Robert A. Clay Allisonalso known as Clay Allison (September 2, 1841 – July 1, 1887) was a cattle rancher, cattle broker, and sometimes gunfighter of the American Old West. He fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. Allison had a reputation for violence, having survived several one-on-one knife and gunfights (some with lawmen), as well as being implicated in a number of vigilante jail break-ins and lynchings. A drunken Allison once rode his horse through town nearly naked—wearing only his gunbelt. Later most reports stated that he was not only dangerous to others but himself, accidentally shooting himself in the foot. Early life Allison was born on September 2, 1841. He was the fourth of the nine children of Jeremiah Scotland Allison and his wife, Mariah Ruth (née Brown) Allison. His father was a Presbyterian minister who raised cattle and sheep to support the family. Allison helped on the family farm near Waynesboro, Tennessee, until the Civil War began, enlisting in the Confederate Army when he was 20. American Civil War On October 15, 1861, he enlisted with the Confederate States Army in Captain W. H. Jackson's artillery battery. Three months later, however, he was medically discharged due to an old head injury hindering his ability to serve. On September 22, 1862, Allison re-enlisted, this time in the 9th Tennessee Cavalry Regiment, where he served under the Confederate "Wizard of the Saddle," General Nathan Bedford Forrest. He surrendered at Gainesville, Alabama—along with Forrest's men—on May 4, 1865 (at the war's end). After briefly being held as a prisoner of war, Allison and the others were paroled on May 10, and allowed to return home. Post civil war Once back home, Allison was involved in several violent confrontations. A popular – possibly apocryphal – story relates that a corporal from the 3rd Illinois Cavalry arrived at the Allison family's farm with the intention to seize it. After a confrontation and the breaking of his mother's vase (which had been an anniversary present to her from his father), Allison took a rifle from the house and killed the man. Whatever the reason, Clay Allison, along with his brothers Monroe and John, and sister Mary and her husband (Lewis Coleman), soon moved west. In the New Mexico towns of Cimarron and Elizabethtown, Allison began to develop a reputation as a dangerous man during the Colfax County War. In the fall of 1870,