Dan Tipton

Tipton served aboard the USS Malvern during the American Civil War and drifted west afterward. He showed up in Tombstone in March 1881. When Morgan Earp was assassinated on March 18, 1882, Tipton was present in the billiard parlor where Morgan was killed. Tipton joined Earp's posse after it returned from Prescott. While escorting Virgil Earp and his wife Allie to the train bound for California, Wyatt killed Frank Stilwell who had been named as a suspect in Morgan's murder. He took the money to the Earp party at Henry Hooker's Sierra Bonita Ranch north of Willcox. Gage The posse members looked for more members of the outlaw Cowboys for a few more days before leaving Arizona on April 15 to avoid arrest warrants. Tipton remained with the group through New Mexico and into Colorado, where most of the posse stayed to avoid arrest warrants from Cochise County. == Later life ==

In 1897, Tipton ran afoul of the law. Customs agents arrested him for smuggling forged Chinese immigrant labor certificates. He was convicted in October and sentenced to 20 months in the Ohio Federal Penitentiary. The 53-year-old inmate lived only four months behind bars before dying of Bright's Disease on February 25, 1898. He left no known family. His body was buried in an unmarked grave at the Green Lawn Cemetery in Columbus, Ohio. In July, 2006, a government-issued tombstone was placed on the veteran's grave. == References ==