Subtitles by KRF Studio Tombstone, Arizona Territory, 1881 The gunfight at the OK Corral is the Old West’s most famous shootout and makes instant
celebrities of the combatants, included amongst them is a gambler and gunslinger known
as “Doc Holliday” It’s the beginning of a legend. But this is where Doc Holliday’s
story really began, here in the American south,
in the state of Georgia. Doc Holliday was born
John Henry Holliday, a descendant of two
Scots-Irish families that had settled
in frontier Georgia, soon after the American
Revolution at a time when much of Georgia
was still Indian territory. His mother’s family, the McKeys, owned
a plantation near Indian Creek, Georgia with hundreds of acres of cotton and
dozens of slaves to work the land. While John Henry’s maternal
grandparents were members of Georgia’s social
class of wealthy planters, his father’s family,
the Hollidays, were of more
modest circumstances. [Bill Dunn]: William Holliday moved
into a little community called Tumbling Shoals
in South Carolina. And from there the family moved to
different places all over the country, some of the family believed in
slavery, some did not and they chose not to go
into the southern states. [Narrator]: Henry Burroughs Holliday
was William’s eldest son. With no great estate to inherit,
Henry chose a career in the military, and served in the Creek Indian
and Mexican Wars. When he returned from the war,
he moved to Griffin, Georgia where he met and
married Alice Jane McKey. Griffin was a town
full of opportunity for an ambitious young man
like Henry Holliday. He took a job with a local druggist
and built his family a comfortable two-story home
on Tinsley Street. It was in Griffin, Georgia
that Henry and Alice Jane Holliday’s
two children were born. The first, a daughter they named
Martha Eleanora, lived only six months. A little over a year later,
on August 14, 1851, the Holliday’s second child was born,
a boy named John Henry. He was christened in March of 1852 in
Griffin’s First Presbyterian Church. There was also an
adopted older brother, a Mexican orphan boy
named Francisco Hidalgo, whom his father had
brought home from the Mexican War and raised
as a member of the family. 25 miles to the west of
Griffin were John Henry’s paternal family in
the city of Fayetteville. The uncle after whom John Henry was
named, John Stiles Holliday, had gone off to the Medical
College of Georgia in Augusta, and returned home to become
Fayetteville’s town doctor. Local tradition says that the
Holliday’s home in Fayetteville was once used as a dormitory space
for the Fayetteville Academy, the local boarding school where a
girl named Annie Fitzgerald studied. [Victoria Wilcox]: Annie
lived on a big cotton plantation in
nearby Clayton County and members of her family
became characters in a book written by one
of her descendants, the descendant was an Atlanta
journalist named Margaret Mitchell and the book she wrote
is called "Gone With The Wind", in which Scarlett O'Hara was said to have studied at the
Fayetteville Academy. [Narrator]: John Henry’s uncle,
Robert Kennedy Holliday, would marry Mary Anne Fitzgerald making Doc Holliday and famed novelist
Margaret Mitchell kin through marriage. Life during those early
years was peaceful. But tensions between the south and
the federal government were rising, and the way of life that John Henry
had known would end abruptly with the first shots
fired from Fort Sumter in 1861 heralding the
start of the Civil War. [Gary Roberts]: And then
the war came. And most of the Holliday
and McKey relatives were suddenly in
the Confederate army and John Henry was left at home
with the women folk, as he was the youngest of
that particular family. [Narrator]: Back in Griffin,
ten-year-old John Henry’s McKey uncles had also enlisted
in the Confederate Army, as had his father, Henry Holliday,
once a United States army officer, he was made a Confederate Major
on Christmas Day of 1861. But his service lasted just over
a year, as he took ill during the Siege of Richmond, and resigned
his commission with the Army. While most of the Holliday family
had settled in Griffin, Henry and John Stiles Holliday’s
brother, Robert Holliday, along with his wife,
Mary Anne Fitzgerald and their eight children, had settled in the town of Jonesboro,
ten miles east of Fayetteville. The eldest of his children was a girl
named Martha Anne, nicknamed Mattie, she was said to have been
John Henry’s favorite cousin. She would serve as his lifelong
pen pal and some would later question the true
nature of their relationship. When the Civil War began,
Robert Holliday registered the deeds to his several
Jonesboro properties, put money in a trust for his
wife and children, and, like his brothers, enlisted
in the Confederate Army. Concerned about Sherman’s
army, Henry Holliday sold his house and
properties in Griffin, packed up his family
and bought train tickets on the Macon
and Western Railroad. Their destination would be
the little village of Valdosta. To John Henry, now
twelve years old, the trip must have seemed like
the adventure of a lifetime. [Gary Roberts]: Now Valdosta
was a very different environment than Griffin. It was still coming out of
the woods, so to speak, it was not a very big town the only thing that gave
it any identity at all was the fact that there
was a railroad through it. So, suddenly he's in what
amounts to a frontier community, it doesn't have a
great social system, there are not a lot of
people that he knows, so things change for him. [Narrator]: Henry Holliday purchased
land at Cat Creek, seven miles outside
of the town of Valdosta and set to farming. There were other family
members moving south as well. John Henry’s McKey
aunts from Griffin and Robert Holliday’s wife
and children from Jonesboro, all came to stay on Henry
Holliday’s farm at Cat Creek, while the men were off fighting far-away
battles on bloody battlegrounds. John Henry attended the local
school, the Valdosta Institute. [Gary Roberts]: He was popular, he was
good on the dance floor, he had learned all the
proper social graces. He was polite, and he seems to have
gotten along well with most people. But he also had an ornery side.
They tell a story that a boy challenged him to a duel. Now all of the friends,
the people of these two boys, assumed it was
going to be a fake duel. They were going to
load pistols with powder and shoot powder at each other. And it was just going
to be a make-believe duel. But John Henry, they said,
showed up with a loaded revolver, and said that he would
use his own gun for the duel. Well, needless to say, the other
boy backed down very quickly. So, he had a streak in him. [Narrator]: When the war ended in 1865,
John Henry’s uncles made their way home. For a time, it must have seemed that
life would return to normal, but a year after the war ended,
his mother lost her own battle, passing away in September
of 1866 of consumption. In the troubled years after the end of the Civil war – a time
called “Reconstruction” with martial law and
Federal soldiers stationed in southern towns,
there was opportunity. Henry Holliday, setting aside
his Confederate loyalty, signed an oath of allegiance
to the Federal government, and took advantage of the
situation by becoming an agent for the
Freedman’s Bureau to oversee the redistribution of land
as the old plantations were broken up and the former slaves were made
land-owning tenant farmers. With his new position and work in town, Henry moved his family from
the Cat Creek farm to Valdosta. As the Union troops began
to move into the area, a young man named Dick Force, who had been a Confederate
soldier at Gettysburg would become a casualty
of the tensions in the town. When 103rd United States Colored
Infantry took over Valdosta, there was friction. Dick Force was arrested
for assaulting a freedman. Four hours later, he escaped
and decided to go to a party, when Union troops showed
up to re-arrest him, Dick resisted and was shot,
he died of his wounds four hours later. [Gary Roberts]: And so, they had
what amounted to a local hero and Doc Holliday looked
up to this young man. Who wasn't that much older than Doc. And so, when you consider
that that's happening, in conjunction with a
couple of other things, Like, for example, the fact
that his own father becomes the head of
the Freedman's Bureau, Doc resented that, then his mother dies, and then three or four months
later his father marries again to a young woman
who was a neighbor and very much younger
than his father. Well all of these things
increased the friction that he had with his father. [Narrator]: An attempt to blow
up the courthouse in Valdosta was discovered and several local boys were suspected. [Gary Roberts]: I don’t think
it was a real attempt they were just showing off, a bunch of boys showing off when a guy who was running for
Congress came through and there was a small explosion. But several people were arrested and
John Henry was sent away to Jonesboro during this time, so one of the
things that’s happening here is that there’s this growing
estrangement with his father and he’s thinking I need to
get away from this place and another of the
new arrivals in Valdosta, was a dentist named Frink, Frink was again a Confederate veteran someone that he could relate to he began to talk to him
about becoming a dentist. He also had the opportunity to talk to
his Uncle John Stiles Holliday who was a physician. So in 1870, he makes the decision
to go away to school and I think everybody thought it
was a good thing for him to get away, and go to dental school in Philadelphia. [Narrator]: For John Henry,
going to dental school meant leaving the
south for the first time. He took the train from
Valdosta to Savannah, and then boarded a ship
to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The city must have
seemed enormous to him. With a population of nearly
three-quarters of a million, Philadelphia was the second
largest city in the country. Compared to it, Atlanta with its twenty
thousand was just a town, and Valdosta, with three
hundred residents, little more than a country village. Located in a five-story building at the
corner of Filbert and Twelfth Street, the Pennsylvania College
of Dental Surgery was one of the best dental
schools in the country. John Henry faced a challenging academic
schedule of classes six days a week. But it wasn’t all work for him. Tall, thin and ash-blonde,
he was a handsome young man free for the first time of the confines
of his conservative upbringing and in a city that had much to
offer for a young bachelor. Philadelphia had its share
of gambling dens, saloons, and brothels of
which he likely visited. He was apparently a gifted student. By the time his first term ended, he had become adept
at the academic knowledge, and practical training of dentistry. Although the college
held a spring session, he returned to Valdosta where he spent the next eight
months working with Dr Frink. In September 1871, John Henry
returned to Philadelphia with much valuable experience that
equipped him for the second year during which he developed his
thesis “Diseases of the Teeth”. Each of the other requirements were met and John Henry was scheduled
to graduate on March 1, 1872. But, qualification for graduation
required that the candidate be twenty-one years of
age and he was still five months short
of turning twenty-one. An opportunity presented itself
when one of his classmates, A. Jameson Fuches Jr
was returning to his home state of Missouri
to practice in St. Louis. Fuches opened an office on Fourth Street
and John Henry joined him there. St. Louis was a hardy, bawdy place. Near Fusches’ office was
a theater and a saloon. One of the employees there was a woman who went by the name of Kate Fisher. Born Mary Katharine Harony in Pest,
Hungary on November 7, 1850, Kate was the first of seven children. Her family immigrated to the
United States in or around 1860 and settled in Davenport, Iowa
among a colony of Hungarians. Kate abandoned her family
after her parent’s death, changed her name to Kate Fisher, and was likely working as a prostitute
when John Henry arrived in St Louis. The nature of the relationship
between John Henry and Kate Fisher at this
time remains a mystery. Later in life, Kate recalled that
his stay in St. Louis was brief, he left in the summer of 1872
and returned to Georgia. [Victoria Wilcox]: Home for John Henry
now would be Atlanta where he would be practicing
with Dr Arthur C Ford who was the past president of
the Georgia Dental Association. [Narrator]: After a few months
of work in Atlanta, John Henry was on the move again, this time back to his
hometown of Griffin to register the deed to
his inheritance property known as the iron-front building. By the summer of 1873, he had sold
his inheritance and left Griffin. [Victoria Wilcox]: The popular story
is that Holliday went West because he was diagnosed with a fatal
case of the lung disease consumption shortly after he finished dental school and was told he had only
three or four months to live if he didn’t move to the high, dry
plains of the American West, and so he packed his bags
and he went to Dallas, Texas. Where he quickly got tired of dentistry
and became a gambling gunfighter. There's some problems with that story. Dallas, Texas, as anybody who
has ever been there knows, is neither high, nor dry, it's
just as humid as Atlanta. And that very year that he was
there, it had just been closed down by a Yellow Fever epidemic and was actually famous in the
newspapers at the time as being the second least healthy
place in the United States to live. [Narrator]: What made John Henry leave
Georgia and his family behind? It may have been his desire to escape the pall of a winter
of family tragedies. His uncle, Robert Holliday,
Mattie’s father, died on Christmas Eve of 1872. One month later, John Henry’s
adopted half-brother, Francisco Hildago,
died of consumption. Or it could have been that his desire
to leave was a matter of the heart for it was rumored that
John Henry was in love with his cousin,
Mattie Holliday. [Gary Roberts]: There may be
something to that. They had been very
close their whole lives and remained close
throughout his life. Even after she became a nun she
kept his letters which was very unusual, the biggest problem,
if this is the case, was that while first cousins marrying
was very common in 19th century life, it was not common among
Catholics and she was Catholic. [Narrator]: Yet another
possibility, as was later noted by Bat Masterson and others, is that his leaving Georgia had
to do with a deadly shooting that was said to have taken place
near the family’s property in Valdosta when John Henry encountered
a group of black youths swimming in the family’s water hole. [Gary Roberts]: Now there
are several versions, one says that they were
told to leave and they didn’t and that Doc fired into
them and killed several. Another version says that
they were told to leave and they became defiant
and Doc killed one of them. And the other says that Doc didn’t kill
anybody but fired over their heads. Even that was still tricky
during Reconstruction, that might get you in trouble. Even during Reconstruction. I’m inclined to believe
that it’s a combination, I think the reason Doc
came back to Valdosta was because he had
contracted consumption and was concerned about that, he may have been in love with Mattie and saw that that was going nowhere. And then he gets home, when he
gets home he's an angry young man. And he goes out on the river,
and he sees this situation and he fired into the group. Now, his uncle, Tom McKey, said
that he fired over their heads, but what would you expect
Tom McKey to say? So, it could have been
that he killed someone. [Narrator]: In the summer of 1873,
John Henry left Georgia for Texas. Whatever demons were chasing
him followed him out West. John Henry ended
up in Dallas, Texas, a railroad boomtown
on the Trinity River. [Patrick Allitt]: At the end of
the Civil War, there was a great pentup enthusiasm
for Western development, it had been going on very rapidly
particularly since the 1840s. The California Gold Rush of 1849 had
lead a huge number of people to the West and so had the settlement
of the Willamette Valley in Oregon,
which was the cause of the creation of the
Oregon Trail in the 1840s. This migration went on
through the 1850s, was interrupted by
the Civil War, but then resumed again at full speed as
soon as the fighting had finished. During the Civil War, Congress had
passed the Homestead Act in 1862, which gave settlers the
right to acquire title to a 160-acre farm simply
by settling there, and farming it for five years. And so tens of thousands
of people moved to the Great Plains in order to
set up farms for themselves. Homestead farms. [Narrator]: It may have
been the offer of a dental partnership
that drew him to Dallas, as he soon went into practice
with Dr. John Seegar, a former Georgian who had lived near the Holliday
family in Fayetteville. Dallas was still rough around the edges, with a muddy main street
lined with saloons and crowded with herds
of cows and pigs being driven to market. But there was also a
new brick courthouse, two theaters and several hotels. In October 1873, the city
hosted the Texas state fair. The dental practice of Seegar & Holliday
entered the Scientific Exhibition with samples of dental work
in gold, porcelain and ivory. They won three blue ribbons
and a fifteen dollar cash prize. John Henry attended
the local Methodist Church and took part in meetings
for the Temperance League fighting against public drunkenness. But his days as a respectable
professional man did not last long. [Victoria Wilcox]: Within a year of
John Henry's arrival in Dallas he had separated
from his dental partner, Dr. John Seegar and
the firm of Seegar & Holliday was dissolved by
mutual consent, the paper said. And that Dr. Holliday
would be responsible for the two debts
against the practice. [Narrator]: After the dissolution,
John Henry opened his own practice in a rented space above
the Dallas County Bank and he soon returned to the saloons
and gambling houses of Dallas. Although the Old West has a
reputation for wide open gambling, in most western towns it was against the law to gamble in a
house of “spiritus liquors” meaning a saloon. The saloon keepers solved the
problem by having one room for drinking and another room for cards. But as the sporting men,
as they were called, tended to drift from one room
to another with drinks and poker chips in their hands,
the legal line was easily crossed. [Gary Roberts] He was arrested
for gambling and a month later again
arrested for gambling. So, he leaves Dallas and
goes to Denison, Texas. [Narrator]: The north Texas
town of Denison was along the Red River
that bounded the Indian Nation. The town was still prospering,
in spite of the Depression, thanks to the newly invented
refrigerated rail cars that shipped out butchered beef from
Texas to hungry markets in the east. Denison was the packing point, bringing an influx of workers and
the sporting men that followed them. Holliday opened a dental
practice in Denison, and likely spent time in the saloons and gambling halls in the muddy
ravine called Skiddy Street –the first “Skid Row” in the country. But by the fall, Denison was hit by
the same economic depression that had crippled the
rest of the country, and the packing plant and the
railroad shipping came to a halt. Without a paying clientele,
John Henry’s practice dried up as well, and he headed back to Dallas. He arrived in time to
celebrate the holidays and get himself involved in a
New Year’s Day shootout with a bartender named
Charlie Austin who went by the nickname
“Champagne Charlie” for the popular song of the time. The song was lighthearted, and so was the report
in the Dallas papers: “Dr Holliday and Mr Austin,
a saloon-keeper, relieved the monotony of
the noise of fire-crackers by taking a couple of shots at
each other yesterday afternoon. The cheerful note of the
peaceful six-shooter is heard once more among us. Both shooters were arrested.” But the law didn’t take
the event so lightly, and John Henry found himself in
jail and in court once again, charged with assault with
intent to commit murder. The penalty for a guilty verdict was
two to twenty years in the state prison. He was found not guilty
of the assault charge. He plead guilty to the gambling
charge and paid a $10 fine. [Gary Roberts]: Eventually he feels it’s
in his best interest to leave Dallas. [Narrator]: Now known as “Doc” Holliday,
he settled into Fort Griffin, which was located 100
miles west of Dallas. It was considered one of the
wildest places in all of the Old West, built on a high bluff between
the West fork of the Trinity River and the Clear Fork of the Brazos river, the town kept watch
over the Plains Indians and the buffalo hunt
and cattle trails. Fort Griffin had a lively saloon
culture and when a new sheriff was sent over from the town
of Albany to clean it up, the name of J.H.
Holliday was among the list of gamblers
on the arrest warrant. Doc was soon to encounter
an old acquaintance. If their relationship in St Louis
remains to question, it was not so in Fort Griffin
for it was here that Kate Fisher almost
certainly became his mistress. [Victoria Wilcox]: According to
Kate’s memoirs, Holliday traveled south to the Rio Grande to the
border town of Eagle Pass and then he crossed over the river
to the Mexican city of Nuevo Laredo where he did some dentistry for the
commandant of the Mexican presidio. It seems strange to think
of Holliday in Mexico, but the language may not
have been a problem for him because he was raised with the
Mexican orphan boy Francisco Hidalgo in his home and so we
believe he spoke Spanish. [Narrator]: But the ride to Mexico would have been long and arduous
for a healthy person, and down-right brutal for
someone suffering from consumption. Why would Doc have taken such a journey? The trip to Mexico may
have had to do with a story later told by Bat Masterson
whose account of Doc’s life, while flawed, is generally
believed to be reliable. Bat claimed that Doc killed a
black soldier at Jacksonboro. No such event was reported in either
the papers or the records of the time, but an incident did
occur at Fort Griffin that might well have been the
shooting Masterson recalled. On the night of March 3, 1876, Private
Jacob Smith, a Buffalo Soldier, who was “absent without
authority” from Fort Griffin was shot and
killed by an unknown party. The unknown assailant
was never arrested, but Doc fled Fort Griffin around
the time of the shooting, this time using an alias
to hide his identity. He ended up in Denver, Colorado, hiding behind the name of his
mother’s brother, Tom McKey. He took a job using that
name as a faro dealer for gambling hall owner Charley Foster
in Babb’s Variety House. [Victoria Wilcox]: Doc Holliday
wasn’t just writing letters and dealing Faro cards in
Denver, however. According to another old story
he was also getting into some trouble with a fellow gambler named Bud Ryan. According to this story, he and Ryan got into a dispute and he
took out a huge knife and about beheaded Bud Ryan
and killed him. However, Bud Ryan was still alive years
later as he recounted the story himself and amazingly considered himself
one of Doc Holliday’s friends. [Narrator]: After months of
hiding out as Tom McKey, Doc had returned to Dallas by
January 1877 where he may have thought to make another try at
life as a professional man. Instead, he found himself quickly arrested again on a series
of gambling charges. The city, it seemed, was cleaning
itself up and becoming respectable. But there were friendlier towns
that actually welcomed sporting men, like Breckenridge, newly established
and celebrating its first birthday with wide-open gambling games. But for Doc, it wasn’t
quite friendly enough. [Victoria Wilcox]: According to a story
in a Fort Worth newspaper, Holliday got into an altercation with a gambler in the town
of Breckenridge, Texas. The gambler's name was Henry Khan
and according to the story, Holliday pulled a cane and hit him and Khan pulled a gun and shot Holliday. We don’t know which man was
in the right or the wrong, We don’t even know what
they were fighting about or whether they were both
just drunk and disorderly. But the newspaper went on to
say that Holliday had been killed and Khan disappeared from town. We know their report
is at least a little bit inaccurate because of
course Holliday was still alive and he actually returned back to Dallas where he was
quickly arrested again on more gambling charges. [Narrator]: Perhaps seeing
the writing on the wall, he left Dallas once and for
all and headed west again, back to the town of Fort Griffin
where he met a man who would change his life
from outlaw to legend. Upon his arrival in Fort Griffin
at the end of summer in 1877, Doc checked into the Occidental Hotel
and opened an account at Smith’s bar. Within a week, he’d amassed
a liquor bill of $120, while spending just over
$20 for his room and meals. In late September, as cattle driving
season was winding down, Fort Griffin became a sleepy town. In search of business and sport, Doc left the town and
in his company was Kate who by this time had changed her
name from Kate Fisher to Kate Elder. Kate later recalled that they traveled through south
and southwest Texas. They stopped briefly at Loredo,
then moved up river to Eagle Pass, where Kate says they
stayed for three months. From Eagle Pass, they moved on to San Antonio where they
stayed for a few weeks, before eventually returning to Fort
Griffin in the early spring of 1878. Thirty year old Wyatt Earp was
already a seasoned gambler and lawman when he met Doc Holliday
in Fort Griffin in 1878. He had lived in and traveled
through several states, been arrested for horse theft, escaped custody, and had joined the Marshal’s office
three years earlier. He was passing through Fort Griffin
when he met Doc for the first time. The details and circumstances of
their first meeting are lost to time, and Wyatt would not
stay long in Fort Griffin, but he and Doc would
soon meet again. Front Street, Dodge City, Kansas: the end of the trail for the
Texas cattle drives. From late spring until late summer,
Dodge City was filled with weary cowboys with trail pay in their
pockets, looking for some fun. And some of them were looking
for relief from toothaches as well. Doc and Kate arrived
in the summer of 1878 and took rooms together
in the Dodge House Hotel, where Holliday also set
out his dental tools again. His new practice was announced
in the Dodge City Times “J.H. Holliday, dentist,
very respectfully offers his professional services
to the citizens of Dodge City and surrounding country
during the summer. Office at room number 24 Dodge House. Where satisfaction is not given
money will be refunded.” Doc seems to have behaved
himself in Dodge City, his name did not show up in the press
or in the police court records. [Gary Roberts]: It was one of the
more peaceful times in his life. And there’s a persistent story and
one which I believe because Wyatt Earp always insisted upon it that there was
an incident involving a group of cowboys and that Doc Holliday
came to Wyatt Earp’s assistance and saved
his life in the process. That’s what Wyatt always
said and there are a couple of incidents that fit the bill
in the records in Dodge City. Dodge was a place where
Doc stayed out of trouble, but it was not good to him as
far as his health was concerned that Kansas High plains winters
and so forth were not good for his consumption and
so he eventually left there. And moved to New Mexico. [Narrator]: They arrived at the old
plaza in Las Vegas, New Mexico. And checked into the newly
built Hot Springs Hotel. Las Vegas was a sleepy Spanish town about to boom with the
coming of the railroad. But it was the water, not the
rails that drew him to the town. In nearby Gallinas Canyon was
the Montezuma Hot Springs, famous for centuries
for its healing waters. [Gary Roberts]: Las Vegas
was a rough town. It had a group that was
known as the Dodge City gang that more
or less ran things there and there were lots of shady characters. And one of them was a young
man named Billy Leonard. Now Billy, like Doc, was a consumptive,
they both had tuberculosis. And that was something that
may have drawn them together. [Narrator]: Doc’s friendship with Billy
Leonard would come back to haunt him. But for now, he had other
adventures in store, like a return to Dodge City
in the spring of 1879 likely at the request
of Bat Masterson. [Victoria Wilcox]: Bat Masterson was
sheriff in Ford County Kansas, home of Dodge City and the Atchison, Topeka and
Santa Fe Railroad and the railroad hired him to put
together its private army Dodge City was the gathering place and
soon gunmen from all over the west were coming together
there to get ready to go out and defend what they
considered their own railroad. And Doc Holliday was one of those shooters who went to
work for the Santa Fe. [Narrator]: They were to defend
the Santa Fe Railroad’s right-of-way through the Royal
Gorge of the Colorado. The Royal Gorge is a 10 mile
long, 1200 foot deep gash in the granite mountains
of southern Colorado. Carved by the Arkansas River,
the gorge was once the wintering grounds
for the Ute Indians. The 1877 discovery of silver
and lead in nearby Leadville prompted a race to
build rail access to the area, with two railroads
competing for the narrow canyon, there was only
room for one set of rails, so both sent armed guards, resulting in a confrontation known
as the “Royal Gorge War”. The war came to nothing more than
a few standoffs and a few shots fired before the Federal courts stepped
in to end the hostilities. Doc had been part of the force that
held the roundhouse at Pueblo before Bat Masterson announced
the legal end to the conflict. In July 1879, Doc was back in Las Vegas in time to celebrate another
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe victory the completion of the rail line from
Colorado down into New Mexico, heading toward its
namesake city of Santa Fe. With the arrival of the railroad the
personality of Las Vegas changed from a sleepy Spanish town
to a rowdy railroad boomtown, and Holliday must have
seen an opportunity. He bought some property on
Centre Street near the railroad depot and opened a tent saloon, then contracted with a local carpenter to turn his tent into a more
permanent wood structure. [Victoria Wilcox]: ]: Of course, Doc was
in trouble with the law again because Las Vegas had laws just like all western towns did against
operating gambling games in houses of "spirituous liquors" so he
just did what other business men did and paid the fines and went right
on operating his gambling games he also had arrests
for carrying a deadly weapon which was
also part of business in a saloon. Because a saloon-owner was expected to
police his own business and had to be armed to protect his
patrons from violence. On the night of July 19, 1879, Doc
got into a shootout with Mike Gordon, reported to be a mean drunk. Bat Masterson later recounted that
Doc shot Mike Gordon dead after Gordon fired
shots into Doc’s saloon. Doc wasn’t charged with the murder but would again be arrested for
gambling and carrying a deadly weapon. The case was dismissed, but he
soon after surrendered his saloon to his liquor wholesaler in
settlement of accounts and left Las Vegas. It may have been a visit from
his old friend, Wyatt Earp, passing through town that made Doc
pack up and take to the trail again, this time headed to Prescott, Arizona. Massive Thumb Butte dominates
the skyline over the city of Prescott in the pine-scented Bradshaw
Mountains of central Arizona. When Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp
arrived there in 1879, Prescott was the new capital
of the Arizona Territory, and already famous for its politicians
and a street called “Whiskey Row”. Wyatt wasn’t the first
Earp to try out Prescott. His older brother, Virgil,
had arrived the year before and was running a sawmill
in the shadow of Thumb Butte. He had also been recently appointed
a deputy United States Marshal, and was making plans to move
to Tombstone along with Wyatt. But Doc seemed to favor Prescott and he turned down Wyatt’s
invitation to travel on to Tombstone. It might have been Whiskey Row
that tempted him to stay, with its famous saloons, like
the Palace, and its gaming halls. Or it may have been a quarrel
with his mistress, Kate Elder, who left him and moved on alone
to the mining camp of Globe. So Doc was single again, and took a room with a
politician named John Gosper – who happened to be the Acting
Governor of the Arizona Territory. Holliday and Gosper might have
seemed an unlikely pair of associates, the one-time Texas outlaw and the head
of the Arizona Territorial government. But Holliday’s Southern
heritage and his professional training made him more
than Gosper’s equal. So, in spite of his past troubles, Doc found himself back in
good company at last, and living next door to the wealthy
merchant William Buffum, one of the leading men in
the Territorial Legislature. But as with most towns,
Doc had soon had enough of Prescott and
moved on to Tombstone. The Tombstone mining district sits atop
a mesa in the San Pedro River valley. This was the land of the
Apaches led by Chief Cochise and the warrior Geronimo. Although claimed by the United States
as part of the Gadsden Purchase in 1853, it was still a no-man’s
land for white settlers. At least until prospector Ed Scheffelin
came along, searching for silver. By September 1879, Doc had
arrived in Tombstone. [Gary Roberts]: There is a little
bit of a question as to why he moved on to Tombstone, the most common one is that he decided
finally to check out what was going on and he went down on his own. There are a couple of
other possibilities. One is that he was
invited by Wyatt Earp. And there is another
that he was part of a group of people who
showed up in Tombstone about the same time, that included
people like Bat Masterson and William H. Harris and others
who all had Dodge City connections. The problem was that there was a
gambler’s war going on in Tombstone. The Dodge City
establishment was generally referred to the
well-established gamblers were mostly "Easterners"
they were called although Eastern
is relative you know but they included people
like Richard Clark and Robert Winders and others that were friends of the Earps. And they were challenged
by a group of gamblers who came out of
California and other places but they were known as the "Slopers". So there is this rivalry between the Slopers and the
Easterners and several well-known Dodge City people happened
to come to Tombstone about that time. [Narrator]: The heart of the
Tombstone story has to do with the quarrel between
the Earps and their friends and the group that was
known as the Cowboys. The Cowboys were mostly rustlers
who lived in the outlying areas of Cochise county. They had been there before
the town was established and they had a fairly lucrative
business stealing cattle in Mexico and bringing them up into Arizona to sell to the Army and
the Indian agencies. [Gary Roberts]: There was friction
between the Earps as lawmen and as
friends of lawmen and the Cowboys from a fairly early time but it all begins to come
to a climax in 1881. [Narrator]: On March 15, 1881,
Doc rented a horse at Dunbar’s stable
and left Tombstone. He later claimed that he
went to Charleston to join in a high-stakes poker game, but he found that the game had
broken up by the time he arrived. Wyatt would later claim that
Holliday returned to Tombstone and played a game of faro
with him and was still playing when the word came to Tombstone
that the Kinnear & Company stagecoach headed to Benson had been held up
and that two men had been killed. At the request of Bat Masterson,
the Earp brothers joined the posse to hunt
down the assailants. Tombstone was full of rumors and Kate Elder, who had
briefly rejoined Doc, would later recount a curious
encounter soon after the robbery. Warren Earp came calling for Doc
late one night at their hotel, and Doc left with him in the
dead of night to visit Wyatt. He was gone for over an hour
before he came back agitated, “The damned fool. I did not
think that of him,” Doc was said to have repeated
over and over again. The reasons for Doc’s concerns
were soon to come to light. The next day, March 24,
The Tucson Star reported: “The names of the three
who are traveling are Bill Leonard, Jim Crane,
and Harry Hickey. The fourth is at Tombstone
and is well known and has been shadowed
ever since his return.” The fourth party alluded to in the report was almost
certainly Doc Holliday. Kate did not linger in
Tombstone, she left almost immediately, believing
the worst, as did others. The search for the bandits
proved fruitless. After two weeks, the search posse
returned to Tombstone emptyhanded. They had gone four days and a half without food and thirty-six
hours without water. Tensions arose between Wyatt Earp
and John Behan with Wyatt angered at Behan’s refusal to promote him
as undersheriff and his refusal to pay Virgil and Morgan for their part in the search for the Benson
stage robbery suspects. Wyatt’s friendship with Doc had made
him the target of rumors of complicity and the gossip hurt the Earps. [Gary Roberts]: After the
Benson stage robbery attempt, Wyatt Earp
did something that was probably foolish in retrospect, he attempt to make a
deal with Ike Clanton, one of the prominent cowboy leaders, to get Ike to turn in the three men that
they were searching for for the Benson stage robbery attempt. It didn’t go well. In the first place because
most of them well in fact all of them
eventually ended up dead before a deal could be worked out which left them with
a nasty little secret. [Narrator]: By midsummer of 1881,
Doc had become infamous in Tombstone. By this time, he had
legally been cleared of charges relating to the Benson stage robbery attempt and the murders
of Bud Philpott and Peter Roerig. But suspicions remained. Many believed that
regardless of what the district attorney
and judge had said, Doc Holliday had been involved
in attempted robbery. Wyatt Earp; however,
stood by his friend. Though quiet and
restrained when sober, Doc was quick-tempered
and vocal when drinking and if he felt violated
he was not afraid to seek redress
at the point of a gun. He was healthier and stronger
than he had been in years, the climate of southern
Arizona benefited him, even as he spent long hours in
smoky saloons and gambling halls. He was associated in public
mind with the Earps, but he had never been Wyatt’s lackey
as legend would later portray him. He was jealous of his reputation and
quick to brace anyone who impugned it. He was also, by all accounts,
a fiercely loyal friend. So when Ike Clanton and Tom McLaury
made their way into Tombstone, the weight of the secret between him and Wyatt sitting heavy
on Ike’s shoulders, Doc spotted Ike in the lunchroom
of the Alhambra Saloon and approached him. Earlier that week, Ike
had accused Wyatt of telling Doc about the
secret deal between them. Wyatt had confronted Doc, and Doc had promised to set
things straight with Ike. An argument ensued
and over the next few hours, tensions
continued to escalate. [Gary Roberts]: Instead of
arresting them as he probably should have, Virgil Earp as Marshal just
told them to go sleep it off. The next morning after a
peculiar thing happened, and that is that Ike
Clanton and Virgil Earp stayed up most of the night playing cards with each other
in the same card game but the next morning, before Virgil
or anybody else had gotten up, Ike Clanton is already walking the
streets looking for the Earp brothers. [Narrator}: This is the beginning
of what would become known as
the OK Corral fight, which took place on the vacant lot
near Fremont Street in Tombstone. The Earp brothers would catch up to
Ike that morning and arrest him, he was fined and released. While leaving the court room,
Wyatt ran into Tom McLaury and knocked
him unconscious. Upon arriving in town, Frank McLaury and
Billy Clanton encountered another Cowboy by the name of Billy Claibourne who told
them about the arrest of Ike Clanton and the beating of Tom McLaury. Frank McLaury is reported to have said
“We’re going to have to resolve this.” [Gary Roberts]: They end up going
to a gun shop, the people are spreading
rumors all over town, telling the Earps they're
down at the gun shop and so forth, there's a confrontation a near confrontation at the gun shop. Then the Earps go back up
to what was known as Hatford’s Corner and they're
standing there on the corner and the Clanton and McLaury’s walk by
them you know kind of glaring at them. [Narrator]: Sherriff John
Behan decided to intervene and set off
to settle the situation. But word arrived that the
Clantons and McLaurys had positioned themselves
on a vacant lot on Fremont Street and the Earps decided
that it was time to make the arrests. After his late breakfast,
Doc had walked to the Alhambra Saloon
to check on business. Morgan caught up with him there,
filled him in on the situation, and walked with Doc to Hafford’s corner. An exchange took place between Doc
and Wyatt which Wyatt later recounted. Wyatt said that he’d told Doc that this fight was none of his affair,
to which Doc replied, “That’s a hell of a thing
for you to say to me!” Wyatt may have further
protested Doc’s involvement, but the matter was settled
when Virgil handed Doc a shotgun, telling him
to hide it under his overcoat. [Gary Roberts]: So they march up
the street turn down Fremont and as they
approach the vacant lot, square off and Virgil Earp
with a cane in his hand throws up his hands and says, "Throw down your guns,
I have come to arrest you." At that point, people start going for
their guns and Virgil says, "No, I didn’t mean that!" But it’s too late and then explodes into
what’s only about 30 seconds of gunfire. [Narrator]: Billy Clanton, Frank
McLaury and Tom McLaury were struck
by bullets and killed. Ike Clanton and Billy
Claibourn both ran for it. Virgil Earp and Doc
received minor injuries. Morgan Earp was struck by
a bullet that chipped a vertebra, an injury
from which he recovered. [Victoria Wilcox]: The story
of the gunfight went out across the telegraph wires and hit all the newspapers in America and made instant celebrities
of all the participants in a country that was enamored
with all things wild west this was the most iconic
Western battle of them all. [Gary Roberts]: The Earps
take the position that they had gone down
there to arrest them and that they had resisted
arrest and that they were killed in the attempt to arrest
them for wearing firearms on the
streets of Tombstone which was clearly in
violation of the law. The other side, including
the sheriff, said that the Earps approached them and immediately opened fire and
basically gunned them down. A coroner’s inquest that investigated
it avoided coming to any conclusion other than the fact that these three
men were killed by the Earp party. [Narrator]: As the country became
fascinated by the story of the shootout, Ike Clanton sought to bring murder
charges against Doc and the Earps. William R. McLaury, brother of Tom and Frank McLaury arrived in
Tombstone from Texas determined to convict the Earps and
Doc for the murders of his brothers. The Earps retained former
Nevada congressman Thomas J. Fitch to lead the defense. At the end of the preliminary hearing,
Judge Wells Spicer ruled that there was insufficient
reason to believe that the Earps and Doc
had committed murder and that it did not
matter who fired first, it was the expectation
that was important and so he declared that there
was no reason to indict… and the grand jury agreed with him. [Gary Roberts]: This is really
the beginning of the Tombstone story, rather than the end
because it's a climactic moment when from that point on the Cowboys and the Earps
are really going after each other. [Narrator]: The fight divided
the town and the Cowboys were determined to take matters into their own hands. In December 1881, Virgil Earp was shot
walking down the street one night and as a result he
was crippled for life. In January 1882 there was a near
confrontation between Doc and a Cowboy Doc had
encountered before by the name of John Ringo
in the streets of Tombstone. Ike Clanton attempted once more to
have the Earps and Doc arrested for the Tombstone fight but failed, which only served to
further rile the Cowboys. Everything came to a
head in March of 1882 when Morgan Earp
was shot to death while playing pool in a
billiard parlor, hailing the beginning of what has become
known as the Vendetta Ride. Doc and Wyatt were
inseparable at this time. Morgan Earp’s assassins had been identified as Deputy
Sheriff Frank Stillwell, Peter Spence, Florentino
“Indian Charlie” Cruz, Frederic Bode and others. When Wyatt, his brothers, their wives
and Doc traveled to Tucson to see Morgan’s body
on the train to California, where the Earp parents lived,
they spotted Frank Stillwell, chased him down, and shot him to death. [Gary Roberts]: This was
the beginning of real trouble for the Earps and it made it clear that
Wyatt was interested in more than just arresting people
this had become personal. [Narrator]: When they
returned to Tombstone, they found that warrants
had been sworn out for Wyatt and Doc and a couple of others for having
killed Frank Stillwell. [Gary Roberts]: He still has the support
of some of the local businessmen, there’s a confrontation
between him and Sheriff Behan in which Behan tries
to arrest him and Wyatt just basically brushes him
aside and leaves town. [Narrator]: Doc remained by Wyatt’s side
as they actively pursued the Cowboys, with Florentino “Indian Charlie”
Cruz becoming yet another casualty
of their vengeance. Shortly after that, they
engaged in a shootout with Curly Bill Brosius in
which Brosius was killed. [Gary Roberts]: After the
Curly Bill episode the Earp posse decides
it’s time to leave Arizona because of the pressure of the
posses that are chasing them. With the assistance probably of two governors,
Wells Fargo and Company, maybe the Santa Fe Railroad
and the US Marshal’s office, they go to Alburquerque and
from there into Colorado. It might have worked out except
there had been a little dispute between Wyatt and Doc in Alburquerque
they got into the first fight they’d really had and as
a result of that fight, Doc left the rest of the Earps and
went into Colorado before them. [Narrator]: The city of Pueblo lies in the high desert of
Colorado at the confluence of the Arkansas River
and Fountain Creek, along the front range
of the Rocky Mountains. It began as a trapper’s trading post
in the early 19th century, on what was then the
US/Mexican border, but it didn’t grow to
anything like a town until the Colorado Gold Rush of 1859. Doc was looking for some entertainment and an escape from
his trouble in Arizona. But trouble always seemed to follow Doc
and this time it was named Perry Mallon. [Gary Roberts]: Mallon tried
to make an impression on him, but Doc kind
of brushed him aside as being of no significance. Instead Doc fell in with
some of his gambling buddies and they headed to Denver. Doc seemed determined it’s time
for him to have a good time, so he goes to Denver and is planning
to go to the horse races, he’s on the train with Bat Masterson
and some other guys that he knows, he gets to Denver and he
meets some people there even introduces himself
to the chief of police and a couple of other people,
so he’s not trying to hide he said later that he
was there to meet a mining man who had
been in Tombstone and that they were going to get together
and talk about some business matters. On his way back to the hotel one night,
he was suddenly confronted by this man who jumped out of the shadows
and put a pointed gun at him and told him to throw up his hands and it was this character
from Pueblo, Perry Mallon. [Narrator]: This encounter made
big news in Denver, Mallon became an instant celebrity, and it kept Doc in hand long enough for people in Arizona to find
out his whereabouts. There was an immediate rush by both the Sheriff of Cochise
County, John Behan and the Sheriff of Pima County,
Bob Paul, to apply to have Doc returned to their respective jurisdictions. Behan wanted him for the murder
of Francisco “Indian Charlie” Cruz, Paul wanted him for the murder
of Deputy Sheriff Frank Stillwell. Mallon eventually slipped out of
town after being discredited, but not before the damage had been done. The case went all the way to
the governor, Frederick W. Pitkin. [Gary Roberts]: All of a sudden, Doc has
support coming out of the woodwork Bat Masterson comes to town
and begins to argue for him, There was a newspaperman named
E.D. Cowan who is working on his behalf, Doc has the services of one of the
most expensive law firms in Denver, he has a major mining owner
with some Tombstone connections by the name of Crummy who is advocating on his behalf. So all of these people are saying
to the governor don’t send him back and so what happens is that the governor
of Colorado looks over the papers and says that there are some
problems with the paperwork I’m not going to grant the extradition. Besides that to make sure
it wasn’t going to happen, he said there is already a charge
against Doc Holliday in Pueblo, and we can’t send him back to
extradite him to another state, when there is an outstanding warrant
against him here in Colorado. By the way, that’s called now in Colorado and other
places, “Hollidaying”, The idea of using filing
charges of one crime to prevent applying
warrants for another crime. [Narrator]: Doc was taken back to Pueblo
where the case against him was delayed continuously and never fully pursued. He was free to go. Perhaps with thoughts of
forgiveness and reconciliation, after Masterson and others
had come to his defense, Doc headed to Gunnison where he sat for probably the last time
with his old friend, Wyatt Earp. The two men mended fences, but the closeness of their friendship was over and they
went their separate ways. At an elevation of over
10,000 feet, Leadville is the highest incorporated
city in the United States. Situated near the headwaters
of the Arkansas River in the heart of
the Rocky Mountains, Leadville in Doc’s time had
a population of 40,000 and hopes of replacing Denver
as the capitol of Colorado. Doc arrived in Leadville in 1883. He became a temporary member
of the Leadville Fire Department when a building
down the street caught fire and he was pressed into service
to help douse the blaze. The local paper, the Leadville Democrat,
thanked him for his valiant efforts. Doc enjoyed the sporting
life at most of the drinking and gaming
establishments in town. He moved in the right social circles, and was interviewed by all sorts. It is in Leadville that his
fame becomes legendary. It was at Manny Hyman’s Saloon,
a block down from the Opera House, where he spent most of his time and where he encountered
some men from his past. Doc’s health had started to deteriorate, his body had begun to tremble
from the effects of his hard living, and perhaps most dangerous
of all, he had once again encountered
Johnny Tyler and Billy Allen. [Gary Roberts]: What happens is that he
owes a little money to Billy Allen and Allen wants to collect it
and he threatens Doc that if he does not pay then he’s going to find him and shoot
him or beat him up. Doc gets frantic about
this and he goes to a saloon and positions
himself near the door, hides the pistol close by
and he talks to policemen he tells everybody he was
wanting to avoid trouble. But when Billy Allen
walks into the saloon Doc reaches over and grabs
a pistol and shoots him now he does not kill him, he wounds him. [Narrator]: Billy Allen insisted
on pressing charges and the case was brought to trial. Doc was acquitted, but his illness
had taken its toll. He wasn’t on the run
this time, but he was in desperate need of a
more hospitable climate. [Victoria Wilcox]: According to
an old story out of Doc's hometown of Valdosta, after leaving Leadville,
he took a train trip far away from his troubles out west and back into southern territory. The occasion was a reunion
of Mexican War veterans, at the Cotton States
Exposition in New Orleans. Where he had a reunion of his own,
with his father, Henry Holliday. [Narrator]: Henry tried to get
his son to return to Georgia, but Doc refused
and returned to Colorado. By 1886, he was worn out
from illness and alcohol, and headed for one more
mountain springs resort to seek a cure: Glenwood Springs, high in the Rocky Mountains. To get there, he had to take
the train back to Leadville, where he bought a bottle of laudanum
from a local pharmacist, before daring a stage coach ride
over the Independence Pass. The pass was only open
in the summer months, and even then the road was treacherous. But there was no other way
to reach Glenwood Springs. He checked into the Hotel Glenwood, a modern resort that
boasted electric lights and running water in private baths and the convenience of a doctor
and nurse on staff for ailing guests. It wasn’t the comfort of a
hotel he had come for, but the heat of the sulfur
vapors in the caves. But Doc Holliday was beyond saving. The illness that had taken his mother
had finally caught up with him. Returning from the caves, he was
bed-ridden for thirty-three days and able to only get up twice. For two weeks after that,
he was delirious, and slipped in and out of a coma. For twenty-four hours before
his death, he did not speak. John Henry Holliday died at
ten o’clock in the morning on Monday,
November 8, 1887. Reverend W.S. Rudolph
delivered the eulogy, and Doc’s body was buried
at four o’clock that afternoon in Linwood Cemetery on a high bluff overlooking
Glenwood Springs. Expenses for the funeral were paid from a collection taken up
among the gamblers, saloonmen and other locals who had come to know Doc during
those last months. [Gary Roberts]: John Clum, the
editor of the Tombstone Epitaph
and a friend of Wyatt Earp’s said that Doc Holliday was
not a constructive citizen, and that’s probably a fair assessment, he had a difficult life
and there are many qualities that he had that would
cause you to arrive at that conclusion. Bat Masterson says in one place
that he didn’t like him very much yet he spent a lot of
time with him and had some more positive things
to say about him too. Wyatt Earp always emphasized
his loyalty and his friendship and his ability with a gun
and he talked about him being at his side
during all of those days. [Narrator]: He had lived a full life,
loved and been loved. It is unlikely that any of his family or
friends were with him when he died. His relationship with
Kate Elder is one of the most perplexing parts
of his life and legend. Little information on their
life together survives. Kate claimed that they were married,
and there does exist some evidence to suggest that this may
have been the case. But, Doc left not a word about
her and Kate’s accounts later in life were
self-serving and defensive, confused by fading memories. She defended Doc against charges
that he was a killer and a drunkard, There was no romance in the story
she told about her life with Doc. She expressed resentment towards him, accusing him of gambling away her money. Kate died on November 2, 1940, and was buried in Pioneer Cemetery
in Prescott, Arizona. At the time of Doc’s death,
the Glenwood Springs Ute Chief noted, “He only had one correspondent
among his relatives... A cousin, a Sister of Charity,
in Atlanta, Georgia. She will be notified of his death.” At the time of Mattie’s death in 1939, she was known as Sister Mary Melanie
and had been a nun for most of her life. Her family held her in high esteem
and publicly disavowed any suggestion that she and Doc
had been in love. But they never denied that
she and Doc had been close, with one relative recalling
that after Doc’s death, “Mattie would talk of him and say that if only people had
known him as she had, they would have seen a different man
from the one of Western fame.” [Gary Roberts]: Doc was a
mass of contradictions, he could be charming and smooth,
he could be nasty and downright brutal. He drank too much, he could be
pathetic and pitiful at times, and you feel when you read the old
documents and what people say about him, and you feel genuine pity
for him as an individual. But he is still the dominant
personality in the story. If you think about it,
and you go to see movies about all of this, the character
who wins in the movies, every time, who puts Wyatt Earp
in the shadows, although he's supposed
to be the hero, you forget about Wyatt Earp and
you concentrate on Doc Holliday. [Victoria Wilcox]: He’d done
more in 36 years than most men ever dream of doing, he'd traveled across the country
and seen history being made and he had become
part of American history. [Narrator]: Mystery surrounds the true
resting place of John Henry Holliday, with some questioning whether
his family would have left his remains in a place far away
from his southern roots. There are two unmarked graves under a tree in the Oak Hill Cemetery
in Griffin, Georgia that are said to belong to Doc Holliday and his father, Henry
Burroughs Holliday. And though it may never be proven, there are many who would like to
believe that Doc’s final resting place is deep in the soil of Griffin. For all his travels, various
exploits and western fame, John Henry “Doc” Holliday
was a son of the south.
