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Doc Holliday (Part 1)

© Elizabeth Gibson

It is not known exactly when John Henry "Doc" Holliday was born. The Presbyterian Church at Griffin, Georgia shows his baptism as March 21, 1852. His parents were Henry B. and Alice Jane McKey Holliday. He had one sister, Martha Eleanor, who died when an infant. He didn't attend school, but instead got schooling at home with his mother's younger brothers and sisters that lived with the family. His father served in the 27th Georgia volunteers in the Civil War. He mustered out after several months due to llness. When he returned he was basically bankrupt. The family was forced to move to some other property he owned near Valdosta, Georgia. Here is where Doc got his first formal schooling at the age of ten. He was one of the few that got some schooling, as most of the kids had to work to help support the family.

Doc was devastated when his mother died in 1866. He didn't like it when his father remarried a year later, but there were lots of relatives around, and he became infatuated with a cousin named Mattie Holliday. His uncles frequently took him hunting, where he began his education in the use of a gun. Shooting contests were also very popular.

In 1870, he left home to attend dental school in Baltimore. The foot-powered pneumatic drill was just coming into use then, so he learned up-to-date techniques. Nitrous oxide was also coming into popular use having been discovered in 1844. He also learned to make false teeth out of a new hard rubber called Vulcanite. While not in school, he was exposed to the shady side of town where gambling games were popular. An unfortunate side affect of his stay in Baltimore was his exposure to tuberculosis, known at the time as consumption. The damp climate harbored it and many residents died of it. Doc had a mild case of it when he returned to Georgia. He hoped the return to the warm climate would make him feel better, but it didn't.

In 1872, He returned to Griffin where he apprenticed to a dentist as required to become a full-fledged dentist. He also married his cousin Mattie. He soon moved to Atlanta, hoping to feel better there, but it didn't do any good. He still felt exhausted all of the time. He was losing weight, constantly feverish, and always coughing.

He finally went to a doctor who told him if he stayed in Georgia he would only live six months, but if he moved to Texas he would have a year or two. Doc sold a piece of property left to him by his mother to finance his trip to Dallas. There he went into practice with another dentist named John Seegar. He began to spend a lot of time in saloons drinking his troubles away. His hopelessness about his disease was worse at night. He began to stay out with the honky-tonk girls and play faro. Soon he quit showing up for work at the dentist's office. On January 1, 1875, he got into a shootout at a Dallas saloon. Upon his arrest he was ordered to leave town. He was 23 years old and all of his friends called him Doc by that time.