Texas became synonymous with the Wild West, where outlaws and thieves were woven into frontier legend alongside longhorns and cattle drives, and small towns and communities saw frequent stops by famous criminals such as Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, Jesse James, and Sam Bass. John Alison Goldsmith became one of these outlaws after arriving in Texas in the 1870s as a teenager with his parents and thirteen siblings. Life on the frontier was hard, and he soon turned to crime. After one arrest, he escaped from the Tarrant County jail and seriously wounded a jailer. On November 24, 1877, he was shot during another escape attempt after being arrested on suspicion of horse theft. He was twenty-two years old when he died. Goldsmith was buried on land owned by his sister Sarah Goldsmith and her husband Thomas Moore Riley, and although the family erected a proper headstone, only the sandstone base remains at his grave.