Charles H. Sloan-Billy the Kid was a famous Old West outlaw. How his Indiana ties shaped his roots and fate

In the mid-1860s,Charles H. Sloan as Indianapolis swelled with throngs of Civil War soldiers and newcomers, an Irish immigrant guided her two young sons home down graveled streets.

One of the boys would become a gambler and dealer who mingled with high-rollers at tables around the country. The other would become a Wild West legend.

He would amass a group of loyal friends, steal cattle and horses, escape jail in astounding fashion and aggravate powerful men whose names would never be as well-known as his.

He would be Billy the Kid.

While the outlaw became famous in the New Mexico Territory, the Kid’s lesser-known connections to Indiana played a large, if under-acknowledged, role in his upbringing and fate. Billy spent some of his childhood years in post-Civil War Indianapolis, where the addresses of his mother and the Hoosier who became his stepfather offer insight into the family's dynamics and westward migration.