Lady at the O.K. Corral: The True Story of Josephine Marcus Earp

by Ann Kirschner

  A rush of capital from New York, Philadelphia, and Boston assured that Tombstone would grow up in a hurry. The all-important Wells Fargo company opened an office, a sign that the boomtown had crossed the threshold of commercial viability, big and stable enough to warrant attention from the ubiquitous business agent of the West, “the ready companion of civilization, the universal friend and agent of the miner, his errand man, his banker, his post office.” One hundred new people arrived by stagecoach each week, not only miners and bankers, but engineers, lawyers, and merchants. The next wave brought their wives and prostitutes, with a rush of French restaurants and oyster bars, tennis courts and bowling alleys, springing up to serve and entertain them.

  Despite the dust and the summer heat, Tombstone had style. Several dress shops and milliners outfitted the local women with the latest Paris fashions. Tombstone had “the most expensive of everything,” proclaimed an Arizona travel guide in 1881. Two luxury hotels, the Cosmopolitan Hotel and the Grand Hotel, competed for customers with bars and casinos and public rooms outfitted with chandeliers, carpets, grand pianos, and paintings, assuring a level of elegance that would not be out of place in San Francisco.

  When Josephine climbed down from the Benson stagecoach, Kitty’s husband Harry and Johnny Behan were waiting for her. Maria Duarte disappeared with the rest of the passengers into the Tombstone crowd.

  Harry Jones had an office on Allen Street, right in the center of Tombstone, and a comfortable three-room residence across the street from Johnny Behan. But Josephine did not accept the Joneses’ offer of a place to stay. Instead, she walked across the street to Johnny’s house. There she discovered that he had a son who would be sharing her new home.

  Josephine’s initial hesitation was correct; Johnny Behan was escaping a failed marriage and a stalled career. He had married the former Victoria Zaff in San Francisco in 1869 and settled in Prescott, near her parents, fathering two children during their six years of marriage. It was true, as Johnny boasted, that he’d held elected and appointed offices, including stints as sheriff and as an elected member of the territorial legislature from Yavapai County. But he had lost his last election, and then his marriage and his political career began to fall apart.

  Victoria filed for divorce in 1875, going enthusiastically public with graphic allegations of Johnny’s violence and debauchery. She charged that her husband was often drunk and subjected her to “a threatening and menacing manner calling me names such as whore and other epithets of like character and by falsely charging me with having had criminal intercourse with other men, threatened to turn me out of the house, quarreling with, and abusing me, swearing and threatening to inflict upon me personal violence.” Johnny frequented the local brothels, causing a scandal among their friends and neighbors, one of whom testified in support of Victoria’s accusations, though dryly noting, “I can’t say of my own knowledge that [Johnny] had carnal intercourse with the inmates of said houses of ill fame.”

  “I have been nearly driven to distraction,” testified Victoria Behan, insulted and disgusted by Johnny’s outbursts and his attachment to one particular house of ill fame and one favorite prostitute, Sadie Mansfield, with whom Johnny did “carouse, cohabit, and have sexual intercourse.”

  Behan denied everything. But the damage was done. Victoria had incited Prescott and its environs, especially given her stepfather’s prominence as the former sheriff. She was granted custody, and Johnny was ordered to contribute child support for their son Albert (their daughter died soon after the divorce). However, Victoria voluntarily allowed Johnny to take Albert to live in Tombstone, probably because she was already planning her second wedding, this time to a local businessman.

  Behan and Albert, accompanied by Johnny’s favorite racehorse, Little Mare, moved to Tombstone, where Johnny planned to resume his career as lawman, businessman, and politician. A new county would be created out of the bustling Tombstone region, and he hoped to be appointed as its first county sheriff. He invested in a livery stable with his well-connected friend John O. Dunbar, and they also leased the bar at the Grand Hotel.

  Josephine would build two lasting relationships in Tombstone. One of them was with Johnny’s son, Albert, who immediately warmed up to the pretty young woman who had moved in with his father. The other lasting relationship would not be with Albert’s father.

  Johnny introduced Josephine around town as Mrs. Behan, but Josephine was quickly disenchanted with the empty promise of the salutation. Johnny’s conduct was inexplicable. He refused to set a wedding date and avoided any reference to marriage. In her letters home, she hinted enough of her unhappiness to prompt her father to wire her money.

  What happened next was predictable, if sad. Josephine taunted Johnny with her financial independence, which prompted Johnny to renew his marriage proposal, take Josephine’s parents’ money and her diamond engagement ring, and sign a ninety-nine-year lease on a nice home on Safford and Sixth—listed solely in his name.

  Johnny Behan had successfully restarted his life. He had acquired a desirable new mistress who acted as governess to his son, a responsibility that she gladly accepted out of affection for the young boy. Johnny’s professional life was flourishing: the Grand Hotel bar business was thriving, he was well liked in Tombstone, and he balanced his Democratic connections with a close business partnership and friendship with the Republican Dunbar family. He had correctly anticipated the creation of the newly named Cochise County and was massaging the political connections that would smooth his path to becoming its first sheriff.

  Wyatt Earp was the only hurdle in his way.

  THE EARP WAGON came rolling into Tombstone in December 1879, laden down with furniture and pots and pans, a sewing machine hanging off the back. The family looked more like a bedraggled pack of peddlers than smooth gamblers and cool lawmen. Their timing was excellent. Although founder Ed Schieffelin had already cashed out and would soon be headed for Alaska in search of the next big strike, Tombstone had not yet reached the pinnacle of boomtown prosperity.

  Even to their wives, Wyatt and his brothers were like “peas in a pod.” Virgil was the eldest, and he had a certain twinkle in the eyes that his brothers, especially dour Wyatt, rarely betrayed. Josephine would later agree that Virgil’s face was “filled with laughter and he was more free with his mannerisms than the others.” To the townspeople, however, the Earp brothers looked so much alike that one merchant sold a horse to Morgan and swore that he sold the horse to Wyatt. All of the brothers were light-haired, wore bushy mustaches, and topped six feet. When they walked down the street together, they were an imposing group, with lean, rugged physiques and a certain athletic grace.

  Among the Earp brothers, Virgil was the most responsible and Wyatt the most handsome. One of the earliest Tombstone chroniclers, Walter Noble Burns, captured Wyatt as “the lion of Tombstone”:

  His face was long and pale, his deep set eyes were blue gray, chin was massive, heavy tawny moustache, hair as yellow as a lion’s mane, deep voice was a booming lion-like growl, and he suggested a lion in the slow, slithery ease of his movements and in his gaunt, heavy-boned, loose-limbed, powerful frame.

  Burns had never seen young Earp, but Burns’s flowery prose was matched by contemporaries who knew Wyatt in his prime. When Kansas judge Charles Hatton was interviewed about Wyatt, his wife interrupted to add her two cents that he was “the handsomest, best-mannered young man in Wichita.” Men were no less effusive and lingering in their description of Earp’s hunky good looks. Wyatt’s close friend Bat Masterson described Earp as “weighing in the neighborhood of one hundred and sixty pounds, all of it muscle. He stood six feet in height, with light blue eyes, and a complexion bordering on the blond.” John Clum, the mayor of Tombstone, recalled Earp as “tall, erect, manly, serene, and in neat attire . . . I still have a clear vision of that dignified figure walking calmly along Allen Street.” Clum went on to praise Wyatt’s manner as friendly but reserved, “equally unperturbed whether he was anticipat
ing a meeting with a friend or a foe.”

  The Earp brothers preferred each other’s company to that of any outsider. All veterans of an outdoor life and a frontier philosophy that had toughened them, they relied on each other. Their wives were equally clannish and mutually supportive. But Tombstone would be the first time—and the last—that all of them lived and worked together.

  THE EARPS BELONGED to an old Scotch-Irish family who immigrated to Maryland around 1680. Ever a roving clan, generations of Earps changed their residences as the borders of the young country expanded, crisscrossing the thirteen original colonies and eventually wandering westward to the frontier.

  Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp was born on March 19, 1848, in Illinois, the fifth of the eight children of Nicholas and Virginia Cooksey Earp. Named for his father’s commanding officer in the Mexican War, Wyatt was too young to serve in the Civil War, but three brothers fought on the Union side. Oldest brother Newton was unharmed, but James Earp was injured enough to qualify for a lifetime pension. Virgil suffered a less visible wound: before going off to war, he had married without the consent of his bride’s parents, who took advantage of his absence to spirit the young woman away. They told Virgil that she was dead. It would be nearly thirty years before Virgil would discover what had become of his young wife.

  As the Civil War drew to a close, the Earp family uprooted themselves once again to join one of the great migrations of American history, the fulfillment of the “manifest destiny” that had driven American policies and demography since the founding of the country. Nicholas Earp was asked to lead a wagon train headed to California. A strict disciplinarian with a salty tongue, Nicholas soon alienated some of his constituency with his profane language and his intolerance of noisy and active children, whom he threatened to whip if their parents did not. Tensions were high during this long and dangerous journey. As attacks by Indians were relatively rare, deprivation and disease caused the most fatalities during the seven-month journey, especially for children and the many babies who were born along the way. While men emphasized the adventure and the economic objectives of the trip, the women were consumed with the difficult communal life of the wagon train, especially the challenges of everyday tasks like child care, laundry, food preparation, caring for the sick, and hygiene. It was the women who counted the horrifying number of roadside graves and recorded the terrors of the journey in their journals and letters.

  By the time Nicholas Earp’s wagon train had arrived in San Bernardino, California, in December 1864, the accompanying families were grateful to have reached their destination—and eager to say good-bye to the demanding Nicholas Earp.

  Despite the ardors of the trip, the Earp family stayed on the West Coast only a few years before returning to the Midwest. They took up residence in Iowa, and then in Lamar, Missouri. At twenty-two, Wyatt ran for election as the town constable, and fell in love with the local hotelier’s daughter. He married Aurilla Sutherland on January 10, 1870, with Nicholas Earp presiding as justice of the peace. Of the four women who would eventually take the name Mrs. Earp, only Aurilla would celebrate with Wyatt in a public ceremony.

  With a legally sanctioned marriage, a responsible job, and most of his family gathered around him, Wyatt bought a house and showed every sign of being ready to settle down and become a pillar of the community.

  Less than one year later, Aurilla died in childbirth during a cholera epidemic; her son was buried with her. Wyatt never spoke publicly about his young bride, other than to acknowledge that he had been married. He never admitted that his wife’s death set off a personal crisis as well as a family feud.

  The next few years would prove to be the darkest of Wyatt’s life. The grieving young widower brawled in public with Aurilla’s brothers, stole horses, and served a month in jail before skipping town. By the time his official biography was published, it would not mention any of his times in “the cold and silent calaboose” as a gambler, pimp, and thief. Josephine may have known only the most general facts about these years. Without acknowledging the aftermath of his brief marriage, she shaped the timeline around his years on the plains, where an unusual fraternity of some ten thousand buffalo hunters honed their drinking and shooting and gambling skills and spawned lifelong friendships. It was here that Wyatt met Bat Masterson, whose career would parallel Wyatt’s, and who would become Josephine’s friend and admirer. However, during these years, Wyatt was at least as familiar with brothels as he was with buffalo and Bat Masterson.

  In cities like Peoria, Illinois, and Wichita, Kansas, prostitution was publicly frowned upon but privately tolerated and regulated as an important source of revenue. It was common practice for mayors and police officials to impose monthly fines or jail terms, castigating the offenders with loud public outcries. A few days later, these revenues safely stored in the city coffers, business would go back to normal. The city treasuries relied on the prostitutes’ contribution, and local merchants depended on the “sporting houses” to keep visitors happy and the town lively.

  Wyatt was arrested at least twice in Peoria before leaving for Kansas, where he ran brothels with his brother James and James’s common-law wife Bessie. In Wichita he entered into a second relationship, though this one had no officiating justice of the peace. He lived for more than a year with Sally Haspel, who was probably the daughter of a local madam who worked with Bessie. Newspaper accounts identify “Sarah Earp” as depraved but good-looking. Both Bessie and Sally endured a grueling cycle of arrests and fines until the spring of 1875, when Wyatt joined the local police force. At this point, the monthly payments ceased, and Sally disappeared from the public record.

  Wichita and Dodge City were major hubs in the Kansas cattle trade and temporary homes to throngs of young men returning from months on the open range. “Cow-boys” meant cash to the local businesses, but signaled trouble. When they came to town, soaked with alcohol and tense with gambling challenges, their antics destabilized the fragile peace of a gun-toting community.

  Wyatt served in Kansas with distinction as a peace officer. He was paid in cash for each arrest, and mostly he arrested cowboys. Town leaders liked him because he managed to avoid fatalities; most unruly cowboys responded well to a sharp knock on the head, known as buffaloing, and an uncomfortable night in jail. This technique worked nicely because the troublemakers were mostly transients blowing off steam. Things would be different in Tombstone.

  Wyatt’s world of gambling and guns and rowdies brought him into contact with a rising Dodge City gambler, Doc Holliday, a thin, tubercular dentist from Georgia. Their friendship was sealed when Doc Holliday came to Wyatt’s aid in a shootout, tossing a gun to him at an opportune moment.

  Loyalty to friends and family was an absolute for the Earps. “Doc was my friend and I was Doc’s friend until he died,” Wyatt steadfastly declared, although none of his brothers and few of his friends shared Wyatt’s affection for Doc, whose nasty temper was as legendary as his dangerous straight shooting. Bat Masterson detested him. “Physically, Doc Holliday was a weakling who couldn’t have whipped a healthy fifteen-year-old boy,” Masterson recalled, dismissing Doc as high-strung and effeminate.

  Even with Doc around for excitement, Dodge City was, in Wyatt’s words, “losing its snap.” Virgil was scouting the latest boomtown, and urging his brothers to convene there. In September 1879 the Earp caravan set out for Tombstone. Among the party were James and Bessie and her teenage daughter. Doc and his longtime companion and lover, “Big Nose” Kate, had made plans to join them later. Younger brother Morgan Earp—everyone’s favorite—and his common-law wife Louisa were also on the way. And there was a new Mrs. Earp: in place of Sally, Celia “Mattie” Blaylock was now sitting next to Wyatt. She had left home as a young girl and was living on her own until she met Wyatt, probably in Fort Griffin, Texas. No beauty, Mattie was a sturdy, large-boned woman with a sweet square face, a mass of curls hiding a broad brow, and long ringlets down her back. She had the look of someone dependable, shy, and long-suff
ering.

  Although Nicholas and Virginia Earp had been joined in a traditional marriage, their sons preferred common-law partnerships requiring nothing other than a voluntary declaration that man and woman were living together as a married couple. This was a popular alternative in the western territories, where couples moved between remote and sometimes dangerous locations where clergymen were not always available. “If a man and woman said, ‘We are Mister and Missus,’ they were, that is all there was to it,” recalled one observer of frontier marriage. The self-declared husband and wife could sign legal documents together and were classified as married by the census, but the common-law widow was not eligible to collect her disabled husband’s Civil War pension. And, as Mattie Earp would discover, common-law marriages were easy to create, and could be dissolved just as easily.

  In Prescott, Virgil and his common-law wife Alvira Packingham Sullivan Earp (known to all as “Allie”) joined the caravan. They had been living in the town where Virgil had been appointed deputy U.S. marshal, the highest office that any of the Earp brothers would hold. Virgil and Alvira had been a couple since 1874, when Allie served Virgil a meal in a Council Bluffs, Iowa, restaurant. It was love at first sight: Allie was immediately drawn to this “big blond” who “looked nice on a horse.” Small and spare, Allie adored Virgil and was the most quick-witted of the group, always ready with a sarcastic retort for anyone other than Virgil.

  The last Earp to arrive in Tombstone was Morgan. He too had acquired a common-law wife, Louisa Houston. A longtime sufferer from rheumatoid arthritis, Louisa stayed behind with Morgan’s parents in San Bernardino, California. “They are all old fashioned people here,” she confided to her sister, “and I like it very much.” Despite Nicholas’s harsh reputation, he and his wife treated Louisa with exceptional kindness, and her health improved in the temperate climate. She knew from Morgan’s letters that Tombstone’s steady rains and dust storms did not augur well for her health, but she missed him and left San Bernardino as soon as he sent for her.