Tombstone AZ 1881 Bank Check Signed by P.W. Smith Knew Wyatt Earp Doc Holliday

Agency Pima County Bank check from Tombstone, Arizona dated April 25, 1881. Pay to the order of \"Cal. & Arizona Lumber Co.\" and hand signed on verso by J. N. Mason. Mason was the manager at the Arizona & California Lumber Company out of Tucson. It was located at Camp Street and Church Plaza. The gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone would take place just 6 months after the date of this check. The check is signed by \"P. W. Smith - Manager\".

Phillip William Smith was a key and colorful figure in early Tombstone history. He was a Republican, and considered a Wyatt Earp \"sympathizer.\" He owned and operated \"P. W. Smith\'s,\" a popular general merchandise store in Tombstone. He also owned \"P. W. Smith\'s Corral,\" on the corner of Third Street where Wyatt and Doc Holliday sometimes stabled their horses. Smith and partners B. Solomon and J. B. Fried supplied Tombstone with gas for street lights and homes. Smith was also one of the partners in the newspaper \"Tombstone Epitaph,\" along with mayor John Clum, Charles Reppy, E. B. Gage, and several others. He sold his interest in the paper when Milt Joyce and some other Democratic investors took control and brought in Sam Purdy as the new editor. In 1879, brothers Barron and Lionel Jacobs partnered with Smith to open the Pima County Bank, the first formal financial institution in Tucson. The two brothers were established merchants and suppliers in the Tucson and Tombstone areas, having expanded the family\'s business from San Bernardino, California eastward into southeastern Arizona. The following year, in 1880, the trio opened the \"Agency Pima County Bank\" in Tombstone, where it operated out of Smith\'s mercantile building. In 1882 it became the \"Cochise County Bank,\" with Smith as President, but it would close in 1890 because of Tombstone\'s depressed economy following the closure of many of the mines in the area. Many of Tombstone\'s legendary lawmen and outlaws regularly did business with Smith; the day before the shootout at the OK Corral on Oct. 26, 1881, outlaws Ike Clanton and Tom McLaury made deposits with Smith at the Pima County Bank, located in Smith\'s mercantile building, a section of which apparently doubled as a bank. It was later that evening, after hitting the Occidental Saloon and getting drunk, that Ike had his famous run-in with Doc Holliday, which would lead to the gunfight the following day. Allegedly, a day or so before the gunfight occurred, Wyatt Earp took delivery of a special coat from P. W. Smith\'s mercantile store: supposedly a mackinaw with lined pockets and made in dark blue heavy jean or canvas. The pockets were supposed to be lined with stiff leather, doubling as \"holsters\" to hide Earp\'s pistols. This has been debated for years by Western historians, and apparently has never been proven. On the day of the shooting, one of Smith\'s employees, J. H. Batcher, was coming back to the mercantile store, walking a few feet behind Wyatt Earp, who was walking in the same direction. He witnessed the famous confrontation between Tom McLaury and Wyatt, which ended when Earp slapped him and then smacked him a second time with the butt of his pistol. This incident, along with Doc Holliday\'s confrontation with Ike Clanton earlier that day, would touch off the gunfight later that day. Batcher would later be called to testify in court as to what he saw that day. P. W. Smith, merchant, banker, publisher and entreprenuer knew and associated with pretty much every major figure involved in Tombstone\'s early days, and the gunfight at the OK Corral.

• * CONDITION: Very Good++ with 3 standard cancelation cuts at left center, center & right center of check.


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