Doc Holliday
American gambler, gunfighter, and dentist
1851 CE to 1887 CE
John Henry "Doc" Holliday (August 14, 1851 – November 8, 1887) is an American gambler, gunfighter, and dentist.
A close friend and associate of lawman Wyatt Earp, Holliday is best known for his role in the events leading up to and following the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
He develops a reputation as having killed more than a dozen men in various altercations, but modern researchers have concluded that, contrary to popular myth-making, Holliday had killed only one to three men.
Holliday's colorful life and character will be depicted in many books and portrayed by well-known actors in numerous movies and television series.
At age twenty-one, Holliday earns a degree in dentistry from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery.
He sets up practice in Atlanta, Georgia, but he is soon diagnosed with tuberculosis, the same disease that had claimed his mother when he was fiften, having acquired it while tending to her needs while she was still in the contagious phase of the illness.
Hoping the climate in the American Southwest will ease his symptoms, he moves to this region and becomes a gambler, a reputable profession in Arizona in this time.
Over the next few years, he reportedly has several confrontations.
He saves Wyatt Earp, a famous lawman and gambler, while in Texas.
Afterwards they become friends
In 1879, he joins Earp in Las Vegas, New Mexico, then rides with him to Prescott, Arizona then to Tombstone.
In Tombstone, local members of the outlaw Cochise County Cowboys repeatedly threaten him and spread rumors that he had robbed a stage.
On October 26, 1881, Holliday is deputized by Tombstone city marshal Virgil Earp.
The lawmen attempt to disarm five members of the Cowboys near the O.K. Corral on the west side of town, which results in the thirty-second shootout.
Following the Tombstone shootout, Virgil Earp is maimed by hidden assailants while Morgan Earp is murdered.
Unable to obtain justice in the courts, Wyatt Earp takes matters into his own hands.
As the recently appointed deputy U.S. marshal, Earp formally deputizes Holliday, among others.
As a federal posse, they pursue the outlaw Cowboys they believe are responsible.
They find Frank Stilwell lying in wait as Virgil boards a train for California and kill him.
The local sheriff issues a warrant for the arrest of five members of the federal posse, including Holliday.
The federal posse kills three other Cowboys during late March and early April 1882, before they ride to the New Mexico Territory.
Wyatt Earp learns of an extradition request for Holliday and arranges for Colorado Governor Frederick Walker Pitkin to deny Holliday's extradition.
Holliday spends the few remaining years of his life in Colorado, and dies of tuberculosis in his bed at the Hotel Glenwood at age thirty-six.
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The Far West
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Tombstone, near the Mexican border, had been formally founded in March 1879 with a population of just one hundred, but had grown extremely rapidly after silver was discovered in the area.
Three of the Earp brothers—James, Virgil, and Wyatt—had arrived, along with their wives, on December 1, 1879, when the small town was mostly composed of tents as living quarters, a few saloons and other buildings, and the mines.
Virgil Earp had been given the job of Deputy U.S. Marshal for the region around Tombstone only days before his arrival.
In June 1881, he had become Tombstone's town marshal (or police chief).
In late 1881, Tombstone has more than seven thousand citizens, excluding all Chinese, Mexicans, women and children residents.
The largest boomtown in the America southwest, the silver industry and attendant wealth have attracted many professionals and merchants who have brought their wives and families; with them have come churches and ministers, bringing a Victorian sensibility; they become the town's elite.
By 1881 there are fancy restaurants, a bowling alley, four churches, an ice house, a school, an opera house, two banks, three newspapers, and an ice cream parlor, alongside one hundred and ten saloons, fourteen gambling halls and numerous brothels, all situated among a number of dirty, hardscrabble mines.
In the summer of 1880, brothers Morgan and Warren Earp had also moved to Tombstone.
Wyatt had arrived hoping to have left "lawing" behind and had brought a stagecoach, only to find the business was already very competitive.
The Earps then invested in several mining claims and water rights.
The Earps, who are Republicans and Northerners, have come into conflict with Frank and Tom McLaury and Billy and Ike Clanton, Johnny Ringo, Curly Bill Brocius, and others.
Ike is prone to drinking heavily and has threatened the Earps numerous times.
They are part of a group of loosely organized smugglers and horse-thieves or "Cowboys", outlaws who had been implicated in various crimes.
At this time during the 1880s in Cochise County, it is an insult to call a legitimate cattleman a "Cowboy."
Legal cowmen are generally called herders or ranchers.
The Cowboys are a loosely organized band of friends and acquaintances who team up for various crimes and come to each other's aid.
Virgil Earp thinks that some of the Cowboys had met at Charleston, Arizona, and taken "an oath over blood drawn from the arm of Johnny Ringo, the leader, that they would kill us.'
The Cowboys are Southerners, especially from Texas, Confederate sympathizers, and largely Democrats.
Though not universally liked by the townspeople, the Earps tend to protect the interests of the town's business owners and residents, although Wyatt had helped keep a Cowboy from being lynched after he had accidentally killed Tombstone Marshal Fred White.
Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan is generally a friend to the interests of the rural ranchers and Cowboys.
Horse rustlers and bandits from the countryside come to Tombstone and shootings are frequent.
Illegal smuggling and theft of cattle, alcohol, and tobacco across the Mexico-United States border, about thirty miles (forty-eight kilometers) from Tombstone, are common in the 1880s.
The Mexican government taxes these items heavily and smugglers earn a handsome profit by stealing these products in Mexico and smuggling them across the border.
In this border area, there is only one passable route between Arizona and Mexico, a passage known as Guadalupe Canyon.
Fifteen Mexicans carrying gold, coins and bullion to make their purchases had been ambushed and killed in Skeleton Canyon in August 1881.
The next month, Mexican Commandant Felipe Neri had dispatched troops to the border and they in turn had killed five Cowboys, including "Old Man" Clanton, in Guadalupe Canyon.
The Earps know that the McLaurys and Clantons were reputed to be mixed up in the robbery and murder in Skeleton Canyon.
The Tombstone's city council, to reduce crime in Tombstone, had passed an ordinance on April 19, 1881, prohibiting anyone from carrying a deadly weapon.
Anyone entering town is required to deposit their weapons at a livery or saloon soon after entering town.
The ordinance leads directly to the confrontation that results in the shootout at the O.K. Corral.