Wild West Personalities Produce Bang-Up Pedigree1. Census extracts by Clare Peden-Midgley: 1850 Marion County, Iowa, Lake Prairie Township, page 290, line 8, family no. 150, NARS microfilm #M432, Roll 187. 1860 Marion County, Iowa, Pella, Lake Prairie Township, p. 630 (written), family no. 1372, NARS microfilm #M653, Roll 335. 2. Earp Family Genealogy, compiled by Jean Whitten Edwards, Breckenridge, Texas, 1990, p. 151. 3. Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, by Stuart N. Lake. New York: Pocket Books, (reprint) 1993, p. 7. 4. Ibid., pp. 6-7. 5. Census extract by Clare Peden-Midgley: 1870 Barton County, Missouri, Lamar Township, NARS M593, Roll 757, page 830B, family numbers 212, 213 and 214. 6. The Earp Brothers of Tombstone: The Story of Mrs. Virgil Earp, by Frank Waters. New York: Framhall House, 1960, p. 29. (Hereinafter: Brothers.) 7. Ibid. Wyatt made his way back from California working as a section hand in various railroad gangs. When he arrived in Lamar, Mo., he learned that his elder half brother Newton had announced himself a candidate for the post of town marshal in the 1870 elections. Wyatt, then 22 years old, ran against him and was elected by a vote of 137 to Newton's 108. Newton pulled up stakes and went to Kansas, where he filed claim to a piece of barren prairie. 8. I Married Wyatt Earp: The Recollections of Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp, collected and edited by Glenn G. Boyer. Tucson, Ariz: University of Arizona Press, second printing, 1979, p. 38 (Note 2 to Chapter Two). (Hereinafter: Married). 9. Compiled records on Wyatt Earp. at Boot Hill Museum, Dodge City, Kansas. 10. Ibid. 11. The Boot Hill Museum in Dodge City, Kansas has a photograph of Celia Ann "Mattie" Blaylock taken about 1872 at Fort Scott, Kansas. Wyatt Earp also was in Hays and Ellsworth, Kansas, which are some distance from Fort Scott, but Fort Scott, Kansas is located just across the Missouri line — not far from Barton County, Missouri where Wyatt lived in 1870, and may be where he met Mattie. 12. 1880 Pima County, Arizona Territory, Tombstone, NARS T-9, Roll 36, p. 163 census of Tombstone. This census, transcribed by Clare Peden-Midgley, shows Wyatt and his brother, Virgil as farmers, their brother, James C., as a saloonkeeper. 13. Brothers, p. 212. 14. According to Josephine Marcus Earp they were married by the captain of Lucky Baldwin's Yacht beyond the three-mile limit. Married, p. 119. 15. Los Angeles Examiner, Jan. 14, 1929. 16. Los Angeles Times, Thursday, Dec. 21, 1944, Part II, p. 3. 17. Brothers, p. 225. 18. Brothers, p. 247. Note 2, Chapter 8. Citation says her name was Ellen Sysdam, [Sysdam is probably a typographical error] a native of Holland, and the information is said to be from The Oregonian of Portland, Oregon, Oct. 29, 1905, from Mrs. William Irvine's collection of Earp data. Note 3 says Ellen married Thomas Easton at Walla Walla, Wash., in 1867, and that there is no record of her first marriage to Virgil Earp having been annulled. In Married, p. 57, (Note 5, Chapter 3), it says Virgil Earp married Ellen Rysdam at Knoxville, [Marion, County], Iowa on Sept. 21, 1861, using his middle name, Walter, and listing her as Ellen Donahoo [and that] ... Ellen married John VonRossen and moved to Kansas City, and then Oregon. [This conflicting data has not yet been resolved by genealogical research.] 19. 1870 Barton County, Missouri, Lamar Township, NARS M593, Roll 757, p. 830B, dated 3 Sept. shows Virgil, age 26, a grocer and Rosa, 17, born in France, next to him, both living in the household of his parents — Nicholas and Virginia; family No. 212. Next to them, family No. 213, are Newton Earp and wife, Nancy, and Effie, evidently their infant daughter, and Christina Adam, a 47-year-old female, born in Kentucky [probably Newton’s mother-in-law]. Family No. 214 is Wyatt Earp, age 22, and "Rilla," age 21, with the notation that they were married in January of that year. 20. Earp Family Genealogy, p. 3. 21. Gaius Marcus Brumbaugh, Maryland Records: Colonial, Revolutionary, County and Church From Original Sources, originally published Baltimore, 1915; reprinted 1985 in Baltimore, by Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., Vol. I, p. 183, Lower Potomack Hundred, "A List of the Number of Souls Taken & Given in to the Committee of Observation, 22 Aug. 1776." — Research report by Julia M. Case. 22. While the Earp Family Genealogy notes that James Cooksey Earp married Nellie Bartlett 18 April 1873 in Illinois, and had a son, Frank (born Feb. 1874), and a daughter, Hattie (born June 1875), by her, no sources are cited this data. The 1880 census of Tombstone, Pima County, paints a different picture. In it James C. Earp is enumerated twice — once on printed page 163 with his brothers Virgil and Wyatt — shown as age 39 a saloonkeeper and next to him is listed Bessie, white female, age 36, listed as his wife, and Hattie, a 16-year-old white female, listed as daughter. However, on page 166, James C. Earp is listed as head of household, age 39, saloonkeeper, and his wife is shown as Bessie, white female, age 39 and Hattie B. Catchin is shown as his stepdaughter, age 17. There is no son Frank listed, who if born in 1874, would have been about six years old. Of course, it is possible that James C. Earp had children by Nellie Bartlett, but he was not with a woman by that name in Tombstone at the time of the 1880 census. In Married (Note 6, Chapter 3, p. 57) it says James Cooksey Earp married Nellie Bartlett Ketchum 18 April 1873 in Illinois and that she died in San Bernardino (California) in 1887. An item that adds yet another dimension to the murky marital history of James C. Earp is that according to Brothers, (Note 4, Chapter 6, p. 243), the Kansas State Census of 1875, city of Wichita, lists Bessie Earp, age 34, as a "Sporting Woman." James C. Earp was enumerated in the 1870 census in Deer Lodge County, Montana on July 6 (NARS M593, Roll 827), p. 56, as a 30-year-old waiter in a hotel. No wife listed. James applied for a Civil War pension in 1912 and in it says he went to Marion County, Iowa in the spring of 1863, crossed the plains to California in 1864-65, went to Helena, Montana in 1870, went to Pineswell (probably Pineville), Mo, then to Wichita, Kans., then to Arizona, then to California in 1890. He does not mention a trip to Illinois in 1873 when he supposedly married Nellie. However, Allie Earp mentions "Jim" Earp and his wife, Bessie, and her 16-year-old daughter, Hattie (Brothers, p. 75). She always refers to the woman who lived with James as Bessie. There also is a reference to a conversation between "Big Nose Kate" (Doc Holliday's companion) and Bessie Earp wherein Kate accused Bessie of having been a whore (in Wichita), and Bessie did not deny it (Brothers, pp. 108-9). It appears that Nellie and Bessie could be the same person and perhaps Bartlett was her maiden name and Ketchum or Catchin, the surname of a previous husband or the father of her daughter, Hattie. Note: The Earp Family Genealogy is available ($29.95 postpaid) from the compiler, Jean Whitten Edwards, HCR51, Box 176B, Breckenridge, TX 76424. |
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