Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp (March 19, 1848 – January 13, 1929) was an American lawman and an assistant marshal to his brother, Virgil Earp. Earp was involved in the 1881 gunfight at the O.K. Corral, during which he and other lawmen killed three outlaws.Ward, Derrick S.; Wishart, David S. (editor): "Earp, Wyatt (1848-1929)," Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, retrieved April 3, 2023 While Earp is usually depicted as the key figure in the shootout, his brother Virgil was both the U.S. Marshal and the Tombstone city marshal and had decided to enforce a city ordinance prohibiting carrying weapons in public in an attempt to neutralize the loosely organized group of outlaws known as the Cochise County Cowboys.
In 1874, Earp arrived in the boomtown of Wichita, Kansas, where his alleged wife opened a brothel. At this brothel, Earp was arrested more than once; he may have been a pimp. He was appointed to the Wichita police force and developed a good reputation as a lawman but was "not rehired as a police officer" after a physical altercation with a political opponent of his boss. Earp left Wichita, following his brother James to Dodge City, Kansas, where his brother's wife Bessie and Earp's common-law wife Sally operated a brothel. In this city, he became an assistant city marshal. In 1878, he went to Texas to track down an outlaw, Dave Rudabaugh, and met John "Doc" Holliday, whom Wyatt credited with saving his life.
Earp moved between boom towns. He left Dodge in 1879 and moved with brothers James and Virgil, later joined by his younger brother Morgan, to Tombstone, Arizona, where a silver boom was underway. The Earps held law enforcement positions that put them in conflict with an outlaw group known as the "Cowboys", who threatened to kill the Earps on several occasions. The conflict escalated, culminating in the shootout at the O.K. Corral in 1881, where the Earps and Doc Holliday killed three Cowboys. During the next five months, Virgil was ambushed and maimed, and Morgan was murdered. Earp, Warren Earp, Doc Holliday, and others formed a federal posse that killed three more Cowboys whom they thought responsible. Earp was never wounded in any of the gunfights, unlike his brothers Virgil and Morgan or Doc Holliday, which added to his mystique after his death.
After leaving Tombstone, Earp went to San Francisco, where he reunited with Josephine Marcus, and they later joined a gold rush to Eagle City, Idaho. In San Francisco, Earp raced horses, but his reputation suffered when he refereed the Fitzsimmons vs. Sharkey boxing match and called a foul, leading many to believe he had fixed the fight. When Earp appeared in the ring to act as referee, Police Captain Wittman disarmed him of a large pistol before the bout began. That night, Earp was arrested on a charge of carrying a concealed weapon and released on bail. Earp and Marcus joined the Nome Gold Rush in 1899. He and Charlie Hoxie opened the Dexter saloon, and made an estimated . At the time, Josephine had a gambling habit, and the money did not last. Around 1911, Earp began working mining claims in Vidal, California, retiring in the summers with Josephine to one of several cottages they rented in Los Angeles. He made friends among Western actors in Hollywood to try to get his story told but was portrayed during his lifetime only briefly in one film, Wild Bill Hickok (1923).
Earp died in 1929, notorious for his handling of the Fitzsimmons–Sharkey fight and role in the O.K. Corral gunfight. This changed only after his death when the flattering biography Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal by Stuart N. Lake was published in 1931, becoming a bestseller and creating his reputation as a fearless lawman. Since then, Earp's fame and notoriety have been increased by films, television shows, biographies, and works of fiction. Long after his death, he has many devoted detractors and admirers.
Early life
Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp was born on March 19, 1848, in Monmouth, Illinois, the fourth child of Nicholas Porter Earp and his second wife, Virginia Ann Cooksey. He was named after his father's commanding officer in the Mexican–American War, Captain Wyatt Berry Stapp, of the 2nd Company, Illinois Mounted Volunteers. Some evidence supports Earp's birthplace as 406 S. 3rd St. in Monmouth, Illinois, though the street address is disputed.
In March 1849, or in early 1850, Nicholas Earp joined about a hundred other people in a plan to relocate to San Bernardino County, California, where he intended to buy farmland. Just west of Monmouth on the journey, their daughter Martha became ill. The family stopped and Nicholas bought a new farm northeast of Pella, Iowa, where Martha died on May 26, 1856.
Nicholas and Virginia Earp's last child, Adelia, was born in June 1861 in Pella. Newton, James, and Virgil joined the Union Army on November 11, 1861. Their father was busy recruiting and drilling local companies, so Earp and his two younger brothers, Morgan and Warren, were left in charge of tending of corn. Earp tried several times to run away and enlist, but at 13, he was too young. Each time, his father found him and brought him home. James was severely wounded in Fredericktown, Missouri, and returned home in summer 1863. Newton and Virgil fought several battles in Missouri, Mississippi, and Tennessee, and later followed the family to California.
Adult life California
On May 12, 1864, Nicholas Earp organized a wagon train and headed to San Bernardino, California, arriving on December 17. By late summer 1865, Virgil found work as a driver for Phineas Banning's stagecoach line in California's Imperial Valley, and 16-year-old Earp assisted. In spring 1866, Earp became a teamster transporting cargo for Chris Taylor from 1866 to 1868. He drove cargo over on the wagon road from Wilmington through San Bernardino, then Las Vegas, Nevada, to Salt Lake City, Utah Territory.
In spring 1868, Earp was hired to transport supplies for the Union Pacific Railroad. He learned gambling and boxing while working on the railhead in the Wyoming Territory and developed a reputation from officiating boxing matches. He also refereed a fight between John Shanssey and Prof. Mike Donovan.
Lawman and marriage
In spring 1868, the Earps moved East again to Lamar, Missouri, where Earp's father, Nicholas, became the local constable. Earp rejoined the family the next year, and Nicholas resigned as constable on November 17, 1869. Earp was appointed constable in his place.
First gunfight Earp went to Beardstown, Illinois, where he spent the summer of 1869. Beardstown was undergoing a boom thanks to a rail line being laid through town.
During that summer in Beardstown, a railroad brakeman named Tom Pinard mocked Wyatt, calling him "the California boy", a euphemism for coward, implying that Wyatt had gone to California to avoid serving in the Civil War. Although Wyatt had attempted to join the army at 13 and had been stopped by his father, he took offense at Piner's remarks. They fought inside Walton's Hotel, a brothel owned by John T. Walton, and Wyatt tossed Pinard outside. Both men drew their guns and exchanged shots; Wyatt wounded Pinard in the hip.
Marriage to Urilla Sutherland
In late 1869, Wyatt Earp courted 20-year-old Urilla Sutherland, daughter of William and Permelia Sutherland, who operated the Exchange Hotel in Lamar, Missouri, the Barton County seat. They were married by Wyatt's father on January 10, 1870. Wyatt bought a lot on the outskirts of town for $50, where he built a house in August 1870. Urilla was about to deliver their first child when she died from typhoid fever.
Lawsuits and charges
Wyatt Earp went through a downward spiral after Urilla's death and had a series of legal problems. On March 14, 1871, Barton County filed a lawsuit against him for $200 (~$5,311 today) and his sureties, including his father. He was in charge of collecting license fees for Lamar, which were designated to fund local schools, but had failed to turn the money over to the county.
On March 28, 1871, Wyatt Earp, Edward Kennedy, and John Shown were charged with stealing two horses from William Keys while in the Indian country, "each of the value of $100". Only three days later on March 31, James Cromwell filed a lawsuit against him alleging that he had erased and rewritten a dollar figure on a judgment against Cromwell and that Wyatt had collected and kept the difference. The court seized Cromwell's mowing machine and sold it for $38 to make up the difference between what Wyatt turned in and what Cromwell owed. Cromwell's suit claimed that Earp owed him the estimated machine value of $75.
On April 6, Deputy U.S. Marshal J. G. Owens arrested Earp for the horse theft. Commissioner James Churchill arraigned him on April 14 and set bail at $500. Wyatt was summoned to appear at a hearing, and before he could appear, Wyatt sold his property, escaped through the roof of the jail, and headed for Peoria, Illinois.
On May 15, an indictment was issued against Wyatt, Kennedy, and Shown. John Shown's wife, Anna, claimed that Wyatt and Kennedy got her husband drunk and then threatened his life to persuade him to help steal the horses. On June 5, Kennedy was acquitted, while the case against Wyatt and Shown remained open. The new constable wrote that he had "good reason to believe [and] does believe that Wyatt S. Earp def[initely] is not a resident of this state, that Wyatt S. Earp has absconded or absented himself from his usual place of abode in this state so that the ordinary process of law cannot be processed against him."
Pimping arrests in Peoria Peoria had grown to a city of 22,000 in the 1870s and had earned a reputation as a wide-open city whose community leaders mostly ignored illegal alcohol use, gambling, prostitution, and other vices. But Peoria police raided a brothel on February 24, 1872, and arrested Wyatt and Morgan Earp, George Randall, and four women including Jane Haspel. The men were charged with "keeping and being found in a house of ill-fame," and later fined $20 and court costs. In Root's Peoria City Directory for 1872–73, published on March 1, 1872, Wyatt is a resident in the home of Jane Haspel at Washington Street near the corner of Hamilton. Wyatt was likely residing in the brothel when he was arrested.
Both Earps were arrested for the same crime again on May 11. "Wyat Earp and his brother Morgan Earp were each fined $44.55 and as they had not the money and would not work, they languish in the cold and silent calaboose..." After being freed, Wyatt and Morgan visited their sister Adelia in the family home in Lamar, Missouri. Wyatt returned to the Peoria area.
On September 10, 1872, Wyatt was arrested aboard the Beardstown Gunboat, a 50-foot keelboat fitted with a ramshackle, eight-bedroom house and used as a floating brothel. The keelboat was owned by John T. Walton, the same man who three years earlier operated the brothel in Beardstown where Wyatt had his first gunfight. A prostitute named Sally Heckell was arrested with him, and she called herself his wife; she was likely the 16-year-old daughter of Jane Haspel.
The Peoria Daily National Democrat reported:
By calling Wyatt the "Peoria Bummer," the newspaper categorized him with "contemptible loafers who impose on hard-working citizens", a "beggar" and "worse-than-tramps." Wyatt and Walton were fined $44, more than any others who were arrested.
During a conversation with Wyatt Earp years later, Stuart N. Lake took notes in which Earp claimed that he'd been hunting buffalo during the winter of 1871–1872. Earp told Lake that he "arrived in Wichita direct from my buffalo hunt in '74," but there's no evidence that he ever hunted buffalo. He may have made up the story to account for the time he was pimping in Illinois and Missouri.
Wichita, Kansas