John Peters Ringo was born into a farming family in Grand Forks, Indiana, in 1850. Moving great distances was common in those days, and the family packed up and moved to Missouri in 1858. His father, however, contracted tuberculosis. During the Civil War, they moved further west in hopes of recovering his health. They crossed the Great Plains in 1864 as part of a wagon train. As they entered Wyoming, his father apparently fell off a wagon, and the shotgun in his hands went off in his face, killing him instantly. The devastated family continued on to California, staying with Ringo’s uncle near San Jose for the next few years.
In 1869, the nineteen-year-old Ringo left California and made his way to Texas. But bloodshed was not far behind. Not long after his arrival, he was arrested and fined $75 for firing a gun across the town square in Burnet. He soon became involved in the notorious Mason County War of 1875-77. The Central Texas county was in chaos with different factions accusing each other of cattle rustling. After one accused thief was killed along with the sheriff bringing him to jail, a series of gunfights and assassinations erupted and tore the county apart.
Johnny Ringo soon was in the middle of the terror. In 1875, he and another man were arrested for the murder of Jim Cheyney, whom Ringo had accused of murdering a friend. Over the next several months, he remained in jail while Texas newspapers ran stories calling Ringo the head of one of the factions. A mob of his supporters broke him out of jail at one point, but he was soon recaptured. The Mason County Courthouse burned to the ground in January 1877, effectively marking the end of the fighting. More than a dozen people were dead. Most of the accused were released as the evidence had all been lost in the fire. Ringo was acquitted in 1878. His popularity still ran high, and he was elected constable for his Mason County precinct that year.
Law enforcement did not sit well with him, and for unknown reasons, he soon left for the Arizona Territory. Within weeks of his arrival, he got into a gunfight in a local saloon, seriously injuring a man. Ringo, however, was not tried over the incident. By 1881, he found himself in the mining boomtown of Tombstone.
Tombstone itself was already in the midst of increasing violence over cattle rustling and competing mine claims, and Ringo, already with a bloody reputation, fell in with the Cochise County Cowboys, a gang of thieves and murderers.
He soon encountered Doc Holliday, the Georgia dentist turned gambler and gunfighter. The two clashed repeatedly, often challenging each other to gunfights as their friends tried to restrain them.
He took no part in the 1881 gunfight at the OK Corral, but he swore revenge against the four men who had won the fight against the Cowboys: Holliday and Wyatt, Morgan, and Virgil Earp. Wyatt Earp suspected Ringo of being involved with the crippling of his brother Virgil later in December 1881 and the revenge murder of his other brother Morgan in March 1882. In January 1882, Ringo challenged Holliday to a fight; and the two were briefly arrested on weapons charges as the two prepared to draw their guns on each other. A month later, Ringo was arrested again on an outstanding charge of robbery but soon released.
By the spring, Ringo led a posse against Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday as they sought revenge against the Cowboy faction. Earp killed Curly Brocius, one of Ringo’s associates. Within weeks, Earp and Holliday had left Arizona, but deaths connected with the Cowboys continued for some time.
By summer 1882, Ringo sank into a drinking binge. He was last seen on a ranch not far from Tombstone in July. Ringo died under mysterious circumstances, a final victim of the violent life he had created for himself. How he died is still a matter of speculation. The official coroner’s report released that summer said the death was a suicide by gunshot, but the report also noted a knife cut at the base of his scalp. Wyatt Earp denied involvement with Ringo’s death to authorities, but he allegedly told different stories to acquaintances over the years. Doc Holliday, who was wanted for murder in the Arizona Territory, was reportedly in either Colorado answering a new string of charges against him or in California, but his location could not be pinpointed
It was a life soaked in blood, and few mourned his passing.
As so many details of his life remained unanswered, more of his life began to be the subject of tall tales that grew into legend. By the twentieth century, stories of Ringo’s life was included in songs, books, and movies.
