Okay, so who was Miss E.L. Billings from Seattle Washington? I inquired of Tim Fattig, Wyatt Earp researcher and author of Wyatt Earp, The Biography if he was aware of an E.L. Billings or a J.H. King that may have been associated with Wyatt. He was not aware of any connection but did suggest that I contact genealogical researcher Nellie K. Romer in Texas who may be able to trace who this woman was.

   Our search was on and she narrowed it down to two possible people. Emma Louise Billings or Emma Leila Billings both of whom had been born in Massachusetts in 1862. A relentless effort and a few other clues provided by David brought us to the conclusion that the owner of this treasure keeper was the latter. But still with this information we were lacking a direct connection to someone Wyatt Earp may have known or met along his journeys. Theories sprung up with connections to Emma Leila that led from Massachusetts to Seattle none of which are concrete but what we do know from Nellie Romer's research is what I will include here.

   Emma Leila was born in MA in 1862 to Lucy Billings and Elijah Randall. She was only a few months old when her father enlisted with the Union Army eventually succumbing to an illness in Louisiana. Her mother, Lucy remarried a man named Frances E. Elmer in 1868 and Emma Leila was sent to live with her maternal grandfather or uncle, Lorenzo Billings where census records have her using the last name of Billings and from then on she was known as Emma Leila Billings. Lucy eventually remarried yet again, this time to William Gunn.

   Emma Leila had a sister 3 years older, Nettie Ray Randall. Her travels took her from Massachusetts to Texas to Idaho and eventually to Seattle where she died in 1908. Nettie had two husbands, one Edward Payson Pomeroy of Texas who she had a son, William Randall with and after divorcing him she met and married Irving Comstock, a carpenter, of New York. It appears that Emma Leila was perhaps summoned to Seattle sometime around 1906 to take care of her ailing older sister.

   So here we are, we know who owned the collection but how would Emma Leila have found herself in contact with the traveling Mr. Earp?

   Again, Nellie K. has been the catalyst at locating information about our mystery woman. She apparently was never married, therefore with the death of her sister in 1908 Emma Leila was left sole survivor of the original Randall family, the only other relative being Nettie's son with E.P. Pomeroy, William who was about 24 at the time of his mother's death. The 1910 census records has her listed as 38 years old and living with the family of Charles S. Emery in Seattle Washington. She is listed as a "servant" to Mr. Emery who is a 42-year-old widower from Iowa and is a physician in general practice. He has a daughter named Marie C. Emery and she is 18 at the time of this census. Also in the household is listed a Charles E. Teel, 69, originally from Iowa, widower, physician, father-in-law. Nellie K. was also able to locate information about Dr. Emery's father. His name was Jacob Emery and he was a customs collector for the Port of Seattle.

   Could either of these doctors who employed Emma Leila from at least 1910 if not earlier to possibly around 1918 be a connection to this tintype? Would a commonality like living in Iowa have endeared Wyatt to them such that there became a friendship along with the services of a physician or customs collector?

   From Seattle Nellie K. traced Emma Leila back to Massachusetts where she appears in 1918 working as a housekeeper for Edward G. Watkins. Mr. Watkins was the founder of the Simplex Time Recorder Co. and he became one of the wealthiest men in Massachusetts, eventually leading to his grandson selling the company in 2001 for more than 2 billion dollars to the Tyco Corporation.

   Realizing the possible importance of what he had so foolishly let go of David was able to locate the person who had purchased the remaining post cards and the album and managed to purchase it intact back from her. Now we had some more clues to work with, we had hoped.

   David sent me 18 post cards, 3 tintypes and 17 miscellaneous photos that had been inside this album, maybe now we would have some other names with which to tie Miss E.L. Billings to a tintype marked as Wyatt Earp. Post cards from New York, St. Louis, Ballard WA, Buckley WA, Springfield MA, San Francisco, St. Paul, Baldwinsville MA, Holyoke MA, Olympia WA, Cambridge MA, and even Lisbon, MI were finally all in my hands and I had hoped that perhaps somewhere among them would be the missing link to locating the connection she may have had with Wyatt Earp. But again, there was nothing that produced a giant "aha" moment and said, this is it. Perhaps the names would help. The people who she had associated with during her lifetime or at least before she sealed the post card album up may have been the connecting link. (See Nellie K. Romer's article Emma Leila Billings)

   A lot of the post cards simply did not have any writing on them other than the address, others had been written in pencil on the picture side of the card and the years had worn away complete legibility leaving us puzzled as to who would have sent that card. Another problem is the fact that often only initials were used to convey who sent the card, N.R.C., M.E.B., Mrs. S., J.N.W., and simply M. Who were these people and which, if any of them, would be the connection? Again, we found no direct connection. But it must be noted here that we did not find a single W.E. in any of her correspondence, family line or on any photograph she had in her collection. And in all of Nellie's research there was only one person, a step-uncle William Harrison Elmer, who had the initials, W.E. Who was this image of and who was the W.E. claiming ownership of the watch? Or does this watch even have a connection to the post card album owned by Emma Leila Billings?

   A serial number was found on the watch, but that has not proved successful in relating it to anyone, much less Wyatt Earp and David has, in the meantime, managed to purchase the timepiece from the man who originally found it in his box of goodies from this estate sale. Perhaps if someone had access to the records for the Waltham Watch Co. that are archived at the Harvard Library, a comparison of serial to location or name sold to would help in solving part of this mystery.

   So with that part of the mystery bringing no successful link I set out to locate the present day owners of the last known address Emma Leila lived in Gardner Massachusetts. An Internet search put me in touch with a lovely lady named Barbara who was successful in putting me in contact with Mr. Watkins' grandson who would have been born right around the time Emma Leila most likely died. Mrs. Watkins was kind enough to hear my story related to this Wyatt Earp tintype, but unfortunately was unable to put me on to any other leads as to where her belongings would have been passed on to or even stories spoke of her. She did confirm, however, that Emma Leila would have lived on the third floor of the three-story Victorian that served as the Watkins residence until the home was donated late last decade to the Cushing Academy and eventually sold to the current owners.

   During the time that I have been trying to connect the dots I have shown this photo to many people and asked their opinions and though many say, "It's Kevin Costner", most all agree that there is a remarkable likeness to the Tombstone legend, a likeness very hard to deny. One such person who saw the likeness was Cindy Reidhead whose diligent effort to research the attire the gentleman in the tintype is wearing is explained in her words in the article included in this issue, What Becomes A Legend Most?

   I also spent some time with Tim Fattig where we examined the digital copy of the tintype in detail. Examining the photo by lifting this transparency up and comparing ears, eyes, eye brow, chin, nose, jaw line, etc. he too found it very believable that this was an image of Wyatt Earp. The eyebrow, bold and hooded, fit into the family images of all the Earps except for Warren. The ears, set upon his head were extremely close to the same position as in the 1886 photo and the chin set under the mustache with the same indentation and shadowing in each photo. The nose, though ever so slightly larger and somewhat dropped in the front, lines up with the same feature on the 1886 photo. This difference could be explained not only by age, but also due to breakage suffered in previous fistfights, explains Tim. The crows feet around the eyes, the deep set line between the brows, the tiny bump on the side of his nose, the hair part line, his ears, and even the piercing look all are just too close a resemblance to discount its authenticity. In fact, there are more remarkable similarities than dissimilarities to discount it completely as a fraud. The many features of the two photos, compared side by side and over lapped, gave remarkable clues to this being an image of the known legend.

   In the meantime, David has furthered his quest to authenticate his find and contacted Joe B. Alexander, MD, CDE in Abilene Texas. Mr. Alexander is a certified forensic document examiner and board certified physician and handwriting expert and has rendered his opinion of the tintype David Horton has as "genuine". His conclusion is as follows:
I, Joe B. Alexander, M.D., C.D.E., declare:
1. I am a Medical Doctor and Certified Document Examiner, and have been retained to render an expert opinion concerning the authenticity of a tintype photograph purportedly of Wyatt Earp taken in 1896.
2. I have personal knowledge of the facts set forth in this declaration, and I could and would testify competently to the facts if I were called as a witness.
3. I have examined a photograph known to be that of Wyatt Earp taken in 1886.
4. I have also examined one tintype photograph purportedly of Wyatt Earp taken in 1896.
5. I have compared the physical features of Wyatt Earp on the known comparison document to the physical features of the person in the second photograph in order to determine whether or not the person pictured in the questioned photograph was the same person pictured in the known comparison photo.
6. It is my professional opinion, as a Certified Forensic Document Examiner, that the person pictured in the questioned photograph has significant similarities in physical features to the known comparison photograph of Wyatt Earp and I am therefore convinced to a reasonable degree of professional certainty that, in fact, the photograph is a genuine photograph of Wyatt Earp.
7. I am willing to testify to these facts before a court of law and prove to the Court that my opinion is correct.
8. I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the State of Texas that the foregoing is true and correct.
Dated: July 16, 2007 - Joe B. Alexander, M.D., C.D.E.

   Did David Horton stumble upon an unbelievable find? Is the tintype that was found in the post card album truly that of Wyatt Earp? Why could it NOT be? But better yet why would it NOT be? There has been, as yet, no direct link to the woman who collected post cards to the man who was marked as Wyatt Earp on the front page of the treasured album. But undoubtedly there are parts of the man's life, and for that matter anyone's life that are not completely known. He would have been places, met people and befriended them if even for a short time along his journeys. Friendships sparked with a commonality such as places lived and people known could be brief and never spoken of in newspaper society columns or diaries. Think about it even today. How many people do you have photographs of that you once were acquainted with and no one can verify that you knew them. How many of your grandparents hope chests have dozens of photographs of people you cannot recognize and put a name to, but that does not mean that they did not have a reason to have that person's image in their treasured collection. Just because we cannot figure why out someone had a certain picture does not mean that they never met the person or that the image is not who it claims to be.

   Or did this tintype not even belong to her, but was, perhaps, her sister Nettie's? It is apparent that the tintype was attached to a paper that was not part of the bigger album. It had been kept in a tintype photo album and the page from that album had been removed. If this was the case it could explain why this, of all images in the collection, was named. If Emma Leila was not aware of who the man was but her sister told her who he was, she would have inscribed a name to go with a picture of someone she did not know, but knew the name and wanted to be sure and remember it. Nettie has spent much more time in Seattle and was in the area from at least in 1892 and would have had more opportunities to meet the man. She and either of her husbands could have run into Wyatt Earp any time either there, along the railroad destinations or even in Idaho as there are records of her having married in that state. Did, perhaps Nettie serve in some capacity to the Doctors Emery and Teel offering her the opportunity to meet Mr. and Mrs. Earp while in Seattle needing medical care? Did some of these post cards actually come from the Earps travels and were shared with Nettie Ray Comstock and then her sister Emma Leila?

   I guess there are many possibilities that could hold sound reason as to why this person has a tintype marked Wyatt Earp, but I have been unable to make that direct connection. And I know that there will be those who unequivocally say this is NOT the man we know as Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp and set out to prove it is not him. I say, great, go for it, you never know what you might come up with and who knows, in your attempt to prove it isn't you just may prove it is. And then there will be and are those who say that this truly is an incredible never before seen photograph of the man legends are based upon. All I can say is, Suppose... Suppose.

   If you would like to comment on this find or would like to reach David Horton, you may email Janice Hendricks at janice@tombstonetimes.com.