Josephine Sarah Marcus was born in New York City in late 1860 or early 1861 to Polish-Jewish immigrants Henry Marcus and Sophia Marcus. She had a brother Nathan and two sisters Rebecca (Edna) & Henrietta (Hattie). In 1869 they moved to San Francisco.

When she was almost 19 she ran away from home with a Pinafore song and dance troupe to Prescott, Arizona Territory, where she met recently- divorced Johnny Behan, who proposed marriage if she would move to the new silver mining town of Tombstone.

After a year (1880-1881) of no marriage she moved out on Sheriff Johnny Behan and took up with the U. S. Marshal Wyatt Earp. A few months after the famous O. K. Corral Shootout, she returned to San Francisco to await her lover Wyatt.

For forty-seven years they were in- separable and traveled throughout the west. After getting married in Parker, Arizona in 1888, they lived in San Diego and San Francisco until 1897 when they went to Alaska.

From 1902 to 1905, they lived in Nevada and then moved to Southern California where they spent the winter on the desert prospecting and the summers in a rented cottage in Los Angeles.

After Wyatt's death in 1929, Josie lived with friends and relatives for the next fifteen years, often in a state of abject poverty as Stuart Lake reneged on royalties due on Wyatt's life story as told in the movies. She died in Dec. 1944 and is buried next to Wyatt in Colma, CA. Before her death she wrote her life story with Wyatt Earp, now known as Wyatt's Woman (Available only from the Earl Chafin Press).

She was reluctant to discuss her stay in Tombstone, due to the fact that she had lived with Johnny Behan for a year without benefit of marriage. Also she had essentially taken Wyatt away from his second wife Mattie who later committed suicide (1888).

© Luis Segarra 2002 guiadelaradio@wanadoo.es

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