Colonel E. Z. C. Judson was an imaginative, inventive man of restless energy; any man who wrote 300-400 books would have to be. Yet his most imaginative, creative invention seems to have been himself—Ned Buntline.



Ned Buntline was a bundle of outrageous contradictions. He was a heavy drinker who gave temperance lecturers; a moral reformer who exposed gamblers, brothels, and sweat shops in his newspaper, Ned Buntline's Own while keeping a mistress in the type of "boarding house" he exposed, blackmailing those he met in gambling dens in exchange for keeping their names out of print and encouraging sweat shop conditions at the printer where his paper was produced. He was a conservationist who once shot a dog to prevent its owner from engaging in a form of hunting he disliked.



There were contradictions in his literary life, too. His early stories were published in literary journals like the Knickerbocker and throughout his life, he wrote lovely lyric poetry. At twenty-one, as editor of the Western Literary Journal and Monthly Review, he blasted "Professor" J. H. Ingraham for churning out "shilling-shockers" - inexpensive, sensational, historical fiction. Buntline assured his readers that his criticism was "a duty which the station we have assumed demands of us." Buntline later turned to popular fiction himself, becoming known as the "King of the Dime Novelists," boasting he once wrote a 610-page book in 62 hours.



Edward Zane Carroll Judson was born in Stamford, New York on March 20, 1823, although he occasionally cited different dates. His father, Levi Carroll Judson, was a writer on Revolutionary War themes and agricultural experiments. Levi moved the family to Bethany, Pennsylvania to accept the position of principal of Beech Woods Academy, when little Edward was still a toddler. Levi Judson's articles defending Freemasonry made the family unpopular and they moved to Philadelphia, where Levi decided to study law and required young Ned to do the same. Ned, aged 11, ran away to sea as a cabin boy. His pen name, "Buntline," is a nautical term for a rope attached to the bottom of a square sail to keep it taut when furled.



He joined the Navy in 1837 for a chance to go on an Antarctic expedition led by Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, but the ship Ned was assigned to was withdrawn from the expedition. He fought in the Seminole War in Florida as a midshipman. Ned joined the army during the Civil War, but there is no record that Colonel Judson was ever more than a sergeant. His only connection to being a colonel is that he was photographed wearing a colonel's uniform in Matthew Brady's Washington studio, seated in the same chair in which Lincoln had been photographed.



He returned to Stamford in 1870 when his uncle, Samuel Judson, died. Samuel Judson's will included a bequest of $1,500 to be matched by the community to establish a library. Buntline moved back to Stamford and organized the Judson Library Foundation to raise the necessary funds. He gave lectures on temperance in towns around Stamford, charging ten cents admission to be donated to the Judson Library fund. According to Anne Willis, Stamford Village historian, Buntline personally made a buying trip to New York City to select some of the books for the Judson Free Library.



The temperance lecturer's favorite watering hole was the Hamilton House, now the site of the Robinson Broadhurst Foundation. His last wife often had to send the carriage to bring him home. At the turn of the century, Stamford became known as the "Queen of the Catskills," but from the 1850s into Buntline's time, the area where Railroad Avenue meets Main Street was called the "devil's half acre." The Hamilton House later became part of Churchill Hall, a summer boarding house that was a 4-building complex connected by long porches.



Initially, Buntline lived in a large tent in Stamford, dressed in buckskins and carried a rifle. He later built a mansion, "Eagle's Nest," just at the edge of the village. It is near Buntline Drive, where South Delaware Street turns into County Route 18. The carriage house behind the main house was a restaurant in the 1950's.



The Ladies


Ned Buntline had a way with the ladies, although the effect of his charms may not have lasted long. He seems to have had six wives—Seberina Marin (married ?, died 1846) Annie Abigail Bennett (married January 1848, divorced, fall 1849), Lovanche Swart (married September 1853 and January 1863), Josie Juda (no dates, but Lovanche filed bigamy charges in 1854), Eva Gardiner (married 1856, died March 1860), Kate Myers (married November 1860, divorced November 27, 1871) and Anna Fuller (married October 3, 1871, survived Ned). Using these dates, Buntline was married to at least two, sometimes three, and possibly four women during the entire second half of his life.



Anne Willis has in her files copies of petitions and letters addressed to the County Court in Delhi, NY when Buntline died. Kate Myers Judson filed a petition seeking a portion of the estate for their four children, Mary, 24, Irene, 22, Alexander, 20 and Edwardina, 18, claiming that Buntline abandoned them and, that since April 1869, had "neglected to provide" for them, "except once in a while he would send a little money. . . . I do not, nor never did think it an honor to be his wife." Lovanche filed a petition as "widow and creditor" seeking a "return of inventory." Another petition was filed by J. Bennett, Annie's son. A rather cryptic letter sought to discredit Lovanche, so as to deny her petition, referring to her as "a blackmailer and a bad egg. I will prove her no wife when this comes to court."



But his problems with women sometimes involved other men's wives. In 1846, Buntline was in Nashville, promoting Ned Buntline's Own, his third magazine attempt. His flirtation with a Mrs. Robert Porterfield led her husband to shoot at Buntline, who fired back, wounding Porterfield above the right eye. Buntline gave himself up. At the hearing he pleaded self-defense, but the injured man's brother and friends shot at Buntline in the courtroom. Buntline fled the courthouse to a hotel across the street. The mob followed, shooting and throwing rocks. Buntline was wounded in the chest and hit by a large stone. He darted up stairs and through passageways, until, with the mob at his heels, he jumped from a third-floor window, reaching for the roof coping, and fell to the ground, where officers took him to the jail. That night Robert Porterfield died. The mob broke into the jail, dragged him to the public square and hanged him from an awning post. Fortunately for Ned, he had friends in the crowd who cut him down and smuggled him away. In later years, he would display his scarred chest and claim it was from an Indian arrow.



The Wild West


Another interesting item in the collection of Anne Willis is a photocopy of the cover of the sheet music for the "Rainbow Temperance Song," published by Wm. A. Pond & Co. 547 Broadway, New York. It shows a man and a woman under a rainbow, both smiling, rosy-cheeked, bedecked in ornate regalia. The song lyrics were written by Buntline and the cover reads "Dedicated to the Sons of Temperance and Good Templars of the United States. By their Friend & Brother, E. Z. C. Judson (Ned Buntline)." In the spring of 1868, Buntline went to California as the official guest of the Grand Division of the Sons and Daughters of Temperance. He gave lectures in San Francisco and then went north to Sacramento for a tour of the mines where he gathered very few pledges. He had planned to return east on the first train to cross the continent, but he missed it. He also seems to have missed the driving of the Golden Spike in Utah. Although he missed the opportunity to report on those events, he met someone with whom his name would always be associated.



He stopped in Nebraska to interview veterans of an Indian skirmish at Summit Springs whom he thought would make a good basis for a novel. The reputed hero of the battle, a Major North, was not interested and referred Buntline to a scout named William Frederick Cody. Buntline spent some days riding and trading stories with Cody and his fellow scouts and then returned east.



In December 1869, the New York Weekly announced a new Ned Buntline serial, "Buffalo Bill, The King of Border Men—The Wildest and Truest Story I Ever Wrote."



Bill Cody may have been surprised to read that he had been the hero of Summit Springs, but even more so to read that he was a temperance advocate. Buntline's stories about "Buffalo Bill" were rewritten into a hit play by Frank Meader, which Buntline and Cody saw together in New York. A year later Buntline wrote Cody to meet him in Chicago, instructing him to bring along some other Westerners and some Indians. He planned to make a fortune with a Wild West Show. Cody arrived with "Texas Jack" Omohundro, but no Indians. Ned Buntline did not have a script. The theater owner canceled the contract, so Buntline rented the theater.



He boasted that he wrote the script for "The Scouts of the Plains" in four hours. It was a reworking of Meader's reworking of Buntline's "Buffalo Bill" stories with the addition of a character, Cale Durg, who Ned added for himself. He hired actors to play the Indians and a Mlle. Irene Morlacchi to play Dove Eye. The Chicago Tribune drama critic described her as "a beautiful Indian maiden with an Italian accent and a weakness for scouts." She later married Texas Jack. At the Wednesday matinee, every "lady" in attendance was presented with a photograph of Ned Buntline, Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack.



They moved on to St. Louis, where despite cold, snowy whether, they drew the largest theater crowd in town. The acting was awful and the crowds seemed to enjoy that, it made the scouts real. One newsman commented on Buntline's boast that he wrote the script in four hours by wondering why it took so long.



Buntline had a little legal problem in St. Louis, so when the show moved on, its title was altered to "The Scouts of the Prairie." The show played in Cincinnati, Albany, Boston and then New York. The review in the Herald stated, "Ned Buntline . . . represents the part as badly as it is possible for any human being to represent it. . . . ‘Buffalo Bill' is a good-looking fellow, tall and straight as an arrow, but ridiculous as an actor. Texas Jack is not quite so good-looking, not so tall, not so straight, and not so ridiculous. . . Ludicrous beyond the power of description is Ned Buntline's temperance address in the forest. . . . Everything was so wonderfully bad it was almost good." The troupe moved on to Philadelphia and then to Harrisburg before disbanding for the summer. Buntline planned to present the piece the following year out of doors and with horses. Bill Cody and Texas Jack continued instead with Wild Bill Hickok.



Another contradiction surfaces here in a letter dated May 20, 1985 from Leonard N. Beck Subject Collections Specialist, The Library of Congress to Anne Willis. Mr. Beck's letter states that it was Colonel Prentiss Ingraham ("Professor" Ingraham's son), not Ned Buntline, who popularized Buffalo Bill Cody. Mr. Beck's letter mentions that Buntline "wrote only four novels (fourteen reprints) about Buffalo Bill." He also refers to the play, "The Scouts of the Plains." But Mr. Beck does not cite any works of Colonel Ingraham's.



Another tale connecting Buntline to a famous western name is almost certainly false. He is reported to have presented Wyatt Earp and other Dodge City lawmen with "Buntline Specials" - Colt single action pistols with longer than usual barrels and detachable shoulder stocks. According to Firearms of the American West, Colt factory records fail to substantiate such a claim. Anne Willis agrees. "He surely would have written about it if he had. He always exploited his adventures."



Politics, Riots, and Prison


Ned Buntline was a nativist, rallying around a cry of "America for Americans!" He was a force within the Patriotic Order of Sons of America, the American Party and the Know-Nothing Party. He was involved in the Astor Place riot, where at least 34 people were killed and 141 wounded; in a St. Louis riot, where a young man was shot and killed and a German-owned home was burned to the ground; and reported to be in Maine, when a Swiss priest ministering to Irish immigrants was tarred and feathered. He served a year at hard labor for his role in the Astor Place riots; he skipped bail in St. Louis twice, once immediately after, and twenty years later, when he was re-arrested while touring with Buffalo Bill.



After The End


In his obituary, the New York Mercury of July 18, 1886 called him "The most sensational, and in some respects the most thoroughly ‘American' American of his time." It also stated that he was "a big hearted, genial, generous man, a devoted friend, a writer who with a little more ambition and less haste might have ranked with Cooper and Irving." Ned Buntline is buried in Stamford, New York.



Note: The material for this article was drawn from the historical collection at the Stamford Village Library, from the files of Anne Willis, Stamford Village historian, from The Great Rascal, a biography of Ned Buntline by Jay Monaghan, from Firearms of the American West, by Louis Garaglia and Chris Worman. Many thanks to Anne Willis for her time and the Stamford Library for entrusting me with their photographs.