page_title: John Clum
section_title: Life in Tombstone
hierarchical_section_title: John Clum / Indian Agent / Life in Tombstone
caption_attribution_description: English: John Clum with his first wife, Mary Ware. Mary "Mollie" Clum died on December 18, 1880 while the couple was living in Tombstone. She was 27 years old. Mary died shortly after giving birth to the couple's daughter, Elizabeth, a sickly child who died the following summer.
context_page_description: John Philip Clum was an Indian agent for the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation in the Arizona Territory. He implemented a limited form of self-government on the reservation that was so successful that other reservations were closed and their residents moved to San Carlos. Clum later became the first mayor of Tombstone, Arizona Territory, after its incorporation in 1881. He also founded the still-operating The Tombstone Epitaph on May 1, 1880. He later served in various postal service positions across the United States.
context_section_description: After silver was discovered in Tombstone in 1877, Clum moved to Tombstone and began publication, on Saturday, May 1, 1880 of The Tombstone Epitaph. He helped organize a "Vigilance Committee" to end lawlessness in Tombstone, and his association with that group helped get him elected as Tombstone's first mayor under the new city charter of 1881. While mayor he became lifelong friends with Wyatt Earp and became one of his greatest supporters. In December 1880, his wife Mary had a daughter Elizabeth, called Bessie, but Mary died soon after on December 18, 1880. Elizabeth was sickly and died the following summer.
  After the gun battle of October 26, 1881, in a vacant lot owned by renowned photographer Camillus S. Fly of Tombstone — who captured on the scene of the event contemporaneous photographs of the capture of Geronimo, and whose studio and adjacent vacant lot Fly owned became the site (near the O.K. Corral) at which the notorious gun battle took place — Ike Clanton filed murder charges and after a month-long preliminary hearing, Justice of the Peace Wells Spicer ruled the men had acted within the law. Clum later observed,
  There had been a lot of talk about the justification of the fight. But the Earps were officers of the law and I could see no reason why an officer should wait until he was fired upon two or three times before opening up himself. Wyatt Earp told me afterward he could have killed Ike Clanton. Ike, Wyatt said, drew back and motioned he was not in it. He called to Ike. 'Get in this, Ike, or get out!' and Ike got out."
  Clum's friendship with the Earps and loyalty to the business leadership made him a target for the outlaw Cochise County Cowboys. On December 14, Clum was on a stagecoach en route to Benson to catch a train for Washington, D.C., where he planned to spend Christmas with his parents and son. He and his newspaper had consistently supported the lawmen. The stagecoach was fired upon by unknown assailants. The stage didn't carry any mail, cash, or silver, so robbery was an unlikely motive for the attack. Driver Jimmie Harrington was able to outrun the attackers, but he soon had to stop to remove a lead horse that had been shot and was bleeding to death. Clum was certain the hold-up was cover for an attempt to kill him, so didn't reboard the stage, but walked until he found a horse he could borrow. He got to Benson the next day and then returned to Tombstone.
  Clum, Wells Fargo Agent Marshall Williams, Justice of the Peace Wells Spicer, mine owner E. B. Gage, attorney  Tom Fitch, Oriental Saloon owner Lou Rickabaugh, and the Earps were also threatened.
  Clum described the attempted murder later. "Yes, I ran away from Tombstone," said Clum. "There were nine of us who were not supposed to get out of Tombstone alive. We received warnings, written in blood. We didn't pay a lot of attention to them at first, but after a few months it became most unbearable. They were picking us off one by one. We could never put our hands definitely on those who were doing it. I decided to settle elsewhere. They opened fire on me from both sides of the road. Three miles farther along the road a bullet tore through my coat and lead brought down my horse. I kept going without him."
  In January Virgil Earp was maimed in an assassination attempt and in March Morgan was murdered. On May 1, 1882, two years to the day after he started The Tombstone Epitaph, he sold it and left Tombstone. The newspaper is still published today as a nationally distributed chronicle of the old west.
caption: John Clum with his first wife, Mary Ware. Mary "Mollie" Clum died on December 18, 1880 while the couple was living in Tombstone. She was 27 years old. Mary died shortly after giving birth to the couple's daughter, Elizabeth, a sickly child who died the following summer.
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