Nicholas Porter Earp (6 September 1813 – 12 February 1907) was an American justice of the peace and wagon-master of the Wild West and the father of Virgil, Wyatt, and Morgan Earp.
Biography[]
Nicholas Porter Earp was born in Lincoln County, North Carolina in 1813 to a family of English and Scots-Irish descent. The family moved to Hartford, Kentucky in 1813, and Nicholas served in the Black Hawk War and the Mexican-American War. He married twice, and his second marriage produced his best-known sons Virgil, Wyatt, and Morgan Earp. He raised the family in Monmouth, Illinois and then in Pella, Iowa, where Earp was convicted of bootlegging in 1859. He became a Provost Marshal in Pella during the American Civil War, and three of his eldest sons (including Virgil) served in the Union Army. On 12 May 1864, Earp was hired as a wagon-master for a trip to California, and he built a farm along the Santa Ana River in San Bernardino upon his arrival in December. He then returned east and settled in Lamar, Missouri, where he became town constable. In 1869, he resigned as constable in order to become a justice of the peace, and Virgil took his place as constable. In 1880, Nicholas and his wife returned to San Bernardino, and he lived to the age of 93. He died shortly after being elected to the Los Angeles County court.