Wyatt Barry Stapp Earp

[Free Hand]

   Wyatt Earp not only was never a cow hand, he never dressed like one (with thepossible exception of when he was riding as a shotgun messenger for Wells Fargo).I understand that he never thought very highly of them. He even went so far in the opposite direction as to have holsters sewn into the pockets of some of his coats.

Also I've read that because he was a member of a particular political party and a large contingent of the more influential business people in Tombstone were of the other one, this helped to exacerbate the friction between the diferent factions there. Is anyone aware of anything that would support of refute these ideas?
 
Eager to hear either way.

Tom B

[St. George]

There are a number of accounts of the Earps and the times they lived in.

He lived well into the 20th Century - dying in 1929, so there was quite a bit written at a time when the Old West was being seriously romanticized - though that started with the Wild West Shows of the late 1880's.

Winnowing out the wheat from the chaff is continually being done, as research techniques improve and forgotten pages turned.

Here's what looks to be the definitive work on Earp - with an impressive bibliography.

'Wyatt Earp - A Biography of the Legend' - by Lee A. Silva

Volume I: The Cowtown Years - ISBN 0-9714719-0-8 - (currently available)

Volume II: Tombstone: The Legend-Making Years - (pending publication)

Volume III: The Forgotten Years - (pending publication)

Volume IV: The Last Years and the Legend -  (pending publication)

Research is the best way to understand the times.

Vaya,

Scouts Out!

[Tubac]

Southern Arizona was full of texans that were pro- confederacy during the war, and unreconstructed after.
Earp was a Yankee Republican as were the newcomers in towns. The ranchers and cowhands were Southern Democrats, who resented these carpetbagers coming in after the war. Friction naturally followed.

Tubac, from the Confederate territory of Arizona

[Advertising]

[Books OToole]

The political rivalry was also represented in the newspapers.  There were two newspapers in Tombstone.  One was pro-Earp and the other was very anti-Earp.

St. George is correct about the evaluation of new &/or better research.  The challenge becomes evaluation of the sources used.  The problem with the Earp legend and the revisionists painting Wyatt and his brothers as well dressed criminals, is that the pro-Earp newspaper burned and the back issues/archives were destroyed.  Therefore the only newspaper accounts available to the modern reseacher are from the anti-Earp paper.

It takes a very critical eye to determine what really happened. (and sometimes it is impossible.)

Here is and example.

The unarmed victims of the Fly's Studio/O.K. Corral shoot out, managed to wound Virgil and Morgan Earp (and Doc Holliday slightly.)  How could that happen?

Books

[Free Hand]

I do thank you very kindly gentelemen for your input, particularly the list of books. BTW I ran into a little Wyatt Earp museum and used book store down in the Gas Lamp District of San Diego. The owner has written a book about the decade that Wyatt there and his involvment in various gambling enterprises there and South of the Border; particularly boxing and horse racing. The place where he operated a gambling parlor (just below a brothel) is still there. It was a rather wide open town until WWII from what I understand.

Also I have an article in American Cemetery Maqgizine (I work at a cemetery in Riverside CA). Refering to his death and the disposition of his crematede remains, just in case anyones' intrested. If not there's no sense in boring anyone with it.   

[Steel Horse Bailey]

A book titled "The Tombstone Epitaph", by Douglas D. Martin, is reprinted from "back in the day."  The Epitaph was the Pro-Earp newspaper, and about the only remaining Epitaph records that survived the fire(s).  There were a "ton" of fires: seems like there were 10 'burned to the ground' Tombstone fires ... in just a small handful of years - less than 3, if I remember right.

[The Elderly Kid]

It's significant that the pro-Earp paper, the Epitaph, referred to the two parties thus: the Earps were "the Lawmen" and the Clanton gang "the Rustlers."  The anti-Earp paper (I think it was the Nugget) referred to the Clantons as "the Cowboys" and the Earps as "the Gamblers." Modern media have nothing on the frontier variety when it came to slant and provocative phrasing.

[Four-Eyed Buck]

EK, maybe it has something to do with the ink? Could be they were sniffing it? Seems newspapers and reporters always seem to have objectivity problems............Buck

[Chance]

One big bone of contention over here is the 'Buntline' legend. I'd be interested to here any views on the subject.

[Books OToole]

In my opinion the "Buntline" special is a myth.  At least where Earp is concerned.

Books

[The Elderly Kid]

To the best of my knowledge and scholarship (not comprehensive in either case) the so-called Buntline Special is only averred by Ned Buntline himself, who claimed that he made gifts of these extravagant revolvers to Wyatt and other lawmen. Surely if Wyatt had packed around a revolver with such distinctive looks someone else would have mentioned it. I thought the film "Tombstone" took a clever middle course, having Wyatt use a rather restrained Buntline. It looked like about a 9" barrel to me.

[St. George]

Look at the 'Kansas Historical Quarterly' - http://www.kancoll.org/khq/1976/76_2_shillingberg.htm

Wyatt Earp and the "Buntline Special" Myth - by William B. Shillingberg
Copyright, 1976, by the author.)

Summer 1976 (Vol. 42, No. 2), pages 113 to 154

It goes in to great detail about this enduring, yet fabricated myth and provides additional references.

Vaya,

Scouts Out!

[Dr. Bob]

St. George,

Quite an article.  I dropped out after the "Buntline went to the bottom of the Pacific!  Myths are the stuff of movies!   Probably why historians don't make them!   Folks would consider them too boring.

[Four-Eyed Buck]

Lee Silva's book on Wyatt takes a different line on the story. Buntline was out that way at the time, but the lawman part was a slight journalistic prefabrication. he was looking for a few more buff hunters to try and revive the play he had going that Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack had left to start their own. All of the receipients had been buff hunters at some point. The barrel lengths were 10" and would not show up in Colt's records as they were picked up, not shipped. Josie's memoire really muddied the story up, Wyatt had loaned his to his partner, Charlie Moxie, of the Alaskan Saloon venture and never got it back. Efforts to find Moxie descendants have been fruitless so far. There would be the place to really look for the truth in the story................Buck

[Books OToole]

Bat Masterson (Also a buffalo hunter & law man) was alledgedly one of the other recipents.  According to legend, Bat had his cut down to a more manageable length.  The latest Bio of Masterson, by Robert Dearment, makes no mention of the mythical Buntline Special.

Books

[St. George]

Did the famed long-barrelled Colts exist?

Certainly - since the days when the Paterson was new.

Many, many fakes abound, and some were fitted with a very rare shoulder stock that's been reproduced, as well.

The problem is the tying of one of them with the lawmen that Buntline claimed to've given them to.

The survivors of the era - Earp and Masterson, notably - make no mention, and theirs were well-reported lives lasting well into the twentieth century.

Stuart Lake was known to fabricate for publication, though he was no match for Buntline, whose purple prose romanticized and mythologized the fading days of the frontier so thoroughly that some folks still take their work seriously.

Research and Provenance are key - can't get the one without doing a lot of the other...

Vaya,

Scouts Out!

[Four-Eyed Buck]

St. George, try getting access to Silva's Vol I on Wyatt. There's a whole chapter on the Buntline dispute. He's done some real digging and believes it's certainly feasable. It's some pretty heavy reading( in more ways than one. Book's as thick as a Webster's!). He has it narrowed down to two or three serial blocks for them. Also descriptions from the day of the Corral shoot out work out to him carrying a 10" Colt earlier in the day..........the butcher's testimony....................Buck