Doc Holliday

by Gary L Roberts

  Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery, where John Henry Holliday studied dentistry.

  John Henry began his studies on October 3, 1870. He attended daily lectures and demonstrations morning and afternoon and began immediately to participate in clinical procedures under the direction of demonstrators. He had ample opportunity for the application of his studies. The largest in the world, the facilities were devoted to dental education, and the urban population brought a steady supply of patients to the clinics.69

  Young Holliday faced a rigorous schedule six days a week, but he also found time for a somewhat broader education as well. Philadelphia was unlike any place he had ever known. The experience had to be both intimidating and exhilarating. For the first time in his life, he was outside the South and away from the control of parents and community, with no constraints except his school’s demands for respectability and discretion. Still, he found time for jaunts into the mysteries of urban life, and he doubtlessly learned more than the principles of dentistry during his time in Philadelphia. For one thing, he got to know Yankees apart from the issues that had held his attention since he was old enough to remember. For another, he came to appreciate some of the social amenities of the urban environment. Philadelphia had its share of saloons, gambling dens, and brothels, and it would not be extravagant to think that the cocky young Georgian tasted some of the city’s worldly pleasures or even made jaunts to New York City.

  He was not in Philadelphia to play, however, and discretion demanded that he be careful. He was apparently a gifted student. For five months, he attended classes, demonstrations, and laboratories in both academic knowledge and rigorous practical training. By the time the term ended, John Henry had become adept at both. The college held a spring session devoted to practical dentistry, but in March 1871 he returned to Valdosta, where he spent the next eight months working with Dr. Frink.70 The town was continuing its postwar recovery, and young Holliday had plenty of opportunities to practice his skills.

  In September 1871, John Henry returned to Philadelphia with much valuable experience that equipped him for his second-year tasks of developing a thesis, demonstrating his mastery of operative dentistry, and preparing artificial dentures. His thesis, “Diseases of the Teeth,” and each of the other requirements were met in due course, and he was scheduled to graduate on March 1, 1872. There was one problem, however. Qualification for graduation required that “[t]he candidate must be twenty-one years of age.”71 He was still more than five months shy of turning twenty-one (a requirement for licensing dentists in several states, including Georgia). His name appeared on the graduation announcement, but he would not receive his credentials until August. John Henry would have to work as an assistant to someone else in the interim or find some other use for his time.

  Times were changing. Reconstruction in Georgia officially ended on January 12, 1872.72 Tom McKey and William H. McKey bought more land at the confluence of the Little and Withlacoochee rivers in February.73 John Henry could have gone home and worked with Dr. Frink and enjoyed the company of his relatives, but, by then, he knew his future did not lie in Valdosta. He had time on his hands before he could open his own practice, so he decided to gain experience and see a little of the country. One of his classmates, A. Jameson Fuches Jr., who wrote his thesis on the same topic that John Henry did, was returning to his home state of Missouri to practice in St. Louis. Fuches opened an office on Fourth Street and young Holliday joined him there.74

  John Henry Holliday, D.D.S. This photograph was taken at Philadelphia at the time of John Henry’s graduation and passed down through the family from Mattie Holliday, Doc’s first cousin and lifelong correspondent, to Carolyn Manley.

  St. Louis was a bustling, hardy, and bawdy place, full of progress and the negative payoff of progress. John Henry tasted the excitement of this place caught between modernization and the frontier. He gained experience in his chosen profession, and he was attracted to things more personal as well.

  Near Fuches’s office was a theater and saloon. One of the employees there was a young woman named Kate Fisher, but that was not her real name. She was born Mary Katharine Harony in Pest, Hungary, on November 7, 1850, the first of seven children. Her parents immigrated to the United States in about 1860 and settled in Davenport, Iowa, with what amounted to a colony of Hungarians.75 Kate’s father purchased property there in 1863, but by 1866, both he and his wife had died, leaving the care of the minor Harony children under the guardianship of the children’s brother-in-law, Gustavus Susemihl. Guardianship soon passed to the family attorney, Otto Smith, however, who reported in October 1867 that Mary Katharine could not be advised of the mortgage of the family’s property “because she went, as it is said to parts unknown.”76

  “Kate Fisher.” This is believed to be a photograph of Mary Katharine Harony, who lived under the name of Kate Fisher in St. Louis, where she met John Henry Holliday. The photograph was given by Wyatt Earp to Hiram Sutterfield in Colorado.

  Kate had run away. One story says that she stowed away on a riverboat and assumed the name of the boat’s captain, a man named Fisher. Her choice of the name “Fisher” might also have come from one of the leading actresses of the day, Kate Fisher, whose performances as Mazeppa, in which she rode across the stage on horseback wearing only pink tights, scandalized and tantalized audiences across the country.77 Kate claimed to have entered a convent school in St. Louis, but, like many runaway girls in that period, she appears to have entered a somewhat different “school.” A “Kate Fischer” was listed in the 1870 census living with eight other women. Seven, including Kate, were listed as “whores.”78 By 1872, she was working at the saloon near Dr. Fuches’s new office.

  She later claimed that she met John Henry in the spring of 1870, but Kate had trouble remembering dates late in life, and other internal evidence in her writings suggests that she meant 1872.79 Apparently, they had an affair or perhaps a “professional” relationship. In later years, concerned about the negative image of her in published sources and determined to salvage her reputation, she even claimed they were married, but though her account was slanted, even deceptive, it contained details that suggest that she did meet and have a relationship with John Henry that spring and summer. She would remember that John Henry Holliday’s stay in St. Louis was a brief adventure, and she would also recall that he returned to Georgia to claim an inheritance. In fact, during July he did return to Georgia to claim his inheritance from his mother and to begin his practice. Kate would not forget Dr. Holliday, and, as it turned out, John Henry would not forget her either.80

  John Henry moved in with John Stiles Holliday that summer. Dr. Holliday had moved to Atlanta after the war and gone into the grocery business with R. W. Tidwell, another Fayetteville transplant. They had been quite successful, to the point that Dr. Holliday gave up the regular practice of medicine. Holliday’s son, Robert Alexander, called “Hub” by family members, was working with him as well. John Stiles Holliday was highly regarded in the new Atlanta, and John Henry moved into not only a large and comfortable household but social and professional credibility as well.81

  Following his return to Georgia, John Henry was introduced to Dr. Arthur C. Ford. Ford was one of the most prominent dentists in the state. He also had a colorful history. He was an Englishman who came to Georgia by way of South Africa. He fought in the Confederate army, was wounded at Sharpsburg, and established himself as a dentist in Atlanta after the war as the partner of Dr. Albert Hape. Ford gained an enviable reputation. He was a charter member of the Southern Dental Association, formed in 1869, and was active in the Georgia State Dental Society.82 He may have met John Henry through Dr. Samuel Hape, the brother of Ford’s partner and owner of the Southern Dental Depot, who was living at the home of John Stiles Holliday. Albert Hape had terminated his partnership with Ford and was moving his practice to Thomson, Georgia. On July 26, 1872, the following notice appeared in the Atlanta Constitution:

  CARD

  I HEREBY i
nform my patients that I leave to attend the Sessions of the Southern Dental Association in Richmond, Virginia this evening, and will be absent until about the middle of August, during which time Dr. Jno. H. Holliday will fill my place in my office.

  Arthur C. Ford, D.D.S.

  Office 26, Whitehall Street.83

  Dr. Arthur C. Ford, the distinguished Georgia dentist and Confederate veteran with whom John Henry first practiced in Atlanta in 1872.

  It was a grand opportunity. Ford’s prominence ensured the right connections and the best chances for success in the new city. Young Dr. Holliday turned twenty-one the same day that Dr. Ford returned to Atlanta, and less than a month later Major signed over the property he had held in guardianship for John Henry to his son.84 John Henry’s future seemed bright. In November, he visited Griffin and registered his deed for the Iron Front Building. He had come of age, and for the occasion his uncle gave him a Model 1851 Navy Colt revolver like those he had given to his own three sons.85 John Henry had reason to be proud. Never the aristocrat, he was now fairly a Southern gentleman, well bred, educated, and prepared for the successful professional life he trained for as part of the New South.

  Chapter 3

  GONE TO TEXAS

  When he became nearly of age, he studied dentistry and afterwards located in Atlanta. But he had a roving and reckless turn of mind, and like a great many of our southern boys of similar nature he soon sought his fortune out West.

  —Valdosta Times, June 24, 1882

  How quickly things turned. The relationship with Dr. Arthur C. Ford did not last. Ford was not a well man, and on January 4, 1873, he announced that “[O]n account of impaired health, from too close application to my profession, and having determined in consequence to visit Florida for a short period to recuperate, I have this day associated with Dr. J. [?] Cooley, a gentleman of skill and experience, and one in whom my friends and patients may place implicit confidence, who will attend to my practice during my absence.” Ford would return to Georgia within a few weeks and be elected president of the Georgia State Dental Society in 1873, but his health would continue to deteriorate. He was consumptive.1

  John Henry Holliday had obviously moved on, although why is not known. He may also have moved out of John Stiles Holliday’s home, because on December 21, 1872, he was registered at the National Hotel in Atlanta.2 Christmas would be gloomy. On December 31, 1872, the Griffin News announced, “Mr. Robert Holliday, who has so long and efficiently occupied the position of baggage master on the Macon & Western Railroad, died at Jonesboro on Christmas night.”3 Mattie Holliday’s father had finally succumbed to his disabilities, actually on Christmas Eve, and the Holliday clan gathered to pay their last respects over a somber Christmas. Mattie later recalled, “Everything gone but one house in Jonesboro, a large helpless family, health wrecked, it is no wonder this jovial, kindhearted man was heartbroken. Seven years struggle with poverty, he died December 24, 1872, after being received into the Catholic Church. He was buried in the Catholic plot in Fayetteville.”4

  John Henry attended the funeral with the rest of the family to comfort Mattie, her sisters, and James Robert Holliday, their brother, called Jim Bob by the family. The Hollidays were close, and Mattie was special to John Henry. Yet beyond the personal and family effects of Robert’s passing, his death seemed to mark the beginning of a troubling and confusing time for young Dr. Holliday. On January 13, 1873, Francisco E’Dalgo died of consumption on his farm near Jenkinsburg, leaving behind a young family of his own.5 Perhaps this loss and a desire to help explained in part why John Henry sold his half of the Iron Front Building in Griffin to N. G. Phillips the very next day, January 14, for $1,800, a surprisingly large sum at the time.6

  John Henry tried to get past the troubles. He may have tried to make a go of it in Griffin after leaving his association with Ford. It was a booming town with a variety of things to recommend it. Griffin boasted fifteen practicing attorneys, a dozen physicians, fifty stores, twelve barrooms, nine churches, and a variety of other establishments. “Griffin is now the healthiest place in Georgia,” the Griffin News boasted. “[N]ot all the fruit and watermelons brought to town can get a serious case of sickness for the doctors.” The same issue noted that Griffin was “the best policed city in the state.”7

  With three colleges, a major rail station, and only one dentist, R. A. McDonald, the opportunities seemed promising. Even though the local press described McDonald as “one of the cleverest and most successful ‘tooth carpenters’ in the country,” local tradition says that John Henry took a corner office upstairs in the McKey half of the Iron Front Building and began a practice there. The corner office still bears evidence of a dental practice, not McDonald’s, which was elsewhere in town.8

  There might even have been other interests for young Holliday; as the News observed, “Think of it, that in the little city of Griffin, gambling holes are as common as pig tracks in the snow.”9 The paper sought “to legalize and tax” them, but John Henry’s interest may well have been less public minded. Here, he could indulge his card playing vice away from Uncle John’s view. Besides that, the town boasted the Central College for Young Women, with courting opportunities aplenty for a young professional man.

  Francisco E’Dalgo, the Mexican orphan taken in by Henry Holliday and reared in his home, who went on to serve honorably in the Confederate army. He died of tuberculosis shortly after John Henry Holliday returned from dental school.

  Of course, Atlanta still had its attractions as well. There, he had renewed his acquaintance with Lee Smith, the “celebrated mixologist” at the Maison de Ville. At twenty-eight years old, Smith was also from Griffin and had known John Henry’s parents. But he had led a fast life since leaving home. He launched his career as a bartender in Atlanta at the end of the war and had spent a couple of years in New Orleans mixing drinks at the St. Charles Hotel before returning to Atlanta to open his own saloon. He was affiliated with several establishments before joining the Maison de Ville in August 1872.10 Smith was a genuine hustler involved in a variety of investments designed to elevate him above the role of bartender.

  In April 1872, while operating the Turf Exchange Saloon, Lee Smith was arrested for “Keeping a Gaming Table.” Specifically, he was running a faro bank. Faro was a popular game at the time, described by one authority on nineteenth-century gambling as “the backbone of the professional gambler’s repertoire and the prime vehicle for the seduction of moneyed innocents.”11 It was a simple game with relatively close odds; Hoyle’s Rules of Games claimed that odds in favor of the house were no more than 3 percent in an honest game. Faro was played on a cloth layout with images of cards in the deck, and players bet on individual cards or combinations against the house.12

  Cards were drawn from a box by the house dealer, with the first card drawn winning for players and the second card for the bank. If a dealer turned two cards of the same denomination, the money was split between the house and the player. All bets paid even money except for splits and the last four cards. Faro’s popularity was based on its simplicity, but the opportunities for dishonest play were considerable. The cultural impact of the game was significant, contributing expressions such as “from soda to hock,” “bucking the tiger,” and “both ends against the middle” to the language.13 In the post—Civil War period, it was still one of the most popular card games, and John Henry Holliday, who would spend a considerable part of his life as a faro dealer, may well have acquired or honed his skills in the game at Smith’s tables in Atlanta rather than later after he went west.

  Smith was found not guilty of the gambling charge on May 27, 1872, before young Dr. Holliday returned from St. Louis, and he accepted the position at the Maison de Ville not long afterward. Later in the year he was arrested for “Assault with Intent to Murder” but was acquitted on November 12, 1872.14 Despite his troubles, Smith made an effort to qualify himself as a bona fide “respectable” entrepreneur as well. By March 1873, he was dealing in specie payments at
No. 16 Marietta Street as an investment capitalist. That did not keep him from refurbishing and opening the Girl of the Period Saloon on Marietta Street in August 1873 or continuing to dabble in the saloon trade over the next few years. By 1875, when he opened the Big Bonanza Saloon, he was well on his way to financial success.15

  Smith’s friendship with young Holliday suggests that John Henry was already drawn to the world of saloons and gambling before he left Georgia, which should not be surprising. “Sowing wild oats” was expected of young men of his time and place, especially when they had a rebellious streak, as John Henry certainly did. Whatever John Henry’s precise activities and their implications, he nevertheless seemed to be focusing on his future, and conversations with Cousin Robert “Hub” Holliday led to Robert’s decision to follow John Henry’s lead and attend the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery in the fall of 1873. John Henry would be Robert’s preceptor, and the two of them anticipated a long and respectable partnership once Hub graduated.16

  His decision to act as Hub’s preceptor indicated John Henry’s intentions to stay in Georgia. Robert would enter school in October 1873, and he would go on to a distinguished career as a dentist in Georgia.17 Unfortunately, the planned collaboration was derailed, and by the time Robert graduated, John Henry was gone. Something dramatic had happened to destroy their plans. What happened is more difficult to define. Even the anecdotal evidence is maddeningly unsatisfying. Yet something happened that caused John Henry’s life to unravel and sent him west to Texas. The details remain shrouded in mystery.

  Robert Alexander Holliday, Doc Holliday’s first cousin. John Henry was his announced preceptor for dental school and his anticipated partner. He went on to become a very successful dentist and businessman.