19 March: Wyatt Earp

On this date in 1848 Wyatt Earp, US lawman who was involved in five gunfights in Tombstone, Arizona including the Gunfight at the OK Corral, was born. 10 things you might not know about him.

1. Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp was born in Monmouth, Illinois and named after his father’s commander in the Mexican-American War.
2. He ran away from home in 1861 to join the Union army; however, his father found him and brought him home. His brothers did serve in the Civil War, however.
3. He probably witnessed his first gunfight after his family decided to travel west on a wagon train to California, and were beset by Indian raids as they travelled. By the end of 1864, the Earps had reached San Bernardino, California. Wyatt's jobs at that time included being a labourer on his father’s farm, hauling freight and jobs in railroad camps.
4. Earp was married in January 1870 to Urilla Sutherland, but she died from typhoid that same year. She was expecting their first child at the time. He sold their house for $75 and went into a downward spiral. However, it was at this time he first worked as a lawman, beating his half brother Newton to the office of constable.
5. He had two more significant relationships – in Dodge City he had a common law wife called Mattie Blaylock, and in Tombstone, he met Josephine Sarah "Sadie" Marcus. Although she wrote in her memoirs that they were married on Lucky Baldwin's yacht off the California coast, there is no public record that it ever happened, so she is assumed to have remained a common law wife.
6. Wyatt Earp was 6 feet (1.8 m) tall, which is tall for the time, when the average height was 5 feet 6 inches (1.68 m). Newspaper accounts of the time describe him as "quiet, unassuming, broad-shouldered, with a large blonde moustache. He is dignified, self-contained, game and fearless". He had Blue eyes and a strong, square chin. Despite his "quiet and unassuming" demeanour, though, he was muscular and could hold his own in a brawl.
7. The event which he's most famous for lasted less than a minute. The gunfight at the OK Corral took place on the afternoon of October 26, 1881 when Earp and his brothers Morgan and Virgil, and Doc Holliday, confronted cattle-thieves Billy and Ike Clanton and Frank and Tom McLaury. Frank and Tom McLaury and Billy Clanton were killed. In the 1957 film, the shoot-out lasted several minutes and shows the participants heavily armed. In actuality the fight only lasted about 30 seconds and each man was armed with just one revolver. Today, the corral is part of Tombstone’s historic district where re-enactments of the gunfight take place for tourists.
8. Strictly speaking, the gunfight didn't actually take place at the OK Corral at all but at a vacant lot on Fremont Street, down the road from the corral. However, the people who made the 1957 film embellished the facts somewhat, and probably decided Gunfight at a Vacant Lot on Fremont Street wasn't a punchy enough title. Wyatt Earp probably wasn't even the hero, since his brother Virgil had not only been a lawman for longer, but had also served in the Civil War and would have been way more experienced in a shoot out situation.
9. So why isn't Virgil the folk hero? Wyatt's notoriety comes from a biography published two years after he died. It portrayed him as the deadliest and most feared shooter in the Old West, although there is so much exaggeration in it that it's thought to be more fiction than fact. His common law wife Josephine was loose with the facts, too. She persuaded his biographers to paint him as a teetotaler, although it's likely he went on regular drinking binges with his friend Charlie Welsh, especially when Josephine was out of town.
10. Earp died at his home in Los Angeles, possibly of chronic cystitis, on January 13, 1929. He was 80, and the last surviving participant of the gunfight at the OK Corral. Western film star Tom Mix was a pallbearer at his funeral. Henry Fonda, James Garner and Kevin Costner have all portrayed Wyatt Earp on screen.

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