossed in the air.
In 1885, she joined Buffalo Bill\'s Wild West and toured the world. She left the show in 1901 after suffering a seriously debilitating spine injury in a train wreck. She eventually recovered but toured far less than in the past.
', 'Her relationship with her husband, Frank Butler was far better than the one depicted in Etta. In fact, Frank and Annie lived happily together for forty-four years.
When she died Frank was so shattered that he refused to eat and died only eighteen days later.
', 'Fred Harvey immigrated to America in 1850 and began his career in restaurants in New York City. After working in New Orleans, he opened his own place in Kansas City. It failed and Harvey became a railroad agent traveling throughout the West.
After noticing the awful food served on trains (described in nauseating detail in Etta), Harvey hit upon the idea of a chain of fine restaurants along a railroad line
', 'that would serve good, clean meals in the time it took for a train to stop for mail and water.
In 1876, Harvey entered into an agreement with the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe railroad to build his eateries along their line. He hired young women to serve the food and required them to keep their reputations as spotless as their aprons. These would eventually become the famous "Harvey Girls."
', 'The restaurants were a tremendous success and at one time there were eighty-four Harvey Houses in operation across the country. For better or worse, Fred Harvey created both the American restaurant chain and the idea of fast food.
If Etta Place ever worked in a Harvey House, no record exists. Her "Contract of Employment," which appears in Etta, is purely a product of the author\'s imagination.
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