Spouses and Paramours of the Earp Brothers

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Sherry Monahan offers another interesting account of a different type of Western woman in her 2013 book, Mrs Earp: The Wives and Lovers of the Earp Brothers.” Among the women of whom Monahan provides profiles are Aurilla Sutherland (1850-1870), Sarah Haspell (1853-1919), Celia Ann “Mattie” Blaylock (1850-1888), and Josephine Sarah Marcus (1861?-1944), identified, collectively, as “Mr. & Mrs. Wyatt Earp”; Magdalena C. “Ellen” Rijsdam (1842-1910), Rozilla Draggoo (1853-1870?), and Alvira “Allie” Packingham Sullivan (1851-1947), identified, collectively, as “Mr. & Mrs. Virgil Earp”; Louisa A. Houston (1855-1894), the wife of Morgan Earp; Bessie Catchim (1840-1887) and Mrs. H. J. Earp, identified, collectively, as “Mr. & Mrs. James Earp”; and Kate Sanford (1855-?), the wife of Warren Earp.

More has been written about some of these wives and lovers than about others, mostly because little is known about the second group. Here are a few of the facts that are known about the latter group of ladies. Unfortunately, no known photographs of the Rozilla Draggoo has been authenticated.

Rozilla Draggoo

Virgil Earp

Rozilla Draggoo, who was born in France “around 1853)”; Virgil Earp's father, Nicholas Porter Earp (1813-1907), a justice of the peace, performed the ceremony in which the couple were lawfully wed on May 30, 1870. For a time, the newlyweds lived in Lamar, Missouri, “with Virgil's parents” and Virgil's siblings, Adelia (1861-1941) and Warren (1855-1900); brother Wyatt (1848-1929) and “his first wife, Aurilla” (c. 1849-1870) lived “nearby” (65).

Magdalena “Ellen” Rijsdam

A bit of a scandal and a lot of pathos surround Virgil's marriage to “his first wife, Magdalena 'Ellen' Rijsdam,” whom Virgil “secretly married” in 1860 (59). Ellen “was underage,” as was Virgil, and, presumably for this reason, both Virgil's and Ellen's parents opposed the couple's union (59-60).

Nineteenth-century Utrecht, Netherlands

Born in Utrecht, Netherlands, she immigrated with her parents, Gerritt Rijsdam and Magdalena Catrina Van Velzen, to the United States on November 25, 1842, living in Baltimore, Maryland, and Pella, Iowa, where the Earps then lived (59).

Although an 1889 newspaper article states that the couple lived apart, Virgil and Ellen produced a daughter, “Virgil's only known child,” Nellie Jane Earp, who was born on January 7, 1862 (60). At the time, the mother was seventeen years old—eight months the senior of her husband, which, Monahan speculates, may explain “why her father was so upset” (60). When “Ellen's pregnancy began to show,” the couple “announced their marriage” (60).

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Virgil joined the Union Army, and the elder Rijsdams told Nellie that her father had been killed in combat (60). Ellen, Nellie, and Ellen's parents then moved to the Oregon Territory, apparently without notifying Virgil; when he returned home to Pella, he “discovered Ellen was gone,” Monahan reports, but “whether he thought she abandoned him or died is unknown” (60).

Monahan's book is replete with other intriguing accounts of the Earp brothers' spouses and paramours and, like Roach's volume concerning authentic cowgirls of the American Wild West, provides historical facts and psychological and sociological insights into these special ladies and their times.