The Earp Wives: Madams, Harlots and their Pimps

By Loretta Kemsley

The OK corral was a run of the mill gun fight until Wyatt Earp sought fame and fortune in fledgling Hollywood. Until he exaggerated his life deeds to authors and scriptwriters, few knew about the deaths on the dusty streets of Tombstone. Since then, the tawdry affair has become legend.

Behind those legends were the women who loved the Earps and Doc Holliday. Their stories have been sparsely told, serving only as a backdrop to their gun-slinging men, yet the lives of the Earp wives were as vivid, adventurous and dangerous as the deeds of their hubbies.

Wyatt purposely hid three of his wives from history. Josie, his fourth wife, is known to most fans, but Urilla was his first. Wyatt worked hard to hide the facts of their life together. She died amid mystery with Wyatt fleeing town not long after. His third wife, drug addicted Mattie, wasn’t discovered until the mid-20th century. Pimped as a teen by her husband, Wyatt’s second wife Sallie’s existence wasn’t known until this past decade.

Gentle, kind Allie was proficient with guns and horses. She was Virgil’s third wife. His first wife, teenage Ellen grieved his death in the Civil War, leaving for Oregon with her parents without discovering the sad news provided by her parents was false. Second wife Rosillia remains shrouded in secrecy, entering his life quietly and just as quietly disappearing without a trace.

Morgan’s prim Louisa wrote about her fears of the Earp brothers and Jim’s Nellie supported her disabled husband with the proceeds from her brothel.

Although Big Nose Kate wasn’t with an Earp brother, her life with Doc Holliday is integral to the tales surrounding this enigmatic family, so she is included on these pages.
The intimate details of their lives have been reconstructed when possible and the missing facts have been contrasted with known facts about their era and the places they lived while plying their trade. Bringing together complex cultural beliefs while contrasting the lives of other women in the West -- Native Americans, Mexicans and white women of the plains -- a picture emerges of the important influences and ambitions that explain the decisions which formed the daring existence of the Earp wives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Loretta Kemsley
• Release date: May 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476320403

Loretta Kemsley

In the 50s and 60s, the San Fernando Valley was mostly farms, ranches and bare acreage. Low desert, the untamed land was covered with sagebrush, tumbleweeds and a bit of cactus. Winter rains encouraged the growth of large fields full of wild barley and golden poppies. Summer brought the hot, dry Santa Ana devil winds. The tall grass, its seed heads chattering in the strong gusts, turned golden brown. The valley was the home of many western movies, movie stars and Mr. Ed--who lived right across the dirt street from me. Lassie resided just two blocks down. We lived smack in the middle of the valley, surrounded by movie ranches, circuses, carnivals, horse trainers, and movie stables: Hudkin Brothers, George Spahn, Fat Jones, Ralph McCutcheon and Glenn Randall. All of these were my stomping grounds at various times, sometimes just hanging out, sometimes helping with the horses. My dad, John Kemsley, was known as the ponyman. He kept a herd of twenty ponies for his carnival and for movie work. Dad introduced me to the world of horses as soon as I could sit up. At six months of age, he put me in the saddle for the first time. That was the beginning of a lifelong love affair. The cowboys said I learned to walk when I fell off. That may be true. My earliest memory is of walking home from a nearby ravine after being dumped, once again, by my black and white pinto pony, Prince. I hated that walk and vowed to never get tossed again. It was a vow I could never quite keep, but it sure did improve my seat. Prince and I worked things out and began returning home together. I still feel more at home astride a horse than I do on the ground. Our ponies worked in many movies and T.V. series: Ginger was the mascot on The Mickey Mouse Club and the star of Robert Mitchum‘s The Red Pony. A group of our ponies raced in Ronald Reagan’s Stallion Road. Fay Wray fell in love with Beauty in The Wedding March. Tiny little Beauty was also the first USC Trojan mascot, appearing at half time during the games and prancing along with the USC band in the Rose Parade. Pixie galloped to glory in The Annie Oakley series as Todd Oakley’s pony. And Gene Autry was my first boss, hiring me at eight-years-old to ride as Calamity in The Buffalo Bill Jr. series. I worked on other shoots in various capacities, but that first thrill of riding down the street of a western town right beside my hero, Dick Jones, is the most memorable. As an adult, I trained show horses and their riders, developing many into champions. Horses still grace my life, calling to me every morning and softly saying good night as the sun sets. Growing up amid the people, horses and places who created the outstanding westerns of the era left me with a lifelong fascination of the Old West, especially the women who trudged across the plains and tamed a wild land. These passions highlight my writing and bring a smile while remembering the great horses and people who have blessed my life.

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The Earp Wives:

Madams, Harlots and Their Pimps

By Loretta Kemsley

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Loretta Kemsley

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The Earp Wives: Madams, Harlots and Their Pimps

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Earp Women Who Live In Legend

Rebels With A Cause

Go West, Young Feminist, Go West

Sex in the 1800s: the Marriage Bed Versus the Bordello

The Marriages of the Earp Clan

Ellen Rysdam and Rosillia Draggoo: Virgil’s First Two Wives

Urilla Sutherland, Wyatt’s First Wife

Sara Sallie Haspel, Wyatt’s Hidden Second Wife

Nellie Bessie Bartlett Ketchum, James’ Wife

Louisa A. Houston, Morgan’s Wife

Kate Big Nose Elder, Doc Holliday’s Wife

Alvira Allie Sullivan, Virgil’s Third and Last Wife

Celia Ann Mattie Blaylock, Wyatt’s Third Wife

Josephine Sarah Sadie Marcus, Wyatt’s Fourth and Last Wife

Introduction

In all of the tomes written about the Earps, few have bothered to focus on their wives for even a chapter. Movie producers haven’t found them interesting either. This focus on the male experience is common when writing about the Old West in particular and history in general. But leaving the Earp women out of the narrative confers a lopsided portrait of the Earp family. It is impossible to write a chronicle about the Earps without including Kate Elder, aka Big Nose Kate, and John Henry Doc Holliday, her common-law husband. She is included in this retrospect on the lives of the Earp women; they were an integral part of the Earp story.

Because the women associated with the Earps have been neglected, reconstructing their lives is a challenge. Three of them—Virgil’s third wife, Allie; Wyatt’s fourth wife, Josie; and Kate Elder, wife of Doc Holliday—tried to leave their memoirs behind. The results for all three were less than satisfactory.

Allie cooperated with Frank Waters in The Earp Brothers of Tombstone (1960), and later renounced the book as a pack of lies. Some historians say that is because the author spoke disparagingly about Virgil. Others say the author completely distorted what she stated.

Josie’s two unpublished manuscripts fell into the hands of Glen Boyer. He used them for his book I Married Wyatt Earp (1976) with similar results. Both books were slanted to match the author’s agenda.

Both authors used deliberate frauds. Because both authors destroyed their credibility with their aggressive slanting of the women’s memoirs there is good reason to discard both books without further consideration. The problem with eliminating these books completely is this suppresses the only material where the women attempted to speak for themselves. Is there anything we can glean from these records? It is enticing to try, even though care must be taken to prevent the possibility of distortion when discussing these passages.

Kate Holliday faired little better, although her thoughts survived in better shape. She corresponded with Anton Mazzanovich, a writer with Brewery Gulch Gazette. Mazzanovich wrote about her correspondence in two articles published by the Gazette, but she refused to allow him to publish more unless she took part in the financial gain. After Mazzanovich died, Joseph Chisholm, another writer for the Brewery Gulch Gazette, used Mazzanovich’s notes for his unpublished manuscript Tombstone Tale: the True Story of Helldorado. Chisholm initially praised Kate as intelligent and educated. When she still would not relent unless she profited too, Chisholm viciously attacked her character.

These women are criticized for trying to clean up the biographies of the Earp and Holliday group, but is that fair criticism? The average person writing their life story wants to leave behind the best image of their life and their loved ones. Wyatt did the same, severely restricting information about most of his life, especially concerning his first three wives.

The Earps and Hollidays—both the men and the women—were considered people of questionable respectability in the Old West. They worked both sides of the law. This wasn’t necessarily a drawback in a hardscrabble country where versatility and endurance were requirements for survival.

Today, relatives of the Earps live in England. The January 9, 2008 edition of Wolverhampton’s Express and Star reported the death of Barbara Nash, a distant relative of the Earp brothers. Barbara was the daughter of Sarah Lucy Nash (nee Earp)….Sarah’s grandfather was the brother of Nicholas Porter Earp whose sons were Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan.

Several years prior, the Express and Star interviewed Jackie Nash about the family connection and quoted her again after Barbara’s death.

The unfortunate thing is that all the female members of the family seem to have the tempers of the Earp brothers. My mother, my grandmother and I all inherited dreadful tempers. We have several old letters from the American branch of the family, and we’re very proud of them because they are historical documents. But we know the Earps were not heroes. The brothers had Tombstone sewn up. In family legend, they are known as cold-blooded killers.

By the time Allie, Josie and Kate were asked to relate their stories, our nation was dramatically changed. Gunslingers weren’t welcome on our streets, although they continued to be revered in books and movies. Prostitution was accepted and even encouraged in the Old West. Towns depended upon them for revenue. After the turn of the century, crusades to outlaw prostitution swept the country. Any woman who’d engaged in the sex trade or with family members who’d done the same would be wise not to admit it in the new, sanitized atmosphere. How could they explain the times adequately to those with moral objections? How could they maintain whatever respect they’d garnered in their later years, far removed from those early times?

No doubt part of their motivation was to receive an income from the books, but did they need to sully the memory of their loved ones to accomplish that? Apparently that wasn’t a path they intended to take. That speaks well of their loyalty to family and friends. It also speaks well of their intelligence. They obviously had their eye on a future beyond the immediacy of profit and accurately gauged the changing mores of the public.

The authors and their publishers displayed no such compunctions. They were quite glad to use the women’s reminisces as grist for profit. Later historians discredited Boyers and Waters as frauds concerning the Earp books they authored.

However, the entire genre of Earp writings is a generous mix of folklore and fictionalization interspersed with some facts. Trying to sort these out has bogged down in tedious debate with many authors trying to establish their credentials by trashing the work of others. Attempting to recreate the lives of prominent outlaws, gunslingers, prostitutes and madams in the Old West has the inevitable result of filling in the blanks, which can never be considered true fact-based history. The best that can be said about the genre is most authors are diligent in trying to establish the facts, even when there are not enough facts to satisfy strict historians. Because men in the West were more likely to be considered influential, they were more likely to be featured in newspapers and other records. This makes the lives of women more difficult to research. This imbalance continues even today because the genre’s authors are mostly men using a male paradigm to define the world they write about.

The conflict between the Earp women and those who wished to profit from the Earp name has left us with questionable and possibly distorted information to sift through as we try to imagine how their lives unfolded.

Present knowledge about general family dynamics may provide a few clues, as can reaching beyond the genre to other books written in the 1800s and early 1900s about the culture, places and events. It is worth considering when facts are absent or disputed. The reader should liberally question the facts and envision the dynamics of every situation presented.

To the top

The Earp Women Who Live in Legend

When the other wives are mentioned in most books and movies, it is as dutiful wives. Closer inspection reveals none of them escaped the title of prostitute, although Allie and Louisa came closest. Bessie and Sallie were madams. Big Nose Kate, Doc Holiday’s gal, worked for them in Wichita, as did Mattie. Josie worked as a prostitute before she met Wyatt and while she knew him in Tombstone. The Earp brothers were flesh-peddlers who profited from running strings of bawdy girls in Peoria, Wichita, Dodge City, Las Vegas (NM), Tombstone and Nome were they were involved in or held shares in brothels.

Who were each of these women? Sorting out the Earp women is not an easy task.

The Kansas Pioneers records contain several Earps, all in Wichita: James, married to Bessie; Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan are all listed, as were Eva, Kate, Minnie, and Sallie.

James was married to Bessie, as listed. Morgan’s wife, Louisa (Lou) wasn’t on the Kansas Pioneers list. Virgil’s wife, Alvira Allie Sullivan, also wasn’t listed. She was Virgil’s third wife. Wyatt was also thought to be married three times: Urilla, Mattie and Josie. Urilla died in 1870. Josie he met in Tombstone while married to Mattie. Some say he met Mattie in Dodge City, but her name does not appear in the Kansas Pioneers lists.

Eva, Kate, Minnie were most likely prostitutes working for the Earps; using the Earp surname proved to be effective protection from prostitution laws as soon as the Earps pinned badges to their chests. There is no mention of Eva and Minnie other than the Kansas Pioneers list. Kate is likely to be Kate Elder, aka Big Nose Kate, Doc Holliday’s future paramour. Sallie has a permanent place in history because she co-owned a brothel with Bessie, James’ wife. Don Chaput, in The Earp Papers: In A Brother's Image , described the Earps involvement in prostitution. Per Chaput, Earp was the last name several harlots used in Wichita. Arrest records for these Earp girls were plentiful. Chaput speculated Wyatt and James were the pimps for these strumpets and confirmed both acted as pimps in other towns: Dodge City, Tombstone and Nome.

Ed Bartholomew, in Wyatt Earp, 1848 to 1880 (1963), the untold story, provided this information taken from the records of Kansas:

...State of Kansas vs. Sallie and Bettsy Erp, deft.; Saml. A Martin, Prosecutor. Personally appeared before me Samuel A. Martin who being duly sworn deposes and says: that on the 3rd of June 1874 at the Co. of Sedgewick and State of Kansas, one Sallie Erp and Betsey Erp did then and there unlawfully and feloniously set up and keep a bawdy house or brothel and did appear and act as mistress and have the care and management of a certain one story frame building situated and located North of Douglas Ave near the bridge leading…

So who was Sallie Earp? She was a formerly unknown common-law wife to Wyatt. Her existence was only recently discovered. Wyatt must be credited with the ability to hide not one but two wives out of four. Mattie, his third wife, was unknown until after the death of Josie, his fourth wife. But Sally remained unknown for another half a century. Fortunately, her story is known now.

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Rebels With a Cause

[The True Woman’s life is] a series of suppressed emotions….She feels herself weak and timid. She needs a protector. She is in a measure dependent. She asks for wisdom, constancy, firmness, perseveredness, and she is willing to repay it all by the surrender of the full treasure of her affection. Women despise in men everything like themselves except a tender heart. It is enough that she is effeminate and weak; she does not want another like herself. George Burnap, in The Sphere and Duties of Woman (1854)

It should not be a surprise the Earp women rejected such guidance. Like all women who voluntarily chose frontier life, they did not consider themselves effeminate and weak. They displayed exactly what Burnap said they desired: wisdom, constancy, firmness, perseveredness.

Barbara Welter, in The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860 (1966), described the husband of their era as a busy builder of bridges and railroads: who occasionally felt some guilt that he had turned this new land, this temple of the chosen people, into one cast countinghouse. His wife was his hostage in the home and expected to personify all the values which he held so dear and treated so lightly." While he spent his day toiling to earn filthy lucre, he wanted his religious and cultural values emblazoned across her very being so he could ease his culpability over the fact they were notably absent from his everyday actions.

The magazines of the era, aimed at transforming an ungainly young woman into an idealized version of herself, hawked the perfect woman as one who suppressed her own

Reviews for The Earp Wives

[Michelle Lloyd Atkins · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Well written but sometimes a little dry. Good history of the suffragette movement with added narratives about the wives.