[2][3] Wyatt assembled a federal posse that included their brother Warren Earp and set out on a vendetta to kill those they felt were responsible.

[6] In February 1860, while living in Pella, Iowa, 16-year-old Virgil eloped with 17-year-old Dutch immigrant Magdalena C. "Ellen" Rysdam (October 25, 1842, in Utrecht, Netherlands – May 3, 1910, in Cornelius, Oregon[7]).

When her parents Gerrit Rysdam and Magdalena Catrina Van Velzen learned of the marriage, they were furious, as they preferred that she marry a man who was also Dutch.

In early 1864, Ellen married a Dutch man named John Van Rossum, and in May of that year they joined a large group who relocated from Pella, Iowa, to the Oregon Territory.

He hired on at a local farm and helped operate a grocery store, before leaving for California to join the rest of the Earp family.

Although there is no record of Virgil ever holding any law enforcement position there, Allie claimed he briefly worked as a deputy town marshal with Wyatt.

Marshal Wiley Standifer, Yavapai County Sheriff Edward Franklin Bowers, Prescott Constable Frank Murray, Virgil Earp, and Colonel William Henry McCall attempted to arrest John Tallos and accused murderer George Wilson.

While the others rode on horseback or carriages, Virgil ran on foot after the posse that pursued the two men to the edge of town, where a gun fight broke out.

[15][16][17] Virgil was shortly afterwards offered a job as a driver for Patterson, Caldwell & Levally, a local freight company, during which he met John J. Gosper, Secretary of the Arizona Territory.

Virgil now held both the more powerful local town marshal position and the prestigious federal law enforcement appointment.

[22] To reduce crime in Tombstone, the City Council enacted an ordinance in April 1881 that prohibited anyone from carrying a deadly weapon in town.

A long-simmering feud between the Earps and some of the Cowboys played a big role in a gunfight that broke out when Virgil decided to enforce the ordinance on Wednesday, October 26, 1881.

Virgil made the decision to enforce a city ordinance prohibiting carrying weapons in town and to disarm the Cowboys.

[30] Virgil, his brothers Wyatt and Morgan, and Doc Holliday confronted the Cowboys in a narrow lot on Fremont Street.

The Sacramento Daily Record-Union reported that "he was fired upon with double-barreled shotguns, loaded with buckshot, by three men concealed in an unfinished building diagonally across on Allen street.

[35] The Crystal Palace Saloon and the Eagle Brewery beyond Virgil were struck by nineteen buckshot; three passed through the window and one about a foot over the heads of some men standing by a faro-table.

[34] The Los Angeles Daily Herald reported that the "cow-boys are bent on vengeance for the slaughter of their companeros a few weeks ago."

The district attorney asked that bail be set at $5,000, but the judge released both men on $1,500 bond, indicating he thought the prosecution's case was weak.

[17] On Monday, March 20, Virgil and Allie were escorted by Wyatt and deputies Warren Earp, Doc Holliday, Sherman McMaster, and "Turkey Creek" Jack Johnson to Contention, where they drove two wagons to the Arizona and New Mexico Railroad terminal 25 miles (40 km) away in Benson.

Wyatt reported later that he received word in Contention that Ike Clanton, Frank Stilwell, Hank Swilling, and another cowboy were watching the passenger trains in Tucson with the aim to kill Virgil.

[42][citation needed] Virgil told the San Francisco Examiner two months later that upon getting off the train in Tucson, "Almost the first men we met on the platform there were Stilwell and his friends, armed to the teeth."

[19] Wyatt said later that he and his deputies spotted Frank Stilwell and another man he believed to be Ike Clanton armed with shotguns lying on a flatcar.

Stilwell's body, riddled with buckshot from two shotgun rounds, one in his leg and the second in his chest with powder burns, and four other bullet wounds, was found the next morning near the tracks.

Clanton gave an interview afterward to the newspapers in which he claimed that he and Stilwell had been in Tucson to respond to federal charges about interfering with a U.S. mail carrier, stemming from his alleged involvement in robbing the Sandy Bob line of the Bisbee stage on September 8, 1881.

After Virgil was ambushed and maimed in Tombstone, he and Allie moved to his parents' home in Colton, California, to recover from his wounds, which took almost two years.

He is close to six feet in height, of medium build, chestnut hair, sandy mustache, light eyebrows, quiet, blue eyes and frank expression.

Two years later, Virgil Earp opened a private detective agency, which by all accounts he had quit by 1886, when he was elected village constable in July.

The next year, encouraged by his wife, Virgil traveled to Portland, Oregon, where he was reunited with Ellen and Nellie Jane Law.

In 1904, they left California for the last time and moved to the boom town of Goldfield in Esmeralda County, Nevada, where Virgil planned to open a saloon.

At the request of his daughter, Nellie Jane Bohn, Allie sent his body to Portland, Oregon, and he was buried in the River View Cemetery there.