It would seem that to explain how Wyatt Earp became known, it is necessary to defend him against some of the allegations of his strongest critics. One of the first things you will hear from critics, hack writers, and even some historians is that Wyatt Earp was completely unknown in his own day. There is a fair amount of truth in this statement. Prior to the 1960's, you couldn't find Wyatt Earp in any history books or encyclopedias. Prior to Lake's book in 1931, Wyatt Earp was no where near as well known as he would become. But it is completely untrue that Wyatt Earp was just a shadow in the "Old West" that no one had ever heard of. One need only to consult the newspapers of the day from Dodge City and Tombstone. Wyatt had a reputation as being a "capable" and "fearless" lawman. In one of the previous sections on this homepage, you will find a quote from an article in the Dodge City newspaper heralding Wyatt's return to Dodge after a brief time being away. Historians and searches of Kansas newspapers at the time have shown that Wyatt had built a reputation as being a "compelling" and "effective" officer. (1) Wyatt and his brothers gained national attention in the newspapers after the shoot-out at the OK Corral. Dr. Paul Hutton, Professor of History, University of New Mexico goes on to note in the same article that "Wyatt Earp was certainly well known in his day, especially in the mining towns and the gambling circuit." (2) When the citizens of Wichita and Dodge City heard that Wyatt and his brothers were up on charges of murder, they sent compelling letters of support to Judge Wells Spicer in Tombstone. Even the famous Hollywood actor, Charlie Chaplin (who wasn't from the United States), had heard of Wyatt before he met him one day on a movie set where Wyatt was hanging around with friend William S. Hart. When introduced to Wyatt, Chaplin said, "You're the bloke from Arizona, aren't you?" "Tamed the baddies, huh?" (3)

Perhaps nothing brought Wyatt Earp more attention prior to Lake's book in 1931 then the infamous Fitzsimmons-Sharkey fight that Wyatt refereed in the 1890's. Fitzsimmons was the heavy favorite and had knocked Sharkey to the mat, when Wyatt gave the match to Sharkey on a low blow. Of course, everyone on Sharkey's side said there was a low blow, and everyone on Fitzsimmons' side said there wasn't, and the crowd was equally split as well. Wyatt was burned up in the national papers for weeks on end after that decision with charges of favoritism and being "fixed". The case finally ended up in court when Fitzsimmons sued Earp for the prize money he lost. The case was eventually thrown out, but Wyatt's image was indelibly marked on the minds of the people of that era and so was his character tarnished by those who believed he was "fixed" to throw the fight for Sharkey.

Since about 1905, Wyatt had sought to have published his accounts of what had happened in Tombstone. Many people have criticized Earp for attempting to have his life story published. Earp felt he had a story to tell, and he felt the need to set some facts straight after books starting coming out in the early 1920's at first criticizing him, then the ones that painted him as the man who "tamed the west". Unfortunately for Earp, he was no writer. The story that he dictated to family friend John Flood was so poorly written that no publisher would take it. In the late 1920's, Earp was approached by a man named Stuart Lake, who asked to write Earp's life story. Since the "Flood Manuscript" wasn't being picked up by anyone, Earp turned over the work Flood had done to Lake to be "professionalized". Lake would also meet with Earp and conduct several interviews, how much he actually met with Earp will be discussed below. Wyatt Earp died in 1929 and Stuart Lake didn't publish his book "Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal" until 1931. Wyatt never got to see the finished project. Lake had taken the few interviews he had with Earp and turned Wyatt into an untarnished hero who tamed bad men of the west with his six shooter and generally left law and order in his wake wherever he went. Despite Josie Earp's attempts to sue Lake for what she described as being "outright lies", the legend of Wyatt Earp had been born, and it would never die. But with the notoriety and fame, came the people who sought to knock Wyatt Earp off of the golden throne that Lake had set him upon. Instead of knocking Lake's character, "Wyatt Earp" back down to earth into the real man he was, they sought to take him down even further and vilify his character and kick dirt on his name.

I won't go into debunking the debunkers very much, but I think it is important to point out the flaws in the mental processes of the authors who sought not to bring out the truth in Wyatt Earp, but only to soil his name. In almost every book that the prospective reader will read from an author that is critical to the Earps, they will find that the author used William Breakenridge's Helldorado as their core material and that they used Stuart Lake's Frontier Marshal as the spoken word of Wyatt Earp as dictated to Lake. Billy Breakenridge was a Deputy Sheriff in Tombstone under John Behan when Wyatt and his brothers were there. Breakenridge was insanely jealous of the notoriety Wyatt Earp had received and he made it very clear on more than one occasion that he thoroughly disliked the Earps. He would comment while he was writing his book how he intended to "burn up the Earps". His book in 1929 was the first large scale effort to bring Wyatt Earp down. But his lacking objectivity made his book poor core material for finding out about the "real" Wyatt Earp. In addition, "The Earp Brothers of Tombstone" by Frank Waters is poor core material as Waters seemed to have an axe to grind. Supposedly from the mouth of Allie Earp, "Earp Brothers", was actually more Waters' opinion surrounded by a few short interviews he actually had with Virgil's widow. Critics from the early part of the century would also endlessly quote oldtimers from Tombstone who told how much the Earps were disliked in Tombstone and how they were thought to be stage robbers. Tombstone was very factionalized in the days of Wyatt Earp and when the Earps and their Republican friends left Tombstone, all that was left was Clanton and McLaury supporters. Their biased opinions also make for poor research material. As for the latter charge, Ike Clanton and his supporters were the only ones in Tombstone who claimed that the Earps were involved in stage robbery, they were never charged with any such crime and there was no evidence as such. Enter "Frontier Marshal". Critics use this book to claim that Wyatt Earp was a braggart and a liar. Usually just prior to vilifying a particular story about Wyatt, they will say, "Earp told his biographer Stuart Lake..." The authors in question take Frontier Marshal to be a book from the mouth of Wyatt Earp. This is due, in large part, to Lake's assertion in the front of his book that it did indeed come, word for word, from the mouth of Wyatt Earp. When in fact, Lake would later admit that he actually spent little time with Wyatt and got very little information from him. He would go on to say that few quotes, if any, actually came from Earp and that he was able to put "words in the mouth" of the old man. (4) The fact that Lake found out was that Wyatt Earp, either because he couldn't remember or didn't want to, talked very little about the days in Tombstone. Earp was known to his family, friends, and strangers who met him as being extremely private, a man of few words, and rarely known to talk about the "old days". In later years when his excited nieces and nephews would pump him for information asking, "How many men did you really kill Uncle Wyatt?", Earp would quickly change the subject. He would go on to say to other people, "That fight didn't take but about 30 seconds, and it seems like , in my going on 80 years, we could find some other happenings to discuss." (5) This hardly sounds like a man prone to bragging and lying. Wyatt would later sell interviews to San Francisco area newspapers in the late 19th century detailing his exploits in Arizona. If you have read them, you will see what would appear to be some obvious bragging in them. Pro-Earp historians have pointed out that Wyatt provided the outlines for the interviews and a professional writer wrote the article. I myself have read these articles and I have also read the Wells Spicer Transcripts in which Wyatt gave his testimony. If you compare the two, it will probably be evident to you, as it was to me, that they are not the same people speaking. There was one killing that Wyatt Earp did take particular pride in, and that was the killing of Frank Stilwell. He would later comment to a family member that Stilwell was the "only man I ever had to kill."

Walter Noble Burns would become famous as one of the first authors to paint Wyatt Earp as the hero in white who saved Tombstone. His 1927 book, "Tombstone, An Iliad of the Southwest", incensed Earp because he had refused to give Burns his life story. Burns had interviewed Earp under the pretense of writing a story about Doc Holliday. While Earp probably would have admitted privately that he liked the way Burns told his story, it meant that Earp would have even more trouble getting the Flood Manuscript published, and he wouldn't get any money for Burns' unauthorized biography.

I think that history has yet to make it's final judgment on Wyatt Earp and his place in the history of the "Old West". As Walter Burns said, "Wyatt Earp was a man". He was a man of circumstance and did what he thought he had to do to survive. Whether we condemn him or laud him, we must not forget this fact. Because being a man, Wyatt Earp was not perfect. He was a compulsive gambler, opportunistic, he left his wife for another women, he landed in jail once or twice, he was prone to fighting and had a temper (they weren't called the Fighting Earps for nothing), there were few things he wouldn't do if it meant a profit, and his best friend was a notorious killer whom he may have lied for to protect. "He was a hard man living in hard times", Burns said. And thus we must keep Wyatt Earp in perspective..............

Earp Genealogy

Wyatt Earp's family can reliably be traced back to Thomas Earp, Jr. (b. 1656, England - d. 1720, Maryland). It would appear that the first Earp to study law was Wyatt's grandfather, Walter, being a Justice of the Peace in Monmouth, Illinois, although his chosen profession was school teacher. He would marry and a son, Nicholas, Wyatt's father, would be born in 1813. Other children born to Walter and wife Martha were Lorenzo Dow in 1809, Elizabeth in 1811, Josiah Jackson in 1816, James in 1818, Francis in 1821, Walter C. (twin) in 1824, Jonathan Douglas (twin) in 1824, Sally Ann in 1827.

Link to Earp Census Records

Wyatt Earp: The Early Years

In 1869, Wyatt returned to Lamar, Missouri. There he had his first experience in law enforcement. (1) In Lamar he ran against his older brother Newton for the position of Constable of the Lamar Police Force in 1870. Wyatt won the election by 35 votes. (2) Newton, being the half brother of the other Earps, is hardly mentioned in any reference. We know that he fought in the Civil War, was the first City Marshal of Garden City, Kansas, and died just a short time before Wyatt. He farmed for several years near Garden City and died in December of 1928. Some historians have theorized that Newton and Wyatt ran against each other to heighten the chances of making sure someone in the family got the job. He would later name one of his children Wyatt Clyde Earp, so there is little chance that he and Wyatt ever had animosity between them over the election.

  Link to the Peoria Bummer

In 1875 Wyatt moved to Wichita, Kansas, then a lawless cattle town.(Roger Myers of Lewis, KS recently pointed out that Wyatt could have been in Wichita as early as Oct. of 1874, citing a newspaper article from the Wichita Eagle about Wyatt, which was published in the Miller and Snell book "Great Gunfighters of the Kansas Cowtowns") Wyatt used some political connections to get appointed as a city policeman. (5) Wyatt gained local notoriety and respect as a Wichita police officer. While some debunkers such as Ed Bartholomew in "Wyatt Earp, The Man and the Myth", claim that Wyatt was generally hated and despised by most townspeople, newspapers of the time seem to paint a much different picture of how the public perceived Wyatt. "Wyatt Earp is an excellent officer, who's conduct has been exceptional." Wichita Weekly Beacon 1875 (5) When a suspected horse thief tries to bolt while Wyatt is questioning him, the Beacon reported that Wyatt "fired one shot across the poop deck to bring him to, to use a naughty-cal phrase and just as he did so, the man cast anchor near a clothes line, hauled down his colors and surrendered without firing a gun."(6) Another article from Wichita noted that Wyatt earned further respect from the town when he found a drunk passed out of the street with $500.00 in cash on him. The Weekly Beacon noted that Wyatt didn't take his money and sent the happy man on his way after he had sobered up. Further disproving Bartholomew's theory that Wyatt Earp was a hated and despised man in the town's in which he was a police officer, a letter from Wichita, Kansas was sent to Judge Wells Spicer in Tombstone in support of Wyatt while he was hearing the case over the OK Corral shootout: "We, the undersigned citizens of Wichita are well acquainted with Wyatt S. Earp and were intimately acquainted with him while he was on the Police Force here...We further certify that said Wyatt S. Earp was a good and efficient officer, and was well known for his honesty and integrity, that his character while here was of the best, and that no fault was ever found with him as an officer or as a man." (7)
                                                                     

  Link to Writings on our Tombstone

2. The Showdown at the Hollywood Corral, Wyatt Earp and the Movies, Dr. Paul Hutton,Montana The Magazine of Western History, page 5.
3. The Showdown at the Hollywood Corral, Wyatt Earp and the Movies, Dr. Paul Hutton,Montana The Magazine of Western History, page 6.
4. Lake to Burton Rascoe, Jan. 9, 1941, Rasko to Lake, Dec. 31, 1940, January 13, 1941, Lake Papers.
5. The Showdown at the Hollywood Corral, Wyatt Earp and the Movies, Dr. Paul Hutton,Montana The Magazine of Western History, page 4.