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Show Genealogy Research of the West Elza Lay -- some little known facts By KerryRoss Boren If you mention the name of Elza Lay around Vernal, chances are they will know who you are talking about, because Elza Lay is a household word in the Uintah Basin. In recent years, his ' name has come before the public often enough that it has become familiar in other places, too, but Vernal claims Elza Lay as its own. Maybe it's nothing to be proud of, claiming an outlaw as a hometown boy, but Elza w as more than just another outlaw, he was special hereabouts. William Ellsworth Lay was born in Vinton County, Ohio, not in Utah, but he made his home here for many years. He left home after the family had resided in Iowa and then moved to Phillips County, Kansas because his father refused to allow him to date a certain girl. He went first to Brown's Park where he met Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, a young newcomer from Pennsylvania, and the two of them drove a stolen herd of horses to Hole-in-the-Wall in Wyoming. Longabaugh was captured for stealing a horse and sentenced to eighteen months in the jail in Sundance (from which he received the nickname, Sundance Kid) while Lay (alias The Chicago Kid) returned to Brown's Park. Much of Elza Lay's life has been reported elsewhere. It is patent that he became the right-hand man of Butch Cassidy in the Wild Bunch, that he participated in several robberies, notably the Montpelier Bank Robbery and the Castle Gate (Utah) payroll robbery and that he was captured in New Mexico after shooting a sheriff and spent time in the New Mexico Territorial Prison. These are old trails, and every good law-dog knows there is no sense following old trails. So, what about a few facts that are not generally known about Elza Lay. To begin with, Elza Lay married pretty young Maud Davis of Vernal in 1896. Maud was the daughter of Allen Davis who operated a ranch near Dry Fork where Cassidy and the Wild Bunch frequently "holed up". The marriage was performed in secret in an isolated canyon near Lodore in Brown's Park by a preacher and arranged for by none other than Queen Ann Bassett, even though Ann herself had quite a crush on the handsome young outlaw. Elza and his new bride spent the winter of 1896-97 at Robbers Roost, honeymooning in a tent in the cedars; nearby was Cassidy and Etta Place and a few others of the gang. Maud was pregnant that winter, and the following year a daughter was born - named Marvel. She never saw much of her father until her sixteenth year, however, for Maud left Elza in 1897. Marvel attended the Uintah Stake Academy in Vernal and on her sixteenth six-teenth birthday, he father came to visit her there, not long out of prison. Later, Elza visited again, and took his daughter back to Kansas to visit some of his family. On this occasion he was accompanied by a friend of his, a man in his late fifties, graying at the temples, but distinguished. It was not until some years later that Marvel learned from jier father that the man had been Butch Cassidy. Marvel presently resides in Heber City and is rightly proud of her father, not for the wrongs he did, but for the many other accomplishments of his life. Elza Lay reformed after leaving prison, studied oil geology, and developed some of the most important oil fields in this country. He discovered and developed the fields in Clay Basin on the fringe of Brown's Park which he knew so well, and drilled the first oil well there. He also developed the Salt Wells Basin near Hole-in-the-Wall in Wyoming and the massive fields near Ogden and many others. In later years, he was also foreman watermaster for the irrigation canals of Imperial VaUey in California. He was a brilliant man, a near-genius, and had been the primary "brains" behind many of the Wild Bunch's early operations. When applied ap-plied to productive pursuits, Elza was a notable success. But Elza had a problem, a drinking problem, and it caused him a great deal of heartache in his life. He re-married to pretty Mary Calvert, daughter of pioneer Kirk Calvert of the Snake River country near Baggs, Wyoming. Charlie Siringo, the Pinkerton detective, had pursued Elza Lay for many years. He caught up to him once, but Elza was already in prison. Ironically, when Siringo died, he was buried by the same undertaker who buried Elza Lay - W.A. Brown of Flower Street, Los Angeles, Calif. Siringo died in Altadena, California September 30, 1928 and Elza died in Los Angeles on November 10, 1934. Dr. Claude Davidson, whose offices were on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, was called to treat William E. Lay in December, 1932 for heart disease. At that time, Elza was sick, bloated and dentures had supplanted the "mouth full of gold teeth" that Pinkertons had used in their wanted posters as a description of Lay. Elza spent the last two years of his life in a second-floor apartment over-looking a busy Hollywood freeway. When Elza Lay acquired cirrhosis of the liver, brought on by his many years of drinking, he finally succumbed and died. It was a tragic, lonely end to an exciting, interesting life. In another fifteen days, he would have been sixty-six sixty-six years old. But the story doesn't end there, or perhaps someday it will continue, for during the last years of his life, Elza Lay was visited by the famed novelist Zane Grey who wanted to write Lay's story. Lay began recording notes of his experiences as an outlaw in a black journal which he proposed to give to r 1 i V I ' ' ' i t FIRST OIL WELL in Clay Basin, near Brown's Park. The man in the center is Elza Lay, former outlaw and later on oil geologist. Grey to work from. But Lay died before the effort was ever completed and the journal fell into the hands of unknown relatives who went through his possessions after his death. Should the journal ever. come forth, it would reveal more astounding facts concerning the life of this amazing character, the "brains" of the Wild Bunch. Not the least fact of which would be a footnote not entered in the journal - that Butch Cassidy attended the funeral of his old friend Elza Lay in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Glendale, California. |