Virgil Walter Earp (18 July 1843 – 19 October 1905) was an American lawman of the Wild West and the brother of Wyatt and Morgan Earp.
Biography[]
Virgil Walter Earp was born in Hartford, Kentucky on 18 July 1843, the second son of Nicholas Porter Earp and the older brother of Wyatt and Morgan Earp. In February 1860, while living in Pella, Iowa, he eloped with a Dutch immigrant girl, but, while he was serving in the Union Army during the American Civil War, the girl's father told her that Virgil had been killed in action, causing her to remarry. In 1868, the Earp family settled in Lamar, Missouri, and he worked a variety of jobs, including a peace officer, farmer, rail worker in Wyoming, stagecoach driver, sawmill sawyer in Prescott, Arizona, mailman, and prospector. He lived with Wyatt in Dodge City, Kansas in 1877 before moving to Prescott, Arizona and then to Tombstone in 1879, where he and his brothers attempted to set up their own business. He became a deputy US Marshal, and he took part in his brothers' feud with the Cochise County Cowboys. On 26 October 1881, his attempt to disarm a group of Cowboys resulted in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and, on 28 December, friends of the slain outlaws ambushed Earp and shattered his left arm, leaving him permanently crippled. His brother Morgan was murdered in March 1882, and Wyatt succeeded Virgil as a Marshal and hunted down Curly Bill Brocius and Johnny Ringo, the leaders of the Cowboys, avenging his brothers' fates. Virgil went on to join his parents in Colton, California to recover from his wounds, and he became constable in July 1886 and served as City Marshal from 11 July 1887 to 1888. He and his wife Allie then moved to San Bernardino in 1888, to the mining town of Vanderbilt in 1893, and to Prescott, Arizona in 1895, where Earp ran for Yavapai County Sheriff in 1900, only to withdraw for health reasons. He went on to reunite with his first wife Ellen in Portland and meet his three grandchildren for the first time, and he and his second wife returned to Colton in 1904. In 1904, they left California for the last time and settled in the boomtown of Goldfield, Nevada. In January 1905, he became a deputy sheriff in Esmeralda County, and he died of pneumonia in October 1905.