Wednesday, August 29, 2001

Editor, I know just how you feel. It's embarrassing to have someone point out your mistakes in public, as Ms. Carolyn Cary did in her Aug. 22 article about the life of the legendary Doc Holliday. She says you added several sentences to another story of hers, erroneously identifying the famous dentist as a resident of Fayetteville. "Sorry, Mr. Editor," she said, "but I'm afraid it isn't so."

You must have been mortified. But imagine if she had used veiled accusation to suggest that almost everything you said was not only wrong, but dangerous to the children of Fayette County. You'd be more than mortified. You'd be hurt and indignant, as I am, for that is what Ms. Cary has done to me and the volunteers of the Holliday House Association in her vastly inaccurate and self-serving article.

In her posturing as the "Official Historian" of Fayette County, Ms. Cary has tried to impress us with her vast knowledge of our history. Unfortunately, her knowledge rarely comes from primary research (the province of true historians) but from the superficial reading of other's more scholarly work. Particularly in the realm of research into the family of Doc Holliday, she is nothing more than a compiler of gossip.

Her recent article was a case in point: almost every paragraph contained such glaring inaccuracies as to make the whole laughable. But the only laughter was coming from Ms. Cary as she pointedly, but without quite naming us, accused the members of the Holliday House Association (who gave tours at the Holliday-Dorsey-Fife House) and myself in particular of spreading lies and telling a "long string of stories" to the schoolchildren of Fayette County.

But it's Ms. Cary herself who is telling stories, as the following points show. The opening quotations come from Ms. Cary's article. The corrections come from documented history.

1. The Mexican orphan boy Francisco Hidalgo "was hidden in the cargo hold of the train as he was not exactly a United States citizen." There is no record of how Francisco Hidalgo arrived in the U.S., other than his coming with Henry Holliday.

2. Francisco died "... a few years later from respiratory problems received in the War." Again, no such record exists. While it is known that Francisco died of consumption, there is no history as to when and where he contracted the disease.

3. "It is felt that Martha [Holliday] was not happy with a lack of social status in her own county ..." Once again, no such record exists. Anecdotal only, though a nice little story.

4. R. K. Holliday "died ... of illnesses received in the war." Pure conjecture. There is no record of what caused the passing of Robert Kennedy Holliday, not even in the memoirs left by his oldest daughter, Martha Anne (Mattie) Holliday. She says only, "Everything gone but one house in Jonesboro, a large helpless family, health wrecked, it is no wonder this jovial and kind-hearted man was heartbroken. Seven years struggle with hardship and poverty [following the War], he died...."

She does not name the immediate cause of his death, though it may have been hastened by the weather that winter: cold and snow before Christmas and ice storms that took down the telegraph lines between Jonesboro and Atlanta. There was a rash of pneumonia deaths that December of 1872, and Robert Holliday may have been one of the victims, but there is no way to know.

5. Doc Holliday was "born with a cleft palate [and] saved by the efforts of his uncle, J.S. Holliday." Again, only anecdotal information, and no record to substantiate the story. What Ms. Cary is referencing here is a claim that the baby Doc was saved by a surgical closing of the palate by his uncle who was assisted by the famous Dr. Crawford Long (a cousin to Dr. Holliday's wife).

A search of the journals of Crawford Long, who supposedly administered the anesthetic in what would have been a landmark plastic surgery on the 8-week-old infant, reveals no mention of the case. Later Dr. Long wrote that, as a country doctor, he had actually had so little experience with ether (the supposed anesthetic) that he could not comment on its usefulness in surgery. Surely he might have mentioned helping to save the life of his infant relative in such a groundbreaking event. Modern plastic and oral surgeons agree that such a surgery would not only have been difficult but next to impossible in those days.

6. "Doc's mother died of tuberculosis." More conjecture. According to Alice Jane McKey Holliday's obituary in the Valdosta Watchman of September 1866, "She was confined to her bed for a number of years, and was indeed a great sufferer." There is no mention of the nature of her fatal illness. While it could have been tuberculosis (and that makes a nice story, allowing the disease to pass on to her son), it could have been any number of other illnesses as well.

7. Doc's own tuberculosis "led him west where he learned he could not make a living with his dental tools." Actually, Doc made a very nice living with his dental tools in towns all over the west. He owned or partnered in dental practices in Dallas and Dennison, Texas; Piedras Negras, Mexico; Dodge City, Kansas; and Otero and Las Vegas, New Mexico, among others.

8. "A maid ... taught him to play cards ..." This is purely anecdotal, a story coming from the former maid herself long after Holliday became famous. She could have been making it up, to add to her own status. We'll never know.

9. "While he was a deputy, he killed two men." Holliday was never a deputy, though he assisted the law at times. And if she's referring to the killings at the OK Corral, the jury is still out on who shot whom Western historians would love to hear that Carolyn Cary has solved this enduring mystery.

10. "Visitors have been shown an upstairs bedroom and told John Henry and his cousin, Melanie, played there and were sweet on each other." This implies a story coming from the guides at the Holliday House. Sorry, but we never told this story. We have no idea where or when John Henry played in the house, though he undoubtedly did. The story that he and his cousin were "sweet on each other" comes from Holliday and McKey family stories, and we were always careful to put it that way.

11. Ms. Cary makes a rather ugly accusation regarding the "Doc Holliday Dental Kit" which was displayed at the house, suggesting that it was a phony shown by a charlatan. While there is no paper trail proving the ownership of the kit (and we never claimed as much), examination by the renowned National Museum of Dentistry in Baltimore substantiates the authenticity of the kit as to date and manufacture. Holliday's own signature, carved into the tiny brass plate on the top of the kit, was the basis of its authentication as part of his own tools. The tool kit has been accepted by recognized Western historians as an important part of American history, along with many other Holliday artifacts. Fayetteville was very lucky to have it for a short period of time.

12. Ms. Cary is correct, however, in stating that Margaret Mitchell never stayed overnight at the Holliday House though she implies that we said otherwise. We did not, nor did we think that to be the case. The stories of Margaret Mitchell's visits there come from the Fife family, who claimed only that the famous author stopped by the house once or twice to look it over, saying that kin of hers (the Hollidays) had lived there and that the house looked much more like her imagined Tara than did the house used in the movie based on her book. The movie "Tara" was actually the David O. Selznick office building on the studio lot in Hollywood, augmented by scenes shot with set pieces. But stories do grow in the telling, though we never told it the way Ms. Cary claims.

Finally, Ms. Cary's reliance on the work of "collateral descendent" Karen Tanner as her source for most of this misinformation shows her own lack of knowledge about the Holliday family. Mrs. Tanner's book, while good reading, is based mostly on the "reminiscences" of a great-grandmother who never even knew Doc Holliday. Her stories are as unsubstantiated as the ones Ms. Cary accuses us of telling. Yet Ms. Cary preaches those stories as if they are historical gospel. They aren't.

Before penning another catalog of historical "facts" about Doc Holliday and his family, Ms. Cary needs to check her sources. It would be a shame if hundreds of Fayette County schoolchildren, as well as thousands of their newspaper-reading parents, believed her stories at face value. Most of them are wrong.

Victoria Wilcox

Founding Director

Holliday House Association

Holliday House Association Board of Directors

Karlan Coleman

Michele Cox

Eleanor Ebbert

Vel Dean Fincher

Linda Hurley

Elizabeth Dorsey Kissel

LaVanda Shellnut

Jeanne Brewer

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