Lincoln County Regulators

The Lincoln County Regulators, or just the Regulators, were an American old west deputized posse that fought in the Lincoln County War.

The Regulators were formed out of numerous small ranch owners and cowboys in the Lincoln, New Mexico area. Many of those who became best known as "Regulators" had a long history with one another previously. William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid or Henry McCarty, would become the best known, most likely due to the notoriety of his name, which arose because news accounts attached his name to everything the Regulators did. The Lincoln County War brought him to the front, but several of the other Regulators were actually the driving force behind the events, and had a history of killing alongside one another prior to the war.

Ab Saunders, Charlie Bowdre, Doc Scurlock, Frank Coe, and George Coe had previously killed rustlers together. On July 18, 1876, that group had stormed the Lincoln jail, removing horse thief Jesus Largo, and hanged him. Ab Saunders and Frank Coe had tracked down cattle rustler Nicos Meras, shooting and killing him that same month in the Baca Canyon. Their association with McCarty began when, in the spring of 1876, Henry (at the time known as either Henry Antrim or William Bonney) moved to Lincoln County and began working for Doc Scurlock and Charlie Bowdre at their cheese factory. He later worked, for a time, for rancher Henry Hooker, and then for Ab Saunders and the Coes on their ranch. By the time the Lincoln County War came along, those main core members, referred to as the "iron clad", were all more experienced and closer to being actual "gunmen" than was McCarty.

The Lincoln County War began when a posse of men, deputized by Sheriff William J. Brady, murdered young Englishman John Henry Tunstall on February 18, 1878. The posse had ostensibly been chasing Tunstall in order to attack some stock Tunstall and his men were driving from Tunstall’s ranch on the Feliz River to Lincoln, but the posse’s real motivation was clear – eliminate John Tunstall as an economic threat to businessmen James Dolan and L.G. Murphy, who had Sheriff Brady in their control.

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