I found the grave of John M. Burke.

I first came across Burke’s name while researching my family genealogy in the 1990s. His name appeared in the 1889 obituary for my great-great-grandmother, Ann (Doherty) McShane, which stated, “Deceased was also a cousin of John M. Burke, manager of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show in Europe.”

Ann was born in 1815 in Wilmington, Del., the same place where Burke was born in 1842. By the early 1820s, Ann’s family made its way to Pittsburgh. She married James McShane in 1835 and had several children, including my great-grandfather, James F. McShane. Ann and her husband operated a steamboat supply store Downtown, near the Allegheny River.

About 1930, James F. McShane told his granddaughter, my mother, Kathleen Haynes, that when Buffalo Bill’s Wild West came to Pittsburgh, Burke visited Ann’s family, providing free tickets and posters to place in the store’s windows.

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, the most well known of approximately 115 traveling historical Western re-enactment outdoor attractions, appeared 11 times in the Pittsburgh area from 1884 to 1911. Many of the appearances were staged at Exposition Park, near present-day Heinz Field.

The spectacle was named for William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, who parlayed his early work as a cattle herder, wagon train driver, military scout, hunter trapper and miner into a career in entertainment. According to the Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave in Golden, Colo., Buffalo Bill’s shows “used real cow boys and cow girls, recruited from ranches in the West. ...  The shows demonstrated bronco riding, roping and other skills that would later become part of public rodeos.” Cody, one of the greatest figures in the history of the American West, died in Colorado in 1917.

Over time, I browsed books about Buffalo Bill for a mention of Burke. Invariably I found that the authors omitted mention of Burke’s date and place of death. By 2007, I found Burke’s obituary in The New York Times, which stated that he died in Washington, D.C., on April 12, 1917. The obituary noted that Burke was almost as well known as Buffalo Bill.

Burke’s death certificate revealed that he was buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery in the nation’s capital. His burial there was at odds with earlier plans; according to a New York Times article published May 4, 1902, with the headline “Tomb Among The Clouds,” Burke wanted to be buried in the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming “where his mausoleum will consist of huge boulders from the native marble.”

In the fall of 2010, I visited Mount Olivet Cemetery and was directed to Section 53, Lot 369. After reading every gravestone in the section, I was disappointed not to find one with Burke’s name. A cemetery employee confirmed that Burke’s grave was unmarked.

I then wrote to the Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave and to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyo., informing them of Burke’s date of death and unmarked location of Burke’s grave. I suggested they file the information for any future inquiries.

In 2015, Joe Dobrow, a marketing guru and author from Arizona, contacted me to say that he was writing a book titled “Pioneers of Promotion” and that Burke would be a central figure in it.

Burke, as press agent, revolutionized promotion by super-hyping Buffalo Bill’s Wild West attraction within a few weeks of an appearance. He did this with floods of press releases, posters, billboards, publicity stunts and parades, all designed to draw people to see the stars of the show — Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, Sitting Bull — and reenactments such as Gen. Custer’s Last Stand and an Indian attack on a stagecoach, among others.

Burke even wrote a book promoting Cody — “Buffalo Bill from Prairie to Palace” — that was published in 1893.  It is Burke’s version of William F. Cody’s adventures as a frontiersman and his metamorphosis into Buffalo Bill, the entertainer who toured Europe and met with the royalty of the era. Over the course of the Wild West’s approximately 30-year run, an estimated 50 million people attended this spectacle.

Mr. Dobrow’s research showed that Burke died penniless with no heirs. He was staying with friends in Washington when he died and was buried by the Washington Lodge of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks as a patriotic gesture.

Mr. Dobrow also said he would like to erect a gravestone on Burke’s resting place to acknowledge his historical importance. Although Mr. Dobrow wanted to obtain permission for the gravestone from me, I did not have a family tree showing a direct connection to Burke.

Soon afterward, Mr. Dobrow visited Mount Olivet Cemetery and informed a manager that Burke probably did not have any direct descendants or heirs. The manager explained that an indirect descendant could offer approval for a gravestone.

With further research, I unraveled Burke’s connection to Ann McShane, my great-great-grandmother. Ann’s first cousin, Mary Murphy, married John M. Burke’s uncle, James Burke. Other than this family tie, John M. Burke was not related to Ann or me. But I volunteered to help Mr. Dobrow anyway.

Besides having a great interest in American history, I knew that I could be useful because I had genealogy (and retired federal investigator) research skills. I conducted research on Burke’s brother, Thomas, and that research revealed a number of living descendants.

One of them, John M. Burke’s great-grandnephew, James A. Fuqua Jr. of Delaware, agreed to authorize Mount Olivet Cemetery to permit a gravestone on Burke’s grave. The laying ceremony was held April 12, 100 years after Burke’s death.

In attendance were Mr. Fuqua and some members of his family; my wife, Rita, and I; and approximately two dozen others. The ceremony was streamed on Mr. Dobrow’s Facebook page and recorded for viewing on PioneersOfPromotion.com.

The ceremony began with Fuqua family members unveiling the gravestone to reveal the inscription:

MAJ. JOHN M. BURKE
“ARIZONA JOHN”
1842 - 1917
PIONEER OF PROMOTION FOR
BUFFALO BILL’S WILD WEST
“HOT AIR AND KIND WORDS DISPENSER”

Burke did not serve in the military and therefore was not a major, but he apparently used the title to enhance his credentials. He nicknamed himself “Arizona John” because he spent time there, and he was trying to puff himself up to the likes of well-known Westerners of the time, such as John “Texas Jack” Omohundro, a frontier scout and actor; and Moses “California Joe” Milner, a scout for Gen. Custer.

After the gravestone was blessed by a deacon, informative speeches filled with humor entertained the gathering. Besides Mr. Dobrow and Mr. Fuqua, the speakers included Jeremy Johnston, curator at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West; Michelle Delaney, director of the Smithsonian’s Consortium for Understanding the American Experience; and Steve Friesen, director of the Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave.

Lastly, Mr. Dobrow told the crowd that he visited the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming and obtained several small native stones that were then placed on the gravestone by Fuqua family members. His book will be published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 2018.

Oakland native and Indiana, Pa., resident Dennis Haynes (dhaynes678@yahoo.com) is his family’s historian. After finding the unpublished memoirs of Ann McShane’s sister-in-law at the Heinz History Center, he published them in 2006 as “The Civil War Diary of Theresa Bridget O’Brien.”

First Published: June 11, 2017, 4:00 a.m.