Clay Allison: ‘Good-Natured Holy Terror’

(Historynet.com) Old West historian Paul Cool says that the phrase "good-natured holy terror" fits several Wild West characters. William "Curly Bill" Brocius and John Henry "Doc" Holliday come to mind. One character who definitely fills the bill is Robert Clay Allison, who reportedly considered himself a "shootist" rather than a gunman.
From 1956, when Franciscan friar Stanley Francis Louis Crocchiola wrote the first biography of Allison, until the early 2000s, when onsite and electronic research was easier, Clay Allison was portrayed as an unglued Southerner who poured his bitterness and vile onto former Union soldiers and anyone else who crossed him. Unfortunately this is how most people still view Allison. Early research on the man was iffy at best, and subsequent writers—and readers—have paid the price. In fact, disregarding the myths laid at his feet by modern writers, Clay in his early Texas years was a young man matured by four years of war and evidently trustworthy enough that two prominent Texas cattleman made him foreman of a 700-mile trail drive. Continued