Did Billy the Kid leave behind children? It is a question that has never entirely faded, and for good reason. The outlaw was only twenty-one when he died, possibly even younger, and he had spent the better part of three years moving through the social circles of Fort Sumner, New Mexico. From time to time, someone surfaces claiming to be his descendant.
But the claims do not hold up under scrutiny. There are no birth records, no baptisms, no documentation of any kind indicating that Billy the Kid fathered a child. Yet the question persists, kept alive by at least two stories that refuse to disappear. The first claim centers on a young woman named Paulita Maxwell, the teenage sister of Pete Maxwell, the man in whose bedroom Billy was killed.
The Maxwells were not just any family living at Fort Sumner. For all practical purposes, they were Fort Sumner. Paulita’s father, Lucien Maxwell, had at one point owned the largest private land grant in the country, nearly two million acres. He sold most of it in 1870 and purchased an abandoned army post, Fort Sumner, moving his family into the old officers’ quarters.
They brought with them a few hundred people who had worked for Maxwell on the Cimarron, mostly Hispanic families. When Lucien died in 1875, his son Pete, known to the locals as Pedro, took over the place. A few years later, after the Lincoln County War, Billy the Kid showed up. Billy spent a great deal of time at Fort Sumner and came to know the people there well, especially Pete’s sister Paulita.
Historian Frederick Nolan, in his book The West of Billy the Kid, noted that rumors circulated in 1881 that Paulita was carrying Billy’s child. That gossip eventually reached Pat Garrett, the Lincoln County sheriff, which might explain how Garrett knew to look for Billy at Fort Sumner in the first place. One of Billy’s friends, Vicente Otero, later claimed that Maxwell did not want his sister to marry Billy, and that this was why he told Garrett where the outlaw was hiding. The idea that Pete Maxwell was quietly working with Pat Garrett to rid himself of Billy was not far-fetched.
People at Fort Sumner, including nearby ranchers, were actively feeding information to Garrett. It is entirely possible that Pete did not like the idea of a known fugitive dating his sister, or that he worried Billy might try to take her away. Still, the question of whether Billy left behind children remains unanswered. The problem with Paulita is that she married a man named Jose Jaramillo in January 1882, about six months after Billy’s death.
Her first known child, Rita Adelina Jaramillo, was born in 1884. The late historian Drew Gomber believed there was more to the story. In an article published in True West magazine titled Did Paulita Maxwell bear Billy the Kid’s child, Gomber was quoted as saying that Paulita had a daughter whose birth date had always been in doubt, and that the girl died at about sixteen. He did not know whether Paulita had Billy’s child, but he believed she was pregnant at the time of the Kid’s death, and that her brother Pete Maxwell was a mighty unhappy feller for that reason.
But which daughter Gomber referred to is unclear. As far as records show, Paulita had only two daughters, and both lived very long lives, one still alive in the 1970s. The 1885 territorial census for New Mexico lists only Paulita, her husband Jose, and one-year-old Adelina. If Paulita had another daughter born in late 1881 or early 1882 who lived to be sixteen, she should appear on that census.
She does not. In a town that small, where everyone knew everyone’s business, a birth so close to Billy’s death would almost certainly have left some record. Somebody would have mentioned it. Years later, in the 1920s, Paulita was interviewed by author Walter Noble Burns.
She denied that there had ever been a romance. According to her, Billy the Kid and she were good friends, and that was all. She was a grandmother by then and a devout Catholic, so perhaps she did not want her grandchildren hearing salacious stories, especially one that involved having a child out of wedlock. But she said something else during that interview that has kept the question alive.
She stated that Billy was something of a ladies’ man, with different girls spread all over the place. She claimed that at least three girls in Fort Sumner were mad about him. One was then a respected matron of Las Vegas. Another, who died long ago, had a daughter who lived to be about eight years old and whose striking resemblance to the famous outlaw filled her mother’s heart with pride.
The third was his lover when he was killed. That is Paulita Maxwell officially claiming that somebody else at Fort Sumner was carrying Billy’s child, unless Burns embellished the conversation, which is always a possibility. Burn’s book, The Saga of Billy the Kid, came out in 1926 and turned Billy from a dead rustler into an American legend. It is a great read and a great resource, but it is not always accurate.
Burns did travel to Fort Sumner and interview people who knew Billy, but there is no way to know whether he recorded their words verbatim or took creative liberties. The third woman Paulita mentioned was Celsa Gutierrez, who, in addition to being married, was Pat Garrett’s sister-in-law. According to some sources, it was Celsa who sent Billy over to Pete’s house on the night of his death. Paulita described the scene that night in vivid terms.
Celsa Gutierrez screamed as one demented. A woman named Nasaria Yerby was wild with grief. Another woman, Abrana Garcia, stood shaking her clenched fists aloft, calling down curses on Pat Garrett’s head and threatening to kill him. Along with Delvina Maxwell, these were the women of Fort Sumner who took Billy’s death the hardest.
Nasaria Yerby is also alleged to have been one of Billy’s lovers. Some believe her daughter, born in 1879, was fathered by Billy the Kid. But there is no documentation to support this. The 1880 census shows both of Nasaria’s children carrying the last name Yerby.
That does not necessarily prove Yerby was their father, but it is the only evidence available. The claim involving Abrana Garcia has a book behind it. Billy the Kid’s Kid, The Hispanic Connection by Albert Garcia argues that Billy fathered a son with Abrana Garcia, and that their son, Jose Patrocinio Garcia, was the author’s grandfather. In other words, Albert Garcia claimed to be Billy the Kid’s great-grandson.
The book reportedly offers little in the way of proof beyond anecdotal stories, like driving out to Fort Sumner to clean up Billy’s grave or the family never wanting to discuss their great-grandfather’s origins. The biggest issue is that Jose’s baptismal record shows he was born in 1886, five years after Billy’s death. Census records from 1900 through 1930 consistently show the same, as does his World War I draft registration. The Garcia family maintains the record was forged to hide Jose’s father’s true identity, and that Jose was actually born in 1876.
But if that were true, Billy would have been only fourteen or fifteen at the time of conception. Possible, but the timeline does not cooperate. Billy was in Silver City with his mother in September 1874 and remained there until he got into trouble in September 1875 and skipped town. He then drifted to Arizona, where he killed Windy Cahill in August 1877.
There is little room for a Fort Sumner romance in those years. The book reportedly places Billy at Fort Sumner as far back as 1872, but that contradicts the known timeline as well. Billy was living in Kansas until 1871, and according to his brother Joseph, the family spent time in Colorado before moving south to New Mexico. The earliest he can be placed in New Mexico is when his mother married Antrim in early 1873.
Why anyone would forge documents for a child born in 1876, when Billy was not yet an established criminal and nobody outside Silver City had even heard of him, remains unexplained. Albert Garcia no doubt believed that Billy the Kid was his great-grandfather, and his family likely believed it too. But from a historical standpoint, without corroboration beyond family stories, the claim cannot stand. Anecdotal stories do not constitute evidence.
There is always the possibility that Billy the Kid could one day be dug up and subjected to DNA testing, but that does not appear likely. Where does all of this leave the question? As things currently stand, there is no evidence that Billy the Kid left behind children, only unsubstantiated rumors. That said, Billy did get around quite a bit, so it is very possible, even probable, that he fathered a child somewhere.
But without proof, the story remains what it has always been, a question that cannot be answered, only kept alive by the women who mourned him, the rumors they carried, and the descendants who still come forward claiming a connection that history cannot confirm.