Wyatt Earp has received far more attention than his older brother Virgil Walter Earp, yet Virgil also served as a frontier lawman, and was, in fact, the city marshal at the time of the so-called Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. Wyatt was acting as Virgil’s deputy on October 26, 1881, when the two brothers were joined by a third Earp, Morgan, and dentist-turned-gambler Doc Holliday for a dramatic walk to a vacant lot where the Clantons and McLaurys were waiting. Virgil was wounded that day, but it took a more serious gunshot wound two months later — during an ambush outside the Oriental Saloon — to knock Virgil out of the bloody Tombstone picture once and for all. Even though his left arm had been rendered useless, Virgil Earp would become a special railroad agent in southern California less than two years later and after that would serve as a lawman in Colton, California.

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By 1890, his lawmen days were almost over, but not so his adventures. Like brother Wyatt, Virgil occupied his time with travel, gambling, fight promoting and mining. And just as Wyatt had a steadfast woman companion, Josephine Sarah (Sadie Marcus) Earp, from 1883 till his death in 1929, Virgil had his own constant companion, Alvira (’Allie) Earp, from 1873 to his death in 1905, even though they may never have been formally married. Virgil had been married twice before, however, and one of his more interesting late-life adventures involved an 1899 reunion with his first ex-wife and daughter, neither of whom he had seen in 37 years.

Virgil Walter Earp, born on July 18, 1843, in Ohio County, Ky., was the second child (after James Cooksey, born on June 28, 1841) of Nicholas Earp and Nick’s second wife, Virginia Ann Cooksey Earp. The fourth child, Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp, wasn’t born until March 19, 1848, in Monmouth, Ill. Two other brothers followed, Morgan in 1851 and Warren in 1855. Nick Earp and his family were living in Pella, Iowa, when 17-year-old Virgil met Ellen Rysdam. Because the young couple’s parents opposed their marriage, Virgil and Ellen ran off to Knoxville, Iowa, to get secretly hitched on September 21, 1861. A child, Nellie Jane, was born in July 1862, just two weeks before Virgil enlisted in the Illinois Volunteer Infantry for three years. The next year, Ellen was told that her husband had died in the Civil War. She married John Van Rossem, and went off to start a new life in Washington Territory with her daughter and second husband.

By the time Virgil Earp was mustered out of the Army on June 24, 1865, the Earp family had moved to San Bernardino, Calif. Virgil joined them there one year later. He probably learned from friends where Ellen had gone, but he apparently did not go looking for her. Ellen continued to have bad luck with marriage. Her second husband soon died, and apparently John Van Rossem’s death was a real one. Ellen married Thomas Eaton in Walla Walla, Washington Territory, in 1867.

In 1868, Nicholas Earp took his family east again, eventually settling in Lamar, Mo., where Virgil helped him farm and operate a grocery store. On May 30, 1870, Virgil married again, this time to Rosilla Draggoo, who was about 10 years younger. Nick Earp was the justice of the peace who performed the marriage ceremony. Perhaps the bride’s parents objected again, because Rosilla Earp soon disappeared from the scene forever. Exactly what happened to her is uncertain.

Not long after that, Virgil Earp left Lamar, and in Council Bluffs, Iowa, in 1873, he met waitress Alvira (Allie) Sullivan. They hit it off so well that Earp must have forgotten all about wives Ellen and Rosilla…or maybe not entirely, if he never officially married Allie. In any case, Virgil and Allie would stick together come hell or high water right into the next century.

The couple lived a nomadic existence for many years. Exactly when and where Virgil first wore a badge is not certain. Don Chaput, the author of Virgil Earp: Western Peace Officer, raises the possibility that Virgil served briefly with brother Wyatt on the Wichita police force in the mid-1870s. Wyatt Earp is known to have joined the Dodge City police force after that and to have been appointed assistant marshal in the Kansas cow town in May 1876. Virgil Earp was also in Dodge City, but whether he ever served as a peace officer is debatable.

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