Keep Story: Gambler, lawman, saloonkeeper, journalist. Born November 24, 1853 (some sources say 1854), in Henryville, Quebec, Canada. Also known as William Barclay Masterson. Though he was born in Canada, Masterson grew up on a series of family farms in New York, Illinois, and Kansas. In 1873, he left home and began working as a buffalo hunter and Indian scout in Dodge City, Kansas. Over the next decade, he worked intermittently as the Ford County sheriff (from 1877-79) and a deputy U.S. marshal (1879) but made his living mostly as a saloonkeeper and gambler. His brothers, Ed and James Masterson, were also Dodge City lawmen. Bat Masterson was a good friend and associate of the legendary lawman Wyatt Earp in both Dodge City and Tombstone, Arizona.
Masterson spent the later years of his life in New York City. In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him deputy U.S. marshal for the southern district of New York, a position he held until 1907. Masterson's enthusiasm for boxing and other sports led him to become a feature writer for Human Life Magazine, a sportswriter, and eventually the sports editor of the New York Morning Telegraph. He died in 1921, of a heart attack.
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