Allan Radbourne papers
Transcribed materials from the Allan Radbourne papers. Radbourne was a historian of the US Southwest/Borderlands region and authored the biography Mickey Free: Apache captive, interpreter and Indian Scout, published by the Arizona Historical Society in 2005.
Collection dates: circa 1972-2021
The collection consists of 7 series of records, notes, photographs, articles, transcriptions, presentations and other reference materials related to Southwestern Frontier and Borderlands History circa 1800's-early 1900's created by Allan Radbourne. It contains research surrounding articles and papers published by Allan Radbourne in True West, Real West, The Journal of Arizona History, The Order of the Indian Wars Journal, and in Wild West. It includes reference materials, photographs and notes for Mickey Free, Apache Captive, Interpreter, and Indian Scout that was published in 2005 and photocopies of a collection of Radbourne writings from 1972-2021. It also holds a series of index cards of source materials, in alphabetical order, for Radbourne's work. Inclusive dates reflect the original date of the primary source material if available or if it is transcribed from an original source material. Born-digital material, found on a flash drive, has also been surveyed and processed to make available for public access.
Allan (no middle name) Radbourne was born on May 21, 1944 in Stone, Staffordshire, England. His parents were Edward George Radbourne and Edith May Harvey, and he had a younger sister, Jennifer. He always credited his mother for inspiring his love of reading and history. He grew up going to the cinema on Saturdays, and his favorite cowboy movie stars were Ken Maynard, Buck Jones, and Colonel Tim McCoy.
When Allan was 17, his father died. Allan turned down a chance to go to art college in order to support his mother. Over the years, he worked in a variety of jobs that included work in factories, shops, supermarkets, hotels, bars, and nightclubs, and finally an automotive company, AE Goetze, Llc., where he worked on the shop floor and then as a training officer.
In 1973, Allan met Marion Jones when she attended the annual general meeting of the English Westerners’ Society. They married two years later (1975) in a small ceremony in Taunton, Somerset. The couple resided initially in Wolverhampton, Taunton, and Bridgewater. He and Marion were interested in cinema, the American frontier, and medieval history.
He joined the English Westerners’ Society in the 1960s, and over time served as chairman (1975–1977), assistant editor (1975–1979), and editor (1981–1985).
In addition to numerous journal and magazine articles about Western history, he published an acclaimed biography of Apache Scout Mickey Free in 2005 called Mickey Free: Apache captive, interpreter, and Indian Scout. He traveled three times to Arizona (2000, 2004, 2006), to do research, visit relatives of Mickey Free, and see the country he knew so well from his research.
He had several additional books planned on Apache history, but began writing about the early cinema, with a history of silent movies titled The Silent Mountie Movies-1910-1930 published posthumously in 2021. Allan Radbourne passed on June 11, 2019, at the age of 75 in Taunton.
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