Fred White

Who was Fred White?

Frederick G. "Fred" White was a young lawman, the first "town marshal" of the new mining boomtown of Tombstone, Arizona Territory. White was elected to the town police position on January 6, 1880. At the time, Tombstone was officially still a town, defined as having fewer than 1,000 residents, and did not become an official city, with over 1,000 residents, until a year later. Before that time, White died in office in a notorious accidental shooting, and was succeeded in office by Virgil Earp.

Although White is usually portrayed, as in the film Tombstone, as an elderly or older man, he was actually only 31 or 32 years of age at the time of his death. He was born in New York according to the 1880 Census. Some claim that the Ghost of Fred White still haunts the street where he was shot.