Now that you know the truth about Wyatt Earp check out this video and find out about The Remarkable Bass Reeves: th-cam.com/video/mirZQ64xf1A/w-d-xo.html
There seem to have been a lot of men in the Old West who toggled back and forth between being lawmen and being highway robbers, smugglers, counterfeiters, keepers of houses of ill repute, etc. The Earps were not unusual, or at least they were not alone, in that. Maybe the old “find a dog who’ll eat a dog” principle was at work when police, sheriffs, and marshals were recruited. Or maybe it was just hard to find anybody else who’d take the job.
Another great example of this is Johnny Ringo himself. He served as law man and outlaw even before he road with the most infamous band of Outlaws in Arizona History. In his youth he fought in the Hoodoo War of Mason County Texas, during which he gunned down an unarmed man named James Cheyenne and he and another man named Scott Cooley killed another man named Charley Bader though Ringo either escaped jail or was acquitted of the murder and went on to become a constable in Loyal Valley Texas before he moved out to Arizona.
Emmett, this is a great revelation to me. My great-grandmother was a Hoerster from Mason County, Texas. I had vaguely heard about some troubles over cattle rustling in the old days, but I didn’t know about the Hoodoo Wars until I read your post. It turns out that Dan Hoerster, who was surely a relative of mine, was one of the central figures in the conflict, and was ambushed and killed during the Hoodoo War. Thanks for tipping me off to some family history!
Hoerster was a Cattle Inspector, ans was well liked by the German American Community in Texas. He led a campaign to eradicate cattle rustling in the area, Cattle Rustling had always been a problem in South Texas. Organized bans of outlaws frequently stole cattle from ranches on both sides of the border, and the spring trail bosses were often at best indifferent to whose cattle they were herding. If they encountered unattended cattle they would add them to their heard, branded or not The German Ranchers had absolutely no patience for the rustlers. When Hoerster captured five rustlers a German Mob broke into the jail and hanged three of the rustlers from an Oak Tree on the edge of town. Hoerster did his best to prevent them from breaking into the jail and to save the five men, but was only able to save one while another managed to escape. The matter was further worsened by the killing of a popular American Rancher in a gunfight between him and a group of German Ranchers after he was arrested by Deputy Sheriff Wohrle for the theft of a yearling and the purchase of stolen cattle. And then the issue was further worsened when a grand jury refused to indite any of the killers. A former Texas Ranger Scott Cooley then formed a posse that included infamous outlaw Johnny Ringo and murdered Hoerster in a failed ambush and gunned down the aforementioned James Cheney. Eventually the Democratic Governor of Texas Richard Coke ordered the Texas Rangers to put an end to the Violence. The Rangers hunted down and arrested both Cooley and Sheriff Clark who had been an ally of Hoerster. And while both were prosecuted only Cooley was ultimately convicted and seceded, while Sheriff Clark would resign and fade into obscurity.
I am an Earp descendant. Wyatt and his brothers were my double first cousins, four generations removed. Wyatt's father was the brother of my third great-grandfather and his mother was the sister of my third great-grandmother. Wyatt had a very hard life. None of his mining claims ever panned out. None of his various businesses ever made him successful. Josephine, whom the family hated, possibly due to antisemitism, or maybe because she insisted on living beyond their means, or perhaps it was that costly gambling addiction, was the only person he seemed to love, outside of his family of origin-- at least after his first wife died while carrying his child. While I enjoy the mythology of Wyatt, I know that he was very tight-lipped and, as an old man, rarely told the truth about his past. I'm certain that he DID kill Ringo. He just wouldn't admit it for many years because he didn't want to hang for a killing he considered no worse than shooting a rabid dog. While Wyatt may have died in Los Angeles, he's actually buried in the Jewish cemetery in Colma, just south of San Francisco. Josephine was Jewish and apparently convinced Wyatt to convert before his death, otherwise he wouldn't be buried there. Thanks for the excellent video about my most famous cousin.
It depends on the person, and family line. In some cases though family lineage can be traced by a very long way, more than just a few hundred years. Though the further back you go, the more important the people have to be for there to have been records about them that could be traced back to. So if you were a decendant of some peasent 500 years ago, you'll more than likely never find out who. How ever if you're a decendent of an important leader like a duke, a king, or something along those lines, there could be enough records that could confirm the relation. That's if the person's decendents, or family kept an important status through the years.
Bayek the lad of Siwa my families lineag goes all the way back to the Titan, the second ship to go to the north americas, on my mothers side we go back to Lusk my many greats grandfather who was hung in canada for piracy after fleeing his home country. Weve paid alot to delve into my families history.
Regarding the Fitzsimmons-Sharkey fight, if a referee is going to throw a fight, he doesn't wait until the 8th round to do it. If Wyatt intended that Sharkey win the fight, waiting until the 8th round would have enabled Fitzsimmons to win during any of the first 7. It was a fair fight, and the right outcome.
This is stupid. If a fight is thrown before round 5 people might ask questions because the fight ended too quickly. Therefore the fighters do a play acting dance fight for 7 rounds or more to make it look more realistic. That's a professional fixed fight. Where you can't tell if it's real or fake. An unprofessional fixed fight is often ended by round 3 and includes shadow punches or lack of fighting at all. That normally results in one or more involved in that fixed fight to be buried alive, often in cement.
back in the "Old West", finding any law enforcement officer that was perfect would be a hard task....Earp was a good lawman who did have principles about serious wrong-doing and followed that premise in correction.....the rest was a sign-of-the-times among the average citizens....of which he was a member
Sure, that's what he claimed. But the reality is that he was a psychopath who used his "law enforcement" duties to personally benefit himself and his friends, and to extrajudicially punish/murder his enemies.
@@chuckschillingvideos At least your honest about the past of America's History. Most of America seem to have an issue with its inception from Genocide and Slavery which gets us the Caste System in this Republic
One thing that is true is that Erp had an interesting life and survived the old west to live to old age and saw a lot of changes in his life. He certainly lived in interesting times.
Wyatt Earp was a remarkable man he lived a dangerous life messed with ladies of the night and lived to be 80 years old.....When the average life expectancy was 36.
@@kemoslabbyhalfmoon2804 That's because the infant mortality rate was really high, which brought the average down. After you made it to a certain age, there was a pretty good chance that you were going to live to a pretty decent age. So you are correct, to an extent.
John Wayne said he modeled his western acting persona exactly after Earp. So when you see Wayne in those trademark westerns you are seeing him portraying Earp.
I have seen documentaries about Wyatt and than there is the Hollywood version. Back in those days you did what ever you had to to survive and Wyatt did many things and lawman was just one occupation. He was simply a man of his times
Anything was shooting words back then lol Guy 1- "Did you just give my horse a dirty look?" Guy 2 - "Indeed I did....." *hand grasps gun butt and the stare down ensues*
Good, bad or indifferent, this man was in fact (much reading) the definition of badass. I don’t even think a navy seal would have have wanted a showdown with this man, he was completely fearless.
Wyatt Earp was just a man, and to portray him as something that wasn't just trying to survive and keep his family safe, is foolish. That being said, everyone that was ever interviewed about him agreed that he was absolutely fearless.
Amen. I get tired of people bringing up every flaw the man had as an excuse to say he was a terrible person. Guess what everyone that has ever lived has done good and bad things. No one ever said Wyatt was perfect. I think that’s the problem with modern day politics even everyone either has to be perfect and a shining white night or they’re just a scumbag. We need to get out of that mentality. Thank God for Wyatt Earp.
A couple of biography’s I’ve read about him, I came away with the feeling he wasn’t a bully, (although he was a big man 6’4”), he just didn’t take shit off anyone. Which to me, is an attribute of someone who’s “fearless”
Most of the evidence presented at the coroner's inquisition pointed toward the Erp group firing first. What we do know for sure is that at the time of the attack the cowboys were not actively pursuing the Earps, the Earp clan came down the street to them. Also, only one of the cowboys present who was considered competent with a gun, and none were even close to the class of the Erps or Doc. How likely is it that someone who knows they are out-skilled by a lot is going to pull a gun on someone face to face.
If they had been there for a fight the cowboys could have shot down the Earps with their rifles before the earps even got into pistol range None of the Earp party had rifles and a sawed off shotgun doesnt have much more range than a pistol
Doc clicked back the hammers of the shotgun, setting off the cowboys to go for their pistols. Whether the Earps got off the first rounds or not, no one will ever really know. Eye witnesses were too contradictory to be clear who fired first. 27 seconds forever changed the perceptions of the early west forever.
@@mickylawless1941 never know for certain, but the overwhelming evidence points to the Earps. The actual eyewitnesses were not contradictory. It just contradict the myth.
My grandfather and his brother my uncle Orlando.. set off to the Klondike Gold Rush in the late 1890s A boomtown known as Nome.. there the met Wyatt Earp and his wife Josie .. all 4 of them embarked on a business venture each had equal shares in a partnership... owning and running a saloon called the Dexter on the main street next to the Warwick...i have letters and photos of the Dexter Josie on horse back.. my grandfather.. uncle Orlando.. Wyatt all outside the Dexter dating back to that time in history.... all this correspondence was sent to my grandma back in Utah... . it has been handed down to my dad now to me .. it a true in sight to how the old west was .. no fancy tales just true facts of every day life... it certainly makes interesting reading ... Wyatt told grandad a lot about his life as a lawman following boomtown after boomtown ...Tombstone was near to the end of boomtown life. change was on its way the railroad opened up the old west... before the railroads a man could only travel as fast as a horse could gallop...OK..... thanks guys
About John Ringo, Buckskin Frank Leslie is the most agreed upon assassin of Ringo. He was in the very near vicinity of Ringo's camp, had a known grudge, and was asking that very day where he could find Ringo. Ringo was found with a shot to the head, with a six gun that was not his laying across his lap, and not in the likely position to be found after firing a bullet into said man's brain. I think Earp would be such a stealer of glory, that he was willing to be the bad-ass who did the deed to the over-rated John Ringo. Earp's fame came firstly and mostly from the glorified auto-biography he dictated to Stuart Lake shortly before his death. I read that version first, of the info I ever read about Wyatt Earp, and I found out in the years after, the preponderance of evidence did NOT support Wyatt Earp as a heroic legend of the West. he was more a product of the pulp fiction of dime novels published at the time, similar to the treatment gunfighters received from interviews in the vane of the interesting movie by Clint Eastwood, 'The Unforgiven".
The difference between a hero, and a villain is good press. Buffalo Bill, too. A lot of what we "Know" about the west comes from the old cowboy craze, and the Pulp novels they were based on. (Bonus fact: Star Trek was pitched as "Wagon Train to the stars." Basically a Western in Space.) We played Cowboys and Indians, where the first tribes were represented as Savages, and the cowboys as heroic. The Lone Ranger, and his friend, Tonto. The reality was invasion, and genocide. The truth is there are no "Good guys," and "Badguys," only people who do good, and bad.
With all the time you spent going on about how Earp was, in fact, not the man popular culture deemed him to be it might have good to hear about how is brother Morgan was murdered and his brother Virgil was permantly disabled through an ambush attack. Along with the revenge rampage that he embarked upon afterward.
Lee Mac Personally, I was greatly hoping to hear more about the "vengeance ride". To me, that was probably the thing that makes me admire Earp so. I'm a firm believer in folks not being allowed to harm family and if they do, they'll pay the ultimate price. That's not a popular view these days, but it's mine. So many folks in those days ran whore houses, gambling joints and bars, it's not even surprising the Earp boys did, or that they were married to prostitutes for the most part. Whether all or only a scant part of the stories about Wyatt are true, they are now a huge part of his mystique and after enough folks believe the lies, they become the truth. That's how most of history is written.
My grandfather's grandfather witnessed the shooting at the OK corral. Stuff like this is family history for me. I was actually surprised to learn that Earp has been considered a hero all this time! Ha! You never know what you'll learn on this show, but you Always learn something. :-)
A lot of the views regarding the Earp and cowboys depended on whether you were a Democrat or a Republican, with the Earps being business oriented Republicans and the cowboys being cattle oriented Democrats. Now, that's not entirely reflective of modern views on them, but a lot of the first hand accounts are clouded by personal bias of the individuals of the time
Great video, as always (you) make the storytelling quite interesting. I must say the background is very flattering for the historical pictures, and you, it works well together, I like the filter.👍It seems to be new or it just really caught my eye, today.
Maybe men who had lived the way outlaws did produced most of the toughest and wiliest men from their ranks. These men might have been, due to their background, experience, toughness & unhesitant willingness to use violence effectively, the most qualified to deal with the type of men they had already learned about as one of their daily routine. In addition, the Earps, in this case, were brothers in a violent time, when they learned from growing up fighting each other, as boys, especially brothers, tend to do. And they would have also learned a lot about human nature and working together, as well as being tough & strong from their testosterone feuled familial and local squabbles, the rough pioneer life, and the experience from the kind of life they chose: bouncers, bartenders, gamblers, miners & pimps. They seemed to have been good at violence, as they tended to thrive at work that was more violent than the kind of work most men did. Most people would like Andy Griffith as Sheriff when personally dealing with the law, but also like one who can become John Rambo when protecting them from criminals. The first kind of lawman is only possible in a somewhat settled and civilized environment. The second is essential for dealing with wild west type environments, while the first is not. Most of us want to hire people who appear willing & capable of doing the job offered. That seems to be the Earps' most prominent talent: being willing and able to deal with dishonest, wiley & violent men.
There are serious reasons to believe that Clay Allison was bat-sh*t crazy, and even crazier when he was drunk. I think if he'd not cried off, Wyatt would have killed him. Guys who actually saw Wyatt in action, said he apparently had ice-water instead of blood: he was utterly cool and would calmly take aim, fire and hit what he aimed at. This is the opposite of Clay Allison's method.
Wyatt Earp was the hero for what he did no matter what he did in his past now I am proudly a related to Wyatt and now that he was not as bad as people say he is
Just my take but Kevin coster's film seemed much more factual plus the characters were less polished which made this film more real. This was the better film.
B'H: I enjoy your videos. I did notice some errors in your presentation. For example, Wyatt Earp was not a drinker. I have read a great deal about the man and he preferred coffee. In addition, his meeting of "john wayne" was when the latter was not yet an actor but working as a grip on the sets. He did meet famous actors Brett Hart and Tom Mix. At the time he felt comfortable around these real ex cow hands. Also Wyatt was appreciated and respected by town folk because he rarely killed the rowdy cowhands, preferring to "buffalo" them and drag them off to jail. He died in a bungalow that he and his wife were renting. He did, according to many, try to sell his story to the movies but had no success...until after his death. In short he was not better or worse than most men who straddled the law, but he was better at it.
Earp's law career prior to Tombstone was pretty minimal in violence. It's pretty easy to trace most of the bad talk about him to a smear campaign by criminals. That's pretty standard for criminals, they're always the victim of their own narrative.
My mother was a school friend of Jane Mix, movie cowboy Tom Mix's daughter. Jane attended Wyatt Earp's funeral with her father. She said that, during the funeral, Tom Mix wept.
Most lawmen are...,very lethal ,gamblers, loyal to family, have women problems,have an outlaw rebel spirit and can be vagabonds. WYATT WAS NO DIFFERENT.
i had never known about wyatt and his life and tombstone untill when i was seven years old and went into the theater in my home town of franklin tenneessee on saturday.the movie was gun fight at the ok corrall withbburt lancaster and cant remember name of other guy.anyway fascinated me.years later i was grown.and heard that hollywood had made another movie about wyatt earp.and it told the true story of his life staring kevin coster.as wyatt.about a week after i learned about the movie and this is the strange and old black man that would go through franklin with a horse and abuggy he pulled up to me in our front yard ased if i wanted some stuff he was not keep so i looked didnt see anything he said wait and picked up a little kind of gray book small he told me it was a western i picked it up said on froint wyatt earp i turned the cover back and inside on cover when it was published by publisher in new york in 1925.then said my life.i took it hopme next night read whole book and details were a lot different than gunfight at ok corral .i stayed up two nights reading it.years later.i became a singer recording artist and musician and toured all over us.also tuscon arizona..while there met my wife.finished a show one night saturday.she took me home next morninh said she wanted to tame me
take me to tomstone.we went there and met some nice people .also saw advertisement from chamber of commerce they were trying to do a fund drive to raise money to help repair old boardwalks that were deterieng so state wouldnt tear them up and destroy the origianals.so we walked into chamber of commerce and italked to them as i also got us booked at thebig nose kate saloon and the national association of bounty hunters there and later the town does a thing called wester film festival we got booked on that performing on mainstreet also met all the western film actors fro hollywood a lot of my heroes then made a deal withchamber of commerce to sell tapes on a song i had wrote about history of boardwalks and made aggreement to let me sell tapes and sign in chamber office to public.while signing tapes noticed tall ma and two little boys standing in line waiting to get their tapes autographed as isigned notice people started stairing at him and the boys.when the got to me laid three tapes i said i will sign tapes for you.so i did .and i notice as they walked through chamber everybody kept looking at them.and i could also see through glass window lookung outside people were stopping them and shaking hands with him.my bodyguard beside me said bobyy dont you know who that guy was i said no because it didnt hit me at first.he said that was kevin coster.also later when i saw wyatt earp i remembered that it was word for word excatly like that little book that old black man gave me.so years later i threw it away.but wyatt earp was excately word for word .so i beleive somebody has another copy of that one that wyatt wrote.
He did a nice job of shedding light on Earp’s past. He gets a few thing a little off. 1. The cowboys that he had conflict with were criminals, rustling cattle, robbing stagecoaches and a murder associated with such crimes. 2. The record on who drew first and who shot first is not that unclear. The overwhelming evidence is that Earp’s posey drew and shot first. 3. The record of timing and location of both have been examined, and it is very unlikely that Earp and ever met a young John Wayne
There is no evidence that he ever met John Wayne. But Wyatt did know the director John Ford and he also knew and often spoke to and even described The Gunfight to Henry Fonda.
Please see about profiling that terrific American, General Custer. Monroe, Michigan has a large statue of this stellar fellow in the city. He was revolting in actuality but perhaps you might unearth some redeeming quality. Just a thought from Patty in Michigan
someone who is just a few hours from Tombstone it was amazing to go up there and see the was thriving town. What is pretty interesting and cool is 300 people actually live in the town today
Simon, if you haven't already could you do a video on why your accent changes depending on where you are in the world (like if you've moved and picked up the new accent), and why? It's fascinating to me when I've known people to live in one area overseas and come back to their hometown with a "twang" in their accent.
I'm not going to judge Earp, because that's God's job, not mine. If we are honest, we realize that sometimes good people do bad things, and sometimes bad people do good things. Earp was no angel, but he did some great things as well as stuff that I find hard to reconcile, like all people. The Old West may be romanticized, but the stories include real people, who were imperfect and complicated, and lived in a very difficult time. Would we have fared much better?
I was influenced by growing up watching the The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp television show (that shows theme song still sticks in mind.). One evening as a 13 year old I was watching the beginning of a western with my best friend and younger brother that was set in Tombstone, Arizona in the aftermath of the OK Corral shootout. If my memory serves me correctly there were either signs or newspapers being shown accusing Wyatt Earp of being a murderer. Based on my factual knowledge based on the television show I launched into one of my know it all tirades defending Wyatt Earp as being "Brave, courageous and bold". However, my younger brother and best friend were telling me that the real Wyatt Earp was no angel. What could those two sixth graders tell that eighth grader? Well, this 61 year old later learned that he didn't know about the real Wyatt Earp. Good video.
Wyatt was not a villain, he lived in a different time. The 'rules' were different, everything was different. You can not legitimately judge anyone from any other time by today's standards.
Murder was still murder, even back then. Earp emptied both barrels of his shotgun at point blank into Frank Stilwell, who was running from him. When there currently was not any warrant for his arrest or bounty on his head.
The "Messy fights that ensued" Earp tracked down the cowboys and killed them after they ambushed his brothers. I guess that would have put to much sympathy toward Earp and Simon could not hide Earps heroism if he talked about those "messy fights."
Thanks for a very interesting history of this much vaunted hero. As a child, I was told I was distantly related to him, and read virtually everything I could find on his life. Most of it was about the mythical Earp, a little of it more accurate. I appreciate hearing what sounds like a very realistic description of him and his life!👍
I went to high school in the early 1980s and our gaming group viewed him as "straddling the line" so to speak. FYI, we had an opinion of him, because we played a gunfight game and played the OK Corral gunfight (of course), and because we were nerd read up on him and the fight. As I recall, much later when we were adults we played an OK Corral gunfight on the computer as well.
You left out a few things. The cowboys weren't some criminal gang as is often portrayed by Hollywood, these were hard-working men who had ranches and cattle and were often seen by locals as respectable stockmen most of the time, though when some of them came into town for much needed time off, the occasional problems occurred because they tended to drink and play hard. However, there's few accounts of problems with Ike Clanton, Tom McLaury., and the others involved in the gunfight. We also have no definitive idea to this day who shot and killed Morgan Earp and wounded Virgil in the reprisals after the OK Corral incident. But Wyatt thought he did and with Doc Holliday and four other men even murdered Frank Stillwell in Tucson not long afterwords on pretext that in turn forced them to flee Arizona, but not before going on on the so-called 3 week "Revenge Ride".
I don't know who the gentleman in the photo at the start of this video is but it is definitely NOT Wyatt Earp. Nor is the photo at 7:47 Ike Clanton. Actually, very few of the photos shown are the persons the narrator purports them to be.
I always remember the Beetlejuice cartoon when I was a kid. One episode had Wyatt Earp in it and he was belching because that's what his name sounded like.
Growing up my dad would often refer to older things as coming from a day when life was actually hard and men were men. Often he would refer to an old tractor or an antique pickup when saying this. Honestly I can’t think of a more fitting timeframe to be talking about than that of the time Wyatt Earp lived through. Earp was famous and made out to be the great American hero because in his time the things he did while being questionable at times were never truly outlaw. Lawmen were often formerly criminals. Hell the man who shot billy the kid was at one point closely associated with his regulators. At that time you had to think like an outlaw to take down the outlaw. Many of lawmen of that time had similar lifestyles at that point. In fact many of those considered American hero’s would never be considered more than scum today. People take for granted that we can view history and look back from the comfort of or modern safe society. We live in an age where people are afraid to go outside for fear of crime. In the 1800s and really into about 1920 if you stepped outside for a walk and lived in the country you might not make it home unless you were armed. The wildlife alone was dangerous. In those times life was actually hard and men were men.
people at that time were hard and in the Wild West lawmen were sparse. There was little scrutiny of prospective lawmen; if they weren't notorious robbers/killers they were considered eligible, esp if they were known to be tough and aggressive enough to handle troublemakers, often with little support from the average citizen. Earp had the qualifications, even with a largely unsuspected history of misdemeanors.
Now that you know the truth about Wyatt Earp check out this video and find out about The Remarkable Bass Reeves:
th-cam.com/video/mirZQ64xf1A/w-d-xo.html
What are you talking about Simon??? Everyone knows Greedo shot first. ^.^
"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend" - The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence
There seem to have been a lot of men in the Old West who toggled back and forth between being lawmen and being highway robbers, smugglers, counterfeiters, keepers of houses of ill repute, etc. The Earps were not unusual, or at least they were not alone, in that.
Maybe the old “find a dog who’ll eat a dog” principle was at work when police, sheriffs, and marshals were recruited. Or maybe it was just hard to find anybody else who’d take the job.
it was survival
Another great example of this is Johnny Ringo himself. He served as law man and outlaw even before he road with the most infamous band of Outlaws in Arizona History. In his youth he fought in the Hoodoo War of Mason County Texas, during which he gunned down an unarmed man named James Cheyenne and he and another man named Scott Cooley killed another man named Charley Bader though Ringo either escaped jail or was acquitted of the murder and went on to become a constable in Loyal Valley Texas before he moved out to Arizona.
Emmett, this is a great revelation to me. My great-grandmother was a Hoerster from Mason County, Texas. I had vaguely heard about some troubles over cattle rustling in the old days, but I didn’t know about the Hoodoo Wars until I read your post. It turns out that Dan Hoerster, who was surely a relative of mine, was one of the central figures in the conflict, and was ambushed and killed during the Hoodoo War. Thanks for tipping me off to some family history!
Hoerster was a Cattle Inspector, ans was well liked by the German American Community in Texas. He led a campaign to eradicate cattle rustling in the area, Cattle Rustling had always been a problem in South Texas. Organized bans of outlaws frequently stole cattle from ranches on both sides of the border, and the spring trail bosses were often at best indifferent to whose cattle they were herding. If they encountered unattended cattle they would add them to their heard, branded or not
The German Ranchers had absolutely no patience for the rustlers. When Hoerster captured five rustlers a German Mob broke into the jail and hanged three of the rustlers from an Oak Tree on the edge of town. Hoerster did his best to prevent them from breaking into the jail and to save the five men, but was only able to save one while another managed to escape. The matter was further worsened by the killing of a popular American Rancher in a gunfight between him and a group of German Ranchers after he was arrested by Deputy Sheriff Wohrle for the theft of a yearling and the purchase of stolen cattle. And then the issue was further worsened when a grand jury refused to indite any of the killers. A former Texas Ranger Scott Cooley then formed a posse that included infamous outlaw Johnny Ringo and murdered Hoerster in a failed ambush and gunned down the aforementioned James Cheney. Eventually the Democratic Governor of Texas Richard Coke ordered the Texas Rangers to put an end to the Violence. The Rangers hunted down and arrested both Cooley and Sheriff Clark who had been an ally of Hoerster. And while both were prosecuted only Cooley was ultimately convicted and seceded, while Sheriff Clark would resign and fade into obscurity.
You were great in "Sergeant York".
I am an Earp descendant. Wyatt and his brothers were my double first cousins, four generations removed. Wyatt's father was the brother of my third great-grandfather and his mother was the sister of my third great-grandmother. Wyatt had a very hard life. None of his mining claims ever panned out. None of his various businesses ever made him successful. Josephine, whom the family hated, possibly due to antisemitism, or maybe because she insisted on living beyond their means, or perhaps it was that costly gambling addiction, was the only person he seemed to love, outside of his family of origin-- at least after his first wife died while carrying his child. While I enjoy the mythology of Wyatt, I know that he was very tight-lipped and, as an old man, rarely told the truth about his past. I'm certain that he DID kill Ringo. He just wouldn't admit it for many years because he didn't want to hang for a killing he considered no worse than shooting a rabid dog. While Wyatt may have died in Los Angeles, he's actually buried in the Jewish cemetery in Colma, just south of San Francisco. Josephine was Jewish and apparently convinced Wyatt to convert before his death, otherwise he wouldn't be buried there. Thanks for the excellent video about my most famous cousin.
calichef1962 cool, man.
calichef1962 so youre actually no way a blood relative. You coudve just said that.
Chris Stylwin do you actually think they can trace your family back that far?
It depends on the person, and family line. In some cases though family lineage can be traced by a very long way, more than just a few hundred years. Though the further back you go, the more important the people have to be for there to have been records about them that could be traced back to. So if you were a decendant of some peasent 500 years ago, you'll more than likely never find out who. How ever if you're a decendent of an important leader like a duke, a king, or something along those lines, there could be enough records that could confirm the relation. That's if the person's decendents, or family kept an important status through the years.
Bayek the lad of Siwa my families lineag goes all the way back to the Titan, the second ship to go to the north americas, on my mothers side we go back to Lusk my many greats grandfather who was hung in canada for piracy after fleeing his home country. Weve paid alot to delve into my families history.
Regarding the Fitzsimmons-Sharkey fight, if a referee is going to throw a fight, he doesn't wait until the 8th round to do it. If Wyatt intended that Sharkey win the fight, waiting until the 8th round would have enabled Fitzsimmons to win during any of the first 7.
It was a fair fight, and the right outcome.
Solid point. Well said.
This is stupid. If a fight is thrown before round 5 people might ask questions because the fight ended too quickly. Therefore the fighters do a play acting dance fight for 7 rounds or more to make it look more realistic. That's a professional fixed fight. Where you can't tell if it's real or fake.
An unprofessional fixed fight is often ended by round 3 and includes shadow punches or lack of fighting at all. That normally results in one or more involved in that fixed fight to be buried alive, often in cement.
back in the "Old West", finding any law enforcement officer that was perfect would be a hard task....Earp was a good lawman who did have principles about serious wrong-doing and followed that premise in correction.....the rest was a sign-of-the-times among the average citizens....of which he was a member
Sure, that's what he claimed. But the reality is that he was a psychopath who used his "law enforcement" duties to personally benefit himself and his friends, and to extrajudicially punish/murder his enemies.
@@chuckschillingvideos At least your honest about the past of America's History.
Most of America seem to have an issue with its inception from Genocide and Slavery which gets us the Caste System in this Republic
One thing that is true is that Erp had an interesting life and survived the old west to live to old age and saw a lot of changes in his life. He certainly lived in interesting times.
Wyatt Earp was a remarkable man he lived a dangerous life messed with ladies of the night and lived to be 80 years old.....When the average life expectancy was 36.
Exactly! He had to be pretty sharp to make it to 80 years old through that time period!
The average life expectancy was not 36😂😂😂
Stop making things up.
Billy Loomis Average life expectancy was around 38 years old for nearly 30 years in the late 1800’s, ain’t make nothing up
@@kemoslabbyhalfmoon2804 That's because the infant mortality rate was really high, which brought the average down. After you made it to a certain age, there was a pretty good chance that you were going to live to a pretty decent age. So you are correct, to an extent.
John Wayne said he modeled his western acting persona exactly after Earp. So when you see Wayne in those trademark westerns you are seeing him portraying Earp.
Grant Douglas No way, Kurt Russel was the best Earp lol, love that movie even if it is all BS
Pilgrim
He likely did. Or at least the version of him that old Wyatt told him. If I live to 80 I'm going to make myself sound like a pretty swell guy.
John Wayne used His Mentor Harry Carey, not Earp
That's hilarious. John Wayne always just played John Wayne.
Loved the old Wyatt Earp show with Hugh O'Brien. Thanks.
Han shot first.
Oscar Coco wierd I was just thinking about that before watching this video for some reason
YOU STOLE MY IDEA!
Still, pretty good.
Greedo shot never
Of course he did.. Fuck Guido..
I have seen documentaries about Wyatt and than there is the Hollywood version. Back in those days you did what ever you had to to survive and Wyatt did many things and lawman was just one occupation. He was simply a man of his times
Wyatt Earp a villain! --- Them's shootin words
Anything was shooting words back then lol
Guy 1- "Did you just give my horse a dirty look?"
Guy 2 - "Indeed I did....."
*hand grasps gun butt and the stare down ensues*
So what ur saying to today I found out is "I'm ur huckleberry that's just my game"
you're fresh kid, i outta belt ya
...Simon, don't mess with Wyatt...I won't mess with King Arthur...thanks for all the fun & information...🌵
He was absolutely not a criminal
Good, bad or indifferent, this man was in fact (much reading) the definition of badass. I don’t even think a navy seal would have have wanted a showdown with this man, he was completely fearless.
Wyatt Earp was just a man, and to portray him as something that wasn't just trying to survive and keep his family safe, is foolish. That being said, everyone that was ever interviewed about him agreed that he was absolutely fearless.
Amen. I get tired of people bringing up every flaw the man had as an excuse to say he was a terrible person. Guess what everyone that has ever lived has done good and bad things. No one ever said Wyatt was perfect. I think that’s the problem with modern day politics even everyone either has to be perfect and a shining white night or they’re just a scumbag. We need to get out of that mentality. Thank God for Wyatt Earp.
A couple of biography’s I’ve read about him, I came away with the feeling he wasn’t a bully, (although he was a big man 6’4”), he just didn’t take shit off anyone. Which to me, is an attribute of someone who’s “fearless”
He was a POS who just happened to have a badge.
Most of the evidence presented at the coroner's inquisition pointed toward the Erp group firing first. What we do know for sure is that at the time of the attack the cowboys were not actively pursuing the Earps, the Earp clan came down the street to them. Also, only one of the cowboys present who was considered competent with a gun, and none were even close to the class of the Erps or Doc. How likely is it that someone who knows they are out-skilled by a lot is going to pull a gun on someone face to face.
If they had been there for a fight the cowboys could have shot down the Earps with their rifles before the earps even got into pistol range None of the Earp party had rifles and a sawed off shotgun doesnt have much more range than a pistol
Doc clicked back the hammers of the shotgun, setting off the cowboys to go for their pistols. Whether the Earps got off the first rounds or not, no one will ever really know. Eye witnesses were too contradictory to be clear who fired first. 27 seconds forever changed the perceptions of the early west forever.
@@mickylawless1941 never know for certain, but the overwhelming evidence points to the Earps. The actual eyewitnesses were not contradictory. It just contradict the myth.
I grew up in New Mexico. Was baptized by a member of the Earp family. That branch of the family held no fondness for Wyatt.
My grandfather and his brother my uncle Orlando.. set off to the Klondike Gold Rush in the late 1890s A boomtown known as Nome.. there the met Wyatt Earp and his wife Josie .. all 4 of them embarked on a business venture each had equal shares in a partnership... owning and running a saloon called the Dexter on the main street next to the Warwick...i have letters and photos of the Dexter Josie on horse back.. my grandfather.. uncle Orlando.. Wyatt all outside the Dexter dating back to that time in history.... all this correspondence was sent to my grandma back in Utah... . it has been handed down to my dad now to me .. it a true in sight to how the old west was .. no fancy tales just true facts of every day life... it certainly makes interesting reading ... Wyatt told grandad a lot about his life as a lawman following boomtown after boomtown ...Tombstone was near to the end of boomtown life. change was on its way the railroad opened up the old west... before the railroads a man could only travel as fast as a horse could gallop...OK..... thanks guys
About John Ringo, Buckskin Frank Leslie is the most agreed upon assassin of Ringo. He was in the very near vicinity of Ringo's camp, had a known grudge, and was asking that very day where he could find Ringo. Ringo was found with a shot to the head, with a six gun that was not his laying across his lap, and not in the likely position to be found after firing a bullet into said man's brain.
I think Earp would be such a stealer of glory, that he was willing to be the bad-ass who did the deed to the over-rated John Ringo.
Earp's fame came firstly and mostly from the glorified auto-biography he dictated to Stuart Lake shortly before his death. I read that version first, of the info I ever read about Wyatt Earp, and I found out in the years after, the preponderance of evidence did NOT support Wyatt Earp as a heroic legend of the West. he was more a product of the pulp fiction of dime novels published at the time, similar to the treatment gunfighters received from interviews in the vane of the interesting movie by Clint Eastwood, 'The Unforgiven".
So...
are you saying Wyatt was a human?
That is an absurd take. Do you go around hitting women, stealing, murdering people who report your crimes, etc?
Michael Harley And you was living back then so you know this 😂🤪😂😂😂😚😋🤣🤣
@@randyvindevoghel7912 God that's funny!
@@weewoahhh have you heard of morals? :D
A villain? You mean a legend!
Tombstone fact or fiction still one of the all time greats.
My whole life I lived 30 mins from where this man was born
I think I'm going to open...a brothel... :)
The difference between a hero, and a villain is good press. Buffalo Bill, too. A lot of what we "Know" about the west comes from the old cowboy craze, and the Pulp novels they were based on. (Bonus fact: Star Trek was pitched as "Wagon Train to the stars." Basically a Western in Space.) We played Cowboys and Indians, where the first tribes were represented as Savages, and the cowboys as heroic. The Lone Ranger, and his friend, Tonto. The reality was invasion, and genocide. The truth is there are no "Good guys," and "Badguys," only people who do good, and bad.
With all the time you spent going on about how Earp was, in fact, not the man popular culture deemed him to be it might have good to hear about how is brother Morgan was murdered and his brother Virgil was permantly disabled through an ambush attack. Along with the revenge rampage that he embarked upon afterward.
Lee Mac
Personally, I was greatly hoping to hear more about the "vengeance ride". To me, that was probably the thing that makes me admire Earp so. I'm a firm believer in folks not being allowed to harm family and if they do, they'll pay
the ultimate price.
That's not a popular view these days, but it's mine.
So many folks in those days ran whore houses, gambling joints and bars, it's not even surprising the Earp boys did, or that they were married to prostitutes for the most part. Whether all or only a scant part of the stories about Wyatt are true, they are now a huge part of his mystique and after enough folks believe the lies, they become the truth. That's how most of history is written.
Oh, so you've seen Tombstone...
manny4mayor "Oh, so you've seen Tombstone..." So what, it's fact, whether it's in a Hollywood movie or not.
@@fredman1085 no it's not lmao
My grandfather's grandfather witnessed the shooting at the OK corral. Stuff like this is family history for me. I was actually surprised to learn that Earp has been considered a hero all this time! Ha! You never know what you'll learn on this show, but you Always learn something. :-)
A lot of the views regarding the Earp and cowboys depended on whether you were a Democrat or a Republican, with the Earps being business oriented Republicans and the cowboys being cattle oriented Democrats.
Now, that's not entirely reflective of modern views on them, but a lot of the first hand accounts are clouded by personal bias of the individuals of the time
"I'll be your huckleberry".
doc holiday said this not wyatt
@@newagecinematics Holliday*
@@newagecinematics Neither of them said it in reality
And it was “I’m you’re huckleberry”
''You're no daisy. You're no daisy at all''
I knew it wasn't him who shot Johnny Ringo, Doc Halliday shot Ringo. Classic Doc
Great video, as always (you) make the storytelling quite interesting. I must say the background is very flattering for the historical pictures, and you, it works well together, I like the filter.👍It seems to be new or it just really caught my eye, today.
I'll just say that the lapel pin Wyatt's father Nicholas wore in his portraits is pretty interesting.
Faro is "fair-oh". It's a bastardized spelling of "pharoah," a common card game in the Old West.
Public enemy said fuck John Wayne bcuz he's races I guess its fuck wyatt earp too
raise thebar what?
Pharaoh
It's PEE-oria, not PAY-oria.
Source: born here, raised here, and will probably die here :-P
con TROV er see
emphasis on PEE
Maybe men who had lived the way outlaws did produced most of the toughest and wiliest men from their ranks.
These men might have been, due to their background, experience, toughness & unhesitant willingness to use violence effectively, the most qualified to deal with the type of men they had already learned about as one of their daily routine.
In addition, the Earps, in this case, were brothers in a violent time, when they learned from growing up fighting each other, as boys, especially brothers, tend to do. And they would have also learned a lot about human nature and working together, as well as being tough & strong from their testosterone feuled familial and local squabbles, the rough pioneer life, and the experience from the kind of life they chose: bouncers, bartenders, gamblers, miners & pimps.
They seemed to have been good at violence, as they tended to thrive at work that was more violent than the kind of work most men did.
Most people would like Andy Griffith as Sheriff when personally dealing with the law, but also like one who can become John Rambo when protecting them from criminals.
The first kind of lawman is only possible in a somewhat settled and civilized environment.
The second is essential for dealing with wild west type environments, while the first is not.
Most of us want to hire people who appear willing & capable of doing the job offered.
That seems to be the Earps' most prominent talent: being willing and able to deal with dishonest, wiley & violent men.
There are serious reasons to believe that Clay Allison was bat-sh*t crazy, and even crazier when he was drunk. I think if he'd not cried off, Wyatt would have killed him. Guys who actually saw Wyatt in action, said he apparently had ice-water instead of blood: he was utterly cool and would calmly take aim, fire and hit what he aimed at. This is the opposite of Clay Allison's method.
Been waiting for this since the bass Reeves episode
You're just lucky Doc's not here.He'd be your huckleberry.
They already did a video on him. Lol
Loved both vids
Wyatt Earp was the hero for what he did no matter what he did in his past now I am proudly a related to Wyatt and now that he was not as bad as people say he is
Tombstone starting Kurt Russell was the a great film and all I need to know about Wyatt.
Just my take but Kevin coster's film seemed much more factual plus the characters were less polished which made this film more real. This was the better film.
B'H: I enjoy your videos. I did notice some errors in your presentation. For example, Wyatt Earp was not a drinker. I have read a great deal about the man and he preferred coffee. In addition, his meeting of "john wayne" was when the latter was not yet an actor but working as a grip on the sets. He did meet famous actors Brett Hart and Tom Mix. At the time he felt comfortable around these real ex cow hands. Also Wyatt was appreciated and respected by town folk because he rarely killed the rowdy cowhands, preferring to "buffalo" them and drag them off to jail. He died in a bungalow that he and his wife were renting. He did, according to many, try to sell his story to the movies but had no success...until after his death. In short he was not better or worse than most men who straddled the law, but he was better at it.
I think you should do a story on why there was a an Australian Navy vessel called HMAS Wyatt Earp
What do you expect? Ned Kelly is often considered something of a folk hero by many of us :P
Like most rough men good or bad, the truth is most times somewhere in the middle. There are no angels in real life.
"There are no angels in real life." Except for Mister Rogers... ;-) th-cam.com/video/eWHYJpJcLcU/w-d-xo.html
Today I Found Out....You're probably right, he's one of the few celebrities that you can dig any (documentable) dirt on.
There are pure,good people out there...like Kevin Spacey, Bill Cosby....or Josef Fritzl.
"throw down boy, skin that smokewagon!"
Can't remember if you've coverd this or not, could you do the Dalton gang?
Don’t forget the Chuck Wagon Gang too!
Interestingly, the Dalton boys had once been lawmen. Their elder brother Frank had been killed in line of duty by horse theives.
Wyatt Earp and the Gunfight at the Allright Corral.... wait, that's not right.... Gunfight at the Just Peachy Corral.... no?
The Okie Dokie Corral?
The Mediocre Mezzanine? Decent Drafthouse? Satisfactory Saloon?
Pretty Alright Corral?
Thank you for your interesting and informative videos!!!
Wyatt Earp went straight as soon as he could afford to.
“The one thing the Irish in me dreads is an ultimatum delivered to me with an English accent." - Tom Selleck
Thank you T.I.F.O. for further fun facts on Wyatt Earp...He certainly led an adventurous life, Never a dull moment..lol
You're very welcome. :-)
Earp's law career prior to Tombstone was pretty minimal in violence. It's pretty easy to trace most of the bad talk about him to a smear campaign by criminals. That's pretty standard for criminals, they're always the victim of their own narrative.
He was an American Legend!Period.
My mother was a school friend of Jane Mix, movie cowboy Tom Mix's daughter. Jane attended Wyatt Earp's funeral with her father. She said that, during the funeral, Tom Mix wept.
Let us not forget one of the greatest quotes of the old west:
“HEY MISTER!” - Arthur Morgan
Another fantastic video from Simon and the rest of the *TIFO* team. Thanks guys.
You're very welcome :-)
Hey Simon, you guys should do a video of the German love of western stuff. They got old west festival.
I think the British may have an old west festival or two themselves.
Most lawmen are...,very lethal ,gamblers, loyal to family, have women problems,have an outlaw rebel spirit and can be vagabonds. WYATT WAS NO DIFFERENT.
i had never known about wyatt and his life and tombstone untill when i was seven years old and went into the theater in my home town of franklin tenneessee on saturday.the movie was gun fight at the ok corrall withbburt lancaster and cant remember name of other guy.anyway fascinated me.years later i was grown.and heard that hollywood had made another movie about wyatt earp.and it told the true story of his life staring kevin coster.as wyatt.about a week after i learned about the movie and this is the strange and old black man that would go through franklin with a horse and abuggy he pulled up to me in our front yard ased if i wanted some stuff he was not keep so i looked didnt see anything he said wait and picked up a little kind of gray book small he told me it was a western i picked it up said on froint wyatt earp i turned the cover back and inside on cover when it was published by publisher in new york in 1925.then said my life.i took it hopme next night read whole book and details were a lot different than gunfight at ok corral .i stayed up two nights reading it.years later.i became a singer recording artist and musician and toured all over us.also tuscon arizona..while there met my wife.finished a show one night saturday.she took me home next morninh said she wanted to tame me
take me to tomstone.we went there and met some nice people .also saw advertisement from chamber of commerce they were trying to do a fund drive to raise money to help repair old boardwalks that were deterieng so state wouldnt tear them up and destroy the origianals.so we walked into chamber of commerce and italked to them as i also got us booked at thebig nose kate saloon and the national association of bounty hunters there and later the town does a thing called wester film festival we got booked on that performing on mainstreet also met all the western film actors fro hollywood a lot of my heroes then made a deal withchamber of commerce to sell tapes on a song i had wrote about history of boardwalks and made aggreement to let me sell tapes and sign in chamber office to public.while signing tapes noticed tall ma and two little boys standing in line waiting to get their tapes autographed as isigned notice people started stairing at him and the boys.when the got to me laid three tapes i said i will sign tapes for you.so i did .and i notice as they walked through chamber everybody kept looking at them.and i could also see through glass window lookung outside people were stopping them and shaking hands with him.my bodyguard beside me said bobyy dont you know who that guy was i said no because it didnt hit me at first.he said that was kevin coster.also later when i saw wyatt earp i remembered that it was word for word excatly like that little book that old black man gave me.so years later i threw it away.but wyatt earp was excately word for word .so i beleive somebody has another copy of that one that wyatt wrote.
Wyatt Earp! Pimp, gambler, killer and the luckiest man to have never gotten shot.
This video was announced ages ago in the video on Bass Reeves. Glad it’s finally out!
Bass Reeves was a truly amazing guy.
He did a nice job of shedding light on Earp’s past. He gets a few thing a little off.
1. The cowboys that he had conflict with were criminals, rustling cattle, robbing stagecoaches and a murder associated with such crimes.
2. The record on who drew first and who shot first is not that unclear. The overwhelming evidence is that Earp’s posey drew and shot first.
3. The record of timing and location of both have been examined, and it is very unlikely that Earp and ever met a young John Wayne
There is no evidence that he ever met John Wayne. But Wyatt did know the director John Ford and he also knew and often spoke to and even described The Gunfight to Henry Fonda.
Please see about profiling that terrific American, General Custer. Monroe, Michigan has a large statue of this stellar fellow in the city. He was revolting in actuality but perhaps you might unearth some redeeming quality. Just a thought from Patty in Michigan
Patty Pretzel
Excellent suggestion. I've never heard anything good about Custer that I can remember.
One of Wyatt Earp's childhood homes is in Pella, IA and it is still standing and is cared for by the Pella historical society.
My sons are Earp descendants so it is exciting to see this!
someone who is just a few hours from Tombstone it was amazing to go up there and see the was thriving town. What is pretty interesting and cool is 300 people actually live in the town today
And it will be as big as San Francisco in a couple of years.
Everyone who knows real history and not movie history knows Wyatt Earp was anything but a reputable lawman.
Thank you .
Simon, if you haven't already could you do a video on why your accent changes depending on where you are in the world (like if you've moved and picked up the new accent), and why?
It's fascinating to me when I've known people to live in one area overseas and come back to their hometown with a "twang" in their accent.
I'm not going to judge Earp, because that's God's job, not mine.
If we are honest, we realize that sometimes good people do bad things, and sometimes bad people do good things.
Earp was no angel, but he did some great things as well as stuff that I find hard to reconcile, like all people.
The Old West may be romanticized, but the stories include real people, who were imperfect and complicated, and lived in a very difficult time. Would we have fared much better?
That was quite interesting. Thank you for your work.
I was influenced by growing up watching the The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp television show (that shows theme song still sticks in mind.). One evening as a 13 year old I was watching the beginning of a western with my best friend and younger brother that was set in Tombstone, Arizona in the aftermath of the OK Corral shootout. If my memory serves me correctly there were either signs or newspapers being shown accusing Wyatt Earp of being a murderer. Based on my factual knowledge based on the television show I launched into one of my know it all tirades defending Wyatt Earp as being "Brave, courageous and bold". However, my younger brother and best friend were telling me that the real Wyatt Earp was no angel. What could those two sixth graders tell that eighth grader? Well, this 61 year old later learned that he didn't know about the real Wyatt Earp. Good video.
Rory Craft
Well, no one claims he wasn't brave, courageous and bold. He WAS. He was also a human being.
Wyatt was not a villain, he lived in a different time. The 'rules' were different, everything was different. You can not legitimately judge anyone from any other time by today's standards.
Murder was still murder, even back then. Earp emptied both barrels of his shotgun at point blank into Frank Stilwell, who was running from him. When there currently was not any warrant for his arrest or bounty on his head.
@@SangTheCryptek sometimes the rules were toss aside, meaning frank would have shot wyatt the same way if the role were reversed.
The "Messy fights that ensued" Earp tracked down the cowboys and killed them after they ambushed his brothers. I guess that would have put to much sympathy toward Earp and Simon could not hide Earps heroism if he talked about those "messy fights."
Thanks for a very interesting history of this much vaunted hero. As a child, I was told I was distantly related to him, and read virtually everything I could find on his life. Most of it was about the mythical Earp, a little of it more accurate. I appreciate hearing what sounds like a very realistic description of him and his life!👍
I went to high school in the early 1980s and our gaming group viewed him as "straddling the line" so to speak. FYI, we had an opinion of him, because we played a gunfight game and played the OK Corral gunfight (of course), and because we were nerd read up on him and the fight. As I recall, much later when we were adults we played an OK Corral gunfight on the computer as well.
People today dont care about facts as much as they do good movies.
You tell 'em I'm coming...and hell's coming with me, you hear? Hell's coming with me!
I wonder what your 4000 word history essay looked like simon... If this is what you do for a single video
Named my Heeler after Wyatt Earp!
You should do a video about one of my ancestors who had a really interesting life as the most feared outlaw in the "Wild West": John Wesley Hardin.
Haplo Teromaximus
He was a facinating man.
You left out a few things. The cowboys weren't some criminal gang as is often portrayed by Hollywood, these were hard-working men who had ranches and cattle and were often seen by locals as respectable stockmen most of the time, though when some of them came into town for much needed time off, the occasional problems occurred because they tended to drink and play hard. However, there's few accounts of problems with Ike Clanton, Tom McLaury., and the others involved in the gunfight.
We also have no definitive idea to this day who shot and killed Morgan Earp and wounded Virgil in the reprisals after the OK Corral incident. But Wyatt thought he did and with Doc Holliday and four other men even murdered Frank Stillwell in Tucson not long afterwords on pretext that in turn forced them to flee Arizona, but not before going on on the so-called 3 week "Revenge Ride".
They were also notorious for rustling cattle in Mexico and selling them in the US.
I don't know who the gentleman in the photo at the start of this video is but it is definitely NOT Wyatt Earp. Nor is the photo at 7:47 Ike Clanton. Actually, very few of the photos shown are the persons the narrator purports them to be.
I always remember the Beetlejuice cartoon when I was a kid. One episode had Wyatt Earp in it and he was belching because that's what his name sounded like.
The old days were so much better. No gun laws, no stress, just living. If anyone hasn’t seen peaky blinders, I recommend it.
Well researched and interesting.
The fact that he didn't want to be portrayed as a hero, just a man, speaks volumes about his moral code.
Oh look, it Simon "no need to fact check, I'm British." Whistler
It begins in a time of war. With a villain named, Wyatt.
Growing up my dad would often refer to older things as coming from a day when life was actually hard and men were men. Often he would refer to an old tractor or an antique pickup when saying this. Honestly I can’t think of a more fitting timeframe to be talking about than that of the time Wyatt Earp lived through. Earp was famous and made out to be the great American hero because in his time the things he did while being questionable at times were never truly outlaw. Lawmen were often formerly criminals. Hell the man who shot billy the kid was at one point closely associated with his regulators. At that time you had to think like an outlaw to take down the outlaw. Many of lawmen of that time had similar lifestyles at that point. In fact many of those considered American hero’s would never be considered more than scum today. People take for granted that we can view history and look back from the comfort of or modern safe society. We live in an age where people are afraid to go outside for fear of crime. In the 1800s and really into about 1920 if you stepped outside for a walk and lived in the country you might not make it home unless you were armed. The wildlife alone was dangerous. In those times life was actually hard and men were men.
Earp's friend in Hollywood wasn't John Wayne. It was Tom Mix.
people at that time were hard and in the Wild West lawmen were sparse. There was little scrutiny of prospective lawmen; if they weren't notorious robbers/killers they were considered eligible, esp if they were known to be tough and aggressive enough to handle troublemakers, often with little support from the average citizen. Earp had the qualifications, even with a largely unsuspected history of misdemeanors.
Still proud to be named after this guy.
I went to the Ok corral at tombstone Arazona
Didn't Captain Kirk kick Wyatt Earp's butt.
Well presented history of a puzzling "Lawman" coupled with the below descendant's comments.
Going to do do Virgil & Morgan Earp as well?
Don't forget younger brother James who ran a bar and married a prostitute.
Wyatt Earp is remember as a hero in large part because he lived long enough to see Hollywood get it's start.
i've been waiting for this episode for too damn long
Sounds like Arthur Morgan in real life to me...