The October 26, 1881 shootout at the O.K. Corral is a significant part of western mythology. Indeed, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday attained immortality as a result of their famous confrontation with their sworn enemies, the Clanton gang. However, in a great irony, few know that on that day, Earp, perhaps the most famous gunman in the Old West, drew his gun for the first – and, for what proved to be, the only – time in his life, as he and his allies killed three members of the Clanton gang.
Moreover, few know that one of the important factors that led to the historic showdown was a romantic rivalry over Earp’s common-law Jewish wife, Josie. For almost half a century, Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp (1861-1944) was one of the most colorful personalities of the American frontier. Though there exists no record of a formal marriage, Wyatt and Josie called themselves man and wife, and the relationship lasted 47 years until Wyatt’s death.
While Wyatt’s biography is suffused with myth, much is known about Josie Earp and her traditionally observant Jewish upbringing. Josie was born in Brooklyn to a Prussian Jewish family, the second of three children of immigrants Henry Marcus and Sophie Lewis. In 1867, she moved with her family to San Francisco, where she received a Jewish education but was also bitten by the allure of the Gold Rush era. The rebellious and attractive Josie (Wyatt’s friend Bat Masterson described her as “an incredible beauty”) ran away, possibly as early as age 14, to Arizona.
At age 18 Josie fell in love with John Behan, the corrupt sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona. Her family temporarily retrieved her and brought her back to San Francisco, but Behan followed her there; convinced her parents that his intentions with respect to their young daughter, some 14 years his junior, were honorable; and brought her back to Tombstone, but he soon reneged on his promise to marry her and she caught him being unfaithful.
Josie is believed to have met Wyatt, then a deputy U.S. marshal, at the Union News Depot in Tombstone, owned by Jewish merchant Sol Israel (1881). The Israel family was one of some 75 Jewish families in Tombstone, and Jews comprised most the town’s merchant class. Local newspapers often reported on Jewish life, including Yom Kippur services in Tombstone and Jewish funeral services there. For example, The Tombstone Nugget reported that the funeral of a Mr. Rosenthal (first name unknown) was conducted by the very first Jewish organization chartered in Arizona, The Tombstone Hebrew Association (sadly, the records of the Tombstone Hebrew Association have never been found) and that he was buried with full Hebrew rites in the Jewish Cemetery in Tombstone.
Prominent Jewish residents of Tombstone included Hyman Solomon, who was the manager of Oberfelder and Company, a general merchandise firm in Tombstone, before being elected Tombstone’s treasurer (1882), and Abraham H. Emanuel, who ran a blacksmith and wagon shop before being elected mayor of Tombstone three times (1896, 1898, 1900).
In any event, as Josie herself later wrote, Behan was Wyatt’s “arch-enemy.” There was bad blood between the two men, who were both political and romantic rivals. Politically, they were competing for power in Cochise County and, romantically, Behan was reportedly devastated by Josie’s “betrayal” – though, in truth, it was Behan who had betrayed her by reneging on his promises of matrimony. Thus, the ultimate showdown at the O.K. Corral was, at least in part, a battle between Wyatt, Josie’s future “husband,” and Behan, her soon-to-be ex. Indeed, many historians argue that Behan had hired the gang to eliminate Wyatt, which led to the legendary confrontation at the O.K. Corral.
