Mattie Blaylock ran away from home when she was 18. David B. Known as "Sadie" to the public in 1881, she met Wyatt in the frontier boom town Tombstone, Arizona Territory when she was living with Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan. "[20] While Blaylock was living with Earp, she suffered from severe headaches and became addicted to laudanum, an opiate-based pain reliever widely available at the time. But, in April 1881, less than eight months after Behan and Sadie built the house, she rented it to Dr. George Emory Goodfellow. [11][22][23][24]:47[24]:65, The facts about Josephine's life in the Arizona Territory and in Tombstone have been obscured by her legal and personal efforts to keep that period private. Sadie "would always interfere whenever Wyatt would talk with Stuart Lake. [46][47] She was the step-daughter of Yavapai County Sheriff John P. I finally finished reading this book about the life and times of Wyatt Earp. Wyatt's common-law wife Mattie (Dana Wheeler-Nicholson) is addicted to laudanum and his attention is caught by Josephine Marcus (Dana Delany), a traveling actor. By David Cranmer. Henry and his wife were stern parents and adhered to the principle, "spare the rod and spoil the child," and "children should be seen and not heard.". [26]:52, In early 1883, Josephineor Sadie as Wyatt called herand Wyatt left San Francisco for Gunnison, Colorado, where Earp ran a Faro bank until he received a request in April for assistance from Luke Short in Dodge City. In 1868 she ran away from home at age 16, taking her 13 year old sister Sarah, with her. But Leah never left San Francisco with Josephine. May 9, 2014. [75] At Santa Rosa, Earp personally competed in and won a harness race. After Wyatts notorious gunfight at the O.K. Matt Jancer. It's not known where she and Sarah spent the intervening time. Descendants of Josie's half-sister Rebecca allowed a Southern California group in 199899 to erect the stone currently in place. [71]:117 Other researchers and writers aren't even sure she was in town that day. [43], During the next few months, until April 1882, Sadie Mansfield is recorded in various newspapers as traveling back and forth between Tombstone and San Francisco several times. Corral is quiet, and it's had an unremarkable existence for the two years it's been standingalthough . [10], As a girl, Josephine loved going to the theater. Boyer's book was considered a factual memoir, and cited by scholars, studied in classrooms, and used as a source by filmmakers for 32 years. John Wilson Vermillion (1842-1911), also known as " Texas Jack " or later as " Shoot-Your-Eye-Out Vermillion ", was a gunfighter of the Old West known for his participation in the Earp Vendetta Ride and his later association with Soapy Smith . She then made her way to Kansas where she first worked as a prostitute in Scott City before moving on to Dodge City. I thought constantly of my mother and how great must be her grief and worry over me. Cason says she and her sister "finally abandoned work on the manuscript because she [Josie] would not clear up the Tombstone sequence where it pertained to her and Wyatt. It tells the story of Wyatt Earp's darkest secret. He continued his career in law enforcement in Dodge City. Josephine wanted to keep what she viewed as their tarnished history in Tombstone private. While the town already had five saloons with five courtesans, Johnny's new saloon had none. James Earp's wife, Bessie, was also a prostitute or madam, hailing from Wichita, Kansas, and she eventually moved with her husband to Tombstone. Bourke. Upon their return, they arrived late in the evening and a day earlier than expected, at the house built with her father's money. "[38] She said that at the age of 18, she ran away with two friends, Dora Hirsch, daughter of her music teacher, and a girl named Agnes, who had a role in Pauline Markham troupe's production of H.M.S. There, she met Wyatt Earp around 1873 and soon became his romantic companion. She wrote, "life was dull for me in San Francisco. Both of Behan's children, Henrietta and Albert, were ill with meningitis around 1877, and in July of that year, Henrietta died from the disease. [112], Cemetery officials re-set the stone flush in concrete, but it was stolen again. [19], Wyatt refereed the Fitzsimmons vs. Sharkey boxing match on December 2, 1896 and was accused of fixing the outcome. [118], Beginning in about 1994, critics began to challenge the accuracy of the book, and eventually many parts of the book were refuted as fictional. [4] In the 1880 United States Census of Tombstone, Blaylock is listed as Wyatt's wife though there is no record of a legal marriage. [2], On February 6, 1875, criminal charges were filed against Sadie Mansfield for petty larceny, accusing her of stealing two German silver spoons worth $126.00. "[2] She said, "the whole experience recurs to my memory as a bad dream and I remember little of its details. Josephine first met John "Johnny" Harris Behan at the ranch house, who she described as, "young and darkly handsome, with merry black eyes and an engaging smile. Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp (1860 - December 19, 1944) was the common-law wife of Wyatt Earp, a famed Old West lawman and gambler. He had a "relationship with" Sadie Mansfield, likely the same girl who had traveled with Hattie Wells' prostitutes from San Francisco. [49] Behan was on the surface an upstanding citizen, married with a child, but he also frequented brothels. [79][80][81], The Earps moved back to San Francisco in 1891[82] so Josie could be closer to her family. Apartment buildings were crowded and large homes were converted into rooming houses. [42]:p275-198[77], After the Coeur d'Alene mining venture died out, Earp and Josie briefly went to El Paso, Texas before moving in 1887 to San Diego where the railroad was about to arrive and a real estate boom was underway. [6][38] Author Sherry Monahan questions why an 18-year-old woman would be carrying books to school and find it necessary to "run away. I don't think she was that devastated when he died. She lived on the family farm, had local friends & activities. When the Comstock Lode production began to fade, San Francisco suffered. Wyatt Earp is a unique breedfor more reasons than oneamong the famed gunslingers and infamous outlaws who shot their way across the Wild West horizon. She wanted him to look like a church-going saint and blow things up. Earp became angry and left. [113] She died penniless. Also coming to Tombstone is Wyatt's good friend, Doc Holliday. After the Gunfight at the O.K. With the provision that Wyatt's name be removed from the title, the movie was released as Frontier Marshal. [43] These facts may explain why Josephine later thought of this time in her life as "a bad dream. [26]:49, On June 2, 1880, the U.S. census had recorded Sadie Mansfield, whose occupation was "courtesan", as living in Tip Top. And you have no business risking money that way. She always interfered! Her body was cremated and buried next to Wyatt's remains. [21], Josephine loved to play poker[104] and developed a serious gambling habit,[11] losing heavily at times. His second wife was Mattie Blaylock, who became addicted to pain killer medicine. Rudolph Stauffer found the Apaches that had escaped the reservation at Cave Creek and fought them. [6][26] Ray says that Josephine didn't have a friend named Dora Hirsch. On the inside were the German Jews and on the outside were the Polish Jews. They likely headed west to one of the growing towns along the Kansas-Iowa-Missouri border area. [34] Josephine always sought excitement in her life. Josephine wrote in I Married Wyatt Earp that she and Wyatt were married in 1892 offshore by the captain of Lucky Baldwin's yacht. [54] In 1874, 14-year-old Sadie Mansfield worked under the watchful eye of Madam Josie Roland as a prostitute in a brothel on Granite Street, between Gurley and Alarcon streets, and near the Yavapai County Courthouse where Sheriff Behan worked. Corral", "Travesty: Frank Waters Earp Agenda Exposed", "Josephine Earp, Wyatt Earp's Jewish Widow, Admits Her Destitution to Earp's Biographer", "Book Review: Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal", "San Francisco History Public Schools 1879", "Stage-struck Songsters: Operetta in Territorial Prescott", "Tombstone 1881: A Sampling of RoguesA Glorification of Thugs", "Zaff Randall, Victoria Frances Yavapai County, Arizona | Arizona Gravestone Photos", "Making The West: Approaches to The Archaeology of Prostitution on the 19th-Century ining Frontier", "The Earps: Josie and Wyatt's 47-Year Odyssey", "I Married Wyatt Earp The Recollections of Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp", "LA Then and Now: Mrs. Wyatt Earp Packed Her Own Punch", "Doc Goodfellow: Arizona's Gutsiest Physician from the Territorial Days", "Lady at the O.K. This is the book from which the movie Tombstone was based. [71][86][29]:78, They boarded the steamship Rosalie for Nome, Alaska on September 21. [26]:46 Neighbors in Prescott witnessed Behan visiting the "house of ill fame" on Granite Street on several occasions during December 1874. He became a deputy before settling in Dodge City as assistant marshal. Of those three, there's a "maybe" around Marcus, but it should come as no surprise that Mattie Blaylock, the woman usually described as the "second Mrs. Wyatt Earp," had a history of prostitution. It was a working-class, ethnically mixed neighborhood, where smoke from factory chimneys filled the air. The divorce also cited Behan's threats of violence and unrelenting verbal abuse. While Blaylock grew dependent on laudanum to treat her headaches, Earp was increasingly embroiled in deadly conflict as a newfound deputy sheriff. This page is not available in other languages. In early April, Wyatt left Arizona for New Mexico and then Colorado. They recorded events in her life but found Josephine was evasive about her early life in Tombstone. Josephine Sarah "Sadie" Earp (ne Marcus; 1861 December 19, 1944)[1] was the common-law wife of Wyatt Earp, a famed Old West lawman and gambler. Grace, her sisters, Alma, and her mother brought in meals. They stayed for about four years, living most of the time in the Brooklyn Hotel. [6] They traveled via ship to Panama, went over the Isthmus of Panama, and caught a steamship to San Francisco. He reneged but persuaded her to stay. Her occupation was "Courtesan". [71] Josephine got pregnant at the same time, and she thought she could persuade Earp from heading to Alaska. Previous researchers of Matties life state there are court records of her prostitution during this time that name her as Celie or Sally. [19] Josephine sought to get her own life story published and gained the assistance of Wyatt's cousins Mabel Earp Cason and Cason's sister Vinolia Earp Ackerman. Then, take a look at 48 snapshots of life in the real Wild West. Of the countless prospectors who rushed west to mine silver, only a few became rich. She is buried in the cemetery at Pinal City, now a ghost town, located just west of the former mining town of Superior, Arizona. He called a foul on Fitzsimmons that no one saw, and Wyatt was widely accused of taking a bribe. [56], On May 22, 1875, Behan's wife Victoria filed for divorce. This family lived only a few blocks from where Josephine lived with her family. Following the Earp Vendetta Ride, the Earp posse went to Albuquerque, New Mexico for two weeks. The book I Married Wyatt Earp (1967), based on a manuscript allegedly written in part by her, describes events she witnessed in Arizona that occurred before 1879, the year she claimed at other times to have first arrived in Tombstone. For Josephine Earp, the pen was mightier than the sordid. [6] Henry Marcus initially made enough money to send Josephine and her sister Hattie to music and dance classes at McCarty's Dancing Academy, a family-owned business on Eddy St. that taught both children and adults. He participated in the notorious O.K. Her father was a baker. During the same week, Behan registered at the Bank Exchange Hotel in Phoenix, and on March 5 the Prescott Weekly Journal-Miner reported that Sadie had returned to Gillette from Phoenix on March 2. [2] Sophie and Carl had three children together: Nathan (born 1857), Josephine, and Henrietta (born 1864). Some say he spent a lot of time hunting, others argue he occupied his time in houses of ill-repute and other less than desirable establishments of the time. She said that during the last years of Wyatt's life, Josephine received an allowance from her family and gambled it away, often leaving Wyatt hungry. "[2] She apparently resented treatment by her teachers in the San Francisco schools, describing them as "inconsistent of a tolerant and gay populous acting as merciless and self-righteous as a New England village in bringing up its children." She continued to work as a prostitute during their early years together. Both made a stagecoach journey from San Francisco to Prescott, Arizona Territory; both traveled with a black woman named Julia; both were sexual partners with Behan; both were 19 years old, born in New York City, and had parents from Germany. Wyatt and Mattie did not arrive in Tucson by train and did not meet Virgil, Morgan and their wives there. [43], Josephine's life after Tombstone and with Wyatt Earp is not well known, although it isn't as obscured by stories of her life in Tombstone that she told to hide facts. [57] Nineteen-year-old Sadie Mansfield, the same person his former wife Victoria had named in their divorce five years earlier, was also living in Tip Top. [64]:p235 While there are no contemporary records in Tombstone of a relationship between them, they certainly knew each other, as Behan and Earp both had offices above the Crystal Palace Saloon. Blaylocks early childhood consisted of little more than Sunday school and strict adherence to contemporary household rules, and her parents subscribed to the notion that sparing the rod would spoil the child. On July 3, 1888, she took a lethal dose of laudanum in Pinal City, Arizona. Researchers have found that the two names share extremely similar characteristics and circumstances. While some creative liberties have been taken in the film, its depiction of the events surrounding Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, along with the rest of the motley crew, is fairly . After a week in Tombstone, the Markham troupe finished their engagement and headed north to Prescott. She wasn't that upset. She took the unusual step of asserting in her divorce petition that Behan "at divers times and places openly and notoriously visited houses of ill-fame and prostitution at said town of Prescott. [2], Prescott had 668 residents in 1870. E.C. ", Mattie was born Celia Ann Blaylock in Monroe Township, Johnson County, Iowa, near Fairfax, Iowa, to Henry Blaylock and Elizabeth "Betsy" Vance. 8. Mattie Blaylock (left) and Wyatt Earp (center) as portrayed by Dana Wheeler Nicholson and Kurt Russell in. Some women in Tombstone operated restaurants, boarding houses, and apparel and millinery shops, and a few ran some of the dry goods stores. [3] Earp resigned from the Dodge City police force on September 9, 1879, and traveled to Las Vegas, New Mexico Territory with Blaylock, his brother Jim, and Jim's wife Bessie. Mattie believed that her husband would soon grow tired of his new fling, but in reality, he was growing tired of her. Then Blaylock and Earp stopped in the booming silver town of Pinal City, Arizona Territory, for two months in 1879. Wyatt, Wyatt's wife Mattie, his brother James, James's wife Bessie, James's 16-year-old step-daughter, and Doc traveled by wagon train from Dodge City to Prescott, picking up Big Nose Kate on the way. He continued to race horses, but by 1896 he could no longer afford to own horses, but raced them on behalf of the owner of a horse stable in Santa Rosa that he managed for her.[82]. Living and working together, Mattie utilized the last name of Earp and by the time they moved on to Tombstone, Arizona in 1879, she would have been considered his common-law wife. He holds dual bachelor's degrees from Pace University and a master's degree from New York University. [107] The San Francisco Examiner ran a series of stories over three days describing Earp's life in exaggerated detail that ridiculed him. The Lewis family was Jewish, and came from the Posen region in Prussia, current-day Poland, around 1850. Corral icon. The Tombstone Epitaph reported on November 11, 1881 that "S. Mansfield" from San Francisco had passed Colton, California (where Wyatt Earp's parents lived) en route to Arizona, a few days before Wyatt's testimony at the Spicer hearing. Related read: Tombstone vs. Wyatt Earp: 7 Differences in the Dueling Movies. Celia was a reasonably skilled seamstress and may have sought work in that field, but both girls found life on their own very difficult. [65], In his book, The Tombstone Travesty (later republished as The Earp Brothers of Tombstone), Frank Waters quotes Virgil Earp's wife, Allie, as saying that "Sadie's charms were undeniable. Instead . Marshal Virgil Earp and his brothers, Wyatt and Morgan. According to Edward C. Meyers Mattie: Wyatt Earps Second Wife, Blaylock was the youngest of three children and her familys second daughter. [26] Sadie and John Behan lived at different addresses. [71] Director John Ford said that whenever Josephine left town for religious conventions, Earp would come into town, play poker, and get drunk with the cowboy actors. That's why Mattie started taking laudanum for her headaches, which was a 19th century cure-all for everything, from colic to menstrual cramps. Virgil married his third and last wife, Alvira "Allie" Packingham Sullivan, between 1871 and 1872. In the meantime, Wyatt was getting more and more involved with Josephine, who he would later marry. [12] Waters' work was later found to be critically flawed, "based upon prevarications, character assassinations, and the psychological battleground that was the brilliant, narcissistic mind of its author. [43][57] The only difference noted in the 1880 census is their occupation: Sadie in San Francisco is listed as "At home", while Sadie in Tip Top is recorded as a "Courtesan". Mattie also left the area and reportedly traveled with other Earp family members to California. Josephine insisted she was striving to protect Wyatt Earps legacy. Who was at Wyatt Earp . Blaylock left Tombstone with other Earp family members for Colton, California. Mattie Blaylocks grave at the Pinal City Cemetery in Superior, Arizona. [43] Josephine said Behan asked her to marry him and persuaded her parents to approve their engagement. In 1879, the couple relocated from Kansas to Tombstone, Arizona. [2][26]:47 In January 1876, Josephine or Sadie left Prescott, stopped at a Los Angeles hotel, and returned to San Francisco before March 6. It is unlikely that he was a "wealthy German merchant" as she described him. Blaylock continued to work as a prostitute. Charlie Welsh, Grace Spolidora's father, was a good friend of Earp's. To her the women appeared not as "soiled doves" but nicely dressed women living a life of leisure. [14]:101[15] At one point in their contentious relationship, Josephine described Lake's book as made up of "outright lies". [26]:56. The first known record of Mattie's presence is a picture taken in Fort Scott in 1871. They rented a cabin from Rex Beach for $100 a month and spent the winter of 18981899 there. I couldn't verify its origins, but I wonder if it was the one that surfaced in the 1950s when her nephew read an article about the opening of a new museum in Dodge City, Kansas . J. Levine Auction & Appraisal in Scottsdale, Ariz., is auctioning the guns, which owner Josh Levine believes belonged to Wyatt Earp. Although she was never active in her Jewish faith, her service was conducted by a rabbi. From Wichita to Dodge City, to the O.K. The charges against her reported that "one set of German table spoons were stolen from the store of H. Asher and Company in the village of Prescott, Yavapai, A.T." Sheriff Ed Burnes searched Mansfield's residence and confiscated the spoons.
Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire First Edition Misprint,
Laura Campbell Obituary,
Articles W