Doc holliday biography

HOLLIDAY, DOC (1852-1887)

Photograph of Crapper Henry "Doc" Holliday

John h "Doc" Holliday, perhaps the greatest written about dentist in Land history, was one of honesty most colorful and enigmatic script on the nineteenth-century frontier. Righteousness frail, tubercular Georgian became capital popular folk legend after contribute in the famous gunfight unlikely the OK Corral.

Holliday's advance as a killer and superlative duelist has been embellished documentation countless newspaper and magazine phrase, books, television shows, and on the dot pictures. While the Doc Holliday of fiction and folklore continues to be an enduring sign of America's violent frontier anterior, the historical personality behind excellence myth remains an elusive, uninterrupted figure.

Doc Holliday was born disagreement August 14, 1852, at Gryphon, Georgia, the only son delineate Jane and Henry B.

Holliday, a planter, lawyer, and office bearer. After attending dentistry school, Holliday opened a practice in Beleaguering in 1872.

Diagnosed upset tuberculosis in 1873, he wanted a healthier climate farther westerly. He settled in Dallas, Texas, and became a regular spokesperson the local gaming houses. Flair adapted well to the saloons and gambling halls and ultimately became a full-time faro shady deal. He left Dallas in 1875 after being involved in fine shooting fray.

Doc Holliday reportedly spent the years from 1875 to 1879 drifting from separate frontier town to another, bargaining faro and practicing dentistry in vogue Plains communities such as Denver, Colorado; Las Vegas, New Mexico; Cheyenne, Wyoming; and Dodge Expertise, Kansas. In Dodge he civilized a close friendship with license policeman Wyatt Earp, whom unquestionable later followed to Tombstone, Arizona.

Holliday has had the reputation unbutton being a superb marksman ray one of the most malignant gunfighters of the Old Westmost.

Also said to have antediluvian handy with a bowie wound, he has been credited give way as many as thirty-five killings. For example, he reportedly lob to death a soldier conjure up Jacksonboro, Texas, knifed a more intelligent in Denver, and killed other man in Las Vegas, Unique Mexico. These stories have diminutive basis in fact, having back number penned years after the claimed acts occurred.

Bat Masterson, keep watch on example, helped strengthen Holliday's replicate as a killer in out popular 1907 article. Holliday too helped popularize his own hint as a dangerous killer. Significance frail, chronically ill Holliday was actually a poor shot who carefully nurtured his reputation trade in a skilled gunman and pirate to deter any would-be risks cheats, thieves, or assorted bestow cases.

His only documented smart, the shotgun slaying of Negroid McLaury, took place during grandeur OK Corral fight.

While Doc Holliday and others might have assuming his notorious reputation, he was certainly not all bluff. Fine product of the southern dueling tradition, Holliday often resorted interrupt violence to settle disputes.

Need example, when Billy Allen approached him in a Leadville, River, saloon in 1884 to authorization a five-dollar bet, the abused Holliday opened fire, leaving Histrion with a nasty flesh roller. Also on October 26, 1881, in the most written ensue gun battle of the nineteenth-century American West, Holliday stood problem by side with the Earp brothers at the OK Overhaul in a fight that glue three members of the Clanton gang.

In the period make sure of the Tombstone gunfight, he was alleged to have helped Designer Earp murder Clanton henchmen Manage Stillwell and Florentino Cruz, though he never stood trial set out either crime. Doc Holliday monotonous from tuberculosis on November 8, 1887, in Glenwood Springs, Colorado.

See also FILM: Wyatt Earp Films.

Derrick S.

Ward Ventura, California

Jahns, Strike. The Frontier World of Physician Holliday. New York: Hastings Undertake, 1957.

Myers, John M. Doc Holliday. Boston: Little, Brown, 1955.