Wyatt S. Earp (1848-1929)
Wyatt Earp, currently the best known and most famous of all Old West lawmen, was born on March 19, 1848 in Monmouth, IL. His father was Nicholas Earp and his mother was Virginia Ann Cooksey. He had a half- brother Newton and four brothers: James, Virgil, Morgan, Warren. He also had a sister Adelia.
His lawman career started in Lamar, Missouri where he was a constable at age 22. After hunting buffalo on the western plains he moved successively to Ellsworth, Wichita and Dodge City, Kansas where he held lawman positions and met Bat Masterson and Doc Holliday.
In Dec. 1879 Wyatt moved with James, Virgil and Warren to Tombstone, A. T. There he and Virgil becameWyatt Earp in 1886 Marshals and on Oct. 26, 1881 wereCourtesy Craig Fouts involved in the famous Shootout at the O. K. Corral, where Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McLaury were killed. Other lawmen were Morgan and Virgil Earp and Doc Holliday, who all survived.
Virgil was later shot and Morgan killed by the cowboy/rusters and Wyatt went on a famous "Vendetta" where he got most of the killers. In another famous shootout at Iron Springs, Wyatt shot and killed the infamous outlaw Curly Bill Brocius. In Tombstone he had met Josephine Sarah Marcus and he now located her and they were inseparable for 47 yrs. His story has been told by his wife Josephine as Wyatt's Woman.
They were married
in Parker, Ariz. in 1888 and travelled extensively throughout the
west, including 4 years in Alaska, where Wyatt ran the Dexter saloon
in Nome.
Returning from Alaska, they ran the Northern saloon in Nevada and
then returned to California for prospecting and retirement.
Shortly after Wyatt's death on Jan. 13, 1929, Stuart Lake published his quasi-fictional Frontier Marshall, from which many fictional movies and the TV series were made.
Wyatt and Josephine are buried in Hills of Eternity Cemetery in Colma CA. Their gravestone says: "Nothing so sacred as Honor and Nothing so loyal as love."|
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