Legends of the West: Virgil Earp and Morgan Earp

The story is very well written, I felt I was part of the story, now I know who were the real heroes of the Earp Family. In reality Wyatt Earp mind was in revenge to kill when he went to the OK corral. Book brought me back to an age of violence, friendship, honor.. West was a rough period. This book was interesting and informative. The information is fascinating and the prose is good. I only wish I had more of these kinds of biographies. See all 6 reviews. Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers.

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The shooting was lively and slugs were hitting the chimney and cabin…. Earp altered his story later on, telling John H. Brocius waived a preliminary hearing so that his case could be transferred to Tucson District Court, and Virgil and Wyatt escorted him to Tucson to stand trial—possibly saving him from a lynching.

Brocius expressed regret, saying that he had not intended to shoot White. Gunsmith Jacob Gruber testified that Brocius's single-action revolver was defective, allowing it to be discharged at half-cock. The judge ruled that the shooting was accidental and released Brocius. Brocius, however, remained intensely angry about how Earp had pistol-whipped him, and he became an enemy to the Earps.

Earp served as deputy sheriff for eastern Pima County for only three months because Democrat Shibell ran for re-election against Republican challenger Robert H. The region was strongly Republican [64]: Earp was a Republican and expected that he would continue in the job. Southern Pacific was the major landholder, so tax collection was a relatively easy process.

On November 2, , Shibell unexpectedly won the election by a margin of 58 votes [71] under suspicious circumstances. The precinct only contained about 10 eligible voters [75] another source says 50 , [76] but the Cowboys gathered non-voters such as the children and Chinese and had them cast ballots.

They then gave names to all the dogs, donkeys, and poultry and cast ballots in their names for Shibell. The election board met on November 14 and declared Shibell the winner. Earp resigned from the sheriff's office on November 9, , and Shibell immediately appointed Johnny Behan as the new deputy sheriff for eastern Pima County. He had been elected to the Arizona Territorial Legislature twice, representing Yavapai Country in the 7th Territorial Legislature in [77]: French ruled in Paul's favor in late January , but Shibell appealed.

His lawsuit was finally resolved in April when the election commission found that a mysterious "Henry Johnson" was responsible for certifying the ballots. This turned out to be the same James K. Johnson who had been shooting up Allen Street the night when Marshal White was killed. Moreover, he had testified at Curly Bill's preliminary hearing after he shot Fred White.

Morgan Earp

However, the election was a moot point by then, as Paul could not replace Behan with Earp because Cochise County was created out of the eastern portion of Pima County on January 1, However, Behan had greater political experience and influence in Prescott. Earp later testified at the O. Corral hearing that he and Behan had made a deal. Behan received the appointment in February , but he did not keep his end of the bargain and instead chose Harry Woods as undersheriff, who was a prominent Democrat.

Behan testified at first that he had not made any deal with Earp, although he later admitted that he had lied. He said that he broke his promise to Earp because of an incident which occurred shortly before his appointment [81] when Earp learned that Ike and Billy Clanton had one of his prize horses which had been stolen more than a year before.

Earp and Holliday rode to the Clanton ranch near Charleston to recover the horse and overtook Behan along the way, who was riding in a wagon. Behan also was heading to the ranch to serve an election-hearing subpoena on Ike Clanton. According to Behan's testimony, however, Earp had told the Clantons that Behan was on his way to arrest them for horse theft.

The incident embarrassed both the Clantons and Behan, and Behan later testified that he did not want to work with Earp and chose Woods instead. Later in life, Josephine Sarah Marcus aggressively protected her and Wyatt's history while in Tombstone. Marcus was deliberately vague about this period, causing modern researchers to question what she was hiding.

She said that she first visited Tombstone as part of the Pauline Markham Theater Troupe on December 1, for a one-week engagement, [82]: Researchers have identified two women with similar names in the same region of the Arizona Territory whose lives bear many striking parallels. Sadie Mansfield and Sadie Marcus were both known by their friends as Sadie. Both made a stagecoach journey from San Francisco to Prescott, Arizona Territory; both traveled with a black woman named Julia; both were sexual partners with Behan; both were 19 years old, born in New York City, and had parents from Prussia.

Behan owned a saloon in Tip Top, Arizona where he maintained a prostitute named Sadie Mansfield, and he moved to Tombstone in September In spring , Sadie found Behan in bed with the wife of a friend [40] and kicked him out, [85] although she still used the Behan surname through the end of that summer. Earp had a common-law relationship with Mattie Blaylock.

Modern researchers have found her listed as Earp's wife in the June census. She suffered from severe headaches and became addicted to laudanum , a commonly used opiate and painkiller, and later committed suicide. When Marcus learned that Stuart Lake had discovered the existence of Blaylock, she successfully demanded that he omit her from his book I Married Wyatt Earp.

After Marcus arrived in Tombstone with Behan, Earp apparently developed an interest in her, although there are no records in Tombstone of a relationship between Josephine and Earp. Tombstone diarist George W. Parsons never mentioned seeing Wyatt and Josephine together and neither did John Clum in his memoirs. The Earp posse went to Albuquerque, New Mexico, for two weeks. Jaffa, who was also president of New Albuquerque's Board of Trade. Like Josephine, Jaffa was Jewish. He wrote, "Holliday said something about Earp becoming 'a damn Jew-boy. Earp did mezuzah when entering the house.

Earp's anger at Holliday's ethnic slur may indicate that his feelings for Josephine were more serious at the time than is commonly known. The information in the letter is compelling because at that time in the s, the possibility of a prior relationship between Wyatt Earp and Josephine Marcus while in Tombstone was unknown.

Otero could know these things only if he had a relationship with someone who had personal knowledge of the individuals involved. Marcus went to great lengths to sanitize her own and Wyatt's history. For example, she worked hard to keep both her name and the name of Wyatt's second wife Mattie out of Stuart Lake 's book, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal , and Marcus threatened litigation to keep it that way. Losing the undersheriff position left Earp without a job in Tombstone; however, he and his brothers were beginning to make some money on their mining claims in the Tombstone area.

In January , Oriental Saloon owner Mike Joyce gave Earp a percent interest in the faro concession at the Oriental Saloon in exchange for his services as a manager and enforcer. Schneider was well liked, and a mob of miners quickly gathered and threatened to lynch O'Rourke on the spot. Tensions increased between the Earps and both the Clantons and McLaurys through The holdup took place near Benson, during which the robbers killed driver Eli "Budd" Philpot and passenger Peter Roerig.

They arrested King, and Sheriff Johnny Behan escorted him to jail, but somehow King walked in the front door and out the back door. During the hearing into the gunfight at the O. He testified that he had other motives for his plan, as well: He told the court that he had taken the extra step of obtaining a second copy of a telegram for Clanton from Wells Fargo, ensuring that the reward applied for capturing the killers dead or alive. All three suspects were killed when attempting other robberies. In his testimony at the court hearing, Clanton said that Earp did not want to capture the men but to kill them.

Clanton told the court, "I was not going to have anything to do with helping to capture—" and then he corrected himself "—kill Bill Leonard, Crane, and Harry Head". Clanton denied having any knowledge of the Wells Fargo telegram confirming the reward money. The masked robbers robbed the passengers and the strongbox, but they were recognized by their voices and language. Stilwell was fired a short while later as a deputy sheriff for Sheriff Behan for county tax "accounting irregularities".

Wyatt and Virgil Earp rode with the sheriff's posse to track the stage robbers, and Wyatt discovered an unusual boot heel print in the mud. The posse checked with a shoemaker in Bisbee and found a matching heel that he had just removed from Stilwell's boot. A further check of a Bisbee corral turned up both Spence and Stilwell, who were arrested by sheriff's deputies Billy Breakenridge and Nagel. Corral shootout, and this final incident may have been misunderstood by the McLaurys.

The tension came to a head between the Earps and the Cowboys on Wednesday, October 26, Ike Clanton, Billy Claiborne, and other Cowboys had been threatening to kill the Earps for several weeks, and Tombstone city Marshal Virgil Earp learned that they were armed and had gathered near the O. Wyatt had been deputized by Virgil a few days prior as a temporary assistant marshal and Morgan was a deputy city marshal. Around 3 pm, the Earps and Holliday headed towards Fremont Street, where the Cowboys had been gathering. Corral's rear entrance on Fremont Street.

The lot was narrow between the Harwood House and Fly's Boarding House and Photography Studio; the two parties were initially only about 6 to 10 feet 1. Morgan was clipped by a shot across his back that nicked both shoulder blades and a vertebra. Virgil was shot through the calf, and Holliday was grazed by a bullet.

Ike Clanton filed murder charges against the Earps and Holliday on October Justice Wells Spicer convened a preliminary hearing on October 31 to determine whether enough evidence existed to go to trial. In an unusual proceeding, he took written and oral testimony from about 30 witnesses over more than a month. The Earps hired experienced trial lawyer Thomas Fitch as defense counsel. Wyatt testified that he drew his gun only after Clanton and McLaury went for their pistols.

He detailed the Earps' previous troubles with the Clantons and McLaurys and explained that he had intended to disarm the Cowboys, and that his party had fired in self defense. Justice Spicer ruled on November 30 that there was not enough evidence to indict the men.

Legends of the West: Virgil Earp and Morgan Earp

He said that the evidence indicated that the Earps and Holliday acted within the law and that Virgil had deputized Holliday and Wyatt. The Cowboys in Tombstone looked upon the Earps as robbers and murderers and plotted revenge. Virgil was ambushed on December 28 while walking between saloons on Allen Street in Tombstone, and he was maimed by a shotgun blast which struck his left arm and shoulder. Ike Clanton's hat was found in the back of the building across Allen Street from where the shots were fired.

Dake asking to be appointed deputy U. The Earps also raised some funds from sympathetic business owners in town. Wyatt and Virgil submitted their resignations to Dake on February 2, , being tired of the criticism leveled against them, but he refused to accept them because their accounts had not been settled. Clanton was also acquitted that day of the charges against him in the shooting of Virgil, when the defense brought in seven witnesses who testified that Clanton was in Charleston at the time of the shooting.

On February 13, Wyatt mortgaged his home to lawyer James G. Morgan Earp was murdered on March 18 while playing billiards, shot by gunmen firing from a dark alley through a door window into the billiard room. He was struck in the right side; the bullet shattered his spine, passed through his left side, and lodged in the thigh of George A. Berry, while another round narrowly missed him. A doctor was summoned and Morgan was moved from the floor to a nearby couch, while the murderers escaped in the dark.

He died 40 minutes later. The day after Morgan's murder, Deputy U. The next morning, Frank Stilwell's body was found alongside the tracks, riddled with buckshot and gunshot wounds. The Earp posse briefly returned to Tombstone where Sheriff Behan tried to stop them, but they brushed him aside. Spence was absent, but they found and killed Florentino "Indian Charlie" Cruz.

The Earp party withdrew to find protection from the heavy gunfire, except for Wyatt and Texas Jack Vermillion, whose horse was shot. Curly Bill fired at Wyatt with a shotgun but missed. Wyatt had protected Curly Bill against a mob ready to lynch him 18 months earlier, and he provided testimony that helped spare Curly Bill from a murder trial for killing Sheriff Fred White. Wyatt returned Curly Bill's gunfire with his own shotgun, hitting him in the chest from about 50 feet 15m away. Curly Bill fell into the water by the edge of the spring and died.

Vermillion tried to retrieve his rifle wedged in the scabbard under his fallen horse, exposing himself to the Cowboys' gunfire, but Holliday helped him get to cover. Earp told biographer Stuart Lake that both sides of his long coat were shot through, and another bullet struck his boot heel. In the letter, he relayed Earp's story about how his overcoat was hit on both sides of his body by a charge of buckshot and that his saddle horn was shot off. The saddle-horn had been splintered, his coat hung in shreds, there were three holes through the legs of his trousers, five holes through the crown of his sombrero, and three through the brim.

Earp was finally able to get on his horse and retreat with the rest of the posse. Some modern researchers have found that most saddlehorns by this time were made of steel, not wood. He was never wounded in any of his confrontations, which added to his mystique. The posse left the Cowboys behind and rode north to the Percy Ranch, but they were not welcomed by Hugh and Jim Percy, who feared the Cowboys; they left around 3 a.

Gage for the posse. Hooker was known for his purebred stallions and ran more than brood mares which produced horses that were renowned for their speed, beauty, and temperament. In , Earp gave an interview to California historian Hubert Howe Bancroft , during which he claimed to have killed "over a dozen stage robbers, murderers, and cattle thieves" in his time as a lawman.

The gunfight in Tombstone lasted only 30 seconds, but it ended up defining Earp for the rest of his life. Masterson went with them to Trinidad, Colorado where he opened a faro game in a saloon and later became marshal. The Earps and Texas Jack set up camp on the outskirts of Gunnison, where they remained quietly at first, rarely going into town for supplies.

Josephine Marcus described the skeletal Holliday as having a continuous cough and standing on "unsteady legs. Josephine was Earp's common-law wife for 46 years until his death. However, he still owned a house in Tombstone with his former common-law wife Mattie, who had waited for him in Colton where his parents and Virgil were living. She had met a gambler from Arizona and he had asked her to marry him. Earp did not believe in divorce and therefore refused, but she ran away with the gambler anyway. She struggled with addictions and committed suicide by opium poisoning on July 3, Earp's friend Luke Short was part owner of the Long Branch saloon in Dodge City, but the mayor tried to run him out of business and out of town during the Dodge City War.

Short appealed to Masterson, and Masterson contacted Earp on May 31, The town council offered a compromise to allow Short 10 days to get his affairs in order, but Earp refused to compromise. Short's Saloon reopened, and the so-called Dodge City War ended without a shot being fired. Eagle City was another new boomtown growing from the discovery of gold, silver, and lead in the Coeur d'Alene area; it is now a ghost town in Shoshone County, Idaho.

Earp was named deputy sheriff in the area, including newly incorporated Kootenai County, Idaho which was disputing jurisdiction of Eagle City with Shoshone County. There were a considerable number of disagreements over mining claims and property rights which Earp had a part in.

On March 28, a miner named Bill Buzzard was constructing a building when Earp's partner Jack Enright tried to stop him.

Enright claimed that the building was on part of his property, and the two men began to argue. Buzzard fired several shots at Enright with his Winchester, then allies of both sides took defensive positions behind snowbanks and began shooting at one another. Earp and his brother James stepped into the middle of the fray and helped peacefully resolve the dispute before anyone was seriously hurt.

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Around April , Earp reportedly used his badge to join a band of claim jumpers in Embry Camp, later renamed Chewelah, Washington. About 10 years later, a reporter hunted up Buzzard after the Fitzimmons-Sharkey fight and extracted a story from him which accused Earp of being the brains behind lot-jumping and a real-estate fraud, further tarnishing his reputation. The Coeur d'Alene mining venture died out by , so Earp and Josephine went to San Diego, California where the railroad was about to arrive and a real estate boom was underway.

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They stayed for about four years, living most of the time in the Brooklyn Hotel. Each room was painted a different color, such as emerald green, summer yellow, or ruby red, [] and each prostitute was required to dress in matching garments. Earp had a long-standing interest in boxing and horse racing, and he refereed boxing matches in San Diego, Tijuana, and San Bernardino. He won a race horse named Otto Rex in a card game and began investing in race horses, [] and he also judged prize fights on both sides of the border; [] he was one of the judges at the county fair horse races held in Escondido, California in The Earps moved back to San Francisco in [27] so that Josephine could be closer to her half-sister Henrietta's family, and Earp developed a reputation as a sportsman and a gambler.

He continued to race horses, but he could no longer afford to own them by , so he raced them on behalf of the owner of a horse stable in Santa Rosa which he managed. Josephine wrote in her memoir that she and Earp were married in by the captain of multimillionaire Lucky Baldwin 's yacht off the California coast. Raymond Nez wrote that his grandparents witnessed their marriage, [] but no public record has been found for the marriage.

Earp's relationship with Josephine was tempestuous at times. She gambled to excess and he had adulterous affairs. In the s, Earp gave Josephine signed legal papers and filing fees to a claim for an oil lease in Kern County, California. She gambled away the filing fees and lied to him about what happened to the lease, which later turned out to be valuable. He distrusted her ability to manage her finances and made an arrangement with her sister Henrietta Lenhardt. He put oil leases in Henrietta's name with the agreement that the proceeds would benefit Josephine after his death.

In February , the oil well was completed and producing barrels a day, but Henrietta's three children refused to keep the agreement after their mother's death and kept the royalties to themselves. Josephine later developed a reputation as a shrew who made life difficult for Earp. He was furious about her gambling habit, during which she lost considerable sums of money; each may have engaged in extramarital affairs.

Earp was a last-minute choice as referee for a boxing match on December 2, which the promoters billed as the heavyweight championship of the world, when Bob Fitzsimmons was set to fight Tom Sharkey at the Mechanics' Pavilion in San Francisco. Earp had refereed 30 or so matches in earlier days, though not under the Marquess of Queensberry Rules but under the older and more liberal London Prize Ring Rules.

Fitzsimmons was favored to win, and the public and even civic officials placed bets on the outcome. Fitzsimmons dominated Sharkey throughout the fight, and he hit Sharkey with his famed "solar plexus punch" in the eighth round, an uppercut under the heart that could render a man temporarily helpless. Then, at Fitzsimmons' next punch, Sharkey dropped, clutched his groin, and rolled on the canvas screaming foul.

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Earp awarded the fight to Sharkey, whom attendants carried out as "limp as a rag". Fitzsimmons went to court to overturn Earp's decision, [] and newspaper accounts and testimony over the next two weeks revealed a conspiracy among the boxing promoters to fix the fight's outcome. Lewis, who accused the Earp brothers of being "stage robbers", [] and Earp was parodied in editorial caricatures by newspapers across the country. On December 17, Judge Sanderson finally ruled that prize fighting was illegal in San Francisco and the courts would not determine who the winner was.

Sharkey retained the purse, but the decision provided no vindication for Earp. The boxing match left a smear on his public character which followed him until he died and afterward. Brookes Lee was accused of treating Sharkey to make it appear that he had been fouled by Fitzsimmons, and Lee admitted that it was true.

While in Yuma, Wyatt heard of the gold rush in the Alaska Yukon. Earp was reported to have secured the backing of a syndicate of sporting men to open a gambling house there. Sadie got pregnant too, and she thought she could persuade Earp from heading to Alaska. He was in agreement, but Sadie, who was 37, miscarried soon after. Wyatt and Josephine spent only a month in Dawson,. When they returned north, Wyatt was offered a job as the marshal in Wrangell, Alaska , but he served for only 10 days. Sadie learned she was pregnant again, and they returned to San Francisco on October 11 aboard the steamship City of Seattle.

By the time they reached Rampart on the Yukon River, freeze-up had set in. In , they got as far as Rampart before the Yukon River froze in place for the winter. Rampart was a friendly place, but far from the real action. They left with the spring thaw and headed for St. Wyatt managed a small store during the spring of , selling beer and cigars for the Alaska Commercial Company. Michael as "chickenfeed" and persuaded him to relocate to Nome. At the time of the Earps' arrival, Nome was two blocks wide and five miles long.

The best accommodations Wyatt and Sadie could find was a wooden shack a few minutes from the main street, only slightly better than a tent. The river was an open sewer. Typhoid , dysentery and pneumonia were common. Hoxie built the Dexter Saloon in Nome, the city's first two-story wooden building and its largest and most luxurious saloon. The second floor had 12 "clubrooms" decorated with fine mirrors, thick carpets, draperies, and sideboards. It was used for a variety of purposes because it was so large: The Dexter drew anyone famous who visited Nome.

Wyatt rubbed elbows with future novelist Rex Beach, writer Jack London , playwright Wilson Mizner , and boxing promoter Tex Rickard , [40] with whom Earp developed a long-lasting relationship. Both the Dexter and the Northern Saloon competed for business with more than 60 other saloons in town serving an estimated 20, residents. He was arrested twice in Nome for minor offenses, including being drunk and disorderly, although he was not tried. Wyatt learned about his death soon after, and although some modern researchers believe he went to Arizona to avenge his brother's death, the distance and time required to make the trip made it unlikely, and no contemporary evidence has been found to support that theory.

The ship was infested with lice and was struck by a storm on the Bering Sea, making for a difficult trip. It took nine days to reach Seattle, Washington. In , archivists at the Alaska State Library digitized a collection of documents relating to Earp's arrival and stay in Alaska. Earp arrived in Seattle with a plan to open a saloon and gambling room. On November 25, , the Seattle Star described him as "a man of great reputation among the toughs and criminals, inasmuch as he formerly walked the streets of a rough frontier mining town with big pistols stuck in his belt, spurs on his boots, and a devil-may-care expression upon his official face".

The Seattle Daily Times was less full of praise, announcing in a very small article that he had a reputation in Arizona as a "bad man", which in that era was synonymous with "villain" and "desperado. He faced considerable opposition to his plan from John Considine , who controlled all three gaming operations in town. Although gambling was illegal, Considine had worked out an agreement with Police Chief C. Earp partnered with an established local gambler named Thomas Urguhart, and they opened the Union Club saloon and gambling operation in Seattle's Pioneer Square.

The Seattle Star noted two weeks later that Earp's saloon was earning a large following. Considine unsuccessfully tried to intimidate Earp, but his saloon continued to prosper. After the city failed to act, on March 23, , the Washington state attorney general filed charges against several gamblers, including Earp and his partner.

The club's furnishings were confiscated and burned. Newspapers in Seattle and San Francisco falsely reported on Wyatt's wealth which prompted a stampede to Nome to seek similar riches. Nome was advertised as an "exotic summer destination" and four ships a day left Seattle with passengers infected with "gold fever. Within weeks Nome grew to a city of over 20, inhabitants. In , the major business there "was not mining, but gambling and saloon trade. There were saloons and gambling houses, with an occasional restaurant.

Prize fighting became the sport of choice and Wyatt's income soared with side bets. He often refereed bouts himself at The Dexter. Sadie got pregnant again, and she and Wyatt decided to leave Alaska. They sold their interest in the Dexter to their partner, Charlie Hoxie. Sadie miscarried and lost the baby. Three months later, in February , they arrived in Tonopah, Nevada , known as the "Queen of the Silver Camps", where silver and gold had been discovered in and a boom was under way. After Tonopah's gold strike waned, they moved in to Goldfield, Nevada , where his brother Virgil and his wife were living.

He hired Wyatt as a pit boss. In , he discovered several deposits of gold and copper near the Sonoran Desert town of Vidal, California , on the Colorado River and filed more than mining claims [85] near the Whipple Mountains. This led to Wyatt's final armed confrontation. Lewis to head up a posse to protect surveyors of the American Trona Company who were attempting to wrest control of mining claims for vast deposits of potash on the edge of Searles Lake held in receivership by the foreclosed California Trona Company. Wyatt and the group he guarded were regarded as claim jumpers and were confronted by armed representatives of the other company.

King wrote, "it was the nerviest thing he had ever seen". With guns pulled, Wyatt came out of his tent with a Winchester rifle , firing a round at the feet of Federal Receiver Stafford W. Earp's actions did not resolve the dispute, which eventually escalated into the "Potash Wars" of the Mojave Desert. Peterson, a realty broker, in a fake faro game. The Earps bought a small cottage in Vidal, the only home they ever owned.

Beginning in and until Wyatt's health began to fail in , Wyatt and Sadie Earp summered in Los Angeles and spent the rest of the year in the desert working their claims. In about , Charles Welsh, a retired railroad engineer and friend that Earp had known since Dodge City, frequently invited the Earps to visit his family in San Bernardino. When the Welsh family moved to Los Angeles, the Earps accepted an invitation to stay with them for a while in their top-floor apartment until the Earps found a place to rent.

She and her sister Alma were concerned about the care Sadie gave Wyatt. Though he was at times very ill, she still did not cook for him. Spolidora, her sisters, and her mother brought in meals. While living in Los Angeles, Earp became an unpaid film consultant for several silent cowboy movies.

In his autobiography, Dwan recalled, "As was the custom in those days, he [Earp] was invited to join the party and mingle with our background action. Earp became friends with William Hart and later Tom Mix , the two most famous movie cowboys of their era. Hart was a stickler for realism in his depictions of Western life, and may have relied on Earp for advice. Earp later frequently visited the sets of movie director John Ford , whose movies starred Harry Carey.

In , Earp went with his friend Jack London, whom he knew from Nome, to visit the set of former cowboy, sailor, and movie actor-turned-film director Raoul Walsh , who was shooting at the studio of Mutual Film conglomerate in Edendale, California. During the meal, the highest paid entertainer in the world, Charlie Chaplin , dropped by to greet Wyatt Earp.

Chaplin was impressed by both men, but particularly the former Tombstone marshal. In the early s, Earp was given the honorary title of deputy sheriff in San Bernardino County, California. Earp tried to persuade his good friend, well-known cowboy movie star William S. Hart, to help set the record straight about his life and get a movie made. In , Earp began to collaborate on a biography with his friend and former mining engineer John Flood to get his story told in a way that he approved.

The two men sat together every Sunday in the kitchen of Earp's modest, rented bungalow. While Wyatt sipped a drink and smoked a cigar, they tried to tell Earp's story, but Josephine was always present. It needs to be clean. She thought Earp needed to be shown as a hero, and the manuscript includes a chapter titled "Conflagration" in which Earp saves two women, one a cripple, from a Tombstone fire.

Flood's writing was "stilted, corny, and one-dimensional", and the manuscript, completed some time in early , never found a publisher. She wrote, "Now one forgets what it's all about in the clutter of unimportant details that impedes its pace, and the pompous manner of its telling. Spolidora as a teenager had visited the Earps many times near her family home in Needles, California , and she sometimes went to San Diego with them.

Josephine "would always interfere whenever Wyatt would talk with Stuart Lake. She wanted him to look like a church-going saint and blow things up. Wyatt didn't want that at all! Hart tried to help. Wyatt Earp was the last surviving Earp brother and the last surviving participant of the gunfight at the O. Corral when he died at home in the Earps' small rented bungalow at W 17th Street, [] in Los Angeles, of chronic cystitis on January 13, , at the age of Wyatt was survived by Josephine and sister Adelia Earp Edwards.

He had no children. Josephine was apparently too grief-stricken to assist. The funeral was held at the Congregational Church on Wilshire Boulevard. Hart good friend and Western actor and silent film star ; [] and Tom Mix friend and Western film star. When Josephine did not attend Wyatt's funeral, Grace Spolidora was furious. She wasn't that upset.

I don't think she was that devastated when he died. Josephine, who was Jewish, [] had Earp's body cremated and secretly buried his remains in the Marcus family plot at the Hills of Eternity Memorial Park, a Jewish cemetery in Colma, California. When she died in , her body was buried alongside his ashes. She had purchased a small white marble headstone which was stolen shortly after her death in It was discovered in a backyard in Fresno, California.

A second stone of flat granite was also stolen. It was located for sale in a flea market. Cemetery officials re-set the stone flush in concrete, but it was stolen again. Actor Kevin Costner , who played Earp in the movie Wyatt Earp offered to buy a new, larger stone, but the Marcus family thought his offer was self-serving and declined. Descendants of Josie's half-sister Rebecca allowed a Southern California group in to erect the stone currently in place.

The earlier stone is on display in the Colma Historical museum. In , the Tombstone Restoration Commission looked for Wyatt's ashes with the intention of having them re-located to Tombstone. They contacted family members seeking permission and the location of his ashes, but no one could tell them where they were buried, not even his closest living relative, George Earp.

Arthur King, a deputy to Earp from to , finally revealed that Josephine had buried Wyatt's ashes in Colma, California, and the Tombstone Commission cancelled its plans to relocate them.

Two years before his death, Earp defended his decisions before the gunfight at the O. Corral and his actions afterward in an interview with Stuart Lake, author of the largely fictionalized biography Wyatt Earp: For my handling of the situation at Tombstone, I have no regrets. Were it to be done over again, I would do exactly as I did at that time. If the outlaws and their friends and allies imagined that they could intimidate or exterminate the Earps by a process of murder, and then hide behind alibis and the technicalities of the law, they simply missed their guess.

I want to call your particular attention again to one fact, which writers of Tombstone incidents and history apparently have overlooked: Tall like his brothers, Wyatt Earp was 6 feet 1. He is dignified, self-contained, game and fearless, and no man commands greater respect At about the same time, The Mirror , a newspaper in Monroe, Iowa, printed a wire story originating in Denver.

The anonymous reporter described Wyatt in detail:. Wyatt Earp, a man whose trigger finger had considerable to do in making the border history of the West, was in Denver for several days last week. He is tall and athletic. His eyes are blue and fringed with light lashes and set beneath blonde eyebrows. His hair, which was once as yellow as gold, is beginning to be stranded with white.

Virgil Earp - Wikipedia

A heavy, tawny mustache shades his firm mouth and sweeps below his strong, square chin. With a Derby hat and a pair of tan shoes, he was a figure to catch a lady's eye In , writer Adela Rogers St. Johns met the elderly Earp for the first time. He was straight as a pine tree, tall and magnificently built. I knew he was nearly 80, but in spite of his snow white hair and mustache, he did not seem or look old.

His greetings were warm and friendly. I stood in awe. Somehow, like a mountain, or desert, he reduced you to size. Among his peers near his death, Wyatt was respected. He was game to the last ditch and apparently afraid of nothing. The cowmen all respected him and seemed to recognize his superiority and authority at such times as he had to use it. When citizens of Dodge City learned the Earps had been charged with murder after the gunfight, they sent letters endorsing and supporting the Earps to Judge Wells Spicer. Wyatt's manner, though friendly, suggested a quiet reserve Frequently it has happened that men who have served as peace officers on the frontier have craved notoriety in connection with their dealings with the outlaw element of their time.

Wyatt Earp deprecated such notoriety, and during his last illness he told me that for many years he had hoped the public would weary of the narratives—distorted with fantastic and fictitious embellishments—that were published from time to time concerning him, and that his last years might be passed in undisturbed obscurity. Bill Dixon knew Wyatt early in his adult life. Wyatt was a shy young man with few intimates. With casual acquaintances he seldom spoke unless spoken to. When he did say anything it was to the point, without fear or favor, which wasn't relished by some; but that never bothered Wyatt.

To those who knew him well he was a genial companion. He had the most even disposition I ever saw; I never knew him to lose his temper. He was more intelligent, better educated, and far better mannered than the majority of his associates, which probably did not help them to understand him. His reserve limited his friendships, but more than one stranger, down on his luck, has had firsthand evidence of Wyatt's generosity.

I think his outstanding quality was the nicety with which he gauged the time and effort for every move. That, plus his absolute confidence in himself, gave him the edge over the run of men. Public perception of his life has varied over the years as media accounts of his life have changed. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Thanks for telling us about the problem.

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