Wyatt Earp

American frontier law officer

• Born: March 19, 1848
• Birthplace: Monmouth, Illinois
• Died: January 13, 1929
• Place of death: Los Angeles, California

As a lawman in the early cow towns of the Old West, Earp established a reputation that made him an American legend. To some, he epitomized revenge; to others, he was an authentic American hero.

Early Life

Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp (ehrp) was named after his father’s company commander during the Mexican War. He was the third son to Nicholas and Virginia Earp. As an early settler of Monmouth, Illinois (1843), Nicholas provided law and order in the community. His father’s principles would impact Earp throughout the rest of his life. Nicholas, a restless farmer, saw the opportunity of abundant farmland in Pella, Iowa. In 1850, he moved his wife, his daughter Martha, and his four sons, Newton (Nicholas’s son from a previous marriage), James, Virgil, and Wyatt (age two). Newton, James, and Virgil fought for the Union during the Civil War. In 1863, during the middle of the Civil War, the Earp family, which now included three more children (Morgan, Warren, and Adelia), moved again, this time to San Bernardino, California, where lush fields and prospering cities promised wealth.

On the wagon train traveling westward to California, Earp learned to handle a gun, shoot, hunt, scout, and, most important, stay cool in pressure situations. All of these skills would aid Earp in his brief but famous career as a frontier marshal. However, at the young age of sixteen, Earp was still very uncertain as to what he wanted to do. It was not until he reached California that he determined that farming was not for him. Instead, he began driving stagecoaches across the deserts of California and Arizona. Though short-lived, the experience enhanced Earp’s frontier skills.

In 1868, Earp’s family returned to Iowa, then quickly moved to the small town of Lamar, Missouri. It was there that Earp married Urilla Sutherland in January, 1870. Just two months later, he was appointed as the constable of Lamar, a job that he found much more enjoyable than farming for his father. Earp seemed to have everything in order. Suddenly, however, his world came crashing down around him. Before their first wedding anniversary, Urilla suddenly died. The cause of her death remains a mystery. Speculation has ranged from complications while giving birth to a stillborn baby to typhoid. It has been suggested that the Sutherlands blamed Earp for Urilla’s death and engaged him and his brothers in a fight. Some biographers believe that Earp left his job and the town of Lamar because of the bitterness and the grief he felt over the death of his wife, but not before allegedly embezzling twenty dollars from the town. Charges were filed, but nothing ever came of it.

After leaving town, Earp headed to the Indian Territory, where the federal government charged him with stealing horses. However, he jumped bail and headed to Kansas. He was able to evade the law by blending into the West as a Kansas buffalo hunter. His reputation as a lawman eventually began in the rough-and-tumble cow towns of Kansas.

Life’s Work

After he spent a few years buffalo hunting, Earp sought his livelihood in the cow towns of Kansas. As legend has it, he was forced into law enforcement in Ellsworth, Kansas, and found it to his liking. From there, he moved to Wichita, Kansas, where he spent three years breaking up fights, dealing with drunken cowboys, and defending the city.

In 1876, during an election for the town marshal, Earp physically attacked the opposing marshal for remarks made against his family. He was immediately fired. However, having heard of Earp’s success with some of the ruffians of Wichita, the mayor of Dodge City immediately called upon him to come to what had become one of the wildest and wickedest cow towns in the West. Even though Earp thought he would be the marshal of Dodge, he was given the deputy marshal’s job and became chief enforcer. He only stayed in Dodge for one season before, according to legend, he went to Deadwood, South Dakota, for the fall and winter. There he cut and sold firewood while learning to gamble. Thereafter, gambling became an added source of income for Earp.

During the next cattle season, Earp returned to Dodge City but not to his job. Instead, he spent the next year bounty hunting fugitives from Dodge throughout Kansas, the Indian Territory, and Texas. It was during an excursion to Fort Griffin, Texas, in 1877 that he met his lifelong friend Doc Holliday, a noted gambler, gunman, and killer. This friendship would always cast a dark shadow on Earp’s reputation.

In 1878, Earp returned to Dodge and was hired back as a deputy and began his career with noted lawman Bat Masterson . Earp and Masterson were credited with taming Dodge. Earp was effective at keeping order without resorting to gunplay, which was precisely what the saloon keepers, merchants, and bankers who ran Western boomtowns wanted. By the time he left Dodge in 1879, he had established himself as the top lawman in the West. Some would argue that he attained this reputation through intimidation and excessive force, while others would say that he epitomized law enforcement with a cool temper and nerves of steel. Earp had tamed the Wild West of Kansas, no doubt with help from a progressive railroad that essentially killed the cattle trade and a temperance movement that restricted alcohol.

Meanwhile, Virgil, Earp’s brother, had heard of a silver strike in the small mining camp of Tombstone, Arizona . He wrote to Earp to come and make his fortune. In December of 1879, Earp arrived in Arizona with Celia Ann “Mattie” Blaylock, his common-law wife whom he had met while in Dodge but had never married. Along with Earp and Mattie came Earp’s brother James and James’s family. Virgil and Morgan arrived shortly after.

Earp was soon back into law enforcement when he was named deputy sheriff of Pima County. Virgil had been named U.S. deputy marshal of the same region. The Earp brothers conflicted with some of the surrounding ranchers, cowboys, and suspected villains. The term “cowboy” had taken on a negative connotation by this time and referred to thieves, robbers, cutthroats, and lawless citizens. The Clantons and McLaurys, two families that have been perceived as lawless cowboys in history books, clashed with the Earps, who tried to reestablish the laws that had grown lax.

The cowboys claimed that the Earps were simply taking advantage of their position. These confrontations eventually blew up in a shootout near the O.K. Corral on October 26, 1881. By that time, Earp and Morgan had been made special deputies under Virgil. According to most accounts, the Earps sought a peaceful resolution to threats that Ike Clanton had made. The incident placed Billy and Ike Clanton, Frank and Billy McLaury, and Billy Claiborne near the O.K. Corral.

Speculation still circulates as to whether these men were waiting to ambush the Earps or were just riding out of town. Whatever their intentions, their plans were severely changed when Virgil, Earp, Morgan, and Holliday, who had been deputized for the occasion, met them on Fremont Street. Again, legend varies as to who fired first, but after the shootout, Billy Clanton and both McLaurys lay dead. Virgil, Morgan, and Holliday were wounded. To this day it is debated whether the shootout was a cold-blooded murder by men who hid behind their badges or justified law enforcement for violence against innocent citizens of Tombstone.

Earp and Holliday stood trial for the shootout. They eventually were acquitted, but the Earps suffered much criticism from the local papers and citizenry. Attention to the trial added to the incident’s infamy. In retaliation for the shootout, an assassination attempt was made on Virgil. He survived, but at the cost of losing the use of his right arm. Next, Earp’s favorite brother, Morgan, was assassinated. It was not until Earp tried to move the rest of his family west and another assassination attempt was made that Earp responded with lethal vengeance by killing one of the assailants. This controversial act was seen by some as murder and by others as justified vengeance. Earp’s lethal crusade continued until he felt that he had accounted for all of the men who had killed his brother. After killing two more men, Earp and his posse fled to Colorado to escape indictment.

Earp stayed in Colorado expecting a pardon that never came. It was not until late 1882 that he joined Virgil in San Francisco, California. Meanwhile, Mattie, who had returned to California with Earp’s family, returned to Tombstone after realizing that Earp was not coming for her. She committed suicide in 1887. During that time, Earp rekindled a romance with Sadie Marcus that had begun in Tombstone. For forty-seven years, Sadie and Earp remained with each other, gambling, mining, working in saloons, and moving from boomtown to boomtown in the American West. Earp died in 1929 in Los Angeles, California, a few months before his eighty-first birthday.

Significance

Wyatt Earp’s career as frontier marshal, only a small portion of his eighty years, was the reason for his notoriety. The saga of a brave frontier lawman fighting for justice has captured the hearts of Americans. His initial biography was released in the dreary days of depression, prohibition, and gangster activity. Because of public perceptions of police who are less than effective or consumed by corruption and a court system that fails to adequately punish criminals, Americans continue to seek someone who will supersede the law to preserve order. Wyatt Earp stands as a powerful symbol of just such a lawman.

Bibliography

Banks, Leo. “Wyatt Earp.” Arizona Highways 70 (July, 1994): 4-13. This short but detailed article covers the chronology of Earp’s life and his appeal to American society.

Barra, Allen. Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1998. Barra, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, meticulously sifts through the events of Earp’s life to distinguish fact from fiction.

Bartholomew, Ed. Wyatt Earp: The Man and the Myth. Toyahvale, Tex.: Frontier Book Company, 1964. This is one of the earliest books that attempted to account for errors in the Earp story by substantiating events with factual information.

Brooks, David. “Wyatt Usurped.” The National Interest 37 (Fall, 1994): 66-70. Brooks’s brief historic overview of Earp argues that motion pictures have perpetuated a Western myth that has become representative of America.

Lake, Stuart. Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshall. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931. Lake’s biography was supposedly written with the help of Earp himself. This interesting but fantastic book is important because it has become one of the major sources of the Earp myth.

Lubet, Steven. Murder in Tombstone: The Forgotten Trial of Wyatt Earp. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004. Lubet, a law professor, provides a detailed description of the trial resulting from the gunfight near the O.K. Corral. In Lubet’s account, the bitter, contested trial was almost as contentious as the gunfight, with prosecutors determined to send the Earps and Doc Holliday to the gallows, and defense lawyers insisting upon their clients’ heroism.

Peterson, Roger. “Wyatt Earp: Man Versus Myth.” American History 29 (August, 1994): 54-61. This magazine article provides a brief history of Earp, discussing how his legend began and how it may have been corrupted.

Tefertiller, Casey. Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997. Tefertiller’s book is an excellent source for explaining the myth of Earp and why it has been misunderstood.