The McLaurys in Tombstone, Arizona: An O.K. Corral Obituary

Epilogue: Three McLaury Brothers

301 An O.K. Corral Obituary The History of Buchanan County’s write-up of Robert H. McClaury gave the old man a chance to boast about himself and his children. For the sake of putting the best foot forward, old hurts and family skeletons were put away. A failed marriage was never acknowledged. Failed real estate ventures were given the euphemism of having “practiced law.” Just as the report on their father was unstintingly complimentary, so all the children were portrayed as successful in their careers. What people remember as history is often a hazy distortion of the truth because they enjoy a well-told story more than mundane details. A good, well-told story is better remembered. In reality, the story of the McLaury brothers has many unresolved ambiguities. After everything that took place in Tombstone, the family turned its collective back on the memory of the brothers who were publicly gunned down, just as they quietly ignored the failure to convict their killers, not once but twice. It appears that justice was denied even from the legal fraternity who, once paid for the prosecution, took no further interest in the family’s claims. Having passed through the phases of grief, the family left the whole business behind, treating it as “a matter that we ought to think about as little as possible.” Tom and Frank were not rootless drifters who committed crimes against people and property. They were two young men from a good family, ambitious and eager to make as big a profit as they could. Yes, they were not above bending the rules. What makes this story both human and contemporary is this paradox. There are plenty of examples of otherwise upstanding and good citizens who at some time in their lives went over the line, did something illicit, illegal or unethical. Yet that does not count them among society’s worst. In the main, it does not make them “bad people.” Redemption, whether in life or in fiction, is available to all and valued wherever it can be found. Having argued that good people can do bad things, it is hard to be absolutely sure how deeply Will McLaury or Charles Appelgate may have been Epilogue: Three McLaury Brothers 302 The McLaurys in Tombstone, Arizona involved in the bloody aftermath of the unsuccessful prosecution of the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday. There is no evidence of criminal behavior after their time in Tombstone. Charles Appelgate went into law enforcement for a few years and then took up a more lucrative legal practice in Nebraska. Will McLaury returned to Fort Worth and continued his legal career, for which he gained social and professional stature. As a lawyer, Will was as prone as ever to suing others in court and being sued in return (and perhaps that pattern was like his father), but at no time did he resort to violence. While he was in Tombstone, Will’s “Hamlet” tendency was its own trial. The lawyer seeking restitution through the law wrestled with the brother who would have gladly “put an end to this thing in a few hours.” He confessed to his Presbyterian partner that it aroused “all the devil” there was in him. In his later years, Will was not above spinning a good story. Perhaps it was his way of blowing off the steam of those old memories. There is a narrative attributed to him that recalls while he was in Tombstone how he took Frank’s six-shooter off the dresser, went out and assassinated Morgan Earp. Patently untrue, yet recorded as gospel by a family member who wrote it down. It was an old-timer’s tale, part of the “fragmentary history” that old-timers are prone to hand on to a later generation, particularly if the narrative holds the listener in awe and wonder.1 McLaury did, however, bear the ordeal of a wayward son. John Dewitt McLaury was in and out of trouble from the time he was a teenager. On the heels of losing his own mother, his eighth birthday was blighted by the arrival of news that his uncles had died. Then his father left him and his sisters in the care of “strangers” for many weeks. Perhaps these events gave him a feeling of insecurity that was only reinforced by his father’s remarriage barely a year later. Will’s second family with Lenora was a brood of five: four boys and a girl. In 1901...