I Married Wyatt Earp (1976) is a book by amateur historian Glenn Boyer which was originally promoted as a memoir by Josephine Earp as edited by Boyer from her personal papers, and describing her marriage to Deputy U.S. Marshal Wyatt Earp. The book was later exposed as a complete fraud fabricated by Boyer.
Originally published by the University of Arizona Press, I Married is the second most popular book about Wyatt Earp that was ever published based on copies sold, and also one of the best selling books issued by the University of Arizona. It was regarded for many years as a factual account that shed considerable light on the life of Wyatt Earp and his brothers in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. I Married was cited in scholarly works, assigned as a text in classrooms, and used as a source by filmmakers. The book's author said the image on the cover of a scantily-clad woman was of Josephine in her 20s, and based on his statements, copies of the image were later sold at auction for up to $2,875.
Boyer did in fact have a long-term contact with members of the Earp family, which appeared to bolster his credibility. He claimed the memoir was based on two manuscripts written by Josephine Earp in collaboration with others. Josephine was known to fiercely protect details of her and Wyatt's early life in Tombstone, even threatening litigation to keep some details private, and was known to have prepared autobiographical documents. This secrecy around Wyatt's life and marriage led to widespread curiosity which Boyer exploited.
In 1994, Western researchers and rival authors identified discrepancies in I Married Wyatt Earp and began to challenge the authenticity of the supposed documents Boyer cited. Critics also claimed to have identified factual errors and inconsistencies in other books published by Boyer, leading to an increasing number of questions about the veracity of his work. The risque cover image was linked to a photogravure titled Kaloma that had been first published by a novelty company in 1914. A 1998 investigative article in the Phoenix New Times revealed Boyer could not prove one of the supporting documents even existed, and also noted how Boyer refused to allow access to the claimed source documentation. The Phoenix New Times article also disclosed how the university press' editor encouraged Boyer to embellish his manuscript. During the interview, Boyer said he felt a responsibility to protect the reputation of the Earp brothers, and also stated he "had a license to say any darned thing I please...[to] lie, cheat, and steal". Boyer found another publisher and continued to publish the work, representing it as an authentic history of Wyatt Earp's life.
Origins
After the death of Wyatt Earp, Josephine Marcus Earp tried to get her own life story published. She sought the assistance of Wyatt's cousins Mabel Earp Cason and Cason's sister Vinola Earp Ackerman. The cousins recorded events in Josephine's life and found Josephine was generous with details about her life after Tombstone, but could not remember events before and while she lived in the town. The Cason manuscript the Earp cousins produced had a serious limitation: it was missing the family's most compelling and interesting story, the time while Josephine and Wyatt lived in Tombstone. Cason and her sister pressured Josephine to supply as much information about her time in Tombstone as she readily recalled about the rest of her life, but Josie resisted. She was very protective of her and Wyatt's image. She finally revealed only a few details, including that she had returned to Arizona when Johnny Behan promised to marry her, but was disillusioned when he continually put off the wedding.
Josephine approached several publishers about the book, but backed out each time due to their insistence that she be completely open and forthcoming, rather than slanting her memories to her favor. Mable Earp Cason says she and her sister "finally abandoned work on the manuscript because she would not clear up the Tombstone sequence where it pertained to her and Wyatt". When Josephine could not find a publisher, she changed her mind and asked the cousins to burn their work, but Cason held back a copy, to which amateur historian Glenn Boyer eventually acquired the rights.
Boyer donated the original The Cason Manuscript to the University of Arizona, which is housed in a special collection and a second copy to the Ford County Historical Society. When Boyer presented the idea of publishing the manuscript to the University of Arizona, they insisted the book had to cover the period in Tombstone. Boyer produced a second, previously unknown and still unseen manuscript, that he said Josephine had worked on between 1929 and 1932 with the help of John Clum, a former editor of The Tombstone Epitaph newspaper. This became known as the "Clum manuscript".
Notability
The University of Arizona Press published the book in 1976 under the title I Married Wyatt Earp: The Recollections of Josephine Sarah Marcus. The copyright was issued in her name and her name was given as the author. A book published by a university press usually must meet a high standard. When it is sold as non-fiction, academics consider the university's approval sacrosanct.
Boyer's book gained wide acceptance as a memoir written by Josephine and an accurate portrayal of her life with Wyatt Earp. The book was immensely popular for many years, capturing the imagination of people with an interest in western history, studied in classrooms, cited by scholars, and relied upon as factual by filmmakers. It became the university's fourth all-time best-selling book with 12 printings totaling more than 35,000 copies. It is the second-largest selling book about Wyatt Earp.
Boyer in turn received wide recognition as the foremost authority on Wyatt Earp. Following on the success of I Married Wyatt Earp, Boyer published over the next 30 years a stream of apparently well-researched and provocatively reasoned papers. He is responsible for the publication of Big Nose Kate's memoirs as well as the long-sought Flood Manuscript written with Wyatt Earp's direct input.
For many years, the book was accepted as a legitimate historical document and was cited by important works on Tombstone like And Die in the West by Paula Mitchell Marks, Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait by Karen Holliday Tanner, and Richard Maxwell Brown's social history of frontier law, No Duty to Retreat (Oxford, 1991). The book was even adopted as required reading in history classes. University of New Mexico history professor Paul Hutton, who has served as executive director of the Western History Association, noted in 1998 that the University of Arizona had been selling the book for 23 years as an individual's memoir and an important historical document.
However, critics began to question Boyer's sources for the book in the 1990s. Stephen Cox, then director of the University of Arizona Press, told the Arizona Daily Star in July 1998 that he stood behind the authenticity of the book.
Book sources
According to an interview with Boyer in 2009, when he turned 85, his family had a long-standing relationship with the Earps. According to Boyer, his father was a janitor in a saloon owned by Josie and Wyatt in Nome, Alaska. The son of Wyatt's good friend George Miller, Bill Miller, married Estelle Edwards, the daughter of Wyatt's sister Adelia Earp Edwards. Boyer said Bill and Estelle became a second set of parents to him.
When the Earp cousins attempted to write about Josephine's life in Tombstone, she was very evasive. Even when Wyatt was alive, she and her husband were very protective of their "past". Author Stuart N. Lake interviewed Earp eight times before his death and began writing his biography. Josie corresponded with Lake, and he insisted she attempted to influence what he wrote and hamper him in every way possible, including consulting lawyers. Josie claimed she was striving to protect Wyatt Earp's legacy. She successfully prevented her name from being mentioned in Lake's book Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, and there is reason to believe that Lake avoided including her because she threatened legal action. As an unmarried woman in frontier Tombstone without visible means of support, perhaps an actress and a dancer, vastly outnumbered by men, if she had not been a prostitute, she undoubtedly was regarded by some as one.
Kit Scheifele, who was the original editor of Boyer's book for the University of Arizona Press, noticed that Boyer had removed wording from his original introduction to the book that made it clear "that the manuscript you have presented is not solely the first-person writing of Mrs. Earp, and that you have written a first-person account based on her memoirs and other material as well". She asked him to restore the content, but Boyer ignored her request. Karen Thure, who prepared the book for publication, questioned Boyer's sources from the beginning. She asked to see copies of the Clum manuscript more than once, and Boyer refused each time. "Glenn put a lot of Glenn in there. Glenn's theories appeared as Josie's," she said. "I think it's a shame that anyone took I Married Wyatt Earp literally," she says. "It's somewhere between history and historical fiction."
Clum manuscript sources
Boyer claimed to possess the so-called Clum manuscript. He said it contained details of Wyatt and Josie's life in Tombstone that were missing from the story she wrote with the Earp cousins. Boyer said that the Clum manuscript had been written by The Tombstone Epitaph publisher John Clum based on conversations with Josephine. But Boyer confused readers and critics when he changed the story behind the origins of the manuscript.
In 1977, Boyer published a pamphlet, Trailing an American Myth, in which he stated that the Clum manuscript was actually written by several authors. He wrote that their work formed "the basis of the Tombstone years in I Married Wyatt Earp and "the Ten Eyck Papers in Wyatt Earp's Tombstone Vendetta." In the same year, Boyer wrote and published another pamphlet, "Who Killed John Ringo?" It stated that fiction writers Dashiell Hammett, Wilson Mizner, Rex Beach and Walt Coburn had written a portion of the manuscript documenting Josephine' Tombstone years. When questioned about the origins of the Clum manuscript during the early 1980s, Boyer changed his story to say that he did not receive the Clum manuscript from Colyn after all, instead it was given to him by one of Earp's nieces, Jeanne Cason Laing in 1967.
When asked if these were all the same manuscript, Boyer replied, "Some of them are a manuscript. Some are only a mishmash, as a matter of fact... The earlier ones of those guys all lean heavily on Clum and Parsons for insights, which is one of the reasons they got in trouble with Josephine Earp... This is a broad way when I say I refer to a Clum manuscript, for example. It is a broad way of referring to something when really this is nobody's business in a way."
Cason manuscript origins
In addition to the manuscript written by Clum, Boyer said he had a copy of a manuscript that Josephine prepared with the help of two of her husband's cousins, Mabel Earp Cason and her sister Vinolia Earp Ackerman. Wyatts' cousins pressed her for details about her personal life before and while living in Tombstone, but she was evasive. Josephine wanted to keep her and Wyatt Earp's tarnished history associated with Tombstone private and sanitize anything that could be seen negatively. Josephine finally consented to tell them that upon returning to Arizona, she believed Johnny Behan was going to marry her, and was disappointed and disillusioned when he repeatedly delayed the wedding. In her version of events, she said years later that she lived with a lawyer while working as a housekeeper for Behan and his ten-year-old son, Albert.