Clay Allison was born on September 2, 1840 in Waynesboro, Tennessee, his father was a Presbyterian minister and farmer. Clay's father died when he was only five and he lived and worked on the family farm until he joined the Confederate Tennessee Light Artillery division in October of 1861.
THE U.S. CIVIL WAR:
By January of 1862 Clay was discharged for medical reasons, citing his violent and psychotic behavior in threatening superiors and his inability to control his temper and act in a rational manner.
But Clay refused to be excluded from the war and reenlisted with the 9th Tennessee Calvary under the command of famous rebel General Nathan Bedford Forrest. He became a scout and spy and served through the end of the conflict until his unit surrendered in May of 1865 at Gainesville, Alabama. where he became a prisoner of war.
Allison was accused of being a spy and was scheduled to be executed but he escaped to freedom by murdering his inattentive guard and escaped to freedom and returned to civilian life in Tennessee.
Clay Joins the KKK and the Violence Continues:
The war only seemed to stir Clay's violent tendencies and upon returning home he joined the Ku Klux Klan, which was a southern hate group that emerged in the south to express the white's displeasure with other races, primarily blacks who wanted to co-exist and be treated fairly and be allowed to live their lives without the yoke of slavery.
Clay was accused of killing a Union soldier and quickly moved to Texas with other family members. He viciously and unmercifully beat a ferryman during his trek to Texas whom he accused of over-charging them to cross the river and years later a relative and notorious gunfighter would attempt to gain revenge for this beating.
Over the next couple of years Clay Allison worked at and became an excellent cow hand and worked in the ranching industry in Texas and became a respected trail boss. In 1870 Clay and his brother followed employers M. L. .Dalton and Lewis Coleman to New Mexico to work on their new ranch there.
Later that year Allison’s sadistic and madcap temper once again erupted when a man named Charles Kennedy was being held in jail suspected of murder. Along with several other vigilantes Clay murdered the suspected killer and decapitated him and placed his severed head on a pole for spectators to see.
Clay becomes an American Gunfighter:
In 1874 a gunman named Chunk Colbert tracked Allison down and planned to add to his reputation and avenge his uncle’s (the ferryman) ill treatment by Clay years earlier. The two gunfighters had dinner and when dinner was done pistols flared and Colbert dropped dead. When later asked why he had eaten with a man who was gunning for him, Clay replied, “I didn’t want to send him to hell on an empty stomach.”
In October of 1875 Clay was involved in another mob style killing when Mexican Cruz Vega was lynched from a telegraph pole for his part in the murder of a circuit rider. In November Cruz’s uncle Francisco Griego came gunning for Allison and was filled full of holes when he drew his pistol on Clay after an intense argument.
In December of 1876 Allison and his brother John rode into Las Animas, Colorado where they began drinking and carousing at a local saloon. The local sheriff attempted to disarm the rowdy duo but was brushed off, and after returned with two deputies the sheriff forced a gunfight in which John was severely wounded and sheriff Charles Faber was shot dead by Clay.
Clay meets Wyatt Earp:
In 1877 in Dodge City, Kansas, Clay got into a verbal altercation with legendary lawman Wyatt Earp but they parted with mutual respect and neither man went for their guns. The dispute centered around Allison’s anger at how cowboy’s were treated in town by the lawmen who were eager to eliminate the violence and lawlessness.
ALLISON’S NOT SO SPECTACULAR END:
Allison was involved in many more famous and not so famous altercation in his lifetime including pulling out the teeth of a dentist that had angered him before the dentist’s screams of terror summoned help. But although he committed insane acts of violence he never served a day in jail for all his crimes and killings.
In July of 1887 at the age of 47, while loading supplies from a wagon, Clay fell from the wagon when the load shifted and landed beneath the wheels of the heavy wagon and had his neck crushed by the wheels and died shortly afterwards.
No guns blazing in glory, no posses chasing behind, no noose around the neck, just a routine ranching accident ended the life of one of the American West’s most vicious and remorseless slayers.
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