Approx. 30 photographs in various formats, being family photographs, most of which were housed in a cabinet card/cdv album, in which now most of the windows are broken. The family was that of Joseph I. Lawless, evidently a descendant or in-law of one of the Earps. The photographs include: 6 cabinet cards with imprint of Imperial, 724½ Market St., San Francisco: Lawrence Lawless, Edward Lawless, Thomas Lawless; + 2 of an unidentified man, possible Edward Lawless, also a young girl. * Two photographs on mounts of the baby Edward J. Lawless, one of him with father Joseph I. Lawless and mother Elizabeth M. Cook Lawless, one with just his mother, and a portrait of Joseph I. Lawless about 1900. * Photograph of Joost Brothers Hardware, 11th & Mission, S.F., May 1906, with 10 men standing in front, one identified as Joe Lawless, who was a bookkeeper at the firm. * Six photographs identified as “Earp Pictures.” Includes: Tintype of 3 young men (2 seated, 1 standing, 1 with moustache), in studio. 3½x2½; Tintype, group portrait of 5 young men, identified (but not verified) as Wyatt, Virgil, Morgan, James and Newton Earp. 3¼x2¼ (some creasing); Tintype of a man with hat and large moustache. 3½x2½; Cabinet card of elderly man seated with woman standing behind him, imprint of The Photo Studio, Little Valley, N.Y. (faded); CDV of man in hat and coat with moustache, imprint of F.C. Haefer, Calumet, Mich.; CDV portrait of man with beard, imprint of J.B. Gallaher, Black River Falls, Wisc. * Six other photographs, including cabinet card portrait of General John Grant Mitchell, another of a woman (purportedly Josephine Earp, though this cannot be verified), small tintype of a man standing behind two seated women, and two cdv’s & a cabinet card from Europe. * A pair of glasses identified as having belonged to Wyatt Earp.
This very interesting group of photographs was sold to James Barrier (the late James "Buffalo Jim" Barrier, sports promoter and celebrated Las Vegas personality, whose personal collection at the time of his death in April of 2008 ranged from celebrity memorabilia and classic automobiles to key examples of Americana) by a man calling himself Wyatt Earp, claiming to be Wyatt Earp's grandson. The original Wyatt Earp is known not to have had any children, and the "grandson," who has made public appearances and written books on his famous namesake, is thought to be at best a great nephew. At any rate, this collection was appraised at the Antiques Road Show in Las Vegas in 2007 for $25,000 to $30,000; there is both a newsclipping describing the event and this album of photographs, and also a "Certificate of Authenticity" signed by the younger Wyatt Earp. While we cannot verify the identity of the actual subjects of the photographs (none of the images match "known' photographs of the Earp brothers, so far as we can tell), if their authenticity could be established, certainly the Roadshow appraisal is not excessive. The connection of the Lawless family to the Earps is equally elusive, though Virgil Earp's first wife, who bore him a daughter while he was serving in the Civil War and moved to Oregon in his absence, remarried a man named Law.