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.
