Death (and Some Open Historical Identity Questions)
Vermillion is said in many sources (including Earp biographer Flood, who is probably the primary source for the information) to have drowned in Lake Michigan near Chicago, about 1900. Young states that Vermillion's body was returned to Virginia for burial, but Flood does not say this, and Young does not cite his source. Young may have assumed the body was returned, since there is evidence that Vermillion is buried in Virginia (see below).
Vermillion family records suggest that Jack Vermillion died peacefully in his sleep in 1911, not 1900. A photograph of him and his second wife ca. 1910 survives in the family record. A John W. Vermillion (farmer) is also listed in the 1910 census in Washington Co., Virginia (this is just South of Russell County and the town of Big Stone Gap). This man, listed as aged 66, is listed as being born in Virginia, married in Virginia, 35 years(?) to wife Nannie. Whether this is the same man is not definitely known. The implied birth date would be wrong, but reasonably close (about 1844 not 1842); however the given marriage date would be far off (35 years from 1910 is 1875, not 1883). The place of residence is in the same relatively small area in the western tail of Virginia where Texas Jack was born, and is said in other sources to have returned. The issue is not resolved. Visually, the elderly man in the 1910 photograph could well be the young J.W. Vermillion from the Civil War photo (see comparison photo).
According to Vermillion family history, Jack killed a man in a gunfight in 1890, and was forced to move 60 miles east to Mendota, Virginia, in Washington County (which fits with the census report), where he spent the rest of his days. John W. Vermillion's grave and that of his wife is in the Mendota Cemetery.
Read more about this topic: Texas Jack Vermillion
Famous quotes containing the words death, open, historical and/or identity:
“The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Wild Bill was indulging in his favorite pastime of a friendly game of cards in the old No. 10 saloon. For the second time in his career, he was sitting with his back to an open door. Jack McCall walked in, shot him through the back of the head, and rushed from the place, only to be captured shortly afterward. Wild Bill’s dead hand held aces and eights, and from that time on this has been known in the West as “the dead man’s hand.””
—State of South Dakota, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Quite apart from any conscious program, the great cultural historians have always been historical morphologists: seekers after the forms of life, thought, custom, knowledge, art.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“Let it be an alliance of two large, formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet they recognize the deep identity which beneath these disparities unites them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)