Glenn Boyer Wyatt Earp collection
Photocopied pages from the testimony given regarding the OK Corral Shootout.
Collection area: Arizona and Southwest
Collection dates: circa 1881-1983
Glenn G. Boyer (1928-1983) published three books and several smaller publications about Arizona lawman Wyatt Earp, as well as additional American Old West figures. Boyer was the first researcher to reveal that Wyatt Earp had a second wife, Mattie Blaylock. Boyer would go on to write three books about Wyatt Earp's life, all of which would later become part of a controversy when scholars suggested that Boyer would not provide copies of documents he cited as source material. Additionally, one of the individuals Boyer interviewed was later exposed as an invention. Boyer would go on to publish memoirs about Big Nose Kate and released the Flood and Cason manuscripts. After Boyer's death, his family put most of his Wyatt Earp materials, which included over 30 boxes of correspondence, guns, and other ephemera, up for auction. Due to the controversy surrounding Boyer's source material, much of which he never produced for critics, his works are still shrouded in question.
The materials in this collection are related to Arizona lawman Wyatt Earp (March 19, 1848-January 13, 1929). Earp was a gambler, lawman, buffalo hunter, saloon owner, miner, and brother proprietor. He served as a lawman in Dodge City, Deadwood, and later Tombstone, Arizona. It was in Tombstone that Earp and his brothers, Virgil and Morgan, and Doc Holliday were involved in the famous gunfight at the O. K. Corral against the Cowboys (Billy Claiborne, Ike and Billy Clanton, and Tom and Frank McLaury). Billy Clanton and the McLaury boys were killed in the 30-second gunfight. Virgil, Morgan, and Doc were injured but Wyatt remained unharmed. The fight would become well-known after historian Stuart Lake published his biography of Wyatt Earp (1931). Historians would later note that the gunfight did not take place at the Corral but the story stuck. In a later court case, Ike Clanton would file murder charges against the Earps and Holliday but the lawmen were released after it was decided they were maintaining order and acting within the laws of Tombstone (and the Old West).
The feud between the Cowboys and the Arizona lawmen would continue. Virgil was later maimed in an attempted murder ambush. Morgan was killed in a dark alley after being shot by a Cowboy, but no suspect was ever indicted. This led Wyatt to go on his 'vendetta ride' in which he killed multiple Cowboys. Wyatt Earp became infamous and eventually left Tombstone. He settled in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Alaska, and took on various jobs including mining ventures, gambling, owning a stable, etc., and would later settle in California.
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