Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend

by Casey Tefertiller

  66. Dodge City papers regularly refer to gambler John Tyler. While it cannot be confirmed that this is the same John Tyler who showed up in Tombstone later, gamblers often followed the money, and it is assumed to be the same person.

  67. Lake's WyattEarp: Frontier Marshal is the only source for the details of this story; however, the Medicine Lodge Cresset of June 12, 1879, picked up the story: "A negro baby carried off the prize of being the handsomest child in Dodge City. We can't say that the ebony hue will be the prevailing color."

  68. Hancock, "William Box Hancock Ms."

  69. Madden to Lake, Nov. 6, 1928, Lake Collection, Huntington Library.

  W HAPTER 2. A NEW TOWN, A NEW BADGE

  1. Wyatt Earp deposition, Lotta Crabtree will case, 1925, Harvard University Law Library.

  2. Thomas H. Peterson Jr., "The Tombstone Stagecoach Lines, 1878-1903: A Study in Frontier Transportation" (master's thesis, University of Arizona, 1965), p. 35.

  3. San Diego Union, July 14, 1880.

  4. Fred Dodge presents an unusual problem because no Wells, Fargo records confirm his work for the company before 1890. However, newspapers openly identified him as working for Wells, Fargo in 1886, and he had a long and distinguished career with the company. In Carolyn Lake's Undercover for Wells, Fargo (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964) he says his role was a secret, and it seems it was kept a secret from company records. Because of his later career, it seems highly unlikely he would fabricate his role in Tombstone.

  5. George W. Parsons and Carl Chafin, ed., "The West of George Whitwell Parsons, 1880-1920." Entry date July 16, 1880.

  6. Ibid.

  7. San Francesco Examiner, Oct. 3, 1881.

  8. Tombstone Epitaph, Mar. 18, 1881.

  9. New Southwest and Grant County Herald, May 29, 1882.

  10. John Pleasant Gray, "When All Roads Led to Tombstone," Arizona Historical Society Collection, Tucson, P. 100.

  11. San Francisco Examiner, May 28, 1882; further Virgil Earp quotes in this chapter taken from May 27 and 28, 1882, Examiner stories.

  12. Numerous period sources also confirm the McLaurys were in the business of purchasing rustled cattle for resale to butchers. The Nov. 3, 1881, Arizona Weekly Star published a letter from a McLaury defender who signed himself "Observer," saying: "They may have bought stolen cattle, and under their reputations were able to dispose of the same publicly in our markets."

  13. B. M. Jacobs file, University of Arizona Special Collections, Tucson.

  14. San Francisco Examiner, May 28, 1882; Forrestine Hooker, "An Arizona Vendetta: The Truth about Wyatt Earp and Some Others" (Southwest Museum, Los Angeles, 1920?), pp. 12-14.

  15. Weekly Epitaph, Oct. 20, 1880.

  16. Tombstone Weekly Nugget, Aug. 5, 1880; Weekly Epitaph, Aug. 7, 1881.

  17. Tnmbetone Weekly Nugget, Aug. 5, 1880.

  18. Phil Rasch, "A Note on Buckskin Frank Leslie" (Denver: 1954 Brand Book for the Denver Posse of the Westerners, 1954), pp. 197-216; Weekly Nugget, Epitaph, July-September 1880.

  19. Wyatt Earp to Walter Noble Burns, Mar. 15, 1927, Burns Collection, University of Arizona Special Collections, Tucson.

  20. Tombstone Weekly Nugget, Aug. 19, 1880.

  21. Epitaph, Aug. 21, 1880, from Tucson Star.

  22. Tombstone Weekly Nugget, Sept. 2, 1880.

  23. Daily Epitaph, Aug. 27, 188 1.

  24. Mary Cummings to Lillian Raffert, Mar. 19, 1940, as quoted in Bob Boze Bell's The Illustrated Life and Tunes of Doc Holliday (Phoenix: Tri-Star Boze, 1995), pp. 107-8. Bell provided a copy of the original for confirmation.

  25. Tuberculosis, then called consumption, was believed by most doctors to be hereditary, not contagious, until 1882, when Dr. Robert Koch isolated the tubercle bacilli. The writings of Dr. S. Adolphus Knopf helped make the knowledge of contagion widespread and led to a fear of consumptives who might spread the disease. No documentation could be located of attitudes toward victims of tuberculosis during Holliday's time in Kansas, New Mexico, and Tombstone.

  26. Tombstone Nugget, Oct. 12, 1880.

  27. Territory of Arizona v. J. H. Holliday, Cochise County Recorder's office, Bisbee, Ariz.

  28. William Hunsaker to Lake, Oct. 2, 1928, Lake Collection, Huntington Library.

  29. Weekly Epitaph, Aug. 21, 1880.

  30. Weekly Epitaph, Sept. 11, 1880.

  31. Tucson Weekly Citizen, Jan. 1, 1881.

  32. Lake, Undercover for Wells, Fargo, p. 236.

  33. Ibid., pp. 241-42.

  34. Arizona Daily Star, Dec. 22, 1880.

  35. Tombstone Epitaph, Oct. 31, 1880.

  36. Analysis of Tombstone political turbulence done with the assistance of Carl Chafin, who has spent more than two decades studying the town's history and politics.

  37. San Francisco Examiner, May 27, 1882.

  38. Tombstone Epitaph, Nov. 8, 1880.

  39. Minutes, Pima County Board of Supervisors, vol. 1, p. 424; research provided by Bob Palmquist.

  40. While details on this deal are sketchy, such a deal is referred to in both the Flood MS (p. 138) and in Lake's Frontier Marshal (p. 245). The June 23, 1881, Arizona Weekly Star says Curley Bill "by a pretext and a political bargain, is turned loose on the community, since which time he has been a terror in the sections in which he mysteriously turns up," but gives no further details of the political bargain. Ike Clanton's position was most difficult, since he was being subpoenaed by Shibell to prove there was no fraud. If he lied on the stand, he would kill Curley Bill; if he told the truth he would admit to election fraud and probably go to jail. Ike apparently prepared to meet the process servers with guns (Nugget, Nov. 5, 1881), but Behan did not pursue the issue. Whether Earp and Paul sought Clanton's testimony is uncertain. Paul had the opportunity to serve him with a subpoena and did not, and Earp seems to have made no effort to bring Clanton to court.

  41. Bob Palmquist, "Election Fraud, 1880-The Case of Paul v. Shibell," University of Arizona seminar paper, 1986, Palmquist Collection, Tucson.

  42. Arizona Weekly Star, Jan. 20, 1881.

  43. Palmquist, "Election Fraud, 1880."

  44. Tombstone Nugget, Epitaph, Nov. 4, 5, 17, 1880.

  45. Ibid., Nov. 17, 1880.

  46. Ibid., Nov. 5, 1881.

  47. Analysis of the incident comes from combining points of agreement in Hooker's "An Arizona Vendetta," Fred Dodge (in Lake, Undercover for Wells, Fargo, pp. 11-12), and Parsons. The quotes of Earp passing through town are from Dodge; the later quote is from Hooker.

  48. Tucson Citizen, Feb. 5, 1932.

  49. Los Angeles Mining Review, Mar. 23, 1901. Copy in Parsons scrapbooks, UCLA Special Collections.

  50. Parsons to Lake, Oct. 25, 1928, Lake Collection, Huntington Library.

  51. Walter Noble Burns notebooks, University of Arizona Special Collections.

  52. Tombstone Weekly Epitaph, Jan. 17, 1881.

  53. Tucson Citizen, Jan. 15, 1881.

  54. Ibid., Jan. 22, 1881.

  55. Arizona Daily Star, Dec. 28, 1880.

  56. San Francisco Exchange, Feb. 16, 1882, from San Jose Time-4.

  57. Ibid. The May 21, 1881, San Francisco Daily Report provides the first known report of Curley Bill's humiliation of the minister and says it occurred in Charleston. The Report also says that Bill with Jim Wallace "took in" Contention in March of '81 and "have several times taken Galeyville."

  58. Arizona Weekly Star, Jan. 27, 1881.

  59. Various memoirs and letters from James C. Hancock of Galeyville and later Paradise tell of the two different Curley Bills. Other old-timers, notably Melvin Jones, claim Curley Bill used both Graham and Brocious; however, Hancock said he knew the two different Curley Bills. In addition, there were other Curley Bills in the West, but none achieved the notoriety of the dance-master.

  60. William M. Breakenridge, Hellaorado: Bringing Law to the Mesquite (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1928), p. 227.

  61. Ibid., pp. 227-28.

  62. Emma Muir, "Shakespeare Becomes a Ghost Town,
" New Mexico, October 1948, p. 25.

  63. San Francisco Examiner, Oct. 3, 1881.

  64. Arizona Weekly Star, May 26, 1881 (includes account of shooting).

  65. Arizona Mining Journal, July 9, 1881.

  66. San Diego Union, Aug. 10, 1880.

  67. Arizona Weekly Star, Mar. 3, 1881.

  68. Wyatt Earp deposition, Lotta Crabtree will case, 1925, Harvard University Law Library.

  69. San Francisco Examiner, Aug. 2, 1896.

  70. Lake, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Mareha4 pp. 253-54.

  71. Masterson and DeMattos, Famous Gunfighters, pp. 55-56.

  72. San Francisco Examiner, May 28, 1882.

  73. Tombstone Epitaph, Apr. 16, 1881. The name had been such a source of irritation that legislator B. H. Hereford had suggested changing the name of the county to Huachuca.

  74. Fremont initially appointed Republicans Lyttleton Price (district attorney), William Seamans (recorder), John Dunbar (treasurer), Abraham H. Emanuel (supervisor), Joseph Tasker (supervisor), and H. M. Matthews (coroner); and Democrats Behan (sheriff), Joseph Dyer (supervisor), J. H. Lucas (probate judge), Rodman Price (surveyor), and George Pridham (public administrator). The council rejected Seamans and Price, while Emanuel withdrew under pressure. Emanuel's withdrawal led to the appointment of saloonkeeper Milt Joyce, which gave the Democrats control of the board of supervisors. After Seamans's rejection, Fremont appointed Republican J. L. Redfern, who was also rejected. He finally capitulated and appointed Jones. Dunbar's brother, Thomas, was a legislator from Pima County and John Dunbar received bipartisan support. Surveyor Rodman Price's father, also Rodman, had served with Fremont in the military action that brought California into the possession of the United States, and later served as governor of New Jersey.

  75. Tombstone Epitaph, May 14, 1881.

  76. Prescott Miner, Feb. 21, 1881.

  77. Researcher Barbara Grcar collected details on Josephine Marcus from San Francisco city directories and other records; Cason and Ackerman, "She Married Wyatt Earp," tells of Josephine Marcus's San Francisco days and joining the Pinafore troupe.

  78. Details of the Pinafore story appear in the Oct. 21, 1879, Los Angeles Herald; the Oct. 22, 1879, Santa Barbara Daily Press; and the Star and Citizen through October, November, and December. The Oct. 5 Daily Star details the breakup of the original troupe in Casa Grande, and the Oct. 25 Weekly Citizen tells of Markham's arrival. It should be noted that none of the Los Angeles papers identify any of the performers as Josephine Sarah Marcus or Dora Hirsch. Former University of Arizona professor Pat Ryan identified May Bell as Josephine Marcus in his article "Tombstone Theatre Tonight," The Smoke Signal Spring 1966, but fails to provide any substantiation. Because of the obvious time problems, it is apparent that Josephine Earp's version of events in "She Married Wyatt Earp" is inaccurate.

  79. Lake to Ira Rich Kent, Feb. 13, 1930, bMS. Am. 1925 (1039) by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Further citation to Houghton Library.

  80. Tucson Citizen, May 21, 1882.

  81. San Diego Union, Mar. 9, 1881.

  82. Tombstone Weekly Epitaph, Jan. 17, 1881.

  83. Tucson Weekly Citizen, Apr. 3, 1881.

  84. Ibid., June 5, 1881.

  85. Arizona Weekly Star, Feb. 17, 1881.

  86. Tucson Weekly Citizen, Feb. 13, 1881, and Apr. 10, 1881.

  87. George H. Kelly, Legislative History of Arizona, 1864-1912 (Phoenix: Manufacturing Stationers, 1926), pp. 98-101.

  88. Arizona Weekly Star, Mar. 10, 1881.

  89. Letter of L. Wollenberg to the Prescott Miner, Feb. 23, 1881.

  90. Prescott Daily Miner, Mar. 17, 1881, from Tombstone Gossip, Mar. 17, 1881. Hints of an unofficial bounty on Curley Bill appear in several sources.

  a HAPTER 3. MURDER AND MADNESS

  1. Los Angeles Evening Express, Oct. 22, 1881, Chafin Collection. Primary sources are contradictory on the exact location of the robbery, some indicating it happened before reaching Drew's Station, others saying after.

  2. Tombstone Epitaph, Mar. 16, 17, 1881.

  3. San Francisco Examiner, May 28, 1882; Forrestine Hooker, "An Arizona Vendetta: The Truth about Wyatt Earp and Some Others," Southwest Museum, Los Angeles, 1920? The account of Earp chasing a trail of pages from a dime novel comes from Hooker (pp. 23-24) and has not been substantiated by other sources.

  4. San Francisco Examiner, May 28, 1882.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Arizona Weekly Star, Mar. 31, 1881, from Tombstone Nugget. It should be noted that the oft-picked-up quotation of King being "an important witness against Holliday" is false and did not appear in the Nugget or any other period source. The Use quotation first appeared in Breakenridge's Helldorado and has been repeated in numerous books. This quotation has been the basis for much confusion in many secondary works.

  8. Tucson Weekly Citizen, Apr. 5, 1881. Len Redfield, the rancher on whose ranch King was located, was hanged by a mob in Florence, Arizona, in September of 1883 after being accused of stage robbery and murder.

  9. Arizona Weekly Star, Apr. 7, 1881, from Tombstone Epitaph.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Tucson Citizen, Mar. 27, 1881.

  12. San Francisco Exchange, Mar. 17, 1881.

  13. Jim Hume to Lida Munson, Mar. 1881, Hume Collection, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, Calif.

  14. San Francisco Examiner, May 28, 1882.

  15. Arizona Weekly Star, Mar. 3, 1880. Woods antagonized Tucson by attempting to ram through the Cochise County bill without the new county assuming a portion of Pima County's debt. The bill passed both state houses only to be vetoed by Governor Fremont, who ordered that Cochise must assume part of the debt. Woods further antagonized Tucson by supporting the bill to keep the state capital in Prescott rather than having it moved to Tucson.

  16. San Diego Union, Aug. 28, 1881.

  17. Tombstone Nugget, Nov. 17, 1881.

  18. Ibid.

  19. Tombstone Nugget, Nov. 13, 1881.

  20. Tombstone Epitaph, Nugget, Nov. 13, 1881.

  21. San Francisco Exchange, June 22, 1881, from Tombstone Epitaph. Mike Gray had indeed purchased his ranch from Curley Bill, as John Pleasant Gray confirmed in his memoirs. But the younger Gray accused the Hasletts of running something of an extortion racket, trying to get more money from the Grays after they had already paid Curley Bill. Rumors circulated of Mike Gray serving as something of a crime boss for the cowboys, but this appears highly unlikely. The rumors were sparse and ended quickly. Parsons never mentioned any such thing in his diary and later became a friend of the family; he was not the sort to forgive a cowboy godfather. Gray did employ the cowboys on occasion and, while many of his dealings were of dubious ethical standards, there is not enough evidence to build him into a criminal kingpin.

  22. Tombstone Epitaph, June 22, 1881. "Joe" would be identified as Sigman Biertzhoff in the Epitaph's July 23, 1881, edition.

  23. Dialogue taken from Hooker's "An Arizona Vendetta."

  24. Tombstone Nugget, July 19, 1881.

  25. The actual events surrounding Virgil's appointment are uncertain. In Stuart Lake's notes in the Huntington Library is a cryptic note saying, "Ben Sippy elected Marshal after White couldn't handle the town, Citizens com. one met Wyatt one night, asked him to interview room-20 people. 'Virgil, want to put you in as the city marshal, to buy Ben Sippy off.' Took him for Virg. Wrong man. 'Ain't you Virg?' 'No, Wyatt.' Sent Virg in, talked bt. Sippy off, Virg. got job." Lake later wrote to Robert Mullin that the first indication of Sippy's failures came when the marshal just stood and watched during the Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce affair. None of this can be supported by documentation.

  26. Tombstone Nugget, July 6, 7, 9, 10, 1881; not available is the July 8 Nugget, which apparently reported details of Kate's threats. The Epitaph did not report any court news for the period in question.

  27. Wyatt Earp to Walter Noble Burns, Mar. 15, 1927, Burns Collection, University of Arizona Special Collections. Earp tells
Burns that Holliday visited Leonard's shack at a location called "the Wells," and returned at 4 P.M., riding on a wagon with West Fuller's father, Henry Fuller. Earp says Holliday was playing faro at the time of the robbery.

  28. Paula Mitchell Marks, And Die in the West (New York: Morrow, 1989), pp. 137-38.

  29. Arizona Weekly Star, Aug. 25, 1881, from Tombstone Nugget. The question of who drove the stage is complicated by Fred Dodge's comment nearly a half-century later that he heard of the driver switch from passengers (Undercover for Wells, Fargo, p. 23) and by the Flood MS also telling of the driver switch. Unfortunately, the only known copies of the Flood MS may have been written before Wyatt Earp had the opportunity to read it and make corrections, and much of the Flood material is questionable. Mining engineer Robert A. Lewis claimed to have heard the story of the driver switch from Paul; however, there is no other record of Paul making such a statement. Lake's notes say, "Paul did not change seats," with three underlines under the not in a section that apparently came from an interview with Earp. All other known Earp interviews list Philpott as the driver at the time of the holdup.

  30. Tombstone Nugget, Jan. 1, 1882.

  31. San D4-go Union, June 28, 1881.

  32. The Flood MS tells a heroic tale of Wyatt crawling through fire to rescue a handicapped woman. Houghton Mifflin editor Ira Rich Kent wrote to Stuart Lake that Mrs. Earp had discussed the fire story with him and wanted it included in Frontier Marshal, Kent to Lake, Oct. 23, 1930, Houghton Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard.

  33. Tombstone Epitaph, June 23, 1881.

  34. Lake, Undercover for Wells, Fargo, pp. 34-35.

  35. San Diego Union, June 23, 1881.

  36. Arizona Weekly Star, June 23, 1881.

  37. Tucson Weekly Citizen, May 22, 1881; Tombstone Nugget, June 9, 1881; Bowyer letter to Gosper, Sept. 17, 1881, National Archives, Chronological Files, State Box 12. A Mar. 13, 1881, Citizen story lists McAllister as a partner in the People's Market with Tomlinson and Hicks, presumably either Milt or Joe Hicks.

  38. Communications between Willcox and Division of the Pacific; copies at the Arizona State Library, Archives Division, Secretary of the Territory, box 2. Military observations of the cowboys preparing for attack is from National Archives, DOJ, RG60. Willcox wrote that Lieutenant Craig "believes that forty or fifty cow-boys of bad character are ready for action between Las Animas and Galeyville."