John H. Flood, Jr.

John H. Flood Jr.

John H. Flood Jr.
Born (1878-01-16)January 16, 1878
Connecticut
Died March 29, 1958(1958-03-29) (aged 80)
Occupation Engineer, secretary

John Henry Flood, Jr. (January 16, 1878 - March 29, 1958) was a mining engineer who worked as Wyatt Earp's unpaid personal secretary late in Earp's life, completing the only authorized biography of Earp. But the language he used in the biography was overblown, florid, stilted and so badly written that nobody would publish it.

Earp's reputation

For much of his life after the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Earp was the subject of a large number of articles disparaging his character. On April 16, 1894, the Fort Worth Gazette wrote that Deputy U.S. Marshal Virgil Earp and Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan had a "deadly feud". It described Behan as "an honest man, a good official, and possessed many of the attributes of a gentleman". Earp, on the other hand, "was head of band of desperadoes, a partner in stage robbers, and a friend of gamblers and professional killers... Wyatt was the boss killer of the region."[1]

On December 2, 1896, Wyatt refereed the Fitzsimmons vs. Sharkey boxing match. He called the match in Sharkey's favor, even though Fitizsimmons had dominated the match and Sharkey was down. Newspaper accounts and testimony over the next two weeks revealed a conspiracy among the boxing promoters to fix the fight's outcome.[2] Earp was parodied in editorial cartoon caricatures and vilified in newspaper stories across the United States.[3]

On March 12, 1922, the Sunday Los Angeles Times ran a short, scandalous article titled "Lurid Trails Are Left by Oldentime Bandits" by J.M. Scanland. It described Wyatt and his brothers as a gang who waylaid the cowboys in the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. It said that the Earps were allies of Frank Stilwell, who had informed on them, so they killed him,[4] and that Earp had died in Colton, California.[5]

The article galvanized Earp. He was tired of all the lies perpetuated about him and became determined to get his story accurately told.[5]

Earp biography

In about 1923, Charles Welsh, a retired railroad engineer and friend that Earp had known since Dodge City, frequently invited the Earps to visit his family in San Bernardino.[6] When the Welsh family moved to Los Angeles, the Earps accepted an invitation to stay with them for a while in their top floor apartment until the Earps found a place to rent.[7]

Starting in 1925, Flood attempted to write an authorized biography of Earp's life, based on Earp's recollections as told to Flood.[8] The two men sat together every Sunday in the kitchen of Earp’s modest, rented bungalow. While Wyatt sipped a drink and smoked a cigar, they tried to tell Earp's story. But Earp's wife Josephine (nicknamed "Sadie") was always present and often intervened. She would stop them and insist "You can’t write that! It needs to be clean." She also demanded that they add more "pep" to the manuscript, which in her mind meant including the word "CRACK!" in all caps. In the chapter about the shootout, the manuscript includes 109 uses of "CRACK". She thought Earp needed to be shown as a hero, and the manuscript includes a chapter titled "Conflagration" in which Earp saves two women, one a cripple, from a fire.[9]

In 1990, Charlie Welsh's daughter, Grace Spolidora, was interviewed by a member of the San Bernardino Historical Society. She had been a teenager during the Earps' many visits to the family home near Needles, California and sometimes went to San Diego with them.[7] She attributed the highly exaggerated stories about Wyatt Earp to Josephine. She said Sadie "would always interfere whenever Wyatt would talk with Stuart Lake. She always interfered! She wanted him to look like a church-going saint and blow things up. Wyatt didn't want that at all!"[10]

The manuscript was apparently typed by Flood, who was an expert typist.[8] Flood and Earp submitted the 348 page manuscript to multiple periodicals, all without success.[9] Editors replied, "We have been unable to find a place for it in the Saturday Evening Post "; "I am deeply disappointed... The writing is stilted, florid and diffuse"; "We do not care particularly for the style in which it is written."[8] Due to Flood's poor writing style, the completed manuscript was never published.

A manuscript copy of it was found in Josephine Earp's effects after her death. Amateur historian Glenn Boyer obtained a carbon copy of the manuscript and made an unknown number of spiral bound facsimile copies which he sold to collectors in 1981.[8] Boyer gave the original carbon copy of the typed manuscript to the Ford County Historical Society.[11] When Earp died, Flood inherited many of his personal belongings. Flood in turn willed them to John Gilchriese.[12]

References

  1. ↑ Ashley, Nelson (April 16, 1894). "Tombstone in the Old Days". Fort Worth, Texas: Fort Worth Gazette.
  2. ↑ "Wyatt Earp Exposes the Examiner's Fake Methods". San Francisco Call. December 4, 1896. p. 1. Retrieved October 22, 2014.
  3. ↑ "Wyatt Earp Sued". San Francisco Call. December 8, 1896. p. 7. Retrieved October 22, 2014.
  4. ↑ Murray, Tom G. (June 1968). "Wyatt Earp's Letters to Bill Hart". True West Magazine. Retrieved April 16, 2013.
  5. 1 2 Taylor, Michael (April 23, 2010). "J. M. Scanland". Retrieved April 16, 2013.
  6. ↑ Barra, Alan (May 7, 2012). "Wyatt On the Set!". True West Magazine. Archived from the original on December 19, 2013. Retrieved 5 November 2014.
  7. 1 2 Reidhead, S.J. (October 4, 2006). "Book Review: Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal". Archived from the original on September 28, 2012. Retrieved January 11, 2011.
  8. 1 2 3 4 "John Flood and Wyatt Earp". Wild West magazine. January 29, 2008.
  9. 1 2 Bell, Bob Boze (October 2015). "Wyatt Earp in Hollywood". True West. Retrieved November 5, 2015.
  10. ↑ Cataldo, Nicholas (Spring 1990). "The Real Wyatt Earp" (PDF). Odyssey. City of San Bernardino Historical and Pioneer Society. 12 (1). Retrieved 5 November 2014.
  11. ↑ Flood Jr., John H.; Earp, Wyatt S. (1926). ""Calling the Turn" from Wyatt Earp, by John H. Flood, Jr.". skyways.org. Dodge City, Kansas. Archived from the original on 6 August 2011.
  12. ↑ "44098: Wonderful Painting of the O.K.Corral Gunfight,". Live Auctioneers. Archived from the original on March 21, 2015. Retrieved 21 March 2015.
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