Doc Holliday

by Gary L Roberts

  17. Atlanta Constitution, November 10, 11, 1906; “History of the Atlanta Dental Supply Co.,” from the personal papers of Constance Knowles McKellar, 9; The Asodecoan, 1934 (Atlanta, GA: Senior Class of the Atlanta Southern Dental College, 1934), 4–6. He was credited with persuading the trustees of the Atlanta Medical College to establish the Atlanta Southern Dental College in 1887, the year that John Henry died. In 1894, he moved to New Orleans, where he operated a dental supply company. He was also instrumental in establishing the New Orleans College of Dentistry in 1899, which later became the dental department of the school of medicine at Tulane University. He returned to Atlanta in about 1904 and died in 1906.

  18. Valdosta (Georgia) Daily Times, June 24, 1882.

  19. Sheila M. Rothman, Living in the Shadow of Death: Tuberculosis and the Social Experience of Illness in American History (New York: Basic, 1994), 16.

  20. Griffin News, December 1, 1872.

  21. Griffin News, April 19, 1873.

  22. “Ford,” in Biographies of Past Presidents of the Georgia State Dental Society, edited by H. Herbert Johnson (Atlanta: Georgia State Dental Society, 1926), 20; Dr. Arthur C. Ford Collection, Atlanta Historical Society, Atlanta, Georgia.

  23. Henry I. Bowditch, “Consumption in America,” Atlantic Monthly (January– March 1869), reprinted in Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz, ed., From Consumption to Tuberculosis: A Documentary History (New York: Galand, 1994), 71; René J. Dubos and Jean Dubos, The White Plague: Tuberculosis, Man, and Society (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 63–66; Mark Caldwell, The Last Crusade: The War on Consumption, 1862–1954 (New York: Atheneum, 1988), 17.

  24. John William Rogers, The Lusty Texans of Dallas (New York: Dutton, 1951).

  25. John Abbott, “Robert Holliday: Restoring a Proud Family Name,” The Holliday House Gazette (Winter 1998): 5–6; Rita H. DeLorme, “Gunfighter ‘Doc’ Holliday, Sister M. Melanie Holliday, RSM; More Than a Pretty Love Story,” The Southern Cross, December 9, 1999, reprinted in Rita H. DeLorme, Memories and Milestones: Stories from the Archives (Savannah, GA: Monsignor Daniel J. Bark Memorial Archives, Diocese of Savannah, 2001), 50–51; Atlanta Constitution, July 2, 1994; Victoria Wilcox to the author, January 29, 1999; Teresa Green to the author, April 23, 2003; O’Connell, Irish Roots of Gone with the Wind, 82–85. Pat Jahns to Lillian McKey, February 17, 1951, copies from the private papers of Susan McKey Thomas, is a response to Miss McKey, which makes it clear just how protective the family was. Jahns also discusses this in a letter to Susan McKey Thomas, February 17, 1975. See also chapter 12.

  26. Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 217–218. In fact, cousinly marriages appear to have increased between 1861 and 1880 as an effort to concentrate wealth after suffering the pressures of war and Reconstruction. See also Wilcox, “Mischievous Minor,” 20–21; Patricia Jahns, The Frontier World of Doc Holliday (New York: Hastings House, 1957), 24–25.

  27. The best account of what happened to the letters is provided in an interview by Victoria Wilcox with Carolyn Holliday Manley of Decatur, Georgia, the Holliday relative who had the trunk containing the letters in her possession for a time and believed she would inherit the letters from Mattie’s sister, Marie, in due course. But Mattie’s sister retrieved the trunk and burned the letters “to keep her sister Mattie’s personal life personal.” Victoria Wilcox to the author, January 29, 1999.

  28. Ronald Yeomans, telephone interview with the author, June 17, 2004, who was told by an uncle that his great-grandfather, born in 1873 or 1874, was John Henry’s son. He was adopted under the name Jones. Yeomans also said that his uncle cautioned him not to “spread it around.” Mary McVicar, who operates the museum on the site of Mannie Hyman’s Saloon in Leadville, Colorado, reported that a young man came into her museum asking questions about Doc Holliday. He then showed her a family Bible that contained a sheet of onionskin paper on which was written the story of a woman from Georgia who went to Missouri, had a child (a girl), and returned to Georgia after placing the child with a couple who had no children, stipulating only that the child be named Alice Mary or Mary Alice. The father was said to be John Henry Holliday. When the child was about six, a rather handsome Southern-sounding gentleman stopped at the couple’s home in Arkansas (where they had moved) and spoke with the child and walked her around the town on his horse, then left without ever returning. Mary McVicar to the author, June 28, 2004. In 1975, Susan McKey Thomas was also told that Doc fathered a daughter who grew up in California. Notes from the private papers of Susan McKey Thomas. Of the three stories, the Yeomans account is the most plausible, but none of them can be documented.

  29. After the war, George Holliday had entered the grocery business with R. W. Tidwell in Atlanta. Later, John Stiles Holliday, after moving to Atlanta, joined this enterprise. R. W. Tidwell was either the son or nephew of Miles M. Tidwell, a Fayetteville attorney. Miles’s daughter, Sarah, or “Sallie C.” as she was listed in the 1870 census, was about nineteen when John Henry returned to Georgia. U.S. Census, 1870, Fayetteville, Georgia, p. 2, M593, Reel 149, NARA. Tanner quotes from “Recollections of Mary Cowperwaite Fulton Holliday (Mrs. Robert Alexander Holliday, DDS) Concerning John Henry Holliday, DDS, Collected and Transcribed by Carl Birger Olson between 1935 and 1940,” typed manuscript, 6, as follows, “You asked about ‘special’ young ladies. I recall hearing only of one. She was one of the Tidwell girls, Sarah or Sallie. She was a niece, I believe, of Dr. Holliday’s partner.” Tanner believes, and it is plausible, that Sallie may have been R. W.’s sister. Karen Holliday Tanner to the author, February 6, 1999; see also John D. Tanner to the author, January 1, 1999.

  30. Tanner, Family Portrait, 79–81, drawing from the recollections of M. C. F. Holliday and Sophie Walton.

  31. Ibid., 80–81. This account is consistent with other accounts. Jahns, Frontier World, 40–42, details the itinerary from Atlanta to Dallas, using the Atlanta Constitution, July 15, 1871, and other biographers have followed suit.

  32. Bainbridge (Georgia) Semi-Weekly Democrat, January 26, 1872, announced that “Maj. Holliday was elected Mayor of Valdosta last Saturday.”.

  33. William Barclay Masterson, “Famous Gunfighters of the Western Frontier: Doc Holliday,” Human Life (May 1907): 5.

  34. Ibid. Masterson’s account has the advantage of coming from Holliday. Whether Bat—or Holliday—embellished it is another question. For the record, Bat himself said, “While he never boasted about the killing of the negroes down in Georgia, he was nevertheless regarded by his new-made Texas acquaintances as a man with a record.”.

  35. “Doc Holliday, as told by Mr. Moore, Nov. 1926,” Files, Arizona Historical Society, Tucson, Arizona.

  36. Joe Lineburger to the author, June 17, 2004. Lineburger says that his grandmother, whose great-aunt was Rachel Holliday, thought of Doc as a drunk and said that after the shooting “it got so hot locally he had to leave.”.

  37. Mrs. J. K. (Clyde McKey) White, interview by Albert S. Pendleton Jr., September 21, 1972, quoted in Albert S. Pendleton Jr. and Susan McKey Thomas, In Search of the Hollidays: The Story of Doc Holliday and His Holliday and McKey Families (Valdosta, GA: Little River, 1973), 33.

  38. Valdosta Daily Times, August 29, 1931; see also J. F. DeLacy to Robert N. Mullin, January 9, 1949, Stuart N. Lake Collection, Box 10, Huntington Library, San Marino, California. It is worth noting that if John Henry did kill someone, Tom McKey would have been an accessory, which would have given him another reason to minimize the incident. The Withlacoochee River was the boundary of the McKey property and the county line between Lowndes County and Brooks County. The only shooting that bears any resemblance to the incident in question was reported in the Quitman (Georgia) Banner, May 28, 1869 (Quitman was the county seat of Brooks County). The article stated that the body of a black man had been found on a “small creek about seven miles from Quitman.” The body “was found to be literally riddled with buckshot, eleven of
which had struck the unfortunate man in the body and arms.” The man had apparently been killed while “striking for fish,” but no clue was found as to the perpetrators. No further evidence has been found on the case, but if it was the fabled incident it occurred before the McKeys bought the property, and it certainly was not the occasion for John Henry’s flight west.

  39. Jack McKey to Victoria Wilcox, two undated letters and a drawing of “the Hell Bitch,” as reconstructed from the scabbard. Jack McKey is Tom McKey’s grandson.

  40. Gary Cartwright, Galveston: A History of the Island (Austin: Texas Christian University Press, 1998), 118–129.

  41. Lillian McKey, “Personal and Family History,” papers from the Martha Wiseman McKey Collection, Valdosta, Georgia. Jonathan Leval McKey apparently settled in Texas about 1858. He and his wife had five children, although two died young. He joined the Third Texas Cavalry, commanded by Marcus H. Cansler, as a sergeant in June 1861, but quickly resigned in July for health reasons. He continued in service as a private until September. Cansler also resigned his commission in August 1861, and Charles H. Featherstone succeeded him. Afterward, McKey applied for compensation for “Services in Captain Featherstone’s Company,” in which enterprise Cansler had power of attorney. By 1870, the ravages of the war and reconstruction had seriously depleted his resources, but he eventually rebuilt his fortunes. His obituary from the Brenham (Texas) Daily Banner said: “John L. McKey has been a conspicuous figure in his country ever since the civil war. By close attention to business and the strictest economy, he amassed considerable wealth, and became, in consequence, a factor of no mean proportions in the world of finance. Indeed there are few business men of long standing in this country who have not at some time during their business career realized the potency of his influence and means.” Victoria Wilcox to Susan McKey Thomas, November 21, 1994; U.S. Census, 1870, Brenham, Subdivision Beat 3, Washington County, Texas, M593, Roll 1608, NARA; Confederate Service Records, Texas State Archives, Austin, Texas.

  42. Dallas Weekly Herald, March 15, 1873, carried an excellent article on “The Social and Political Conditions” of Dallas County. Carl H. Moneyhon, Texas after the Civil War: The Struggle of Reconstruction (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004), offers a useful analysis of the political climate of Texas at the time.

  43. T. R. Fehrenbach, Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans (New York: Da Capo, 2000), 433–434; Rogers, Lusty Texans of Dallas; Darwin Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History (Woodland Hills, CA: Windsor, 1982).

  44. Thonnie Smith Wisenbaker, “First Impressions of Valdosta in 1865,” 49, 55, unpublished manuscript from the Mrs. Arthur Strom Collection, courtesy Susan McKey Thomas; Dallas City Directory, 1873, 77; David O. Moline, DDS, to Susan McKey Thomas, July 15, 1995, including a copy of Dr. Moline’s October 5, 1995, presentation to the Academy of the History of Dentistry, titled, “The Real True Story of Dr. John Holliday.”.

  45. Moline, “The Real True Story”; Wilcox research notes; Susan McKey Thomas research notes. From 1840 to 1860, John Seegar, Dr. Seegar’s father, ran a “respectable house of entertainment for travelers” on the post road that ran from Greenville, South Carolina, through Atlanta, to Mobile, Alabama, not far from the inn owned by John Henry’s grandfather, which makes it likely that the two families knew each other. Dr. Seegar grew up in old Campbell County, next to Fayette County. He married Martha Rainwater on November 17, 1859, in Fulton County, Georgia Marriages, 1699–1944, myfamily.com, Provo, UT, 2004.

  46. Moline, “The Real True Story.” The only service record found is “James A. Segar,” CSR, CWS, GDAH. This Segar served first as a private in Company B, Ninth Battalion, Georgia Volunteer Infantry, which was later absorbed along with the Third Battalion to form the Thirty-seventh Regiment, Georgia Volunteer Infantry. In the Thirty-seventh Regiment, he was part of Company E. James Segar was a seventeen-year-old farm laborer from the Minish district of Jackson County in 1860. U.S. Census, 1860, Jackson County, p. 198, M653, Reel 128, NARA. Tanner, Family Portrait, 84–86, says that John Seegar migrated to Texas before the war. This appears to be correct. The 1860 census shows “John A. Segar [sic],” erroneously listed as “M.D.,” and his wife, Martha, at a hotel in Springville in Wood County, Texas. U.S. Census, 1860, Wood County, Texas, p. 11, M653, Reel 1308, NARA. This would seem to indicate that Seegar left for Texas soon after his marriage in November 1859.

  47. J. A. Leegar [sic], “Galvanic Action from Amalgam Filling,” Dental Times 9 (April 1872): 147. By November 1872, Dr. Seegar was well established in Dallas. Apparently, Seegar set up practice in Dallas in 1867. On November 23, he published an advertisement in Norton’s Union Intelligencer as follows: “I am thankful for 5 years patronage [sic]. I now can be found one door east of the Keaton House, up stairs over Cochran’s Drug Store, on Commerce Street. My office is well fitted up for the reception of ladies, very quiet & pleasant. My work is on exhibition both in the city & country. Broken gold plates taken at a fair valuation for work. All work warranted. Call & give me a trial. J. A. SEEGAR.”.

  48. Dallas Weekly Herald, October 11, 1873.

  49. Gunnison (Colorado) Daily News-Democrat, June 18, 1882. The records of the First Methodist Church are disorganized, and confirmation of his membership has not been possible so far. Cindy Booker, administrative assistant, First United Methodist Church of Dallas, to the author, August 5, 2004.

  50. Dallas Daily Commercial, March 2, 1874. The firm of “Seegar & Holiday [sic]” is listed in Lawson and Edmondson’s Dallas City Directory and Reference Book for 1873–74, 64, 96.

  51. State of Texas v. Dr. Holliday, Cause No. 2236, Indicted for Gaming, Minutes, Fourteenth District Court, Dallas County, Texas, 1874–75, May 12, 1874, vol. 1, p. 209. On May 22, at the hearing, T. M. Myers posted $100 bond, which guaranteed that Doc would appear at his trial. He was being introduced to the practices of the law in frontier towns toward gambling. The antigambling sweeps were periodic and used more to raise money through fines than to end gambling. See also Tanner, Family Portrait, 91–93.

  52. J. H. Holliday, Assessment Roll, Precinct No. 1, Office of County Tax Commissioner, Dallas County, TX, 20.

  53. Jack McGuire, Katy’s Baby: The Story of Denison Texas (Austin, TX: Nortex, 1991), 19–33; see also V. V. Masterson, The Katy and the Great Southwest (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1952), 183–192.

  54. Bob Young, “He Whipped Rowdy Denison into Shape,” Quarterly of the National Association and Center for Outlaw and Lawman History 12 (Fall 1987): 13–16. Dora Neill Raymond, Captain Lee Hall of Texas (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1940), is the standard work on Hall.

  55. Denison (Texas) Daily News, June 18, 1873. By then, John Henry was already in trouble at Fort Griffin. On September 12, 1874, the Dallas Weekly Herald reported unclaimed letters for him at the Dallas post office.

  56. Denison (Texas) Daily News, August 14, 1873; Masterson, The Katy, 200–207.

  57. Dallas Weekly Herald, January 2, 1875. The Austin Statesman, January 3, 1875, reported, “The Herald does not even know the number of bar-rooms, keno and faro banks in Dallas. Who can tell!”.

  58. Dallas Daily Commercial, March 6, August 12, 14, 1874.

  59. State of Texas v. Charles Austin, Cause No. 2636, Indicted for Carrying a Pistol, Minutes, Fourteenth District Court, Dallas County, p. 482; State of Texas v. J. H. Holliday, Cause No. 2643, Indicted for Assault to Murder, Minutes, Fourteenth District Court, Dallas County, pp. 486, 516. Charles Austin’s Cause No. 2636 was dismissed on May 5, 1875, Minutes, Fourteenth District Court, Dallas County, vol. 1, p. 65.

  60. State of Texas v. Dr. Holliday, Gaming, Fourteenth District Court, Dallas County, vol. 1, p. 5.

  61. Denison (Texas) Daily Cresset, May 28, 1875.

  62. Jahns, Frontier World, 52–60, presented the view that Holliday’s first visit to Fort Griffin was a mere stop en route to Colorado by way of the stage roads that linked the frontier posts of Texas. After his troubles in Dallas, he decided to leav
e, she argues. “So he recollected all he’d heard of the boom towns of the west and picked Denver as the most promising for a gentleman of his talents and delicate state of health.” Tanner, Family Portrait, 95–96, agrees. The biggest argument for this view is that Holliday himself said that he was in Denver in 1875 and 1876. Such a course seems unlikely for reasons that are clear in Jahns’s own account, that the way west detailed by her became “lonelier and more dangerous as they progressed into Indian country.” See also Roger Conger, Frontier Forts of Texas (Waco, TX: Texian, 1966), for an even greater sense of the distances, dangers, and discomforts involved in travel through central and western Texas. If John Henry wished to go to Denver, he could have taken the railroad north and then west by a route that would have been both more comfortable and less dangerous. More likely, then, John Henry was attracted by tales of the Fort Griffin boom itself.

  63. J. R. Webb, “Henry Herron: Pioneer and Peace Officer during Fort Griffin Days,” West Texas Historical Association Yearbook 20 (1944): 23. Herron, who was interviewed extensively by Webb, arrived in Fort Griffin at midsummer of 1875, a few weeks after Holliday.