When Virgil was discharged from the military on June 26, 1865, he returned to Iowa but could not find his wife and daughter. He hired on at a local farm and helped operate a grocery store, before leaving for California to join the rest of the Earp family. In 1868, Nicholas Earp took the family east again, eventually settling in Lamar, Missouri. On August 28, 1870, Virgil married Rosella Dragoo (born in France in 1853) in Lamar. His father as justice of the peace married them, but there are no further records of Rosella.