Doc Holliday

by Gary L Roberts

  72. Tucson Daily Star, May 26, 1882.

  73. Denver Daily Times, May 30, 1882; Denver Daily Rocky Mountain News, October 23, 1898.

  74. Atlanta Constitution, June 21, 1882; Atlanta Post-Appeal, July 8, 1882.

  75. John H. Flood Jr.’s notes from an interview with Wyatt Earp, September 15, 1926, reproduced in Wyatt Earp, Tombstone and the West: The Gilchriese Collections, part 3 (San Francisco: Johns’ Western Gallery, 2005), 5. Flood included part of this story without mentioning Crummy by name in “Wyatt Earp: A Peace-officer of Tombstone,” 327–328 (manuscript written by John Henry Flood Jr., 1927), C. Lee Simmons Collection. Wyatt claimed in the Flood manuscript that Masterson had written to him two days before Crummy’s visit, “Wyatt, I’ve done everything I can but I guess you’ll have to go [to] the front. Don’t lose any time, and see your friend.” It may have been this message that prompted Crummy to go to Denver. Crummy almost certainly knew both Wyatt and Doc. He was in Tombstone in October 1880. He registered at the Grand Hotel, “G. W. Crummy, Lake City, Co.,” the day after Doc’s fight with Milt Joyce. Tombstone Daily Epitaph, October 12, 1880. His name apparently appears twice in the 1880 Colorado census; he is listed at Lake City, Hinsdale County, as “owner of mine,” and at Silver Cliff, Custer County, as “saloonkeeper.” If these two were, in fact, the same person, it was not unusual; double registration was common for people with businesses in more than one county. The Lake City enumeration shows him living with an older brother, J. W. Crummy. At any rate, Crummy and Pitkin had been business partners for at least two years when the Holliday case arose. Campbell to Roberts, January 22, 2005.

  76. Denver Daily Rocky Mountain News, May 30, 1882; Trinidad Daily News, June 1, 1882; Denver Daily Times, May 31, 1882; Denver Daily Tribune, May 30, 1882. Tritle may well have sent defective papers deliberately. The Tucson Daily Star, June 1, 1882, proposed that Tritle had suggested to Pitkin: “‘My dear brother, let this blow pass!’ It passed.”.

  77. Denver Daily Rocky Mountain News, May 30, 1882.

  78. Ibid.; Denver Daily Times, May 31, 1882; Denver Daily Tribune, May 30, 1882.

  79. Denver Daily Tribune, May, 30, 1882.

  80. Pueblo Chieftain, June 1, 1882; Denver Daily Rocky Mountain News, June 1, 1882. The Trinidad News, June 2, 1882, reported, “Marshal Masterson who has been in Denver for some time past interesting himself in the release of Doc. Holliday, is home again.” No evidence has come to light to suggest that Masterson was criticized in Trinidad for his interest in the case.

  81. Denver Daily Rocky Mountain News, May 31, 1882.

  82. Tucson Daily Star, June 2, 1882. The Denver Daily Times, May 31, 1882, noted, “The deputy sheriffs in Denver sympathize with Sheriff Paul because, by the governor’s refusal to let Holladay [sic] go, they lose the reward they had hoped to pocket.”.

  83. Tucson Daily Star, June 1, 1882.

  84. Tombstone Daily Epitaph, May 31, 1882.

  85. Tucson Daily Star, May 31, June 1, 1882. The Denver Daily Times, May 25, 1882, observed, “It is the general impression that the arrest of the Earp boys, the Arizona outlaws, is not desired for some reason or another. It is believed it would not be a difficult thing to get them if they were wanted.”.

  86. Gunnison Daily News-Democrat, June 1, 1882.

  87. San Francisco Examiner, May 27, 1882.

  88. Tucson Daily Star, June 2, 1882.

  89. San Francisco Examiner, May 27, 1882.

  90. Denver Daily Tribune, May 26, 1882.

  91. Denver Daily Rocky Mountain News, May 25, 1882.

  92. Denver Daily Times, May 24, 1882.

  93. Denver Daily Times, June 2, 1882; Denver Daily Rocky Mountain News, June 2, 1882; Denver Daily Tribune, June 2, 1882; Gunnison Daily News-Democrat, June 3, 1882.

  94. Most of this information is from an unpublished manuscript, written by Peter Brand, “Perry Mallon—The Famous Man from Nowhere,” which will be published after revision to include additional material. Brand, along with Jennifer Lewis and Jean Smith, who work with him as researchers, are doing important work on the so-called minor characters in the Tombstone story. Peter Brand to Gary L. Roberts, May 5, September 21, 22, 27, 2004, May 28, December 12, 2005; Ruth Rocco to Gary L. Roberts, May 5, 2004.

  95. Denver Republican, June 2, 1882.

  96. Pueblo Chieftain, June 1, 1882.

  97. Denver Republican, June 2, 1882.

  98. Pueblo Chieftain, June 6, 1882.

  99. Gunnison Daily News-Democrat, June 18, 1882. The paper had reported, June 17, 1882, that Holliday had checked into the St. James Hotel on June 16.

  100. National Police Gazette, September 2, 1882.

  101. Judd Riley interview, Stuart N. Lake Collection, Box 11, Folder 41, Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

  102. Salida (Colorado) Mail, July 8, 1882; Lake City (Colorado) Silver World, July 15, 1882.

  103. Case No. 1851, The People v. J. H. Holliday, Larceny, July 11, 1882, District Court Records of Pueblo County, Colorado, Vol. 5, 354–355. The Pueblo Chieftain, July 19, 1882, reported that the case had been continued “on people’s motion.”

  11. A Living—and Dying—Legend

  1. Atlanta Constitution, June 21, 1882.

  2. Atlanta Post-Appeal, July 8, 1882.

  3. Tombstone (Arizona) Daily Epitaph, July 28, 1882.

  4. Denver Daily Rocky Mountain News, June 14, 1882.

  5. Describing Doc as the leader was commonplace in newspapers of the time.

  6. Jack Burrows, John Ringo: The Gunfighter Who Never Was (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1987), is still the most satisfying biography of Ringo because of the author’s careful and critical examination of the growth of the legend. David Johnson, John Ringo (Stillwater, OK: Barbed Wire, 1996), is the most detailed work factually. Steve Gatto has written two books about Ringo, John Ringo: The Reputation of a Deadly Gunman (Tucson: San Simon, 1995) and Johnny Ringo (Lansing, MI: Protar House, 2002), which contain some new material but focus primarily on the controversies about Ringo and demonstrate the vitality of the legend.

  7. Wyatt Earp himself appears to have been the first to make this claim. Forrestine C. Hooker, “An Arizona Vendetta (The Truth about Wyatt Earp—and Some Others),” 77–78, unpublished manuscript, circa 1920, Southwest Museum, Los Angeles, California, and John Henry Flood Jr., “Wyatt Earp: A Peace-officer of Tombstone,” 320–325 (unpublished manuscript, 1927), C. Lee Simmons Collection, were both based on interviews with Earp. The problem with these stories is that they have Earp killing Ringo on the way out of Arizona, when, in fact, Ringo’s death came months later. Curiously, Earp made no such claim to Stuart N. Lake for his biography, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931).

  The first published account to say that Earp claimed to have killed Ringo appeared in Frank C. Lockwood, Pioneer Days in Arizona (New York: Macmillan, 1932), 283–285. The story was revived in 1964, in an article by Bob Thomas for the Tucson (Arizona) Daily Star, January 26, 1964, based on interviews with John D. Gilchriese, whose Wyatt Earp collection included the Flood manuscript and other early materials about the Tombstone troubles. The new variation on the story was that Earp went back into Arizona from Colorado on a secret expedition to kill Ringo. This version took a giant leap with the publication of the now discredited book Glenn G. Boyer, I Married Wyatt Earp: The Recollections of Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1976), 108, followed by a series of Boyer articles culminating with his Who Killed John Ringo (Rodeo, NM: Historical Research Associates, 1997). Two Holliday biographies, Ben T. Traywick, John Henry (The Doc Holliday Story) (Tombstone, AZ: Red Marie’s Bookstore, 1996), 193–207, and Karen Holliday Tanner, Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 193–198, followed Boyer’s line. All these accounts have Doc with Earp but not as the shooter. Yet, almost inevitably, Doc becomes the shooter in some screeds on the topic and a part of the plotline in movie versions of the story, most notably Tombstone (1993).
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  8. The Gunnison (Colorado) Daily News-Democrat, June 18, 1882, was the first major post-Denver article, but it was followed by many others. For example, see Lake City (Colorado) Silver World, July 15, 1882, and Pueblo (Colorado) Chieftain, November 26, 1882.

  9. Don L. Griswold and Jean Harvey Griswold, History of Leadville and Lake County, Colorado: From Mountain Solitude to Metropolis, 2 vols. (Denver: Colorado State Historical Society and University Press of Colorado, 1996), is a meticulous account of early Leadville based on newspaper and other primary materials, some of which are no longer available, especially news accounts from the Leadville (Colorado) Chronicle, which are available nowhere else.

  10. For a full description of life in Leadville in 1882, see Griswold and Griswold, History of Leadville, 1:933–1087.

  11. Lewis Cass Carpenter, Tourist’s Guide to Leadville and the Carbonate Fields (Denver: Denver Daily Tribune, 1879), quoted without page citation in Patricia Jahns, The Frontier World of Doc Holliday (New York: Hastings House, 1957): 261.

  12. Sheila M. Rothman, Shadow of Death: Tuberculosis and the Social Experience of Illness in American History (New York: Basic, 1994), 179–180; Thomas Dormandy, The White Death: A History of Tuberculosis (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 129–137. Another important source for understanding the situation in the 1880s is Phyllis Allen Richmond, “American Attitudes towards the Germ Theory of Disease,” Journal of the History of Medicine and the Allied Sciences 9 (October 1954): 428–454. Koch would receive the Nobel Prize for his discovery in 1905.

  13. Rothman, Shadow of Death, 179–225, discusses the shifts in attitudes toward those with consumption during the last years of the nineteenth century.

  14. Some confusion has existed about where Holliday lived in 1882. With the help of Roger Jay, Karen Holliday Tanner, and Mary McVicar in analyzing the city directories of the time, this seems to be the correct arrangement. Especially important was Roger Jay to Gary L. Roberts, January 30, 2002.

  15. Roger Jay, “Spitting Lead in Leadville: Holliday’s Last Stand,” Wild West (December 2003): 38–45, 74; Gary L. Roberts, “The Leadville Years,” True West 48 (November–December 2001): 66–71; Jahns, Frontier World, 261–264; and Tanner, Family Portrait, 201–203, combine to give a good feel for the environment in which Doc found himself.

  16. Leadville (Colorado) Daily Herald, May 30, 1882.

  17. Roger Jay, “The Lake County Independent Club, 1882,” Western Outlaw-Lawman History Association Journal 11 (Winter 2003): 25–26.

  18. Robert F. Palmquist, “He Was about Half Way Right: Territory v. Blount, 1881,” Journal of Arizona History 40 (Winter 1999): 377–390; Peter Brand, “Wyatt Earp, Jack Johnson, and the Notorious Blount Brothers,” Quarterly of the National Association for Outlaw and Lawman History 27 (October–December 2003): 36–47; Jay, “Lake County Independent Club,” 28; and Valdosta (Georgia) Daily Times, February 11, 1888.

  19. Jay, “Lake County Independent Club,” 28. Jay has shared his research generously with Roberts and they both think it highly unlikely that Leadville’s Neill was Hoodoo Brown.

  20. Leadville Daily Herald, April 23, 1882.

  21. Ibid.; see also Jay, “Lake County Independent Club,” 28.

  22. Denver Daily Tribune, June 3, 1882.

  23. Holliday’s association with the Earps in Arizona made him a Republican in the public mind at least, and his association with Republican interests in Colorado make this transformation clear.

  24. Jay, “Lake County Independent Club,” 27–28.

  25. Ibid.

  26. Leadville Daily Herald, October 21, 1882.

  27. Griswold and Griswold, History of Leadville, 1:1056–1064.

  28. Pueblo Chieftain, November 22, 26, 1882; G. D. No. 1851, The People v. J. H. Holliday, Larceny, November 25, 1882, Pueblo County District Court Records, Pueblo, Colorado, vol. 6, p. 38.

  29. Leadville (Colorado) Evening Chronicle, December 6, 1882.

  30. Leadville Daily Herald, December 23, 1882, reported that “G. H. Holliday” was fined $32 for drunkenness and carrying a concealed weapon. This was apparently Doc. Griswold and Griswold, History of Leadville, 1:1082.

  31. Leadville Evening Chronicle, January 15, 1883.

  32. G. D. No. 1851, The People v. J. H. Holliday, April 27, 1883, vol. 6, p. 141. Every indication is that this case was disposed of exactly as intended by its architects. Enough time was allowed to pass for it to slip from public consciousness.

  33. Denver Rocky Mountain News, October 23, 1898; John Myers Myers, Doc Holliday (Boston: Little, Brown, 1955), 241.

  34. Dodge City (Kansas) Ford County Globe, May 1, 1883; Dodge City (Kansas) Times, May 3, 1883. Nyle H. Miller and Joseph W. Snell, Why the West Was Wild: A Contemporary Look at the Antics of Some Highly Publicized Kansas Cowtown Personalities (Topeka: Kansas State Historical Society, 1963), 519–565, is the starting place for any study of what became known as the “Dodge City War.” It presents the most critical documents relating to what happened. Robert K. DeArment, Bat Masterson: The Man and the Legend (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1979), 252–266, is a useful secondary account. Casey Tefertiller, Wyatt Earp: The Man behind the Myth (New York: Wiley, 1997), 267–274, is also helpful. Roberts has also profited from discussions with William B. Shillingberg, a longtime student of Wyatt Earp’s life, to understand the politically charged environment of Dodge City at the time.

  35. These maneuverings are detailed from the contemporary press in Miller and Snell, Why the West Was Wild, 524–538.

  36. Silverton (Colorado) Democrat, May 19, 1883; La Plata (Colorado) Miner, May 26, June 23, 1883; Mark Dworkin to Gary L. Roberts, July 29, August 3, 2005.

  37. Kansas City (Missouri) Journal, May 15, 1883.

  38. Kansas City (Missouri) Evening Star, May 15, 1883.

  39. Kansas City Evening Star, May 16, 1883.

  40. San Francisco Examiner, August 16, 1896.

  41. Topeka (Kansas) Daily Commonwealth, June 2, 1883.

  42. Ford County Globe, June 5, 1883. The Globe claimed that Mike Sutton “started for his cyclone building on Gospel Ridge, where he remained until a truce was arranged.”

  43. Ibid.

  44. Kansas City Evening Star, June 7, 1883.

  45. Miller and Snell, Why the West Was Wild, 561–563, provides the sources that complete the story.

  46. William B. Shillingberg, “The John D. Gilchriese Collection: An Introduction,” in Wyatt Earp, Tombstone, and the West, part 1 (San Francisco: John’s Western Gallery, 2004), 9. Jack Burrows, who was present during the interview with Alice Earp Wells, related the same story to Gary L. Roberts, June 2, 2002. Burrows said that Alice was “infatuated with Doc” and described him as very affable and interested in her, in contrast to Wyatt, who was “very cold” and did not speak to her.

  47. Garden City (Kansas) Irrigator, June 10, 1883. This was the same day that Wyatt and Bat left Dodge.

  48. Reprinted in Ford County Globe, August 28, 1883.

  49. Leadville (Colorado) Carbonate Chronicle, July 7, 1883.

  50. From the Leadville Evening Chronicle, as reprinted in Griswold and Griswold, History of Leadville, 1:1216.

  51. Leadville Evening Chronicle, September 10, 1883.

  52. Leadville Evening Chronicle, September 11, 1881. Griswold and Griswold, History of Leadville, 1:1245–1246, provide further detail.

  53. Griswold and Griswold, History of Leadville, 1:1246.

  54. The incident at Hyman’s occurred in October, but it was reported in the Leadville Evening Chronicle, December 8, 1883, at the time of trial. The Garvin-Gallagher incident was reported in the Leadville Evening Chronicle, October 23, 25, 1883.

  55. Mattie entered the order October 1, 1883, took the habit February 4, 1884, and took first vows February 2, 1886. In 1886, she transferred from St. Vincent’s Convent in Savannah to a teaching position at Immaculate Conception Convent in Atlanta. This information comes from an old ledger provided by Sister Jude Walsh, the archivist for St. Vince
nt’s, and given to Roberts by Teresa Green, Eastover, South Carolina, March 26, April 23, 2003, and from records provided by Sister Mary Felicitus Powers, Sisters of Mercy Provincialate, Baltimore, Maryland, to Susan McKey Thomas, May 12, 1972. Also useful are Rita H. DeLorme, “Gunfighter ‘Doc’ Holliday, Sister M. Melanie Holliday, RSM: More Than a Pretty Love Story,” The Southern Cross 79 (December 9, 1999): 3.

  56. Phoenix Weekly Herald, November 15, 1883.

  57. Rothman, Shadow of Death, 16; Tanner, Family Portrait, 205–206; Rene J. Dubos, The White Plague: Tuberculosis, Man, and Society (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 63, says, “Accounts of the medical treatment of phthisis during the nineteenth century reveal that opiates were then used almost universally to quiet cough and diarrhea, and to ease mental anguish.”

  58. Leadville Daily Herald, January 18, 1884.

  59. Leadville Daily Herald, December 27, 1883; see also Jay, “Lake County Independent Club,” 26.