gunfight at the o.k. corral participants

Unlike the Earps, members of the Clanton family had served the Confederacy, as had Holliday’s father. Two years later, the Clantons relocated once again, to Texas, where Billy was born. Newman had moved his family from Missouri to Adams County in western Illinois in 1851, when Ike was four. Newman had died in an ambush just eleven weeks before the incident at the O.K. Ike’s father, Newman, operated a ranch near Tombstone, and had a shady reputation as well. The “Cowboys” included Ike Clanton, who had his own ties to Illinois, and his younger brother, Billy. There, tensions ran high with a group of citizens dubbed the “Cowboys,” which was often applied to rustlers in that region. Another Earp brother, Warren, also lived in Tombstone. Along the way, Wyatt became close friends with Holliday, a hard-drinking dentist who suffered from tuberculosis.īy December 1879, Wyatt, Virgil, and James had settled in Tombstone, joined by Morgan the following July. The Earp brothers were a close-knit lot, and frequently moved around the West to be near one another. The Earps returned to Monmouth in 1856, when Morgan was five, then went back to Pella in 1859.

The third Earp brother at the shootout was Morgan, who was born in Pella, Iowa, where the family had settled after leaving Illinois. Corral, served in the 17th Illinois during the war, while several Earp cousins were also in Union service. Another Earp brother, James, who was not at the O.K. Along with their brothers, they also had straddled both sides of the law in Kansas and elsewhere.ĭuring the Civil War, Virgil had spent two years in the 83rd Illinois. Virgil and Wyatt had both worked in brothels back in Illinois, particularly in the Peoria area, and Wyatt reputedly spent time in Beardstown, along the Illinois River, in the summer of 1869. That term, however, must be taken accordingly. marshal and town marshal of Tombstone, who was the group’s most experienced lawman. Corral that day, including his older sibling Virgil, a deputy U.S. Wyatt was one of three Earp brothers at the O.K. His father, Nicholas, had served in the Mexican War from Illinois, and named Wyatt in honor of his commanding officer in Mexico. Wyatt’s grandfather, a Methodist Episcopal preacher, served as the justice of the peace in Monmouth. Wyatt Earp, the most famous of the fighters that day, was born on Main Monmouth in Warren County, where the family home on South Third Street is a local landmark. At least four of the participants had lived in Illinois, but the event has become blurred by half-truths and tall tales that began almost immediately. Corral, a 30-second gunfight that pitted the legendary Earp brothers and Doc Holliday against the notorious Clantons and McLaurys in Tombstone, Arizona. Today marks the 140th anniversary of the shootout at the O.K. One thing, however, is clear there was a definite Illinois connection. It was the most famous gunfight in the history of the West, though legend has obscured the facts. It is the site of the famed 1881 Gunfight at the O.K.

The town, featuring staged gunfights and reenactors dressed in 1800s western attire, is a popular tourist attraction. A sign hangs over the entrance to the site of recreated gunfights in historic Tombstone, Arizona, known as The Town Too Tough to Die.

Gunfight at the o.k. corral participants