Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend Read online

  THE LIFE BEHIND THE LEGEND

  CASEY TEFERTILLER

  FOREWORD BY ANGUS CAMERON, WINNER OF SEVEN WESTERN HERITAGE AWARDS

  To my mother, Ruby Dunlap Tefertiller, who has always believed that miracles can happen with enough hard work. With love and affection.

  CONTENTS

  Foreword ix

  Acknowledgments xi

  Introduction 1

  1 Cowtown Justice 3

  2 A New Town, A New Badge 34

  3 Murder and Madness 76

  4 A March to Destiny 113

  5 "I Think We Can Hang Them" 130

  6 Tombstone in Terror 163

  7 Vendetta 226

  8 Law versus Order 248

  9 A Fight for Honor 281

  10 The Last Frontiers 306

  11 Long May His Story Be Told 329

  Notes and Sources 345

  Bibliography 373

  Index 377

  FOREWORD

  ALMOST ALL OF THE BOOKS on Wyatt Earp and his brothers, from Stuart Lake's 1931 "biography," Frontier Marshal, until this book by Casey Tefertiller, have been, alas, regrettable examples of all that is the worst in the western myth. For this writer it has been a most enjoyable experience to watch (through several manuscript versions) how Mr. Tefertiller has produced a book that is not romantic nonsense but rather honestly derived from sources and much of it from new sources never used before. To write a book evading the cliches of the western myth is a most difficult task and that task has been made infinitely more difficult by the added smokescreen of misinformation laid down by a succession of ridiculous motion pictures. In these movies the complicated lawman that Wyatt Earp really was has disappeared completely from view and Earp has emerged as a classic movie hero.

  When modern readers survey the evidence provided by Casey Tefertiller they will discover that the real Wyatt Earp was an infinitely more interesting man than the trashy "heroes" who have emerged from the books and movies made since Wyatt Earp died. And they will discover a host of other things, including an account of the famous (or infamous) shoot-out at the O.K. Corral (a favorite episode for purveyors of western myth) that explains that violent episode without doing violence to the truth in the process.

  Tefertiller is unsparing with his hero; he presents the data and readers can reach their own conclusions. Some may look upon the moody Wyatt as a brave peace officer; some may concede that but reserve the judgment that if he was a "bent cop," as we would put it today, he probably was not bent much, no more perhaps than a modern cop on the beat who though a good officer is not above "liking the best of it," as a con man might put it.

  Tefertiller makes no bones about making clear that in seeking private revenge for the assassination of one brother and the crippling for life of another, Wyatt indeed became an outlaw. Mr. Tefertiller leaves it to readers to decide what they themselves might have done had they been in Wyatt's place.

  Like any reliable scholar Casey Tefertiller gives the readers the facts about Wyatt Earp as the sources-many of them newly uncovered- reveal them, and lets the readers make up their own minds.

  It seems unlikely that a future writer will soon feel like tackling another biography of Wyatt Ea.rp unless much more material is unearthed about Wyatt Earp's later life.

  ANGUS CAMERON

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A WORK OF THIS SCOPE required much assistance, and this book is really the combined effort of many people who have sought the truth about one of America's great mysteries. I am most thankful to Carl Chaffin, who opened to me his collection of Tombstone materials, provided access to previously untranscribed sections of George Parsons's diary, and helped in all ways possible. Jeff Morey, historical consultant for the movie Tombstone, freely shared material and insight to help shape much of the thinking and understanding in this book. Dr. Gary L. Roberts of Abraham Baldwin College has pursued a better understanding of the frontier throughout his academic career and shared information and insight. Writer-historian Jack Burrows has been researching Arizona history for more than four decades and gave invaluable support. Angus Cameron provided invaluable help in shaping this book and clarifying the thinking on complex issues. Historian John Boessenecker provided detail on the activities and operations of Wells, Fargo and other information about the West. Historian/lawyer Bob Palmquist freely shared much information and legal knowledge on obscure Arizona Territorial statutes. Roger S. Peterson, who has spent years researching the Earps and interviewing family members, shared his tapes and notes of conversations. Barbara Grcar investigated the life of Josephine Earp in San Francisco and provided information. Historians William Seacrest, Bob McCubbin, and Craig Fouts have been most generous in their assistance and support; Writer Harriet Rochlin provided her research on Josephine Earp; Lee and Marlene Simmons opened their extensive Earp files, part of which is the former Al Turner collection; Jeanne Cason Laing, a friend of Josephine Earp's whose mother and aunt prepared the Cason MS., has shared her memories. I am very grateful to the descendants of Charles Welsh -Major Lois C. Welsh, Elena Armstrong, and Grace Elizabeth Spolidoro-who freely shared their most interesting personal memories of Wyatt and Josephine Earp's later years.

  Hugh O'Brian was most generous in sharing recollections and knowledge from his days portraying Earp on television. Kate Edelman and Susan Chadwick of Edelman Productions provided material on the television show. Hana Lane and Seymour Kurtz of John Wiley & Sons brought this together. Literary agent Gerard McCauley provided considerable help.

  Many others have also been of great help, including Earp researcher Michael Campino; Robin Gilliam and Candy Carlson of the Southwest Museum in Silver City, New Mexico; Tombstone researcher Gary McLelland; Peter Blodgett of the Huntington Library; Josephine Earp descendant Gary Greene; Megan Hahn of the New York Historical Society; Christine Rhodes, Cochise County Recorder; Lois Jermyn and Mel Patterson of the San Francisco Examiner Library; Richard Buchan of the Southwest Museum; Debbie Savage of the San Bruno Public Library; Thelen Blum of Pinkerton's; Seymour Rothman of the Toledo Blade; Christine Marin of Arizona State Special Collections; Linda Sue McCleary of the Arizona State Library; Jim Bradshaw of the Haley Library; Judy Mullins of the Harvard Law Library; Leslie A. Morris of the Houghton Library, Harvard University; Mario M. Einaudi of the Arizona Historical Society; Brad Koplowitz of the University of Oklahoma; Champ Vermillion and John P. Vermillion, descendants of Texas Jack Vermillion; Idaho historian Judge Richard G. Magnuson; Bonnie Hardwick, Dean Smith, Richard Oger, and the staff of the Bancroft Library; Brandon Bowen for assistance with photography; Robin Vidaurri for computer assistance; Bob Boze Bell; Carolyn Lake; Don Chaput; Pat Jahns Clark; Ray Robinson; Jack Castel; Tom Wilson; Gloria Atwater; Steve Ellis; Brad Newcomb; Margaret Harding; Cynthia Pridmore; Earp descendant Reba Young; Brooks and Joan White; Arvo Ojala; Dr. Chris Carroll; Richard Lapidus; Janel Cook of the Ellsworth County Historical Society; Dan Geller; Susan Caulfield; Keith Lieppman; Nick Cataldo; Irene Shipman; Rich Freeman; Jim Dunham; Leslie Auerbach; Robert K. DeArment; McLaury reearcher Paul L. Johnson; Stilwell family descendant Virginia Card; Carina Roter; Bob Candland of the Tombstone Tumbleweed; Allen Barra; the late Richard Erwin and the late Frank Waters.

  The following libraries and repositories have graciously shared information: The Southwest Museum: Bancroft Library; Iowa State Historical Society; New York Historical Society; Idaho Historical Society; San Francisco Public Library; Oakland Public Library; San Bruno Public Library; Albuquerque Public Library; Tucson Public Library; Huntington Library; Arizona Historical Society; University of Arizona Special Collections; Arizona State University Special Collections; Arizona Historical Foundation; University o
f Oklahoma; Houghton Library, Harvard; Harvard Law Library; Nita Stewart Haley Memorial Library, Midland, Texas.

  Helldorado copyright 1928 by William M. Breakenridge Copyright renewed 1956 by Fred E. Adam. Portions reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.

  Undercover for Wells, Fargo copyright 1964 by Carolyn Lake Published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. Portions printed by permission of Carolyn Lake.

  Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal copyright 1931 by Stuart Lake Published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. Portions reprinted by permission of Carolyn Lake.

  INTRODUCTION

  'WHEREVER WYATT EARP APPEARED, the world seemed to go mad around him, and it forever baffled him that history would not just leave him alone. Other men had killed and left their pasts behind, but controversy followed Wyatt like a detective in a pulp novel. He could run fast and far, but he could never escape from Tombstone and the five months when his actions stirred the conscience of a nation. Tombstone, with its web of ambiguities and uncertainties, would haunt Earp for the rest of his life.

  It troubled him deeply to see his name smeared in newspapers, magazines, and books. By the time he reached his seventies in the 1920s, many writers had rediscovered the old stories of Tombstone and were telling lies, accusing him of crimes he never committed and wrongs he believed were morally justifiable. Earp had spent a quarter of a century refusing to discuss Tombstone, simply trying to leave the past behind. But when the writers began filling the magazines with lies, he knew he had no choice but to tell his story or forever be branded as the worst type of criminal: a mankiller.

  He had killed only when he saw no other choice, and his victims had been criminals who deserved bullets, not sympathy. He believed, as strongly as a man can believe, that he had done everything he could to avoid killing. He never imagined that for generations to come his righteousness would be the subject of debate, and his courage would be the substance of legend.

  "He was not an angel," former Tombstone resident George Parsons wrote in 1928, "but his faults were minor ones, and he never killed a man who did not richly deserve it."

  Earp had been a tough officer, tough to the point of brutality during his days behind a marshal's star in the Kansas cattle towns and in Tombstone. But most striking about his law enforcement career is how diligently he avoided killing. He always preferred fists and pistol-whippings to pulling a trigger. He even refused to carry a gun much of the time he wore a badge. He did not need one; he was man enough to stand tall without a pistol in his hand.

  Bat Masterson, a frontier legend in his own right, wrote a series of essays in 1907 on western gunfighters. He chose his old friend as a subject:

  Wyatt Earp is one of the few men I personally knew in the West in the early days, whom I regarded as absolutely destitute of physical fear. I have often remarked, and I am not alone in my conclusions, that what goes for courage in a man is generally the fear of what others will think of him -in other words, personal bravery is largely made up of self-respect, egotism, and an apprehension of the opinions of others. Wyatt Earp's daring and apparent recklessness in time of danger is wholly characteristic; personal fear doesn't enter into the equation, and when everything is said and done, I believe he values his own opinion of himself more than that of others, and it is his own good report that he seeks to preserve.... He never at any time in his career resorted to the pistol excepting in cases where such a course was absolutely necessary. Wyatt could scrap with his fists, and had often taken all the fight out of bad men, as they were called, with no other weapons than those provided by nature.

  Earp's weapons of choice were always those provided by nature, his fists. Earp had no compunction against beating up troublemakers. He assiduously stopped short of killing them. He had always done this; always, that is, except in Tombstone. For this and for a series of old rumors, he was branded a mankiller and a badman.

  The real Wyatt led a life that was authentically Western. He was a gambler and a saloonkeeper, and he enjoyed the charms of several women, even leaving his common-law wife to take up with a dancer. Most of all, he was as tough as men came when toughness earned respect. He was loved and hated, a man who drew strong allegiances and made devoted enemies. Wyatt Earp was a natural leader with a coterie of followers and friends who always believed he did right. He believed it, too.

  He was not a mankiller who delighted in death, and he was never a gunfighter, at least in the sense that later movie generations would understand the word. He fought only two standup gunfights, one with a pistol and the other with a shotgun. There were no fast draws, no fancy shooting. Wyatt Earp faced a challenge and responded. He never really understood what he had done by becoming a law unto himself, and he did not spend much time analyzing the issue. His heart told him he had killed to save lives, and that did not make him a man killer. History, and history by Hollywood, would pass its own judgments.

  By the time he reached his seventh decade, the old stories returned to torment him. Magazine tales and books appeared accusing him of horrible crimes, and he finally told his story. He could never know that nothing he could say or do would end the controversy over Tombstone. He had become the fulcrum of an issue that would be passionately argued for generations after his death. Wyatt Harp could never escape the legacy of Tombstone, and Tombstone remained ingrained in the American consciousness.

  COWTOWN JUSTICE

  NICHOLAS PORTER EARP, a widower with one son, married Virginia Cooksey in 1840, and five years later moved the family from Kentucky to Monmouth, Illinois. He arrived about the time the Mexican War broke out and quickly enlisted in the company commanded by Wyatt Berry Stapp. His military career ended abruptly with a kick in the groin from a mule. Returning to Illinois a wounded veteran, he worked in Monmouth as a farmer, harness maker, and sometimes justice of the peace, never really finding contentment while all that empty land in the West seemed to be calling as the family kept growing. On March 19, 1848, with the birth of his fourth son, Nick paid tribute to his old captain, naming the baby Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp.

  Two years later the Earps moved again, landing in Pella, Iowa, where Wyatt's younger brothers, Morgan and Warren, were born. The growing family remained settled until the Civil War broke out. Elder brothers James and Virgil and half-brother Newton went off to fight for the Union, and James took a musket ball through the left shoulder and spent seventeen months in military hospitals before returning to the family. Wyatt would later tell stories of how he tried to run away and join the army, only to have his father find him and bring him back. Nick had made enough contributions to the cause. He was taking his family away from the action. Wyatt was 16 when the family, including wounded brother James, headed to California in 1864, leaving older brother Virgil fighting in the Civil War. Young Wyatt assumed a man's role on the trip, serving as a hunter and helping to fend off two Indian raids on the train of forty wagons.' With all this moving, Wyatt had little time for formal schooling, although he did learn reading and writing along the way.

  Virgil returned from the Civil War and joined the family in southern California's San Bernardino County, where Wyatt learned to hate plowing, hoeing, and just about everything else connected with farming. Obviously, this did not much please his father, and the teenaged Wyatt knew it was time to leave farming and find another way to make a living. He joined Virgil working on freight wagons between southern California and Salt Lake City, and on another line to Prescott, Arizona. Young Wyatt worked as a swamper, doing the menial tasks, helping with loading, and probably took a few turns at driving the teams.2

  The ever-restless Nicholas decided to move the family back to Iowa in 1868, then on to the little town of Lamar in Missouri. Wyatt, after completing his contract with a freighter, dutifully returned to plowing and hoeing, at least temporarily. In this midwestern farm town he found a job much more to his liking. For the first time, he pinned on a badge. On March 3, 1870, he received the appointment of constable in the tranquil little town. His life seemed headed in
the right direction. Two months earlier, on January 3, he had married a local woman named Urilla Sutherland, whose father owned Lamar's hotel."

  The biggest controversy Earp faced as constable was a civic dispute over whether the lawmen should be responsible for herding away hogs that ran loose on the street. Nicholas Earp ran for the board of trustees on a ticket opposed to shutting up the pigs. Nicholas won, a victory for both the Earp and porcine families. There were other problems in Lamar. At one point an arsonist set the school on fire, and shortly after Wyatt Earp's appointment he had to handle two inebriated brothers. The duo got roaring drunk on a June night, then went wandering the streets until the young constable "found one of them upon the street incapable of taking care of himself and took him down to a stone building which he has appropriated for the use of just such customers. As Mr. Earp was about turning the key upon his bird the other one came staggering up, enquiring for his lost brother. Mr. Earp opened the door and slid him in."4

  Leaving the makeshift jail, Wyatt met "another hard case in the shape of a tramping butcher who asked Mr. Earp to purchase him a lead pencil in place of one he alleged Mr. Earp had borrowed from him some time previous. Mr. Earp enticed him down to the stone building and procured him a pencil, and of course he shared the fate of the other two. There being a hole in the roof of the building, the three caged birds managed to crawl out before morning, and the stranger not liking the reception he met with here, left for parts unknown. The other two were brought before Esq. Earp, and fined $5 and costs, each. A few more examples, and the town will be better for it."5

  Wyatt declared his intentions to run for his constable's post, and surprisingly his older half-brother, Newton, emerged as his top opponent. In November, Wyatt won, 137-108, the only time he would ever run for office. Wyatt's tranquillity in Lamar was disrupted shortly after the election. Less than a year after his marriage-the exact date is unknown-Urilla died suddenly. The cause is uncertain; some reports say typhoid, others say she died in childbirth with a stillborn baby. For reasons obscured by time, Wyatt, with brothers James, Virgil, and Morgan, engaged in a street fight with Urilla's two brothers, Fred and Bert Sutherland, and their friends the Brummett boys, Granville, Loyd, and Jordan. Both sides emerged bruised, battered, but alive. The cause of the brawl has never been determined.