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Doc Holliday’s Family Affair

“I was in love once. My first cousin. She was… We were both so…
She joined a convent over the affair.
She was all I ever wanted.”

Doc & Wyatt’s Last Game

Those are Doc Holliday’s words in his tragic but touching final scene from the film “Tombstone,” the cult classic that made Doc lovable and relatable again after a generation of his being cast as a movie villain. In Kevin Jarre’s brilliant version of the West’s most famous gunfight, gambling dentist Doc Holliday is lawman Wyatt Earp’s most loyal friend – and the heart of the whole story. Partly that comes from Jarre’s own script which gave Doc so many quotable lines. Partly that comes from actor Kurt Russell’s generous editing of the filming script that cut out many of Wyatt’s lines in favor of a focus on Doc. For as every follower of Westerns knows, if you have a sympathetic Doc Holliday, you have a hit movie.

But what about that iconic final scene, as Doc confesses his young love and then dies? Was that Jarre’s dramatic invention or Russell’s addition? Or was it based on something from Doc Holliday’s own life?

Ashley & Melanie: The fictional Doc & Mattie?

According to old Holliday family stories, the young romance between Doc and his first cousin really happened – and may have been one of the reasons he left Georgia. The girl was Martha Anne “Mattie” Holliday, daughter of Doc’s uncle Robert Kennedy Holliday. Doc (then just John Henry Holliday) grew up in the little city of Griffin, Georgia, while Mattie grew up in Jonesboro, thirty miles or so up the road. Although the families were a bit separated in those horse-and-buggy days, they gathered together whenever they could, often at the home of Doc’s medical doctor uncle, John Stiles Holliday, in nearby Fayetteville. Mattie was eighteen months older than John Henry, but the two were close as children and remained close – and reportedly even had a romance when they were teens. While we might not consider cousins as appropriate sweethearts, in 19th century America cousins did sometimes fall in love and marry. As Margaret Mitchell says in the classic novel of the Old South, Gone With the Wind: “The Wilkes and Hamiltons always marry their own cousins.” She was referring, of course, to Ashley Wilkes (Scarlett O’Hara’s crush) marrying his cousin, Melanie Hamilton.Continue reading

Doc
Holliday
Stories

The Face Behind The Fireplace

By Victoria

Willis Swint was six years-old when his family moved from their hometown of Milner, Georgia to Jonesboro in Clayton County, and into an antebellum cottage across from the tracks of the Macon & Western Railroad. That was in 1933, during the Great Depression, and hobos riding the rails often stopped at the house looking for a meal and maybe some work to pay for another day of hard living. But the old house was used to strangers coming by through the years, from Yankee soldiers during the Civil War to young recruits during two World Wars. Willis liked to think about all the old house had seen, as he spent his growing up years there, finally moving out when he married and started his own home.

Willis Swint

He was an older man himself when he moved back to the house on the railroad tracks, hoping to preserve the home and his family’s history. But it was another family’s surprising history that Willis discovered when he and his wife Beverly returned and began renovations on the 150 year-old property – the family of Western legend, Doc Holliday. In an old safe left in the house, they discovered a pile of deeds to the property reaching back to the 1860’s when the home was known as the “Holliday Office House.” The owner then was Captain Robert Kennedy Holliday, uncle of the famous Doc Holliday, and father of Doc’s rumored first love, Mattie Holliday. The home was Captain Holliday’s office, and a place that young Doc would have known and likely visited.Continue reading

Filed Under: Doc Holliday Stories Tagged With: doc holliday, holliday office house, Mary Anne Fitzgerald, mattie holliday

Doc
Holliday
Stories

An Irish Blessing

By Victoria

There’s a bit of Ireland running through the Southern Son saga, a little Claddaugh ring that Mattie Holliday inherits from her Grandmother Anne O’Carew Fitzgerald, and that she gives to John Henry as a symbol of their affection. It first appears in Book One, Southern Son, and comes back again and again through the three books and into the Postscript at the end. Can’t tell you how or why or where without ruining the story for you, but it’s more than a plot device: it’s a physical symbol of spiritual things and of the emotional story that winds through the adventure of Doc Holliday’s life. You’ll see it as part of the logo on the cover of all three books.

That little Claddaugh ring has become an important symbol in my writing life as well, as my husband gave me my own Irish ring after it first appeared in the book, and then my mother continued the tradition over the years by sending me gifts that featured the gold Irish ring. I have necklaces and earrings, a shiny door knocker, wall plaques and kitchen linens and birthday cards. The image of the Irish ring became an ongoing reminder that she believed in me and the story I had to tell.Continue reading

Filed Under: Doc Holliday Stories Tagged With: author inspiration, claddaugh ring, doc holliday, holliday dorsey fife house museum, irish ring, mattie holliday