Morgan Seth Earp (April 24, 1851 – March 18, 1882) was the younger brother of Deputy U.S. Marshals Virgil and Wyatt Earp. Morgan was a deputy of Virgil's and all three men were the target of repeated death threats made by outlaw Cowboys who were upset by the Earps' interference in their illegal activities. This conflict eventually led to the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, during which Morgan was wounded. All three lawmen along with Doc Holliday were charged by Ike Clanton, who fled the gunfight, for murdering brothers Tom and Frank McLaury along with his own brother Billy Clanton. During a month-long preliminary hearing, Judge Wells Spicer exonerated the men, concluding they had been performing their duty.
Virgil was gravely wounded in an ambush on December 28, 1881, and Morgan was assassinated on March 18, 1882 by a shot through the window of a door while he was playing billiards. The Cowboys suspected were let off on technicalities or for lack of evidence. Wyatt Earp felt he could not rely on civil justice and decided to take matters into his own hands. He concluded that only way to deal with Morgan's murderers was to kill them. Wyatt assembled a posse that included their brother Warren Earp and set out on a vendetta to kill those they felt were responsible.
Early life
Morgan Earp was born in Pella, Marion County, Iowa, to Nicholas Porter Earp (1813–1907), a cooper and farmer, and his second wife Virginia Ann Cooksey (1821–1893).
When elder brothers Newton, James, and Virgil went off to the American Civil War, they left their young teenage brothers Wyatt and Morgan to tend the family farm. James and Morgan grew up close, with a shared wish for adventure and a dislike of farming. Before adulthood, teen-aged Morgan followed James Earp up to Montana for a couple of years. Later he was with Wyatt on the Western frontier.
In 1875, Morgan departed the Earp clan living in Wichita, Kansas, and became a deputy marshal under Charlie Bassett at Dodge City. In late 1877, Morgan took his common-law wife Louisa A. Houston to Montana, where they lived until March, 1880.
At different times in Arizona, both Wyatt and Morgan worked as shotgun messengers for Wells Fargo & Co., deputy sheriffs for Pima County, and as deputies under Tombstone's Chief of Police Virgil Earp, their older brother. During early 1882, Morgan was appointed to the federal position of Deputy U.S. Marshal, an office subservient to Wyatt Earp, who had been given the position by the U.S. Marshal C. Dake, after Virgil was wounded, and had authority to deputize.
Morgan has gained an undeserved reputation for being a hot-tempered man, but this appears to be on the basis of incidents related in the book The Earp Brothers of Tombstone purportedly written by Virgil Earp's wife Allie. However, the incidents in the book involving Morgan, like much else in the book, are almost certainly fabricated. From the rest of what is known of Morgan's life, he normally showed the same even temper and cool reactions to danger as did his brothers.
Assassination
Two months after the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, in December 1881, Virgil Earp was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt that left him with a permanently crippled left arm. By February 1882, Morgan grew wary of the danger to the Earps in Tombstone and sent his common-law wife Louisa Houstin Earp to the Earps' parents in Colton, California. However, Morgan chose to remain in Tombstone to guard Virgil, support Wyatt, and continue to work in law enforcement.
At 10:50 p.m. on Saturday, March 18, 1882, Morgan was ambushed after returning from a musical at Schieffelin Hall. He was playing a late round of billiards at the Campbell & Hatch Billiard Parlor against owner Bob Hatch. Dan Tipton, Sherman McMaster, and Wyatt watched, having received threats that same day.
The assailant shot through a glass-windowed, locked door which opened onto a dark alley between Allen and Fremont Streets. Morgan was struck in the right side and the bullet shattered his spine, passed through his left side, and lodged in the thigh of mining foreman George A.B. Berry. Another bullet lodged in the wall over Wyatt's head. Several men rushed into the alley but found the shooters had fled. After he was shot, his brothers tried to help him stand, but Morgan said "Don't, I can't stand it. This is the last game of pool I'll ever play." Dr. William Miller arrived first, followed by Drs. Matthews and George Goodfellow. They all examined Morgan. Even Goodfellow, recognized in the United States as the nation's leading expert at treating abdominal gunshot wounds, concluded that Morgan's wounds were fatal.
Wyatt was quoted by Lake in Frontier Marshal as saying that Morgan, before dying, whispered to Wyatt, "I can't see a damned thing." Wyatt said that they had promised each other to report visions of the next world when at the point of death. Virgil and Allie, and James and Bessie arrived, but Warren was out of town. Morgan died on a lounge in an adjoining card room less than an hour after he was shot. (The Campbell and Hatch Billiard parlor and card room, two lots east of Hafford's Saloon on 4th Street and Allen, burned in a fire in May 1882.
Morgan was laid out in a blue suit belonging to Doc Holliday. The Earps took his body by wagon the next day to the New Mexico and Arizona railroad station in Contention. From there, his older brother James Earp accompanied Morgan's body to Colton, California where Morgan's wife and parents were waiting. Morgan was first buried in the old city cemetery of Colton, near Mount Slover. When the cemetery was moved in 1892, Morgan's body was reburied in the Hermosa Cemetery in Colton.