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WESTERN DEAD GIRLS - EARP WOMEN

Earp Women

Urilla

Mattie

Josie

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Frontier lawman and entrepreneur Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp was born in 1848 in Monmouth, Illinois, into a large family and he eventually had three wives, but he never had any children (that he knew of). As a young man, Wyatt worked as a stagecoach driver, railroad construction worker, surveyor, buffalo hunter, and a policeman.

Urilla Sutherland

1849 – 1870

Wyatt Earp married his childhood sweetheart Urilla Sutherland on January 10, 1870 at Lamar, Missouri. His father N.P. Earp, the Justice of the Peace, performed the ceremony.

Unfortunately, Urilla died later that year during childbirth along with their child.

The death of his young bride threw Wyatt into a period of depression and disillusionment. About this time, he probably reconsidered any "christian" bourgeois ethics he may have formerly believed in. In May 1871, Wyatt was arrested and charged with horse stealing in Arkansas, but he skipped bail and was never tried for the offense. Wyatt and his brothers developed careers in gambling, pimping, and law enforcement.

"Mattie"

Celia Ann Blaylock

1850 – 1888

Celia Ann Blaylock was born in 1850 in Wisconsin, but raised in Fairfax, Iowa. Apparently, she ran away from home at the age of 16 and made her way to Kansas, stopping first in Scott City and then moving to Dodge City.

While touring the west in various employment capacities, Wyatt met "Mattie" either in Fort Scott or Dodge, possibly as early as 1873. By this time, the Earp brothers began to have investments in brothels and gambling parlors. (It is the common theory that Mattie, as well as several of the other Earp brother's wives, was a prostitute.) She was certainly his "common-law" wife by 1879 when they left Dodge for the booming mine town of Tombstone, Arizona.

In Tombstone, Republican Wyatt and his brothers' business interests - bars, gambling houses, and brothels - became in direct conflict with the Democratic Clanton family interests. While Wyatt was out making money and chasing down criminals, Mattie was supposed to have developed an addiction for laudanum, a common painkiller of the day, an opium distillate in liquid form.

Josephine
Sarah
Marcus

1861 - 1944

Josephine Sarah Marcus was born in 1861 in New York City to a family of Jewish immigrants from Germany. When Josie was six years old, the Marcus family moved to San Francisco. Josie left home at the age of eighteen and became an actress, joining the Pauline Markham Theater Company, a traveling theatre troupe, performing in the Gilbert & Sullivan opera "H.M.S. Pinafore." Eventually, the troupe made its way to Tombstone, Arizona.

In 1880, "Sadie" Marcus became engaged to Johnny Behan, the Tombstone town sheriff and political tool of the Clanton-cowboy faction. However, the relationship didn't make it to the altar. In July 1881, Sadie became disgusted with Johnny's wandering ways (she found him having an affair with a married woman) and broke up with him.

During August and September, Sadie and Wyatt developed a friendship, which eventually turned into a romantic relationship. (Faced with needing to find a new source of income, did she become a prostitute and hire Wyatt as her pimp?)

Earp and Behan were political adversaries in the 1881 elections for Sheriff of Tombstone. Behan won the election, but Earp won "Josie."

According to some historians, this romantic rivalry was one of the factors that led to the infamous gunfight at the OK Corral.

Mattie became devastated when she learned of the relationship. Virgil's wife, Allie, supported Mattie and tried to help her. But Mattie's laudanum consumption grew.

The heated antagonism between the urban Republican Earps and the rural Democratic Clanton faction also grew, rising to a melting point in the southwestern desert town. On October 26, 1881, Wyatt, his brothers Virgil and Morgan, and their friend "Doc" John Holliday, met Ike and Billy Clanton, Tom and Frank McLaury, Billy Claiborne, and West Fuller in a vacant lot behind the O.K. Corral and next to Camillus S. Fly's boardinghouse and photo studio.

When the gunfight ended thirty seconds later, Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers were mortally wounded. Virgil, Morgan, and Doc were wounded. But Wyatt didn't have a scratch.

"I jumped up as I heard the firing start.
Without stopping for a bonnet I rushed outside.
A man in a wagon yelled,
'Hop in, lady--I'll run you up to the excitement!'
I didn’t know at the time who was wounded
and was too frightened to get closer.
I almost swooned when I saw
Wyatt's tall figure very much alive.
He spotted me, and came across the street.
Like a feather-brained girl, my only thought was,
'My God, I haven't got a bonnet on. What will they think?'
But you can imagine my real relief at seeing my love alive.
I was simply a little hysterical. Can you blame me?"
- Josie Earp

After the gunfight, Clanton killers sought revenge, wounding Virgil and murdering Morgan. The Earps left Tombstone. Mattie traveled with the Earp survivors to Colton, California where they joined up with Wyatt's parents. However, at some point, she left them and ended up in Globe, Arizona where she returned to prostitution. She told her friends her husband had destroyed her life when he deserted her. Tragically, she died of a laudanum overdose on July 3, 1888 in Pinal, Arizona.

(Mattie Earp's existence was not conclusively known until the 1940's. Earp biographer Stuart Lake knew of the existence of Mattie Earp, but covered it up. How would it make his hero from "Frontier Marshal" look if people knew he had left his wife for another woman?) 

"If Mattie had a temper like her sister,
I don't blame him for leaving her."
- Mrs. O.H. Marquis, Mattie's sister's daughter-in-law

While Wyatt and Doc took justice into their own hands by raiding various outlaw hideouts and killing the individuals they believed participated in Morgan's death and Virgil's wounding, Josie returned to her family in San Francisco. Eventually, she joined Wyatt in Gunnison, Colorado where they fought extradition back to Arizona. Wyatt and Josie would stay together for the rest of their lives and she was always fiercely protective of him and his reputation.

Wyatt and Josie traveled the west and even as far north as Alaska in search of success and fortune. They invested in mines and real estate and operated saloons and gambling parlors.

Wyatt and Josie's last years were spent in Los Angeles living off the proceeds of their racehorses, oil, real estate speculation and other types of gambling. In the 1920's Wyatt tried to make it in Hollywood society, hanging out with silent era movie people, hoping to get a movie made about his exploits, becoming friends with cowboy stars Tom Mix and William S. Hart. However, studio producers and directors exploited him for information about the days of the Wild West without ever paying him a dime.

In 1927, Wyatt began having conversations with young writer Stuart Lake regarding the writing of his biography.

At the age of eighty-one, Wyatt Earp died peacefully on January 13, 1929 in Los Angeles. After having Wyatt cremated, she kept the urn containing his ashes for six months in her Los Angeles home. Finally, Josie buried his remains at the Marcus family plot in the Little Hills of Eternity Jewish cemetery in Colma, California.

"Wyatt's family were almost all gone
and we had no children.
My only home was where my parents rest.
So I took Wyatt's ashes to San Francisco."
- Josie Earp

After Wyatt died, Josie argued with Lake about his forthcoming portrayal of Wyatt, which Josie found unflattering. In 1931, Lake’s biography, "Wyatt Earp - Frontier Marshal," finally appeared with the offending passages stricken.

Josephine Marcus Earp had helped craft an authentic American legend.

In 1937, Josie worked for four years with Earp sisters Mabel Earp Cason and Vinnolia Earp Ackerman on her memoirs, but the book was never finished. Eventually, author Glenn Boyer transformed the manuscript into his popular book, "I Married Wyatt Earp, by Josephine Marcus Earp," but the book's authenticity has been questioned.

Josie's final years were filled with lawsuits against the Earp survivors over Wyatt's remaining assets.

 "They were always in court together,
but they were basically close-knit.
When they got out of court they were all friends again."
- Jeanne Cason Laing, niece

In 1939, Twentieth Century Fox studios hired Josie to provide technical advice on an adaptation of "Frontier Marshall." She immediately insisted on rewrites.

Josie lived to be 83 and died on December 19, 1944. She had begun to suffer from senility. Her ashes were buried with Wyatt's in Colma.

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