William Frank Carver

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William Frank Carver 1879

William Frank (Doc) Carver (* 1840 in Winslow; † 1927 ) was an American sniper .

Life

At the age of 17, Carver left his hometown of Winslow and moved to Minnesota , where his grandfather had lived. In the following years he aroused astonishment among the Sioux and Pawnee in his vicinity with his accuracy in shooting. The Santee tribe gave it the nickname "Spirit Gun".

Later, at the age of 35 or 36, Carver moved to California and joined people like Buffalo Bill , Wild Bill Hickok , Phil Sheridan, etc. According to his own estimation, he hunted around 30,000 animals during his time as a buffalo hunter. Then he discovered that there was a lot of money to be made in shooting competitions and moved into this business. From 1877 he gradually challenged competition across the United States and then in Europe. Glass balls were shot as well as living birds. Finally, Carver awarded himself the title of world champion.

The Prince of Wales , delighted with Carver's performances, awarded him a medal. On a bet by the prince, Carver set a new record: In eleven minutes he hit 153 glass balls in a row. In 1883 he fought a 25-part competition with his competitor Adam Henry Bogardus. In 19 of the 25 fights he won, three ended in a draw and in three he lost.

Carvers Wild West Show

Oscar Smith on his death jump

Carver used part of the money raised on the European tour in 1882 to put together a Wild West show with Bill Cody . He invested about $ 27,000 in this company on which he lived for the last three decades of his life. Among the sensations he demonstrated were horses and moose jumping into a basin from a tower and diving. They were mainly demonstrated by his daughter and daughter-in-law. In 1907, The Great Carver Show settled in Electric Park in San Antonio , Texas.

The jumps with the horses of a four-story tower in a deep pool, called the diving horse (to German Diving Horse ), were not dangerous. The Light newspaper sold out in a very short time when it published the snapshot of the fatal accident of the young rider Oscar Smith on February 17, 1907, which the reporter CJ Overman had taken. In 1931 there was another serious accident. After Carver's death, the show was continued by his son Al and moved to the Steel Pier amusement park in Atlantic City . There Doc Carver's daughter-in-law Sonora had an accident while jumping on the horse Red Lips . Although she was blinded by the accident, Sonora Webster continued to jump on horseback until World War II in 1941 interrupted her. Show operations were later resumed, shown on television in the 1950s and continued into the 1970s. Then animal rights activists made sure that the diving demonstrations were stopped. In 1991 Sonora Webster's Life was filmed by the Disney Company ; the film was entitled Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken .

Carver in literature

William Frank Carver is mentioned in Theodor Fontane's novel The Stechlin . “I can only compare it to Mr. Carver, the well-known Mr. Carver, of whom you must have read once, who shot away three glass balls a second. And so all the time, many hundreds, ” says Hauptmann von Czako to his table lady in the third chapter when he talks about the rat hunt in the catacombs of Paris.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Doc Carver vs Captain AH Bogardus March and April, 1883 ( Memento from February 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Marc von Lüpke: Bizarre attraction: daredevil women on their jumping horses . In: Spiegel Online , March 21, 2017, accessed June 16, 2018.
  3. ↑ http://www.texasescapes.com/MikeCoxTexasTales/192-Jumper-and-Diving-Horse.htm
  4. ↑ http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Fontane,+Theodor/Romane/Der+Stechlin/Schlo%C3%9F+Stechlin/3.+Kapitel
personal data
SURNAME Carver, William Frank
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Carver, Doc
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American sniper
DATE OF BIRTH 1840
PLACE OF BIRTH Winslow
DATE OF DEATH 1927