Big Nose Kate

Mary Katharine Horony (November 7 1850–November 2 1940), better known as "Big Nose Kate", and also known by aliases Kate Fisher, Kate Elder, and Mary Katherine Cummings was the long-time companion/common law wife of gunfighter Doc Holliday in the American Old West. Although no proof exists, many historians and biographers continually label Kate as a prostitute.

Early life

Coming to the United States

Kate Horony (seated at left) and younger sister in about 1867, at the time they were orphaned. Kate is about 17 years old.

Mary Katherine was born November 7, 1850, in Pest, Hungary. The eldest daughter of a wealthy physician named Dr. Michael Horony, she and her siblings were educated as aristocrat's children. Each of Doctor Horony's children were literate, and Mary Katherine spoke several languages. In 1860, Dr. Horony, his second wife Katharina, and his children left Hungary for the United States, ultimately reaching New York on board the ship Bremen in September 1860. Although no conclusive evidence or records exist, Dr. Horony was to accept a position as personal physician to Austrian born Maximilian I of Mexico. Many authors have stated that Horony left Mexico in 1863 with his family long before the crumble of Maximilian's rule. The family settled in a predominantly Hungarian area of Davenport, Iowa. Horony and his wife both died in 1865 within a month of one another. Mary Katherine and her younger siblings were placed in the home of her brother in law, Gustav Susemihl, and in 1870, they were left in the care of attorney Otto Smith.

St. Louis

Unhappy with her fate, Kate ran away from her foster home and allegedly stowed away on a riverboat bound for St. Louis, Missouri. Repeated stories tell the tale of a young Kate that was discovered by the boat's captain and that he took pity on the stowaway, granting her his protection and passage.

While in St. Louis, Kate claimed to have married a dentist named Silas Melvin and that the two had a son. Subsequently, both husband and son were said to have died of Yellow Fever. No record currently proves the marriage, birth of a child, or the deaths of either Melvin or the child. In fact, recent research using Ancestry.com proves that Silas Melvin is enumerated in a Saint Louis census. Kate's claims of Melvin's being a dentist are unfounded, since this enumeration states that Melvin was an employee of a St. Louis asylum. Since it is during the early 1870s that Kate met Doc Holliday, there is speculation that she may have confused the two and their occupations when recalling the facts later in her life.

Doc Holliday

By 1874, Kate had made her way to Dodge City, Kansas, where she was known as "Kate Elder." It is alleged that she and another woman were fined and working as "sporting women" in a sporting house run by Bessie Earp, wife of James Earp.

In 1876, Kate had moved to Fort Griffin, Texas. There she met Wyatt Earp and began her long-time involvement with Doc Holliday. Doc had once stated he considered Kate to be his intellectual equal.

Wyatt Earp, in the controversial Stuart Lake biography Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal tells a colorful tale of Kate helping Holliday escape lawmen in Fort Griffin, Texas, by setting fire to a shed, but there is no other historical evidence for this tale . Kate acknowledged the story but did not admit its truth.

Picking up her own account, Kate and Doc went to Trinidad, Colorado, and then to Las Vegas, New Mexico, where Holliday was briefly a keeper of the Center Street "gin mill." Doc and Kate met up again with Wyatt Earp and his brothers on their way to the Arizona Territory. Virgil Earp had already been in Prescott before Wyatt talked the families into moving to Tombstone. Holliday and Kate stayed behind in Prescott to advance Doc's gambling winnings at a card game called blackjack . They then arrived in Tombstone in the fall of 1880. Despite reports, there is no conclusive evidence which proves Kate owned and operated a bordello or "sporting house" in Tombstone. Kate was often confused with a bawdy sporting woman called Rowdy Kate.

Holliday, who like Earp was an opportunist, had been suspected in the robbery of a stagecoach running between Tombstone and Benson, Arizona, and the murder of stagecoach driver, Bud Philpot, which occurred near Tombstone on March 15, 1881. John Behan discovered that Doc and Kate had a drunken fight, and he offered Kate more alcohol in exchange for her testimony, implicating Doc. Holliday was arrested based on her testimony. But the next day, a sober Kate recanted her story, and Holliday was released from jail.

Kate traveled to Globe, Arizona, where she owned a small boarding house. She occasionally traveled to Tombstone to see Holliday until he left for Colorado in April 1882. In 1887, Kate traveled to Redrock,Colorado, which is close to Colorado Springs to visit with family. Although no proof exists, Kate may have ventured over to Glenwood Springs to be with Holliday as he was dying.

Later life

After Doc Holliday's death, Mary Katherine Horony married Irish blacksmith George Cummings in Aspen, Colorado, on March 2,1890. They moved to Bisbee, Arizona, where she briefly ran a bakery. After returning to Willcox, Arizona, in Cochise County, Cummings became an abusive alcoholic and they separated. In 1900, Mary Katherine moved to Cochise (which is now a ghost town) and worked for John and Lulu Rath, owners of the Cochise Hotel. Cummings committed suicide in Courtland, Arizona, in 1915.

In 1910, Mary Katherine is enumerated as having moved onto the Dos Cabezas, Arizona, homestead of miner John J. Howard. When Howard died in 1930, Mary Katherine was the executrix of his will. She contacted his only daughter who lived in Tempe, Arizona and settled the inheritance.

In 1931, now aged 80, Mary Katherine contacted her lifelong acquaintance, Arizona Governor George Hunt, and applied for admittance for the Arizona Pioneer Home in Prescott, Arizona. In the 1920s, the home was established by the state of Arizona for destitute and ailing miners and male pioneers of Arizona. It took Kate 6 months to be admitted, since the Pioneer Home had a requirement that a resident must be a U.S. citizen. According to the 1935 Bork interview, Kate was owed money by the Howard estate but the amount owed was not enough to buy firewood through the winter as Kate had complained in her letters to the Governor.

She was granted admittance as one of the first female residents of the home. She lived there and had become a very outspoken resident assisting other residents with living comforts. Kate wrote many letters to the Arizona state legislature, and when she was not satisfied she would contact the governor.

Kate died on November 2, 1940, five days short of her 90th birthday, of coronary artery disease. She is buried under the name of "Mary K. Cummings" below a modest marker in The Arizona Pioneer Home Cemetery, in Prescott, Arizona. [1]

Kate on the O.K. Corral

Near the end of her life, several reporters had tried to record Kate's story of her relationship with Doc Holliday and her time in Tombstone. However, she only allotted time to two authors: Anton Mazzonovich and Prescott historian, Dr. A.W. Bork.

In 1939 Kate wrote a letter to her niece, Lillian Raffert. In the letter, Kate revealed that she had stayed with Holliday at Fly's Boarding House. The room was along Fremont Street and the open alley way between the boarding house and the O.K. Corral

There is some historical evidence authenticating her claims of being in the vicinity of Tombstone with Holliday during the days leading up to the fight. Kate is precise regarding minor details and states that she was with Holliday in Tucson at a "feasto". There was a fiesta, which was the San Augustin Feast and Fair, in Levin Park on October 1881. On October 20, 1881, Morgan Earp rode to Tucson to alert Holliday of the impending trouble. According to Kate's recollections, Holliday asked her to remain in Tucson for her safety, but she refused, instead going with Holliday and Earp.

As part of Kate's 1940 recollection, on the day of the gunfight, a man entered Fly's Boarding House with a "bandaged head" and a rifle. He was looking for Holliday, who was still in bed after a night of gambling. Kate recalled that the man who was turned away by Mrs. Fly was later identified as Ike Clanton. Clanton's head had been bandaged after being buffaloed, or hit over the head with the butt of a pistol by city marshall Virgil Earp.

The Earps and Holliday walked down Fremont Street to confront the cowboys in the vacant lot west of Fly's Boarding House. Author Glenn Boyer disputes that Kate saw the gunfight through the window of the boarding house. She would have been able to see the fight only if she stuck her head out the front window of Fly's. It is more plausible that Kate had heard testimony from accurate accounts of the actual gunfight and than repeated them in her letter to her niece.

Kate claims after Doc Holliday returned to his room, he sat on the edge of his bed and wept from the shock of what had happened during the close range gunfight. "That was awful," Kate claims he said. "Just awful."

References

• Doc Holliday is a: A Family Patriot, Karen Holliday Tanner, University of Omaha Press, 1998 (ISBN 0-8061-3036-9). Contains a great deal of carefully researched material about Kate and Doc Holliday, avoiding mythology in favor of accounts with newspaper, legal, or other independent historical documentation.
• Wyatt Earp, Family Friends and Foes, Volume I, Who Was Big Nose Kate, Glenn G. Boyer, Arizona University Press, 1997 (ISBN 1-890670-06-5) Glenn Boyer is the only known author to have met with members of the Horony Family. Pictures from the family are included in the booklet as well as copies of her letter to family members and the Governor of Arizona.
• Arizona State Archives and Genealogy Division, Phoenix, Arizona
• Ace High Gunfighters & Company an Old West reenactment group in Mesa, Arizona ,

(AceHighGunfighters@COX.net)

• Old West Researcher, A. M. Brant
• Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend, Dr. Gary Roberts, John Wiley Publisher, 2006 (ISBN 0471262919)Contains quite a great deal about Kate and debunks many older claims about Kate.
• Scott County Recorder's Office (Holly), Davenport, Iowa
• Davenport City Library, Davenport, Iowa

External links

• Find a Grave Listed under "Mary Katherine Cummings". Use the "all graves link". Link includes map with directions of the Arizona Pioneer Home Cemetery, and a photo of her grave marker.