An unexpected surprise entered our day. As we were perusing the Harley Davidsons a salesman walked up to greet us. We conversed for almost a half hour before we turned to leave and he handed us his card. As we read his business card we noticed his name.
Of course we asked the question that begged to be asked. His response was, Yes indeed, he was related to Wyatt Earp as Wyatt was his great-great-great uncle.
Wyatt Earp was a legendary American gambler, Pima County, Arizona Deputy Sheriff, and Deputy Town Marshal in Tombstone, Arizona, who became known as the “toughest and deadliest gunman” in the Old West.
He took part in the epic Gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, during which Earp, his two brothers James and Virgil, and their friend and ally, gambler, gunfighter, and dentist, John Henry “Doc” Holliday, killed three outlaw Cowboys who had been threatening to kill the Earps.
The gunfight lasted only 30 seconds, but it ended up defining Earp’s life.
In an interview in 1888, Wyatt Earp claimed to have killed “over a dozen stage robbers, murderers and cattle thieves’ in his time as a lawman.
However, Earp was at different times in his life a city policeman, county sheriff, teamster, buffalo hunter, bouncer, saloon-keeper, gambler, brothel owner, pimp, miner, and boxing referee.
He spent his early life in Iowa. Within the next two years he was arrested, sued twice, escaped from jail, then was arrested three more times for “keeping and being found in a house of ill-fame”.
An imposing figure at 5'11 tall and 170lbs, he was reputed to be very capable of using his fists instead of a weapon but was expert with a pistol, showed no fear of any man, and often attracted notoriety.
He died at his home in Los Angeles at the age of 80, with an obituary describing him as “a gun fighter, whose blazing six-shooters, were for most of his life allied with the side of law and order’.
Earp’s life had been immortalised in many a Hollywood film.
To our surprise it seemed a small world and proved to an interesting day.
Nana
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