Virgil Earp

Virgil Earp

Virgil Walter Earp (July 18, 1843 – October 19, 1905) fought in the Civil War. He was U.S. Deputy Marshal for south-eastern Arizona and Tombstone City Marshal at the time of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in the Arizona Territory. Two months after the shootout in Tombstone, outlaw Cowboys ambushed Virgil on the streets of Tombstone, shattering his left arm, leaving him maimed for life. His brother Morgan Earp was assassinated in March and Virgil left Tombstone for Colton, California, to live with his parents and recuperate. When 16 years old, Virgil was married in Pella, Iowa. While Earp served in the Union Army during the American Civil War, his wife received a false report that he had died and, so, moved to Oregon with her parents. Virgil did not see her or his daughter again for 37 years. He married two more times.

Virgil held a variety of jobs throughout his life, though he primarily worked in law enforcement. His younger brother Wyatt, who spent most of his life as a gambler, became better known as a lawman because of writer Stuart N. Lake's fictionalized 1931 biography Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal and later portrayals of him in movies and fiction as Old West's "toughest and deadliest gunmen of his day."