Photo of Morgan Earp, Courtesy of Emory Cantey
The real part of the Journey of our lives has a lot to do with the connections between people, places and times. We are caught up in the flow of the river of time. A river which can be majestic, or as violent and unforgiving like the Mississippi or Missouri rivers on a bad day. But then you view them from a distance, and experience their might, or in the case of history from a place further down the timeline. What the author has learned in the last few years, is that within the time continuum of our history, there can be found a lot misunderstandings which have manifest along the way when historians, writers and collectors dabble in the art of minutia. No where is this more apparent than when the pursuit of history crosses paths with historic photos. This area can be a deeply emotional pursuit, of those who have, what Glenn Boyer once called "photowishitus." And Morgan and other famed Tombstone legends seem to have had their photos mixed up with other people from time to time, one prime example is a photo once claimed to be Doc Holliday, which turned out to be a photo of another Tombstone Citizen by the name of John Escapule. (True West Magazine May 2015). The author even had T-shirt at one time that was purchased in Tombstone Arizona in a gift shop there, that featured an image of John Escapule on the front, which was identified as Doc Holliday. The same type of confusion also occurred with the photo of Morgan Earp. But the author did some due diligence on the above photo Morgan Earp (See articles below), and determined that the photo at the top of this article is Morgan Earp. Then one day I was working with Findagrave.com. and I popped on Morgan's listing at found that the photo featured was not Morgan but a photo of James Earp was featured instead. I promptly reached out to Findagrave.com and let them know of this and I uploaded a copy of the correct photo which they eventually approved and changed. Thanks to findagrave.com for working with me to correct this error.
-G.C. Stevens
The Correct photo of Morgan Earp, (and his wife Louisa Earp) also appeared in the late Ben Traywick's book "Historical Documents and Photographs of Tombstone. "Both photos were credited to the Glenn Boyer collection.
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