John Henry "Doc" Holliday (August 14, 1851 – November 8, 1887) was an American gambler, gunfighter, and dentist of the American Old West who is usually remembered for his friendship with Wyatt Earp and his involvement in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
As a young man, Holliday earned a D.D.S. degree and set up a dental practice in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1873 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, the same disease that had claimed his mother when he was 15. He moved to the American Southwest in hopes that the climate would prolong his life. Taking up gambling as a profession, he subsequently acquired a reputation as a deadly gunman.
During his travels, he met and became a good friend of Wyatt Earp and his brothers. In 1880, he moved to Tombstone, Arizona, and participated alongside the Earps in the famous gunfight at the OK Corral. This did not settle matters between the two sides, and Holliday was embroiled in ensuing shootouts and killings. He successfully fought being extradited for murder and died in bed at a Colorado hotel at the age of 36.
The legend and mystique of his life is so great that he has been mentioned in countless books and portrayed by various actors in numerous movies and television series. For the 125-plus years since his death, debate has continued about the exact crimes he may have committed.
Early life and education
Holliday was born in Griffin, Georgia, to Henry Burroughs Holliday and Alice Jane Holliday (née McKey). His father served in the Mexican–American War and the Civil War. His family baptized him at the First Presbyterian Church in 1852.
In 1864 his family moved to Valdosta, Georgia. Holliday's mother died of tuberculosis on September 16, 1866, when he was 15 years old. Three months later, his father married Rachel Martin. While in Valdosta, he attended the Valdosta Institute, where he received a strong classical secondary education in rhetoric, grammar, mathematics, history, and languages—principally Latin but also French and some Ancient Greek.
In 1870 the 19-year-old Holliday left home to begin dental school in Philadelphia. On March 1, 1872, at the age of 20, he met the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Dental Surgery from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery(which later merged with the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine). He graduated five months before his 21st birthday, which would have been problematic since this age was needed both to hold a D.D.S. degree and to practice dentistry as anything other than a student under a preceptor in Georgia.
Holliday did not go home after graduation but worked as an assistant with a classmate, A. Jameson Fuches, Jr., in St. Louis, Missouri. By the end of July he had moved to Atlanta, where he lived with his uncle and his family while beginning his career as a dentist. A few weeks before his birthday, the Atlanta papers carried an announcement by noted dentist Arthur C. Ford in Atlanta that Holliday would fill his place in the office while he was attending dental meetings. This was the beginning of Holliday's career in private practice as a dentist, but it lasted only a short time, until December.
Shortly after beginning his dental practice, Holliday was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He may have contracted the disease from his mother, although he may also have caught it from a coughing or sneezing patient. Little or no precaution was taken against this during dental procedures, as tuberculosis was not known to be contagious until 1885. He was given only a few months to live, but he considered that moving to the drier and warmer southwestern United States might slow the deterioration of his health.
Gambler and gunman
In September 1873, Holliday moved to Dallas, Texas, where he opened a dental office with fellow dentist and Georgian John A. Seegar. Their office was located between Market and Austin Streets along Elm Street, about three blocks east of the site of today's Dealey Plaza. He soon began gambling and realized this was a more profitable source of income, since patients feared going to his office because of his ongoing cough. On May 12, 1874, Holliday and 12 others were indicted in Dallas for illegal gambling. He was arrested in Dallas in January 1875 after trading gunfire with a saloon-keeper, but no one was injured and he was found not guilty. He moved his offices to Denison, Texas, and after being found guilty of, and fined for, "gaming" in Dallas, he decided to leave the state.
In 1877, Holliday returned to Cheyenne and Denver, eventually making his way to Kansas to visit an aunt. He left Kansas and returned to Texas, setting up as a gambler in the town of Breckenridge, Texas. On July 4, 1877, he got involved in an altercation with another gambler named Henry Kahn, whom Holliday beat with his walking stick repeatedly. Both men were arrested and fined, but later in the day Kahn shot Holliday, wounding him seriously.
The Dallas Weekly Herald incorrectly reported Holliday as dead in its July 7 edition. His cousin, George Henry Holliday, moved west to take care of him during his recovery. Fully recovered, Holliday relocated to Fort Griffin, Texas, where he met "Big Nose Kate" (Mary Katharine Horony) and began his longtime involvement with her. In Fort Griffin, Holliday was initially introduced to Wyatt Earp through mutual friend John Shanssey. Earp had stopped at Fort Griffin, Texas, before returning to Dodge City in 1878 to become the assistant city marshal, serving under Charlie Bassett. The two began to form an unlikely friendship—Earp more even-tempered and controlled, Holliday more hot-headed and impulsive. This friendship was cemented in 1878 in Dodge City, Kansas, when Holliday defended Earp in a saloon against a handful of cowboys out to kill Earp, and where both Earp and Holliday had traveled to make money gambling with the cowboys who drove cattle from Texas.
Tombstone
Dodge City was not a frontier town for long. By 1879 it had become too respectable for the sort of people who had seen it through its early days. For many, it was time to move on to places not yet reached by the civilizing railroad—places where money was to be made. By this time Holliday was as well known for his prowess as a gunfighter as for his gambling, although the latter was his trade and the former was simply a reputation. Through his friendship with Wyatt and the other Earp brothers, especially Morgan and Virgil, Holliday made his way to the silver-mining boom town of Tombstone, Arizona Territory, in September 1880. The Earps had been there since December 1879. Some accounts state that the Earps sent for Holliday when they realized the problems they faced in their feud with the Cowboy faction. In Tombstone, Holliday quickly became embroiled in the local politics and violence that led up to the famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in October 1881.
The gunfight happened in front of, and next to, Fly's boarding house and picture studio (where Holliday had a room) the day after a late night of hard drinking and poker playing by Ike Clanton. The Clantons and McLaurys collected in the space between the boarding house and the house west of it before being confronted by the Earps. Holliday may have thought they were there specifically to assassinate him.
It is known that Holliday carried a coach gun from the local stage office into the fight. He was given the weapon just before the fight by Virgil Earp, as Holliday was wearing a long coat that could conceal it. Virgil Earp in turn took Holliday's walking stick, and by not going conspicuously armed, Virgil was seeking to avoid alarm in the citizenry of Tombstone, and in the Clantons and McLaurys.
An inquest and arraignment hearing determined the gunfight was not a criminal act on the part of Holliday and the Earps. The situation in Tombstone soon grew worse when Virgil Earp was ambushed and permanently injured in December 1881. Then Morgan Earp was ambushed and killed in March 1882. After Morgan's murder, Virgil Earp and many remaining members of the Earp families fled town. Holliday and Wyatt Earp stayed in Tombstone to exact retribution on Ike Clanton and the corrupt members known as the Cowboys. In Tucson, while Wyatt, Warren Earp, and Holliday were escorting the wounded Virgil Earp and his wife Allie on the first stage of their trip to California, they prevented another ambush, and this may have been the start of the vendetta against Morgan's killers.
Earp Vendetta Ride
Several Cowboys were identified by witnesses as suspects in the shooting of Virgil Earp on December 27, 1881, and the assassination of Morgan Earp on March 19, 1882. Some circumstantial evidence also pointed to their involvement.
Wyatt Earp had been appointed Deputy U.S. Marshall after Virgil was maimed. He deputized Holliday, Warren Earp, Sherman McMasters, and "Turkey Creek" Jack Johnson, and they guarded Virgil Earp and his wife Allie on their way to the train for California. In Tucson, the group spotted Frank Stilwell and Ike Clanton who they thought was lying in wait to kill Virgil. On Monday, March 20, 1882, Frank Stilwell's body was found at dawn alongside the railroad tracks, riddled with buckshot and gunshot wounds.
Tucson Justice of the Peace Charles Meyer issued arrest warrants for five of the Earp party, including Holliday. On March 21, they returned briefly to Tombstone, where they were joined by Texas Jack Vermillion and possibly others. Wyatt deputized the men who rode with him. After leaving Tombstone, the posse made its way to Spence's wood-cutting camp in the South Pass of the Dragoon Mountains. There they found and killed Florentino "Indian Charlie" Cruz. Over the next few days they also located and killed "Curly Bill" Brocius and wounded at least two other men thought to be responsible for Morgan's death. Holliday and four other members of the posse were still faced with warrants for Stilwell's death. The group elected to leave the Arizona Territory for New Mexico and then Colorado. While in Trinidad, Colorado, Wyatt Earp and Holliday parted ways, going separately to different parts of Colorado. Holliday arrived in Colorado in mid April 1882.
Extradition fails
On May 15, 1882, Holliday was arrested in Denver on the Arizona warrant for murdering Frank Stilwell. Wyatt Earp, fearing that Holliday could not receive a fair trial in Arizona, asked his friend Bat Masterson, Chief of Police of Trinidad, Colorado, to help get Holliday released. The extradition hearing was set for May 30. Late in the evening of May 29, Masterson needed help getting an appointment with Colorado Governor Frederick Walker Pitkin. He contacted E.D. Cowen, capital reporter for the Denver Tribune, who held political sway in town. Cowen later wrote, "He submitted proof of the criminal design upon Holliday's life. Late as the hour was, I called on Pitkin." After meeting with Masterson, Pitkin was persuaded by whatever evidence he presented and refused to honor Arizona's extradition request. His legal reasoning was that the extradition papers for Holliday contained faulty legal language, and that there was already a Colorado warrant out for Holliday—one on bunco charges that Masterson had fabricated in Pueblo, Colorado.
Masterson took Holliday to Pueblo, where he was released on bond two weeks after his arrest. Holliday and Wyatt met briefly after Holliday's release during June 1882 in Gunnison.
Final illness, death and burial
Holliday spent the rest of his life in Colorado. After a stay in Leadville, he suffered from the high altitude. He increasingly depended on alcohol and laudanum to ease the symptoms of tuberculosis, and his health and his ability to gamble began to deteriorate.
In 1887, prematurely gray and badly ailing, Holliday made his way to the Hotel Glenwood, near the hot springs of Glenwood Springs, Colorado. (The Hotel Glenwood was not a sanatorium, as is popularly believed. The sanatorium in Glenwood Springs was not built until many years after Holliday's death.) He hoped to take advantage of the reputed curative power of the waters, but the sulfurous fumes from the spring may have done his lungs more harm than good.As he lay dying, Holliday is reported to have asked the nurse attending him at the Hotel Glenwood for a shot of whiskey. When she told him no, he looked at his bootless feet, amused. The nurses said that his last wordswere, "Damn, this is funny." Holliday died at 10 am on November 8, 1887. He was 36. It was reported that no one ever thought that Holliday would die in bed with his boots off.
He is buried in Linwood Cemetery overlooking Glenwood Springs. Because it was November and the ground may have been frozen, some authors like Bob Boze Bell have speculated that Holliday could not have been buried in his marked grave in the Linwood Cemetery, which was only accessible via a difficult mountain road. Holliday biographer Gary Roberts, however, has located evidence that other bodies were transported to the Linwood Cemetery at the same time of the month that year. And the papers reported at the time explicitly that the burial was in the Linwood Cemetery; no exhumation has been attempted.