Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp (March 19, 1848–January 13, 1929) was an American farmer, teamster, sometime buffalo hunter, officer of the law in various Western frontier towns, gambler, saloon-keeper, and miner. He is best known for his participation in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, along with Doc Holliday, and two of his brothers, Virgil Earp and Morgan Earp.
Wyatt Earp has become an iconic figure in American folk history. He is the major subject of various movies, TV shows, biographies and works of fiction.
On July 30, 1840, widower Nicholas Porter Earp wed Virginia Ann Cooksey in Hartford, Kentucky. Wyatt Earp was born in Monmouth, Illinois, on March 19, 1848. Wyatt Earp had an older half-brother, as well as a half-sister, who died at the age of ten months. Nicholas Earp named Wyatt after his commanding officer during the Mexican-American War, Captain Wyatt Berry Stapp of the Illinois Mounted Volunteers. In March 1850, the Earps left Monmouth for California but settled in Iowa. Their new farm consisted of one-hundred and sixty 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 work as a cooper or farmer. Faced with the possibility of not being able to provide for his family, Nicholas chose to become a municipal constable, serving at this post for about three years. Reportedly, he had a second source of income from the selling of alcoholic beverages, which made him the target of the local Temperance movement. Subsequently, he was tried in 1859 for bootlegging, convicted and publicly humiliated. Nicholas was unable to pay his court-imposed fines, and, on November 11, 1859, the Earp family's property was sold at auction. Two days later, the Earps left again for Pella, Iowa. Following their move, Nicholas 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 Civil War broke out. Newton, James, and Virgil joined the Union Army on November 11, 1861. Only thirteen years old, Wyatt was too young 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 tending an eighty-acre crop of corn. After being severely wounded in Fredericktown, Missouri, James returned home in the summer of 1863. Newton and Virgil fought several battles in the east and later returned.
On May 12, 1864, the Earp family joined a wagon train heading to California. The 1931 book Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal by Stuart N. Lake, tells of the Earps' 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 Earp's early life is embellished, since there is little corroborating evidence for many of its stories.
By late summer 1865, Wyatt and Virgil found work as drivers for Phineas Banning's Banning Stage Line in California's Imperial Valley. This is presumed to be the time Wyatt first drank whiskey; he reportedly felt sick enough to abstain from it for the next two decades.
In the spring of 1866, Earp became a teamster, transporting cargo for Chris Taylor. His assigned trail for 1866–1868 was from Wilmington, California, to Prescott, Arizona Territory. He worked on the route from San Bernardino through Las Vegas, Nevada Territory, to Salt Lake City. In the spring of 1868, Earp was hired by Charles Chrisman to transport supplies for the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad. This is believed to be the time of his introduction to gambling and boxing; he refereed a fight between John Shanssey and Mike Donovan.
In the spring of 1868, the Earps settled in Lamar, Missouri, where Nicholas became the local constable. When Nicholas resigned to become justice of the peace on November 17, 1869, Wyatt was appointed constable in place of his father. On November 26 and in return for his appointment, Earp filed a bond of $1,000. 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, in Lamar, Missouri, Earp married his first wife, Urilla Sutherland (1849 - c.1870), the daughter of William and Permelia Sutherland, formerly of New York City. The marriage was short-lived. Urilla is believed to have died either a few months or about a year later. There are two reported versions of her cause of death: one version claims she died of typhus,[1] 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, Earp ran for and won his constable's post, beating his older half-brother, Newton, 137 votes to 108.
On March 14, 1871, Barton County, Missouri, filed a lawsuit against Earp and his sureties. He was in charge of collecting license fees for Lamar, with the collected monies intended as funding for local schools; Earp was accused of failing to deliver the collected money. On March 31, James Cromwell filed a lawsuit against Wyatt, alleging he falsified court documents referring to the amount of money Earp had collected from Cromwell to satisfy a judgment. To make up the difference between what Earp 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 Earp owed him $75, the estimated value of the machine. On April 1, Earp was one of three men (along with Edward Kennedy and John Shown) facing accusations for horse theft. On March 28, the accused reportedly stolen two horses, "each of the value of one hundred dollars", from William Keys while in the Indian Country. On April 6, Earp was arrested by Deputy United States Marshal J.G. Owens for the 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 Earp, Kennedy and Shown was issued. Anna Shown, wife of John Shown, claimed that Earp 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 Earp and John Shown remained. Faced with two lawsuits and a criminal trial, Earp 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 Earp. Researchers do not have enough evidence to conclude whether he was guilty of the criminal charges; however, the acquittal of one of his co-defendants may have been enough to cause the authorities to lose interest.
For years, researchers had no reliable account of Earp's activities or whereabouts between the remainder of 1871 and October 28, 1874, when Earp made his reappearance in Wichita, Kansas. It has been suggested that he spent these years hunting buffalo in Kansas (as is reported in the Stuart Lake biography) and wandering throughout 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 Earp in Peoria, Illinois, and the surrounding area during 1872 have caused researchers to question these claims. Earp 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 plus costs 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 Earp was intimately involved in the prostitution trade in the Peoria area throughout 1872. This new information has caused some researchers to question Lake's accounts of Earp hunting buffalo in Kansas in 1871-74.
In Frontier Marshal, Lake also claimed that while in Kansas, Earp met such notable figures as Wild Bill Hickok. Lake also identified Earp as the man who arrested gunman Ben Thompson 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 Lake's account. 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 Earp's arrest of Thompson, or even Earp's presence in Ellsworth in August of that year, point to unsubstantiated recollections that Earp registered at the Grand Central Hotel there. Research has shown Earp 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 Earp. Thompson published his own accounts for the events in 1884, and he did not report Earp as the man responsible for his arrest. Deputy Ed Hogue of Ellsworth actually made the arrest.
Like Ellsworth, Wichita was a train
