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. Big Nose Kate was a prostitute in the American Old West. She was best known as the long-time companion of legendary and fabled Old West gunfighter, Doc Holliday.
Early life
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 of 1860. 1860 immigration schedule, Ancestry.com Although no conclusive evidence or records exist, Dr. Horony was to accept a position as personal physician to Austrian born, Maximilian I of Mexico. Horony left Mexico in 1863 with his family long before the crumble of Maximilian's rule. The family settled in a Hungarian area of Davenport, Iowa. Horony and his wife both died in 1866 within months of one another. Mary Katherine at 16, and her younger siblings were placed in foster home run by Otto Smith
Source: 1935 Bork interview, Arizona Historical Society, Boyer Collection, Tucson, AZ
Unhappy with her fate, "Kate", as her sisters called her, ran away from her foster home in 1867 and stowed away on a river steamboat bound for St. Louis, Missouri. The boat's Captain, Captain Fisher discovered the stowaway and took pity on her, granting her his protection and passage. At one point, Kate claimed to have married a dentist named Silas Melvin and bore him a son. No record cuurently proves either the marriage or birth of any child. Recent research using Ancestry.com proves that Silas Melvin is enumerated on a Saint Louis, MO census. Kate's claims of Melvin being a dentist are unfounded as this enumerted proves Melvin to be an employee St. Louis asylum. Since it is the early 1870's that Kate met with Doc Holliday, there is speculation that old may have been the reason she labeled Melvin as a dentist.
Source: Glenn Boyer
Kate and Holliday
By 1874, Kate had made her way to Dodge City, Kansas, where she was known as "Kate Elder". She was now working as a prostitute in a sporting house run by Bessie Earp, wife of James Earp, oldest brother of Virgil Earp, Wyatt Earp, Warren Earp and Morgan Earp.
In 1876, Kate had moved to Fort Griffin, Texas. There she met Wyatt Earp and his companion Mattie Blaylock and began her long-time involvement with Doc Holliday. Though we have no direct evidence, Doc and Kate got along so well as it seems likely that the educated Doc reminded Kate of her physician father more than the average man she met in the West. 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 getting Doc out of trouble in Ft.Griffin by setting a shed on fire and getting the drop on a lawman, but there is no other historial evidence for this tale (see Karen Holliday Tanner biography of Holliday, below). Kate herself slyly acknowledged the story, but had never openly vouched for it's truth.
Picking up her own account, Kate and Doc left for Trinidad, CO and than onto Las Vegas, NM where Doc briefly "hung a shingle" not for dental practice but as a keeper of the Center Street "gin mill". Doc and Kate met up again with Wyatt Earp and his brothers on their way to Arizona. Virgil Earp had already been in Prescott, AZ before Wyatt talked the families to moving to Tombstone, AZ. The group forged ahead and arrived in December of 1879. Doc and Kate stayed behind in Prescott, AZ to advance Doc's gambling winnings at a card game called Faro . They than arrived in Tombstone, AZ the Fall of 1880.
Source for above: 1935 Bork interview, Arizona Historical Society, Boyer Collection, Tucson, AZ
Despite reports, there is no conclusive evidence which proves Kate owned and operated a Bordello or "sporting house" in Tombsone. Kate was often confused with a bawdy sporting woman called Rowdy Kate.
Holliday, who like Earp was an opportunist, had been suspected inthe Robbery of a stagecoach running between Tombstone and Benson, Arizona and the murder of stagecoach driver, Bud Philpot which ocurred near Tombstone, on March 15, 1881. John Behan who had become an Earp and Holliday nemisis discovered Doc and Kate to have had a drunken fight and offered Kate more alcohol in exchange for her testimoney, 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, AZ where she owned a small boarding house. She traveled to Tombstone, AZ from Globe, AZ to see Holliday on and off until he left for Colorado in April of 1882. In 1887, Kate traveled to Redrock,Colorado which is close to Colorado Springs, CO to visit with family. Although no proof exists, Kate ventured over to Glenwood Springs, CO to see and is said to have been with Doc as he was dying.
Later life
After Doc's death, Kate traded her prostitue life for the straight and narrow. Mary Katherine Horony married Irish blacksmith, George Cummings in Aspen, Colorado on March 2,1890. They returned to Bisbee, Arizona to a warmer climate and she briefly ran a bakery in Bisbee. After returning to Willcox, Arizona in Cochise County, AZ]] Cummings became an abusive alcoholic and they separated. Their marriage lasted 10 years. The two seperated and in 1900, Mary Katherine moved to now historic Arizona Ghost town, Cochise, AZ and worked for John and Lulu Rath owners of the what is known to be the most Authentic Old West Hotel in America, The Cochise Hotel. Cummings committed suicide in another small mining town called Courtland, Arizona in 1915. Courtland, Arizona is now considered a Southwestern Arizona Ghost town much like Dos Cabezas and Cochise. Students of History where the Old West is concerned as well as those interested in the travels of the Earps and miners of Arizona frequent these small towns on foot or on horseback.
In 1910, Mary Katherine is enumerated as having moved onto the Dos Cabezas, AZ homestead of miner, John J. Howard. When Howard died in 1930, Mary Katherine was the executrix of his will and left the homestead with inheritance.
In 1931, with no where else to call home, Mary Katherine contacted her lifelong acquaintance, Arizona Governor George Hunt and applied for admittance for the Arizona Pioneer Home in Prescott, Arizona. In the 1920's the Home was established by the State of Arizona for destitute and ailing miners and male pioneers of the State of Arizona. It took Kate 6 (six) months to be admitted as the Pioneer Home also had the requirement that a resident must also be a US citizen. According to the 1935 Bork interview, Kate was owed money by the Howard estate. Kate spent time with her family while the home was "adjusting" records which if read by a novice of Kate's history would direct one to believe that Kate was a US Citizen having been born in Davenport, IA.
She was granted admittance and remarkably was 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 of the State. source: letters to A.N.Kelly, State Legislature
Kate was a larger-than-life character who lived long enough to see stories of her own life and death printed and discussed without their authors knowing her true identitiy. In real life, Kate left for parts uknown on November 2nd, 1940. She died at 8:35 PM in bed and had long survived her Doc. Unlike Earps and Holliday, Mary Katherine "Big Nose Kate" died of old age rather than senility or disease. She is buried under a modest white stone, in a lonely, unkempt and sloping Pioneer Home Cemetery in Prescott, Arizona.
May the harsh mountain winds blow gently there....Old West Author, Glenn Boyer
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 alotted time to two authors Anton Mazzonovich and Prescott historian, Dr. A.W. Bork. Other authors such as Joe Chisholm of Bisbee were unwilling to pay for it, and Kate was unwilling to give it away. Chisholm subsequently went on to write a very foul story of Kate being annally wounded and has Doc Holliday coming to her wounded rescue just outside of Bisbee. (Also Tucson Old west author, Glenn Boyer should be credited for his tireless work and research)
Some bits and pieces however, survive in a letter she wrote to her niece, Lillian Raffert in her 89th year. 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 John Montgomery's OK 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 in minor details and in an example, makes a point of the fact that she was actually with Holliday in Tucson, AZ at a "feasto". Modern day evidence of that time period leads the reader to verify Kate's memories since the "feasto' or "fiesta" survives to this day. We know this fiesta to be was the San Augustin Feast and Fair in Levin Park, Tucson, AZ. On October 20th, 1881, Morgan Earp rode to Tucson to alert Doc Holliday of the impending trouble. According to Kate's recollections, Doc asked Kate to remain in Tucson for her safety and she admanatly refused, returning to the town she hated so much to be with Doc.
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 (during which he'd had one argument with Ike Clanton which had been stopped by onlookers). The man who was turned away by Mrs. Fly, was later identified as Ike Clanton. Clanton's head had come to be bandaged after being buffaloed or hit over the head with the butt of a pistol by town Marshall, Virgil Earp.
Source: 1935 Bork interview, Arizona Historical Society, Boyer Collection, Tucson, AZ and Who is Big Nose Kate by Glenn Boyer.
In addition to subsequent testimony from many of Tombstone's residents, Kate claimed tensions had escalated between the Earps, Ike Clanton and what had beome known as the somewhat lawless "Cowboy Factions". This spurred Doc to put on his clothes and walk up Fremont Street to check in with his friends, the Earps. The Earps as the town law, had gathered at the corner of 4th Street and Allen, where they could keep an eye on the courtroom to the South, the O.K. Corral a block west, and the various "cowboys" who were believed to be coming and going from out of town. Eventually, the Earps and Holliday walked down Fremont Street to confront the cowboys in the vacant lot West of Fly's Boarding House. Where Kate and Doc were staying. Kate would have been able to see the fight, just feet away, from her window overlooking the vacant lot. Most of Kate's testimony was repeated during a hearing heard by Judge Wells Spicer after the Gunfight and is outlined in the book, Who is Big Nose Kate by Glenn Boyer. Referenced below
It is only from Kate that we know what happened after the fight. Kate claims Doc returned to to his room. Kate further claimed Doc sat on the edge of the bed and wept from the shock of what had happened during the close range gunfight. "That was awful," Kate claims he said. "Just awful. This fact is outlined in a 3/18/1940 letter written to Kate's niece. Lilly.
Source: 1935 Bork interview, Arizona Historical Society, Boyer Collection, Tucson, AZ and Who is Big Nose Kate by Glenn Boyer.
References
- Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait, Karen Holliday Tanner, Univsersity 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 havemet 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 Geneaology Division, Phoenix,Arizona
- Ace High Gunfighters & Company an Old West reenactment group in Mesa, Arizona , AceHighGunfighters@yahoo.com
- Hattie Catchim (Earp) Biographer, A.M.Brant, Wild West Magazine coming in 2008
External links
- [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=cummings&GSfn=mary&GSbyrel=all&GSdyrel=all&GSst=5&GSob=n&GRid=13410029& Fin
- [http://www.ghosttowns.com/ Link to Ghost Towns throughout the United States