DOC DIES

11/8/1887 - One of the legendary figures of America's Wild West days cashes in his chips at the Hotel Glenwood in Glenwood Springs, Colorado ... gone to lung destroying tuberculosis at the age of only thirty-six is gunfighter John Henry "Doc" Holliday.

Doc

Born to Henry Burroughs Holliday and Alice Jane (McKey) Holliday (a family with English ancestry) in Griffin, Georgia on August 14, 1851, tragedy finds John at an early age ... his mother dies of tuberculosis in 1866, as does his adopted brother, Francisco.  Taken in stride with no other choice, Holliday receives a classical education at the Valdosta Institute in Valdosta, Georgia that includes studies in rhetoric, grammar, mathematics, history, and languages (Latin, French, and Ancient Greek), and then moves on to Philadelphia where he receives a Doctor of Dental Surgery degree from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery in 1872 at the age of twenty (but is not allowed to practice until his twenty-first birthday).  After graduation, Holliday relocates to St. Louis, where he works as a dental assistant to a dental school classmate, before returning to Georgia to open up his own practice in Atlanta (while living with his uncle and his uncle's family).  He is not there long however as a result of two defining events ... like his mother and adopted brother, he is diagnosed as having tuberculosis and given only a few months to live ... and when a group of African-American youths refuse to leave a popular "whites only" swimming hole on the Withlacoochee River, he engages in his first gun battle, killing one of the black youths.

Holliday At 20

Atlanta In The 1860s

A dry climate recommended if Holliday wishes to live more than a few months (and no lawmen looking to make an arrest), the dentist moves to Dallas, Texas and partners with a friend of his father's, Dr. John A. Seegar ... and good at his business, the pair win awards for their dental skills at the region's annual county fair ... best set of gold teeth, best in vulcanized rubber, and best set of artificial teeth ... but it doesn't last because of all the coughing Holliday does, and before long he tries to cram as much life into the time he has left by drinking and gambling ... and drawing a revolver or knife when attacked or insulted, as saloon keeper, Charles Austin, discovers when he and Holliday exchange gunfire with each other in January of 1875.  Then its on to a higher, drier elevation as Doc moves to Denver and becomes a faro dealer at John A. Babb's Theatre Comique on Blake Street ... a position that abruptly ends when he seriously wounds a gambler named Bud Ryan in a knife fight.  Restlessly moving about, Holliday spends time in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Deadwood, South Dakota, Cheyenne again, Denver again, and then lands in the mining town of Breckenridge, Colorado ... at least he's there until an altercation with a gambler named Henry Kahn leads to Holliday beating the man with his walking stick, which causes Kahn to shoot Doc later in the day after both men have been arrested and paid a fine not to spend the night in jail.  Once mended (his cousin, George Henry Holliday moves to Colorado to nurse him back to a modicum of health), Doc sets up in Fort Griffin, Texas, where while dealing cards at John Shansey's saloon, he meets the dance hall girl and sometime prostitute to whom he will forever be linked, Mary Katherine "Big Nose Kate" Harony.  And it is there too that Doc meets the man he will always be associated with for the first time, Deputy U.S. Marshal Wyatt Earp (Doc provides Earp with information on the movements of outlaw Dave Rudabaugh, a man Holliday has spent time playing poker with only days before).

Big Nose Kate

Rudabaugh

In 1878, both men are in Dodge City when their friendship is solidified forever by Holliday coming to an unarmed Earp's rescue when over two dozen cowboys have the lawman in their sights when he attempts to stop them from shooting up the Long Branch Saloon ... Holliday's remedy, holding a cocked gun to the head of the cowboys' leader, Ed Morrison.

The Long Branch Saloon

Wyatt Earp - Late Thirties

Despite becoming friends with the lawman, Doc's temper is always ready to spark and he will shoot bartender Charles White (the man survives a bullet that creases his scalp), kills a soldier in Jacksonboro, South Carolina, tries to regain his health for a time in Las Vegas, New Mexico (the town has 22 hot springs), hires out as part of the team that Deputy U.S. Marshal Bat Masterson puts together in a clash between the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway and the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad over the right-of-way through Colorado's narrow Royal Gorge to reach the riches of the booming mining town of Leadville (and pockets a nice bit of the $10,000 Masterson is give for abandoning a strategic Santa Fe roundhouse), and tries owning a saloon in New Mexico until he argues with former U.S. Army scout named Mike Gordon over the employment of a saloon girl and shoots the man dead.

The Royal Gorge

Masterson

Trouble follows Doc south of course when he hooks up once more with the Earps in the Arizona Territory of the 1880s.  After a fight with Big Nose Kate, the drunken woman seeks vengeance by accusing Holliday of a recent stagecoach robbery that sees the shotgun guard and a passenger killed (the Earp Brothers will provide the evidence that gets Holliday freed), almost gets into a gunfight with Johnny Ringo (Holliday tells Ringo, "All I want of you is ten paces out in the street" ... but cooler heads break up the encounter before leather is slapped), and then he gets into a gunfight (drunk of course) with Tombstone saloon owner Milt Joyce in the man's drinking emporium over rumors about his participation in the robbery ... disarming Joyce by putting a bullet through his hand, and dropping Joyce's bartender with a round in the foot, before Joyce knocks him out with a revolver blow to Holliday's head).

Tombstone, Arizona - 1880s

Main Street

And then there of course is the legendary OK Corral gunfight that takes place in a vacant Tombstone lot 15 feet by 20 feet wide between Fly's Photograph Studio and the Harwood boarding house ... thirty seconds of flying bullets that results in three deaths and three woundings (Holliday takes a slight wound in his hip).  Siding naturally with his friends, the Earps, especially after an argument the evening before in which Doc and Ike Clanton threaten to kill each other, Holliday is credited with killing Tom McLaury with a shotgun blast into the cowboy-outlaw's chest, and doing the same for his victim's brother, Frank, by way of a pistol round into the man's skull (whether she was there or not still in question by historians, Big Nose Kate will state that after the fight Holliday returns to his room, sits on his bed, and weeps while repeating over and over, "That was awful ... awful.").

Doc

Gunfight

L To R - Tom McLaury, Frank McLaury, And Billy Clanton

In for a penny, in for a pound, when revenge shootings wound Virgil Earp and kill Morgan Earp, Holliday, deputized, participates with Wyatt Earp, Warren Earp, Sherman McMaster, "Texas Jack" Vermillion. and "Turkey Creek" Jack Johnson in what becomes known as the Earp Vendetta Ride that sees the payback killings of Frank Stillwell on the railroad tracks of Tucson, Florentino "Indian Charlie" Cruz at the wood camp of Pete Spence, and Earp's shotgunning of "Curly Bill" Brochius at Iron Springs in the Whetstone Mountains ... deaths that many in the territory want to have Holliday and Earp pay for with time behind bars or fatal neck stretchings. Fleeing to Colorado, Doc is arrested in Denver for the murder of Frank Stillwell, but is rescued from potential dire consequences when Wyatt Earp contacts Bat Masterson, then the Chief of Police in Trinidad, Colorado, for help.  Trumped up bunco charges by Masterson against Holliday result in Doc's extradition being halted and his transfer to Bat's custody taking place ... two weeks later Holliday is free, and able to live out his last days in the Centennial State (Earp will see his friend for the last time in the winter of 1886 in the lobby of the Windsor Hotel).

Texas Jack

The Vendetta Ride

Curly Bill

Up in the high country again, almost destitute, Holliday gets in his last gunfight in Leadville, Colorado in 1885 ... a dispute over the gunfighter not paying back a five dollar loan from bar tender Billy Allen that results in Allen getting shot in the arm when he comes to collect or fight (before he can get off a second shot he is disarmed by a bar man ... a good thing, Allen not killed, Holliday claims self-defense and is acquitted). Prematurely greying, coughing up blood, and falling apart rapidly, Doc makes his last stop in Glenwood Springs, Colorado in 1887, seeking a healing miracle from the town's hot springs and sulfurous fumes ... which don't work.  On 11/8/1887, always expecting to go out in a hail of lead, Doc lays bootless in bed, asks his nurse for a shot of whiskey, and when it is refused, stares at his bootless feet, mutters "This is funny," and passes away at 10:00 in the morning.

Glenwood Springs, Colorado

Glenwood Springs, Colorado

Wasting Away

Buried the same day (the exact location is now lost), Holliday resides in the town's Linwood Cemetary ... but lives on, linked to his good friend Wyatt Earp, in books, movies, songs ... and as of 2005, as a life-sized statue at the Historic Railroad Depot in Tucson, Arizona at the approximate site of the killing of Frank Stillwell.

Linwood Memorial

Statue

John Henry "Doc" Holliday

BLACK BART'S LAST ROBBERY

11/3/1883 - At the same site as his known first robbery, Funk Hill (to the southeast of the current Californian town of Cooperopolis), the criminal career of Charles Earl Bowles comes to an end with a final robbery that sends the man to San Quentin ... where he isn't known as Bowles, or his alias names of Charles Bolton and C.E. Bolton ... there, to authorities and cons, he is known as the infamous poet highwayman, Black Bart.

Black Bart

The third of ten children born to John and Maria Bowles (seven brothers and three sisters), Charles greets the world in 1829 in Norfolk, England.  He is only two, when his parents and family immigrate to Jefferson County, New York, where a farm has been purchased.  A young man in 1849, Charles and his brothers David and James catch gold fever and make the long journey out to California to become prospectors on the North Folk of the American River near Sacramento.  And like so many others, they find only grief ... giving up in 1852, but trying again in that same year with a trio of Bowles' comprised of Charles, David again, and on the second time, brother Robert ... and things go worse, with no gold found again, and brothers David and Robert dying shortly after their arrival.  By 1854, Charles is back east, putting down roots in Decatur, Illinois ... where the future outlaw marries Mary Elizabeth Johnson and the couple have four children.

Gold Rush Announcement

Prospecting

With the American Civil War raging, in 1862, Bowles enlists as a private in Company B of the 116th Illinois Regiment, a unit that will be part of the Union Army of the Tennessee.  He proves to be a good soldier, and within a year he has been promoted to first sergeant and will end the war as a first lieutenant ... seriously wounded in the stomach during the Vicksburg campaign, Bowles recovers from the wound and is back with the unit for the capture of Atlanta, Sherman's March to the Sea, and participates in the two-day parade through Washington D.C. of the victorious Union armies at the war's end.  Mustered out of the army, he returns to Illinois and his family, but with his gold fever really never abated, by 1867 he is in the West again, searching for a mother lode of riches in Idaho and Montana ... and thinking he has found it, he vows revenge when necessary water to the site is cutoff by a group of men associated with Wells Fargo that take over the mine when Bowles is chased from the site (documented in a letter he writes his wife, the last time she will hear from him until his arrest in 1883) ... and thus, he has his excuse for becoming a criminal.

Vicksburg - 1863

The Grand Review

On 7/26/1875, the Black Bart robberies begin when wearing a long, soiled duster over his clothing, a flour sack with cut-out holes for the eyes, and carrying a double-barrel 12 gauge shotgun, Bowles steps out from behind a rock and calls out to Wells Fargo stagecoach driver, John Shine, "Please throw down the box,"  and then yells, "If he dares shoot, give him a solid volley boys."  Looking around, Shine sees rifles pointed his way from behind boulders surrounding the area, and complies (they are actually sticks the outlaw has set up to dupe the stagecoach into easier submission than just his gun alone).  When one of the women travelers (women, children, and men ... there are ten people crammed in the stage when it makes its unscheduled stop) on the coach throws her purse out in a panic, Bowles returns it to her, stating, "Madam, I do not wish your money.  In that respect, I honor only the good office of Wells Fargo."  Strong box opened with a hatchet, the bandit makes a profit of $394 on his first caper, and the pattern is set for over a decade of stage coaches belonging to Wells Fargo being robbed ... all by a masked figure holding a shotgun (in none of the robberies that follow is the shotgun ever discharged, even when people are shooting at Bowles) that is well spoken, never robs the passengers of personal items and treats all females he encounters on jobs with great respect.

Black Bart In Action

Strong Box

From 1875 to November 3, 1883, Black Bart will rob 28 stage coaches in a variety of locations, taking thousands of dollars from Wells Fargo moving in northern California and Oregon ... the Sonora to Milton stage, the North San Juan to Marysville stage (another rifle stick robbery), the Point Arena to Duncan's Mill stage, the Quincy to Oroville stage, a Mendocino County stage, the Covelo to Ukiah stage, the La Porte to Oroville stage, the Roseburg to Redding stage, the Alturas to Redding stage, the Point Arena to Duncan's Mill stage again, the Weaverville to Redding stage, the Roseburg to Yreka stage, the same stage when it returns to Oregon for Yreka (a route traveled by President Rutherford B. Hayes and General Sherman only three days before), the Redding to Roseburg stage, the Roseburg to Yreka stage again, the Yreka to Redding stage, the Lakeview to Redding stage, a stage in Yuba County, the North San Juan to Smartsville stage, the Ukiah to Cloverdale stage, the Little Lake to Ukiah stage, the La Porte to Oroville stage again, the Yreka to Redding stage again, the Lakeport to Cloverdale stage, the Lakeport to Cloverdale stage again, and the Jackson to Ione stage. 

Typical Wells Fargo Stage

Little evidence is ever left behind ... escaping one of his jobs, Bowles stops at a farm for a meal and the teenager who serves him is later able to give authorities a description of a blue-eyed man in his 50s with a heavy white mustache, running from gunfire, his derby hat comes off his head, and twice, in 1877 and in 1878, he leaves behind poems in which he names himself Black Bart (from a name he enjoys in a favorite dime store novel published in the Sacramento Union called "The Case of Summerfield"):  1877 - "I've labored long and hard for bread, For honor and for riches, But on my corns too long you've tread, You fine-haired sons of bitches."  1878 - "Here I lay me down to sleep, To wait the coming morrow, Perhaps success, perhaps defeat, And everlasting sorrow, Let come what will, I'll try it on, My condition can't be worse; And if there's money in that box, 'Tis munny in my purse." 

Wanted Poster

Bowles

For twenty-seven robberies, Bowles is unsuspected, using the loot to invest in a number of businesses, wearing fancy clothes, and dining and staying at only the finest restaurants and hotels in Sacramento and San Francisco.  The authorities finally catch a break when Bowles decides to once more rob a stage as it slows going up Funk Hill, the site of his very first robbery.  Stopping the stage near the crest of the hill on 11/3/1883, Bowles is unaware that the driver, Reason McConnell, has picked up 19-year-old Jimmy Rolleri after using the Reynolds Ferry (Rolleri's father runs the ferry) ... and Rolleri is carrying a hunting rifle and ammunition.  Deciding to do some hunting on the fringes of the hill and meet the stage when it comes down the other side, Rolleri is surprised when the stage doesn't appear, and begins climbing the hill.  Just below the crest Rolleri discovers McConnell and the horses from the stage, where the driver tells Rolleri that Black Bart is back in action.  Moving over the summit, they see Bowles stepping from the coach, where he has been tolling to remove the strong box bolted to the floor of the stage ... instantly, McConnell grabs the rifle from Rolleri and begins firing ... but when both shots miss, Rolleri takes his weapon back and sends two more shots Black Bart's way as he vanishes into a nearby thicket.  Shot in the hand by Rolleri, Bowles drops a packet of mail, runs for a quarter of a mile, then stops, wraps a handkerchief around his wounded hand, stuffs a sack of gold found in the box in a rotten log (while keeping $500 in gold coins), hides his shotgun in hollow tree and flees, leaving behind a pair of eyeglasses, some food, and a handkerchief bearing the laundry mark, F.X.O.7 ... a marking that proves to be Bowles' undoing.

Funk Hill Robbery Site

McConnell

Rolleri

Recognizing the significance of the clue left behind, Wells Fargo Detective James B. Hume and Sheriff Henry Morse of Alameda County track the laundry mark to San Francisco and begin checking cleaning establishments for a match.  Bingo after a week of searching ... on the 90th laundry visited, the Ferguson & Bigg's California Laundry, they find the mark they are looking for, and the owner of the shop identifies the person to which the handkerchief belongs to as being mining engineer C.E. Bolton (a Bowles alias), who lives in a nearby boarding house.  Suspect identified, the men go to the boarding house and discover Bolton matches the description of the robber and has a wounded hand.  Pretending to be interested in Bolton's mining experiences, the men walk Bowles to the nearby Wells Fargo office for a conversation about areas in northern California that look good for prospecting gold, and then once inside, confront Bowles about the robbery and have him arrested.  

Hume

Bowles

Culprit caught (at first, Bowles will claim he is actually someone named T. Z. Spaulding), because of a lack of evidence and the years that have passed, Wells Fargo decides to just prosecute Bowles on the most recent of his robberies.  Found guilty, Bowles is sentenced to six years behind bars ... but because of his good behavior while at San Quentin prison, only serves four and is released in January of 1888, visibly aged, his eyesight beginning to fail and deaf in one ear. Interviewed by reporters upon his release, Bowles states, "I'm through with crime."  And perhaps he was, but no one will ever know for sure because the next month, Bowles leaves the Nevada House he has been staying in, goes to Visalia, checks into the Visalia House hotel, and then vanishes (New York City, Montana, and Nevada are all said by way of never proved rumors to be his final resting place) ... though he has been secretly tailed from San Quentin to Visalia by Wells Fargo detectives, leaving behind, the legend of Black Bart.

San Quentin - 1870s

Black Bart & Bowles - True West Magazine