Doc Holliday

The Good and the Bad of Doc Holliday

John Myers Myers had the verbal swagger and style to fit the material he wrote about. His documented research alone leads us to believe the story of Doc Holliday is authentic. However, early in the book Myers Myers made an educated guess that John Henry Holliday¿s dental college education was acquired in Baltimore. He was just as wrong as many others at the time. For a number of years the two most popular sites named for Doc¿s dental training were Charleston, South Carolina and Baltimore, Maryland. Several years after the printing of the Myers Myers book actual records turned up in the library at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. John Henry Holliday graduated from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery at Philadelphia in 1872. Following dental college Holliday returned to Georgia and had a short dental practice in his hometown of Griffin, Georgia and another in Atlanta. His stay in Georgia and relationship with his cousin Mattie Holliday were cut short when he was diagnosed with consumption. John Henry¿s doctors urged him to seek a dryer climate in the west and as a practical matter he took their advice and moved to Dallas, Texas. Alone and far from home Doc Holliday took to the saloon and gambling life. A short article in the Dallas Weekly Herald of January 2, 1875 confirmed that fact. `Dr. Holliday and Mr. Austin, a saloon keeper relieved the monotony of the noise of firecrackers by taking a couple of shots at each other yesterday afternoon. The cheerful note of the six-shooter is heard once more among us. Both shooters were arrested.¿ Shortly after that shooting incident Holliday moved west and joined the gambling circuit. Doc had some history in both Ft. Griffin and Jacksboro, Texas. His reputation grew along with his gambling proficiency and many of his problems grew out of his ability to win at both faro and poker. Doc met two people at Ft. Griffin that would have a profound effect on his life, Big Nose Kate and Wyatt Earp. Wyatt was on the trail of a couple of outlaws and Doc provided him with a tip as to where they might be heading. Kate had her eye for Doc, but he didn¿t respond until he got into a scrape during a poker game. Doc defending his life killed Ed Bailey. Bailey¿s friends didn¿t see it that way and were about to hang Doc when Kate made her move and executed a daring plan to save Doc from the hangman¿s noose. They got out of town in a hurry and headed north to Dodge City, Kansas. Wyatt was a city marshal at the time and got himself into a life-threatening situation and Doc came to his rescue. Wyatt never forgot Doc¿s life saving move and from that day forward they became lifelong friends. In less than two years many of the Dodge City crowd found their way to Tombstone, Arizona and that included Doc, Kate and Wyatt. Both Doc and Wyatt had their difficulties in Tombstone and several of them were caused by Kate and her problem with the bottle. The day that made Tombstone famous was October 26, 1881, when the Clanton¿s and McLowry¿s took on the Earps and Holliday in the shootout at the OK Corral. The shootout killed three of the cowboy outlaw faction while none of the Earps and Holliday law and order group was killed. The shootout didn¿t end the violence on the streets of Tombstone and at some point Doc figured he had seen enough killing and decided to go to Colorado. Wyatt eventually followed but so did the Tombstone faction that wanted to kill Doc and Wyatt. They cornered Doc and had him jailed in Denver but were unable to get him extradited to Tombstone. Doc remained in Colorado and had one shooting incident in Leadville. There were no charges filed and Doc was not arrested. However, his old nemesis that had followed him from Georgia, tuberculosis finally caught up with Doc Holliday November 8, 1887 and he died peacefully in his hotel room. Western readers will enjoy this old Holliday story written by John Myers Myers.

History, not Hollywood

Myers makes no attempt to either glorify or vilify America's most famous dentist. He traces Holliday's life from his birth in Georgia to his death from tuburculosis in Colorado 36 years later. Drawing on period sources and newspaper accounts, he takes the reader on the non-stop roller coaster ride that was John Henry Holliday's life.

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