Josephine Sarah "Sadie" Earp (née Marcus; 1861 – 1944)
She was the wife of Wyatt Earp the famed Old West lawman. She met Wyatt in 1881 in the frontier town of Tombstone, Arizona, when she was living with Johnny Behan, sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona. She left Behan, who was nearly twice her age, in 1881, before the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. She returned to San Francisco in March 1882 and was joined that fall by Wyatt, with whom she remained for 46 years until his death in 1929. Josephine Earp had his body cremated and buried him in the Marcus family plot in a Jewish cemetery
Josephine Marcus was born in New York to a Jewish family. They moved to San Francisco, where she attended dance school as a girl. She ran away as a young teen traveling to Arizona looking for adventure. Sadie kept this period of her life a secret but there js evidence that she may have been forced to work as a prostitute under the name Sadie Mansfield. She described this period as 'A bad dream'.
The book I Married Wyatt Earp (1967), is based on a manuscript allegedly written in part by her.
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