Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait is well researched and written. Karen Holliday Tanner draws on family history, papers, albums and oral stories to augment hard research of libraries, museums, historical societies and personal collections. Through her exhaustive research, Ms. Tanner puts to rest some of the wild exaggerations of killings, life of a con man, and criminal schemes supposedly perpetrated by Doc during his life.
Young John Henry Holliday’s early days were spent in Griffin, Georgia with his father Henry Holliday and mother Alice.
Henry Holliday was a prominent Griffin citizen, first clerk of the court of Spalding County, and was involved in real estate and land speculation. The elder Holliday had a military background and had fought in the Mexican War. Early in the Civil War he served in the Confederate Army in Virginia. Following his military service Holliday purchased land in South Georgia and moved his family there.
Alice Holliday contracted tuberculosis and died in September of 1866. John Henry mourned the loss of his mother and felt that his father had betrayed her name when he married Rachel Martin less than three months after the death of mother Holliday. The marriage caused a schism between father and son that never quite healed.
John Henry was a bright student and eventually chose dentistry as a profession. He graduated from The Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery in 1872 and returned to Atlanta where he practiced dentistry until he contracted tuberculosis and traveled west in search of a dryer climate.
While in Dallas John Henry stayed with the dental profession, but added another to augment his income. He spent time at the gaming tables and eventually became a skilled Frontier Gambler. After several years in Dallas he joined the gambling circuit and traveled to Denison, Denver, Deadwood and points in between.
He became known as Doc Holliday and using his charm, wit and gambling skills Doc made a name for himself and collected an array of friends Kate Elder, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Luke Short and Eddie Foy just to name a few.
While in Dodge City Doc saved Wyatt Earp from an angry mob of drunken cowboys and Wyatt never forgot it. Doc and Wyatt were both well known in gambling circles, but the incident that turned them into legends was the shootout at the OK Corral.
Doc stood with Wyatt and his brothers on the side of law and order against Cochise County’s political ring. The Earps and Holliday won the gunfight, but ring outlaws caused a bloodbath that eventually, to get out of the line of fire, Doc and Wyatt moved to Colorado.
Wyatt dug for silver in the Gunnison and Doc played the tables at Leadville. But due to failing health Doc quit the games and retired to Glenwood Springs, Colorado where he died of tuberculosis on November 8, 1887.
A must read to get the full Holliday picture.
Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
www.RocktheTower.com
More reviews about the Doc Holliday: a Family Portriat