Wyatt
Earp
(March 19, 1848 – January 13, 1929)
 Wyatt
Berry Stapp Earp, was a
teamster, sometime
buffalo hunter, officer of the law, gambler, and saloon-keeper in
the Wild West and the U.S. mining frontier from California to
Alaska. He is best
known for his participation in the Gunfight at the O.K.
Corral,
along with Doc Holliday, Virgil
Earp, and Morgan Earp. Earp is the major subject of many and various movies,
biographies and works of fiction.
Table of Contents
Wyatt
Earp was born in Monmouth, Illinois to Nicholas Porter Earp
(September 6, 1813 in Lincoln County, North Carolina - November
12, 1907 in Sawtell, California), a cooper and farmer, and his
second wife Virginia Ann Cooksey (February 2, 1821 in Kentucky -
January 14, 1893 in San Bernardino County, California).
On
December 22, 1836 in Hartford, Kentucky, Nicholas Porter Earp
married Abigail Storm (born September 21, 1813 in Ohio County,
Kentucky - died October 8, 1839 in Ohio County, Kentucky).
The
short marriage produced Wyatt's older half-brother Newton Jasper
Earp (October 7, 1837 in Kentucky - December 18, 1928 in
Sacramento, California). Another half-sister Mariah Ann Earp (Feb.
12-Dec. 13, 1839) did not survive to adulthood.
On
July 30, 1840, widower Nicholas Earp wed Virginia Ann Cooksey in
Hartford, Kentucky. This
second marriage produced eight children. Note that two of Wyatt's
three full sisters did not survive to adulthood.
Wyatt's
Family
-
James
Earp (June 28, 1841 in Hartford, Kentucky - January 25,
1926 in Los Angeles, California)
-
Virgil
Walter Earp (July 18, 1843 in Hartford, Kentucky - October
19, 1905 in Goldfield, Nevada).
-
Martha
Elizabeth Earp (September 25, 1845 in Kentucky - May 26,
1856 in Monmouth, Illinois).
-
Wyatt
Berry Stapp Earp
(March 19, 1848 in Monmouth, Illinois - January 13, 1929 in
Los Angeles, California).
-
Morgan
Seth Earp (April 24, 1851 in Pella, Iowa - March 18, 1882
in Tombstone, Arizona).
-
Warren
Baxter Earp (always known as Warren) (March 9, 1855 in
Pella, Iowa - July 6, 1900 in Willcox, Arizona).
-
Virginia
Ann Earp (February 28, 1858 in Marion County, Iowa -
October 26, 1861 in Pella, Iowa).
-
Adelia
Douglas Earp (June 16, 1861 in Pella, Iowa - January 16,
1941 in San Bernadino, California).
Early Life
Wyatt Berry
Stapp Earp, born in Monmouth, Illinois on March 19, 1848.
He was named after Captain Wyatt Berry Stapp of the
Illinois Mounted Volunteers, Nicholas Earp's commanding officer
during the Mexican-American War. In March, 1850, the Earps left Monmouth for California, but
they never reached there, settling instead in Iowa.
Their new farm consisted of 160 acres, seven miles
northeast of Pella, Iowa.
On March 4,
1856, Nicholas sold his farm and returned to Monmouth, Illinois,
but was unable to find a job as a cooper or farmer.
Faced with unemployment, Nicholas chose to become a
municipal constable, serving at this post for about three years.
He reportedly had a second source of income from the selling of
alcoholic beverages, which made him the target of the local
Temperance movement, and in 1859, he was tried for bootlegging,
convicted and publicly humiliated.
Nicholas was unable to pay his fines and on November 11,
1859, Nicholas's property was sold at auction.
Two days later, the Earps left again for Pella, Iowa.
Nicholas
apparently made frequent travels back to Monmouth throughout 1860
to confirm and conclude the sale of his properties and to face
several lawsuits for debt and accusations of tax evasion.
During the
family's second stay in Pella, the American Civil War broke out.
James, Virgil and Newton joined the Union Army.
Wyatt (aged 13 at war outbreak) was too young to join, but
later tried on several occasions to run away and join the army,
only to have his father find him and bring him home.
While Nicholas was busy recruiting and drilling local
companies, Wyatt, with the help of his two younger brothers,
Morgan and Warren, was left in charge of bringing in an 80-acre
corn crop. James
returned home in summer 1863 after being severely wounded in
Fredricktown, Missouri.
On May 12th,
1864, the Earp family joined a wagon train heading to California.
The 1931 book Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal by Stuart Lake,
tells of the Wyat's encounter with Indians near Fort Laramie and
that Wyatt reportedly took the opportunity at their stop at Fort
Bridger to hunt buffalo with Jim Bridger.
Later researchers have suggested that Lake's account of
Wyatt's early life is embellished, as there is little corroborating
evidence to many of its stories.
However, there is no good reason to doubt many of these
personal tales, either, for they relate to personal actions on the
unsettled American frontier, which would not be expected to be
recorded anywhere except (with luck) in an occasional diary.
California
By late summer
1865, Wyatt and Virgil had found a common occupation as stagecoach
drivers for Phineas Banning’s Banning Stage Line in Southern
California. This is
presumed to be the time Wyatt had his first taste of whiskey. He reportedly felt sick enough to abstain from it for the
following two decades.
In the spring
of 1866, Wyatt became a teamster, transporting cargo for Chris
Taylor. His assigned
trail for 1866 - 1868 was from Wilmington, California to Prescott,
Arizona Territory. He
also worked on the route from San Bernardino through Las Vegas,
Nevada Territory to Salt Lake City.
In the spring of 1868, Wyatt was hired by Charles Chrisman
to transport supplies for the construction of the Union Pacific
Railroad. Historian
presume it is the time of his introduction to gambling and boxing.
In the spring
of 1868, the Earps moved again, this time settling in Lamar,
Missouri where Nicholas became the local constable.
When Nicholas resigned to become Justice of the Peace on
November 17, 1869, Wyatt was immediately appointed constable in
place of his father. On
November 26 and in return for his appointment, Earp filed a bond
of $1000. His
sureties for this bond were his father Nicholas Porter Earp, his
paternal uncle Jonathan Douglas Earp (April 28, 1824 - October 20,
1900) and James Maupin.
On January 10,
1870, Wyatt married his first wife, Urilla Sutherland (1849 -
1870/1871), a daughter of William and Permelia Sutherland of New
York City. The
marriage was short-lived. Urilla
is believed to have died either a few months later, or about a
year later. There are
two reported versions of her cause of death: one version claims
that she died of typhus, the other that she died in childbirth.
In August 1870,
Wyatt bought a house and land for $50.
In November, he resold the house for $75.
The later event has been used to estimate the death of
Urilla, based on presumption that a widower has less need of
permanent residence than a married man expecting children.
That November, Wyatt ran for and won his constable's post,
beating his older half-brother, Newton, 137 votes to 108.
This would be the only time Wyatt would ever run for
office.
After his
wife's death, Wyatt started to have some difficulties with the
law. On March 14,
1871, Barton County, Missouri filed a lawsuit against Wyatt and
his sureties. He had
been in charge of collecting license fees for Lamar, the collected
monies intended as funding for local schools.
They accused Wyatt of never delivering the collected money.
The action was eventually vacated, possibly because Wyatt
and his father had moved out of the state.
On March 31,
one James Cromwell filed a lawsuit against Wyatt alleging that he
had falsified court documents referring to the amount of money
that he had hand collected from Cromwell to satisfy a judgment.
To make up the difference between what Wyatt turned in and
Cromwell owed (and claimed he had paid), the court seized
Cromwell's mowing machine and sold it for $38.
Cromwell's suit claimed that Wyatt owed him $75, the
estimated value of the machine.
The outcome of this case is not known.
On April 1,
Wyatt was one of three men (along with Edward Kennedy and John
Shown) facing accusations for horse theft.
On March 28, the accused had reportedly stolen two horses,
"each of the value of one hundred dollars", from William
Keys while in the Indian Country.
On April 6, Wyatt was arrested by Deputy United States
Marshal J.G. Owens for the latter charges.
The arraignment of the charges against him was read to him
by Commissioner James Churchill on April 14.
Bail was set at $500.
On May 15, the indictment against Wyatt, Kennedy and Shown
was issued.
Anna Shown,
wife of John Shown, claimed that Wyatt and Kennedy got her husband
drunk and then threatened his life in order to earn his
assistance. However,
on June 5, Edward Kennedy was acquitted while the case against
Wyatt and John Shown remained. Faced with two lawsuits and a
trial, Wyatt apparently chose to flee the state of Missouri. An
arrest warrant was issued.
Both lawsuits
and the horse theft case were eventually dropped, in part because
of the disappearance of Wyatt. Researchers
of his life do not have enough evidence to conclude whether he was
guilty of the charges; however the acquittal of one of his
co-defendants may have been enough to cause the legal system to
lose interest. In any
case, this would not be the last time Wyatt Earp settled legal
problems through the use of distance.
Reappearance
For years, researchers had no
reliable account of Wyatt’s activities or whereabouts between
the remainder of 1871 and October 28, 1874, when he made his
reappearance in Wichita, Kansas.
It has been suggested that he spent these years hunting
buffalo (as is reported in the Stuart Lake biography) and
wandering from place to place in the great plains.
He is generally considered to
have first met his close friend Bat Masterson around this period,
on the Salt Fork of the Arkansas River.
Nevertheless, the discovery of contemporary accounts that
place Wyatt in Peoria, Illinois, and the surrounding area during
1872, have caused researchers to question these claims.
He is listed in the city directory for Peoria during 1872
as living in the house of Jane Haspel, who operated a bagnio
(brothel) from that location.
In February 1872, Peoria police
raided the Haspel bagnio, arresting four women and three men.
The three men were Wyatt Earp, Morgan Earp, and George
Randall. Wyatt and
the others were charged with "Keeping and being found in a
house of ill-fame." They
were later fined twenty dollars and cost for the criminal
infraction. Two
additional arrests for Wyatt Earp for the same crime during 1872
in Peoria have also been found.
Some researchers have concluded that the Peoria information
indicates that he was intimately involved in the prostitution
trade in the Peoria area throughout 1872.
This new information has caused some researchers to
question Wyatt's accounts of Buffalo hunting in Kansas.
In Frontier
Marshal, Lake claimed that while in Kansas, Wyatt met such
notable figures as Wild Bill Hickok.
Lake also identified Wyatt as the man who arrested gunman
Ben Thompson (November 2, 1843 - March 11, 1888) in Ellsworth,
Kansas, on August 15, 1873. However,
Lake failed to identify his sources for these allegations.
Consequently, later researchers have expressed their doubt
about them. Diligent
search of the available records has uncovered no evidence that
Wyatt Earp was in Ellsworth at the time of Thompson's trouble
there. Proponents of
Wyatt's arrest of Thompson, or even his presence in Ellsworth in
August of that year, point to unsubstantiated recollections that
Wyatt registered at the Grand Central Hotel there.
Research has shown he did not check into the hotel that
summer.
In particular,
the activities of Benjamin Thompson during the year of his arrest
were covered in detail by the local press without ever mentioning
Wyatt. Thompson
published his own accounts for the events in 1884, and he too
failed to report Wyatt as the man responsible for his arrest.
Deputy Ed Hogue of Ellsworth actually made the arrest.
Wichita
Like Ellsworth,
Wichita was a train-terminal which ended cattle drives from Texas.
Such cattle boomtowns on the frontier were a modern
policeman's nightmare, as they filled with drunken, armed cowboys,
celebrating at the end of long drives.
Wyatt officially joined the Wichita marshal's office on
April 21, 1875, after election of Mike Meagher as city marshal
(this would cause endless confusion, as "city marshal"
was then a synonym for police chief, a term also in use).
One newspaper report exists referring to Wyatt as
"Officer Erp" (sic) prior to his official hiring, making
his exact role as an officer during 1874 unclear.
Probably he served in an unofficial paid role.
City Marshal
Mike Meagher was described as a tall, erect, powerful man with
chestnut brown hair, a blonde mustache and gray eyes.
No doubt, he talked with an Irish accent. He, more than
anyone, was responsible for keeping a lid on the cauldron that was
Wichita. His
assistant was John Behrens (not to be confused with Johnny Behan),
and his deputies were Jimmy Cairns and Wyatt Earp.
Wyatt received
several public acclamations while in Wichita.
He recognized and arrested a wanted horse thief (having to
fire his weapon in warning, but not hurting the man), and later a
set of wagon thieves. He
had a bit of public embarrassment in early 1876 when a
fully-loaded single action revolver dropped out of his holster
while he was leaning back on a chair and discharged when the
hammer hit the floor (single-action revolvers were always
dangerous to carry with a round under the hammer).
The bullet went through Wyatt's coat and out through the
ceiling. It may be
presumed from Wyatt's discussion of the problem in Lake's
biography Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal (published after
Wyatt's death) that Wyatt never carried a single-action with six
rounds again. Lake's
Earp didn't admit that he had first-hand knowledge of this error.
Wyatt also had
his nerves tested in Wichita in a situation which was not reported
by the newspapers, but which occurs in the Lake
"biography" and is substantiated in the memoirs of his
deputy Jimmy Cairns. Wyatt
had angered a number of drovers by acting to repossess an
unpaid-for piano in a brothel, forced a number of drovers to pass
the hat to collect the money to keep the instrument in place.
Later, a group of nearly 50 armed drovers collected in
Delano, preparing to "hoorah" Wichita across the river.
("Hoorah" was the Old West term for out-of-control
drunken partying). Police
and citizens in Wichita collected to oppose the cowboys.
In the end, Wyatt Earp stood in the center of the line of
defenders on the bridge from Delano to Wichita and calmly held off
the mob of armed men, speaking for the town.
Eventually, the cowboys turned and withdrew, peace having
been kept without a shot fired or man killed. This pattern would
be repeated many times in Wyatt's career.
Years later
Cairns would write of Earp: "Wyatt Earp was a wonderful
officer. 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."
In late 1875
the local paper (Witchia Beacon) carried this item: "On
last Wednesday (December 8), policeman Earp found a stranger lying
near the bridge in a drunken stupor. He took him to the "cooler" and on searching him
found in the neighborhood of $500 on his person.
He was taken next morning, before his honor, the police
judge, paid his fine for his fun like a little man and went on his
way rejoicing. He may
congratulate himself that his lines, while he was drunk, were cast
in such a pleasant place as Wichita as there are but a few other
places where that $500 bank roll would have been heard from.
The integrity of our police force has never been seriously
questioned."
Wyatt's stint
as Wichita deputy came to a sudden end on April 2, 1876, when
Wyatt took too active an interest in the city marshal's election.
According to news accounts, former marshal Bill Smith
accused Wyatt of wanting to use his office to help hire his
brothers as lawmen. (Another
story without historical substantiation is that Smith accused the
Earp family of running a brothel, but if so this would be a
strange insult for the frontier, since Wichita had two licensed
brothels and many more in the honky-tonk district of Delano across
the river). Wyatt responded to the insult, whatever it was, by getting
into a fist fight with Smith and beating him.
Meagher was forced to fire and arrest Wyatt for disturbing
the peace, the end of a tour of duty, which the papers called
otherwise "unexceptionable." When Meagher eventually won
the election, the city council was split evenly on re-hiring
Wyatt. With the
cattle trade diminishing in Wichita, however, Wyatt solved the
problem by moving on to the next booming cow-town, Dodge City,
Kansas.
Dodge City,
Kansas
Dodge City,
Kansas became a major terminal for cattle driven from Texas along
the Chisholm Trail from Texas after 1875.
Wyatt was appointed assistant marshal in Dodge City, under
Marshal Larry Deger, in 1876. There is some indication that Wyatt traveled to Deadwood,
South Dakota Territory, during the winter of 1876-7.
Wyatt was not on the police force in Dodge City in the
later part of 1877, although he is listed as being on the force in
the spring. His
presence in Dodge as a private citizen is substantiated by a July
notice in the newspaper that he was fined $1.00 for slapping a
muscular prostitute named Frankie Bell, who (according to the
papers) "...heaped epithets upon the unoffending head of
Mr. Earp to such an extent as to provide a slap from the
ex-officer..". Apportionment of the blame for this
disturbance of the peace by those of the time is found in the fact
that Bell spent the night in jail and was fined costs of $20.00,
while Wyatt's fine was the legal minimum.
In October
1877, Wyatt left Dodge City for a short while to try his luck on
the gambling circuit in Texas.
During this time, he stopped at Fort Griffin, Texas, where
(according to Wyatt's recollection in the Stuart Lake biography)
he met a young, card-playing dentist known as Doc Holliday.
Wyatt returned
to Dodge City in 1878 to become the assistant city-marshal under
Charlie Bassett. Holliday
moved to Dodge City in June 1878, and saved Wyatt's life in August
of the same year. While
Wyatt was trying to break up a bar-room brawl, a cowboy drew a gun
and pointed it at Wyatt's back.
Holliday yelled, "Look out, Wyatt," then drew his
gun, scaring the cowboy enough to make him back off.
This would mark the beginning of Wyatt's and Holliday's
friendship.
In the summer
of 1878, Texas cowboy George Hoy, after an altercation with Wyatt,
returned with friends and fired into the Comique variety
hall, outside of which stood police officers Wyatt Earp and Jim
Masterson. Inside the
theater, a great number of .45 bullets penetrated the plank
building easily, sending Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson, comedian
Eddie Foy and many others instantly to the floor.
Masterson, Foy, and the National Police Gazette
later all gave accounts of the damage to the building and danger
to those inside. No
one was hurt, but this was by pure luck (Foy would note that a new
suit of his, which remained hanging up, was holed three times by
bullets). The lawmen
both inside and outside the building returned fire, and Hoy was
shot from his horse as he rode away, with a severe wound to the
arm. A month later,
he died of the wound. Whose
bullet struck Hoy is unknown, but Wyatt would always claim the
shot.
Wyatt, many
years later, claimed Hoy was attempting to assassinate him at the
behest of Robert Wright, with whom he claimed an ongoing feud.
Wyatt said the feud between himself and Wright started when
he arrested Bob Rachals, a prominent trail leader who had shot a
German fiddler. According
to Wyatt, Wright tried to block the arrest because Rachals was one
of the largest financial contributors to the Dodge City economy.
Wyatt claimed that Wright then hired Clay Allison to kill
him, but Allison backed down when confronted by Wyatt and Bat
Masterson.
Clay Allison
was also a moderately famous character of the Old West, but
current research cannot confirm the tale of Wyatt and Masterson
ever confronting him. Bat
Masterson was out of town when Allison tried to "tree"
(scare) Dodge City on September 19, 1878, and witnesses, cowboy
Charles Siringo and Chalkley M. Beeson, proprietor of the famous
Long Branch saloon, left written recollections of the incident.
They said it was actually Texas cattleman Richard McNulty
who faced down Allison. Siringo
said Wyatt was nowhere to be found while Beeson said Wyatt was
working behind the lines. A distant cousin of Wyatt's has speculated it may be that the
incident both Siringo and Beeson remembered happened at another
time, but no account of another incident has yet come to light.
Arriving in
Dodge with Wyatt was Celia "Mattie" Blaylock, a former
prostitute, who would continue with him until 1882.
Wyatt resigned
from the Dodge City police force on September 9, 1878, and headed
to Las Vegas, New Mexico.
The “Buntline
Special”
Deputy Earp was
known for pistol-whipping armed cowboys before they could dispute
town ordinances against carrying of firearms. What kind of pistol
Wyatt used for the job has been a mystery.
The existence
of Wyatt’s long-barreled pistol, for many years doubted, may
have been a reality. The
Lake biography, in describing its origin is probably incorrect,
however. The story of
the Buntline begins with the murder of actress Dora Hand in 1878. Dora was shot by a gentleman attempting to kill Dodge City
mayor, James H. “Dog” Kelly.
Dora was a guest in Kelly’s house and sleeping in his bed
at the time while Kelly and wife were out of town.
Dora was a celebrity in 1878 and her murder was a national
story. Wyatt was in the posse which brought down the murderer.
The story of the capture was reported in newspapers as far
as New York and California.
Five men were
dispatched as a posse to capture the assassin: Wyatt Earp, Bat
Masterson, a very young Bill Tilghman, Charlie Bassett and William
Duffy. Wyatt shot the
man’s horse and Masterson wounded the assassin, James
"Spike" Kennedy, son of Texas cattleman Miflin Kenedy.
The Dodge City Times called them “as intrepid a posse as
ever pulled a trigger”.
It is very
likely that Dora’s murder and the tracking down of her assassin
were the events which caused Ned Buntline to bestow the gift of
the “Buntline Specials”.
Wyatt’s biography claimed the Specials were given to
“famous lawmen” Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Bill Tilghman,
Charlie Bassett and Neal Brown in 1876 by author Ned Buntline in
return for “local color” for his western yarns.
The historical problem, of course, is that neither Tilghman
nor Brown was a lawman then.
Further, Buntline wrote only four western yarns, all about
Buffalo Bill. So, if
Buntline got any “local color”, he never used it.
His stock in trade was sea yarns (a buntline is a knot).
If Lake made up
the Buntline Special, he even fooled himself because he spent an
extraordinary amount of time trying to track it down through the
Colt Company and Masterson and contacts in Alaska.
In all probability, it was a 10 inch barreled Colt Single
Action Army model with standard sights and wooden grips into which
the name, “Ned”, was carved.
(And, sorry, no shoulder stock).
This gibes with both Lake’s original description and the
description of one eyewitness to the gunfight at the O.K. corral
shooting. The
butcher, Bauer, saw a “pistol 14 or 16 inches long." A Colt
SAA with a 10 inch barrel is exactly 15 inches overall.
It is known that Wyatt was carrying his side-arm in the
pocket of his pea-coat. Many people would believe that this is not the place for a
pistol with a 10-inch barrel, but Wyatt's coat pockets were
specially made. They
were 1 1/2' deep, coated with rubber inside, making it like a
holster.
See Also Wyatt
Earp Page 2
|
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation
License.