Doc Holliday Catholic Convert

There was something very peculiar about Doc. He was gentlemanly, a good dentist, a friendly man, and yet outside of us boys I don’t think he had a friend in the Territory. Tales were told that he had murdered men in different parts of the country; that he had robbed and committed all manner of crimes, and yet when persons were asked how they knew it, they could only admit that it was hearsay and that nothing of the kind could really be traced up to Doc’s account.

Virgil Earp, interview Arizona Daily Star, 1882

John Henry Holliday left a legend behind him that completely overshadowed the facts of his brief life of 36 years.  Born in 1851 in Griffin, Georgia, his father was a Mexican War veteran and during the Civil War would serve as a Major in the 27th Georgia.  His beloved mother died of tuberculosis when Holliday was 15, Holliday contracting the disease due to his care of his mother during her last illness.  Holliday received a good Classical education and in 1870 he enrolled in the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery, graduating in 1870 as a Doctor of Dentistry.  Diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1873, Holliday decided to move West to find a drier climate.  This also made sense from a professional standpoint as trained dentists were few and far between in the West.

In Dallas,Texas he joined a dental partnership and won an award for the quality of his dentistry.  He formed his own dental practice in 1874 in Dallas.  Unfortunately his coughing spells became worse as his tuberculosis progressed, a definite problem in a profession which required steady hands, and his dental practice slowly declined.  Card playing had been a hobby for him, but as his skills developed he began to gain most of his income as a gambler.

In 1875 he moved to Denver and under the alias of Tom Mackey and worked as a faro dealer.  The next two years Holliday led a vagabond life in Colorado, Wyoming and Kansas, paying his way on his gambler earnings.

In 1877 in Fort Griffin, Texas he first met Wyatt Earp, a Deputy US Marshal from Dodge City, Kansas, who was hot on the trail of bandits.  Holliday had played cards with the bandit leader and told Earp that he thought they were heading back to Kansas.  Forming a friendship with  Earp, Holliday moved to Dodge City in 1878.

Holliday fought a gunfight with bartender Charles White, which left White with a grazing wound in his scalp but otherwise unscathed, as was Holliday.  This was typical of most “gunfights” in the Old West which tended to involve verbal insults and posturing but not a lot of gun play.  If shooting did occur the level of marksmanship tended to be poor with few injuries, accurate pistol shooting at any distance being a hard skill to master.  Somehow Holliday gained a reputation as being good with both guns and cards.  While in Dodge City he joined a team formed by US Marshal Bat Masterson to prevent a range war between two rival railroads.  One of the railroads bribed Masterson with ten thousand dollars, Holliday shared in a portion of the bribe, an exploit the mythmakers for both Masterson and Holliday have passed over in silence.

Perhaps using a portion of his ill-gotten gains, Holliday built a saloon in Las Vegas in 1879.  In October 1879 Wyatt Earp stopped in Vegas and told Holliday he was going to settle in the boom town of Tombstone in the Arizona Territory.  Holliday decided to come along to Arizona.  He and his common law wife settled in Prescott and in September 1880 moved to Tombstone.  After a nasty fight with his common law wife, she implicated him in a stagecoach robbery, signing an affidavit to that effect.  Earp rounded up witnesses who attested that Holliday was elsewhere at the time.  His common law wife recanted her affidavit and the District Attorney dismissed all charges against Holliday, calling them ridiculous.

Holliday’s main claim to fame was his participation in the shootout at the OK corral.  The melee lasted 30 seconds and was fought not at the OK corral, but rather took place at a narrow lot adjacent to a photography studio.  (I guess that the shootout at the photography studio lacks resonance.)  This was a culmination of a bitter feud between the Earps, Virgil Earp being the town Marshal and, a loosely organized group of outlaws calling themselves the Cowboys.  Three cowboys died that day, one being accounted for by Holliday who was deputized.  The Earps were held by the local Sheriff, but released after a thirty day preliminary hearing, the court finding that Holliday and the Earps had been acting in their capacity as lawmen.

This is getting long for a blog post.  Suffice it to say that Holliday took part in the bloody vengeance ride of Wyatt Earp after Virgil Earp was maimed and Mogan Earp murdered.  Arizona becoming a tad bit too dangerous for him, Holliday relocated to Colorado.  As his tuberculosis progressed, Holliday self medicated with laudanum and alcohol, eventually losing his skill with cards as a result.   He lived in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, hoping that the hot springs there could help hi. Prematurely aged he died on November 8, 1887, amused by the fact that he was dying in his bare feet rather than in his boots as he always thought he died.

In spite of the life he lived, or perhaps because of it, Holliday had always had a religion.  Baptized Presbyterian, he had converted to Methodism.  Striking up a friendship with the local Catholic priest, Father E.T. Downey, Holliday was baptized into the Catholic Church as Holliday informed by letter his cousin Sister Mary Melanie, a Catholic nun.

So why did Doc Holliday became such a legend, endlessly portrayed in films?  Wyatt Earp.

Earp lived to be 80 dying in 1929.  He became involved in the infant film industry, often being called upon as an expert to lend greater realism to the countless Westerns being made.  He became friends with many current and future stars, probably not including John Wayne contra to a myth which has grown up, and directors, including John Ford.  Earp had a formidable presence, a man from another time who had lived the experience that the filmmakers and actors were trying to recreate, and he made an indelible impression on them.  Earp was also a fabulist, to be polite, and lovingly embroidered tales of derring do about himself and his friends, including Doc Holliday.  In 1946 in My Darling Clementine, John Ford made a fact free homage to Earp, with Victor Mature giving a haunting performance as the doomed Doc Holliday.

After the success of that film, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday became giants in American popular culture, their almost completely fictional exploits becoming ingrained in the American psyche:

Perhaps Doc Holliday finds this amusing in the world to come, or perhaps he is chagrined by it.  With his late in life conversion I think it likely that he knows a peace now that eluded him in this Vale of Tears.