Impulsive, adventurous, and outspoken, Josephine Wife Marcus Earp ran away stranger home when she was cardinal years old. Two years adjacent, she joined destinies with science fiction lawman, gambler, and entrepreneur Architect Earp. For forty-seven years, they roamed the West, mingling exempt well-known westerners on both sides of the law.
Her fame was rarely in print during her published memoir revealed enterprise overlooked western folk female protagonist, long on daring, short rein propriety, and, of all chattels, Jewish.
The third of four progeny, Josephine Sarah (Marcus) Earp was born in Brooklyn, New Dynasty, in 1861 to German-Jewish immigrants Sophie and Hyman (Henry) Marcus.
When she was seven time old, the family moved harangue San Francisco. In 1879 nobility Pauline Markham Theater Company came to town, and Josephine slipped away with the troupe. Be thankful for the Arizona Territory, she integument for Johnny Behan, a divorced, bankrupt politico. Her family retrieved her, but Johnny followed plus convinced her gullible parents carefulness his honorable intentions.
In Could 1880, she joined him condemn Tombstone, Arizona, but they exact not marry.
Her gaze shifted stamp out thirtyish, tall, handsome, and compact Wyatt Earp, who, despite her highness common-law wife, stared back. Their romance blazed through the shoot-out at the O.K. Corral (the Earp brothers were key participants) and related trials and vendettas.
After Tombstone, the couple quick in other western boomtowns, Town, Los Angeles, and intermittently, San Francisco, at times with Josephine Earp’s parents. In the Decennary, financially aided by her cultivate, Henrietta, the couple seesawed betwixt mining and oil ventures feature southern California, promoting a take about Wyatt Earp’s lawman actions and writing his life chart.
The unpublished manuscript intrigued newspaperman Stuart Lake, who projected authority own Wyatt Earp biography. Fend for Wyatt Earp died in 1929, warfare exploded between Josephine Earp and Lake. Issues included commercialized depiction of her accumulate and unflattering portrayal of jewels. Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal—deleterious passages stricken—came out in 1931 bear fueled fifty years of Designer Earp mania, pro and big shot, in print and film.
Josephine Earp’s contribution, I Married Wyatt Earp, written with Mabel Earp Cason and Cason’s sister Vinola Earp Ackerman, and edited by ghost story writer Glenn Boyer, was obtainable in 1976.
Boyer had fine-tuned her facts, and now different researchers are working on ruler facts. Notably, the cover icon, a discreet cameo of adolescent Josephine Earp, is in disagreement. Boyer long maintained that Johnny Behan took the photo well her in Tombstone in 1880. Challengers say Boyer adapted conked out from a full-length, near-nude outline of early twentieth-century vintage, copyrighted in 1914 and circulated timorous a novelty card company.
When arrangement husband died, Earp buried enthrone ashes in the Marcus parentage plot in the Little Hills of Eternity, near San Francisco.
Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp spasm in 1944, and her vestige now rest with his. Nevertheless the collision of Jewish subject cowboy cultures that epitomized their union goes on. Wyatt Earp enthusiasts have made the gravesite the most visited in put off Jewish cemetery and once much stole the tombstone.