Mystery woman joining The Kid at Fort Sumner

FORT SUMNER — She died 142 years ago at age 19. The cause of her sudden demise remains a mystery, along with many details about her life, but she's about to be memorialized among legends of the Old West.

The Wild West History Association has announced that a memorial marker for Juanita Martinez Garrett — the first wife of Lincoln County Sheriff Pat Garrett — will be placed in the Old Fort Sumner Cemetery near the site where Billy the Kid is buried.

Garrett killed Billy the Kid at Fort Sumner in 1881.

A ceremony to mark the Martinez grave has been scheduled for 2 p.m. on Sept. 25.

The marker is being placed in cooperation with descendants of the siblings of the family of Juanita Martinez Garrett and the Fort Sumner Village Council.

According to a news release from the Wild West History Association, Martinez's grave has remained unmarked for 142 years. She died in 1879.

Martinez family stories relate that when Juanita married Pat Garrett, he was not Catholic as her family was, so they were married by a justice of the peace.

During the marriage ceremony, the candles blew out and Juanita took it as a bad omen. Some say she believed her marriage was not real in the eyes of God since it was not performed by a Catholic priest.

Soon after the ceremony — some say weeks, others claim months — Juanita was dead.

Juanita's life is not well chronicled, but Fort Sumner's Paulita Jaramillo was acquainted with her and talked about her in an interview in the 1920s. Jaramillo's words are recorded in Walter Noble Burns' book, “The Saga of Billy the Kid: The Thrilling Life of America's Original Outlaw,” published in 1925.

“Juanita Martinez, Garrett's first wife, and Apolinaria Gutierrez, his second, were sparkling, young women, who had the charm of gaiety and light-heartedness and were always surrounded by admirers at our dances,” Jaramillo said. “Juanita was the sister of Don Juan Jose Martinez (of Fort Sumner) … Everyone loved her and mourned for her when an unkind fate changed her bridal gown into a shroud three weeks after her wedding.”

Leon Claire Metz, in his 1983 book, “Pat Garrett: The Story of a Western Lawman,” reported Juanita's marriage to Garrett was “as obscure as the time and circumstances of her death. Allegedly, they were married only a matter of weeks or months. She may have died of a miscarriage.”

WWHA has been working with descendants of her siblings' families — Andrea Martinez Espinosa, Emelia Martinez Casaus and Juan Jose Martinez — to memorialize Juanita with a permanent grave marker. A request was recently made to the Fort Sumner Village Council for a marker to be placed in the cemetery.

Letters from the Martinez family, as well as information from WWHA grave marking project committee member Roy B. Young, were submitted with documentation that Juanita was, indeed, buried in the cemetery. The exact spot of her burial is unknown, but it is believed to have been in the vicinity of those graves of Lucien Bonaparte Maxwell and Billy the Kid and his “Pals.”

Her marker will be placed next to that of Maxwell.

The De Baca County News contributed to this report.