WYATT EARP’S GUNS

By William Urban

On April 17 two guns, one a shotgun, the other a revolver supposedly worn by Wyatt Earp at the famed gunfight at the OK Corral, will sell at auction in Arizona. What should be an exciting event has so far been a bit of a yawner, and it’s worth reflecting why.
One reason, perhaps, is that pubic interest has changed. Back in the 1950s, when the TV show first appeared, the character played by Hugh O’Brien was exactly what the public was looking for — a handsome, courageous, moral man with no interest beyond protecting the public. This had little resemblance to the real Wyatt Earp, but neither did parts of the book on which it was based, Stuart Lake’s Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal. However, audiences were accustomed to film biographies that “improved” the story line of the lives of the people supposedly portrayed, and many Americans had been yearning for a law and order person who would be a model for American police forces.
Second, we now know much more about the real Wyatt Earp. There is no universally accepted view of what the gunfight was about, but it certainly wasn’t a showdown between good and evil. The cowboys weren’t saints, but today nobody portrays them as they had been seen in the Fifties. Wyatt and his brothers, too, are more complicated people, neither too good for this world nor too bad to have a place in it. Modern movies take a more sophisticated (or cynical) view of the events in Tombstone in late October of 1881, and portray more sex, violence and dusty clothes.
Third, the owner of the weapons has fallen far in the esteem of those who know Earp lore. Glenn Boyer’s first books were well received and are even today widely cited. But when people began asking what his sources for particular statements were, he was first evasive, implying that his reputation was beyond question, then he said that it was based on a manuscript by Wyatt’s contemporary, Ted Ten Eyck. When pressed, he finally admitted that he had made up the manuscript from sources here and there. His object, he said, was to trap “scholars” who were stealing his words without attribution.
I can understand his frustration. We have a regional radio personality who reads out marvelous stories without telling where he gets the material. I have recognized entire paragraphs of my articles without a word being changed. (Apparently I am a better writer than he is.) However, I know that complaining will have no impact and I’m really not hurt; moreover, I doubt that he is paid much, if anything. So I shut up and pay my PBS contribution like any good citizen who listens to NPR news, and I keep quiet about NPR’s liberal slant — I figure that folks smart enough to listen to public radio are also smart enough to tell hard news from soft propaganda.
Still, Boyer left a sufficient doubt about his honesty to make every intelligent reader of his books wonder what portion of his publications is good scholarship, what is made-up, and what is an elaborate practical joke. There is no doubt that he collected everything he could lay his hands on. For the authenticity we have to rely on his word. This is not always easy. For example, the serial number on the revolver has been filed off, making it impossible to date the weapon. (At least it isn’t the fictional Ned Buntline revolver from the television series.)
I had one phone conversation with Glenn Boyer. That was many years ago, shortly after I had discovered that Wyatt’s grandfather (Stuart Lake called him a judge, which was a stretch for a justice of the peace), his father, and his uncle had earned a rather nice income by buying up IOUs at a discount, then summoning the debtor to the grandfather’s justice of the peace court and requiring him to pay the debt and court costs as well. Then I learned from the land records that Wyatt’s father had returned to Monmouth from 1856 to 1859, a fact that Wyatt had never mentioned to his biographers and that local newsmen and county historians had forgotten about as well.
Boyer called up, presumably to ask about my sources, but it soon became clear that he wanted to tell me that he was the only person who knew anything about Wyatt Earp. I had first used the land records in the Recorder’s Office. Later I spent many hours in the storage area in the courthouse tower, working in winter temperatures below zero and summer temperatures above 100. At first the documents were all in file cabinets, so that all I had to do was systematically go through the court cases involving his grandfather; later, after the tower was determined to be overloaded, the weight was reduced by putting all the documents into large cardboard boxes and discarding the heavy metal file cabinets. After that I could get the heavy boxes down using a step ladder, but the contents were no longer in order.
From my experiences there and in the archives at WIU, where the tax records and bound newspapers were stored, I learned to tell students that a historian needs patience, luck, old clothing, and a strong back. I also emphasized the need to be polite and considerate of the needs of the courthouse personnel, who in Monmouth were super to work with; in other states and larger cities, I found out that was not always the case.
So when Boyer told me that he had lots of documents like those I had found, I was skeptical about his having slipped into Monmouth without anyone knowing it, found the records and photographed the pages I had used (this was pre-Xerox). Any stranger asking about Wyatt Earp without Ralph Eckley hearing of it strains the imagination. Ditto for Boyer having new information and not telling anyone about it.
The experts on the Tombstone discussion board generally share my skepticism for anything Boyer touched. My respect for their detailed knowledge is considerable — they have effectively memorized everything about the gunfight episode, and few would agree with the Tucson newspaper’s headline calling Wyatt a gunslinger.
This is of minimum interest to most Earp historians, of course. They still like the shoot-em-up stuff. The public does, too. Which is why some idiot will probably pay a lot of money for a weapon that Wyatt Earp may have owned, or could have owned, or at least looks like one he had handled.

Review Atlas (April 10, 2014), 4.