Virgil Earp: Western Peace Officer
(Don Chaput)
A biography of Virgil Earp, a history of the Earp family, an account of a western peace officer?s duties, and an insight into the wanderlust of the Earps makes this book an excellent read for western-history fans.
Virgil?s ancestry is traced to its Irish roots. From the time the Earps set foot in America in the early 1700s, until Virgil?s father settled in San Bernardino, California in 1864, the Earps moved west - following the frontier. The Earp boys continued this tradition, moving from boomtown to boomtown in the west for the next sixty-five years. This wanderlust ended only when the last of them, Wyatt, died in 1929.
Virgil, although less famous than Wyatt, spent most of his life as a well-known and respected peace officer. He was the senior peace officer at the Earps famous gunfight at the OK Corral. Virgil?s life is traced through his mysterious first marriage, his Civil War service, and his stints as a peace officer in Wichita and Dodge City, Kansas; Prescott and Tombstone, Arizona; Colton, California; and Goldfield, Nevada, where he died peacefully in a hospital bed.
Virgil?s demise was in keeping with his duties as a peace officer. There was occasional gunplay, but law enforcement on the frontier consisted mostly of jailing drunks, collecting license fees from bordellos, and handing out speeding citations to over-eager horsemen. This was the bread and butter of the job, for the peace officer retained a percentage of the fines and fees he collected.
Virgil and his brothers were entrepreneurs, drifting from one boomtown to the next in search of business opportunities - running saloons, bordellos, and gambling houses. Being a police officer helped the other endeavors succeed.
Go buy a copy. A western-history fan will not find a better book about lawmen of the old west.
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