John Henry Doc Holliday
For the dentist turned gunman from Georgia, from 1864 until his final days in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, in 1887, life was a struggle for survival. If his family wasn’t fleeing the abject destruction being wrought by Gen. William T. Sherman in Georgia during the dying days of the old Confederacy, John Henry himself, beginning in the early 1870s, was locked in a desperate struggle with the dreaded disease tuberculosis for which there was no cure.
In his early life, John Henry Holliday was schooled and trained for a professional career as a dentist and dental surgeon. He had dedicated himself to this objective and attended the best schools toward the achievement of that goal. However, upon the discovery of the fatal disease which had infected his lungs and body, his life was dramatically altered forever.
Though we do not know for certain the actual impetus for his immediate departure from Georgia, most historians have narrowed it down to either an effort at obtaining a better climate for the preservation of his health, or a combination of that objective coupled with a departure over a broken romance with a first cousin – Mattie Holliday.
For many years after his death, Holliday was a virtually forgotten man. Following his burial, any notoriety he had enjoyed disappeared with him beneath the dark Colorado soil of the Glenwood Springs town cemetery. Indeed, such was his total dismissal by the residents of that community that, to this very day, they have no idea of the actual location of his burial, and only marked a presumed spot of interment in recent years in order to take advantage of the burgeoning tourism value of his former association with the town.
It wasn’t until the 1950s and the advent of “television serials” that the former fame of many historic figures associated with early America began to dramatically re-emerge. With the additional release of major motion pictures in which the Earp family of frontier fame was prominently featured, interest was regenerated as well in the native son of Georgia.
On the pages of this book, much of the life of Holliday – including that portrayed in the fascinating period photographs of him, his family, and his famous contemporaries – is explored and documented for posterity. Many of the myths of his life and the mysteries secreted therein are examined – some for the first time – to reveal not only a clearer explanation of his life, but also possible circumstances hitherto unknown of this fascinating historic figure of the old West.
