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Josephine Earp

Josephine Sarah "Sadie" Marcus (1861-19 December 1944) was an American theater actress, the mistress of Sheriff Johnny Behan, and the wife of Wyatt Earp.

Biography[]

Josephine Sarah Marcus was born in New York City, New York in 1861 to Prussian-Jewish immigrants from the Grand Duchy of Posen. The family migrated west to San Francisco, California in 1868, and her father - originally a baker - came to run a prosperous mercantile business. Josephine attended dance school as a girl, but, at the age of 14, she ran away from home, seeking adventure. She came to Prescott, Arizona in 1874, and she worked as a prostitute in Prescott and Tip Top from 1874 to 1876 before arriving in Tombstone in 1880 and becoming a local theater actress.

The 17-year-old Josephine began an affair with the 33-year-old sheriff Johnny Behan, and he promised to marry her; however, she did not truly love him, and she instead fell in love with the newcomer Wyatt Earp, who became a prominent local figure as a businessman and lawman. Josephine and Wyatt rode horses together one afternoon after a chance encounter, and she told him of her desire to keep travelling and live off room service, never looking back.

She left Behan before the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, as he continued to see other women, and, in March 1882, she returned to San Francisco. That August, she was joined by Wyatt, and they would stay together for 46 years, remaining in a common-law marriage until Wyatt's death. They moved from one boomtown to another, going on several adventures before retiring to California, spending their summers in Los Angeles and their winters in the Sonoran Desert town of Vidal on the Colorado River. She wrote an autobiographical manuscript which was posthumously published in 1967 as I Married Wyatt Earp, and she died in Los Angeles in 1944 at the age of 83.

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