Transcript of Spicer Hearing and a Tip from Hemingway

Researching a Legend.
Part 11

During my stay in Georgia the romance questions about young John Henry Holliday and his cousin Mattie were constant. And I suppose what kept the story alive was the differing opinions – was there a romance or not? Both sides were passionate in their beliefs either pro or con. Even a Catholic nun or two go into argument.

I was on the pro side and I made my case through the relationship between Margaret Mitchell and Mattie, Sister Mary Melanie once she took the vows. There was a close relationship between the writer and her cousin. Margaret paid weekly visits to Sister Melanie where they sometimes talked for hours sharing family stories. Now this could be coincidence but the name of Scarlett's first husband was Charles Hamilton, a name that was prominent on John Henry's graduation program as receiving an honorary degree. That as I said could be coincidence but Margaret Mitchell's story line in 'Gone With the Wind' Ellen O'Hara's early romantic tie to he cousin Philippe Robillard was not. And the fact that Ellen died with the the name Philippe on her lips were not lost on Mammy or this writer.
After Doc went west there were numerous letters written between Mattie and Doc Holliday that could play a part in my story.
In my first draft none of those things were prominent, but they should be.
I suppose I could talk about the romance angle in a prologue, but for now my mind was too clouded with the new facts I'd uncovered back east to do more than let it settle in. Taking a leaf from Hemingway's 'A Memorable Feast' regarding the subconscious and giving it time to work on the problem I decided to go to work on my other large question regarding what really happened after the shootout at the OK Corral?
The fact is Cochise County political ring and the cowboy's swore out a Warrant, in Ike Clanton's name, accusing the Earp's and Holliday for murder and hauled them into court.
Judge Wells Spicer called the hearing and it lasted 28 days. Now you'd think a 28 day court hearing would raise some interest and in some quarters it did, but it some how got lost on the biographers, historians and movie makers. Dozens of books and movies were done about Tombstone and the gunfight at the OK Corral, but little about the hearing.

As a storyteller I figured that a good courtroom battle would tell a lot more about Tombstone and its citizens in 1881 than the wild tales that had hardened into myth about what happened on the streets of Tombstone or who shot Johnny Ringo? It had to be factual though and it had to involve the attorneys, witnesses, defendants and the judge.
I read a book 'The OK Corral Inquest' edited by Alford E. Turner that told the story in a kind of oblique way. Not what I had in mind. 'Inquest' was based on court transcripts. The witnesses and Judge Spicer were prominent, but not the names of prosecution or defense attorneys .
The Tombstone newspapers, Epitaph and Nugget must have covered the trial, so I had to look around for copies published during that period. I had some copies of the Epitaph in my possession and I quickly realized that they didn't do much with the story. But what about the Nugget?
I recalled seeing a few copies of the Nugget at the Arizona Historical Society and gave them a call. Fortunately they had microfiche copies of about half of the Spicer Hearing. We made a deal and they sent me what they had.
I scanned a number of issues and I could immediately see that the Nugget did a great job in reporting on the business of silver mining in and around Tombstone. From what I could tell their reports on the industry were straight forward and objective. On the other hand there was no covering up the fact that the Nugget was in opposition to the Tombstone Safety Committee and law and order. They were a tool for the Cochise County ring and backed the cowboys.
It only took me a couple of days to realize that the Nugget had reported the the Spicer Hearings gavel to gavel. But did they report like they did the mining news or with a bias as was their custom in their general opinion and commentary on Tombstone life and politics.
That question had to be answered before I would take their court reporting seriously.
I started out by comparing the Nugget with what the Epitaph had to say in their sparse reporting. I next went to the Turner Inquest and compared line by line witness testimony. That was quite a long process. Then I took every mention of the Spicer Hearings from other sources and tested them against the court reporting in Inquest as well as the newspaper reports.
I finally concluded that the Nugget was reporting courtroom dialogue just as straight as they did the mining news.
Why they didn't appear to use their normal bias in favor of the cowboys, I didn't know. In any event I decided to work through the Spicer Hearings using the Nugget as my base, but to challenge every line.
Next I had to assemble the cast of characters for the courtroom drama. Judge Spicer and all the witnesses were in the court record along with the District Attorney Lyttleton Price and his chief assistant Earl Smith. Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp were there, Morgan and Virgil Earp were excluded because they were in bed recovering from wounds they received during the shootout.
Doc and Wyatt were at the defense table with their attorneys Tom Fitch and Judge T.J. Drum.
District Attorney Price was in the first chair at the prosecution table and to his right was his chief assistant Earl Smith next was Ike Clanton and his attorney Ben Goodrich sat at the end.
E.J. Risley was the court reporter and an unnamed bailiff was present.

From the first day of Judge Spicer's hearing to the last the gallery was filled with Tombstone partisans. They were in two groups split along political lines, which were articulated by the Tombstone Epitaph and Tombstone Nugget newspapers. And that split has remained over the years.
As a historical researcher and writer I recognized the task of getting the truth was going to be difficult. But I felt that if I could get a true transcript of what was actually said in that courtroom the drama would be real and not manufactured.
It was plain common sense and why some of the historians and movie makers hadn't tapped this wealth of material I don't know.
I am sure of one thing though, to have living witnesses tell what they saw on that day was crucial in getting at the facts of how it all happened that afternoon.
The news story went out by telegraph and for some reason captured the imagination of the public and still does.
Western fans from all over the world still flock to Tombstone – so why not let them know the truth about what actually happened?
(To be continued)

Writers Notebook:

A.E. Hotchner wrote in his book 'Papa Hemingway' that, ' During their general conversations apparently very few subjects were off limits. Most of Papa’s personal problems were discussed; he even talked about some of his writing techniques. Papa once said I discovered in writing The Sun Also Rises that it was easier to write in first person because you could involve the reader immediately. So I took that advantage with Farewell, but later in To Have and Have Not and For Whom the Bell Tolls, I used the third person; it's harder to write in third person but the advantage is that you move around better.'

There were actually two tips in this one. I was searching around for today's tip and found it in the flap of my large Writers Notebook. It was a rewrite page of my Papa Hemingway review. I went to my reviews to copy and paste the tip from the review. Well, it wasn't there. The hard copy I held in my hand was an early draft and the only way the tip survived. The final version in my computer files didn't have that portion of the review.
So you might give it some thought. Those scraps of paper you keep could make a difference.

Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.www.tombarnes39.com
www.RocktheTower.com
http://TheHurricaneHunter.blogspot.com

Doc Holliday and Ft. Griffin, Texas

Researching a Legend
Part 10

Atlanta West.
Research never ends, but for the most part the new material I had found in Georgia and Pennsylvania gave me a fresh approach to Holliday. There were still holes in the story, but at least I was beginning to see Doc Holliday as a real person, not the cardboard cutouts I had grown up with.

Now it was time to concentrate on the west, and following a short stay in Atlanta I got into my car and drove west on Interstate 20 to Dallas. I had no contacts in Dallas so I checked in at the central library. I explained my needs to a librarian and was dirrected to the rersearch department. To make a long story short I got very little information from the Dallas library.
Fortunately I already had material regarding Doc's dental work and his saloon and gambling life during his stay in Dallas.
The library people did show me a short newspaper article written on New Years day 1875 regarding shots being fired by a saloon owner named Austin and a man named Holliday. I had already heard the story but the newspaper did confirm the fact that there were no injuries during the incident.
From Dallas I drove west through Fort Worth and on to Albany, Texas, which is located in Shackelford County.
The towns of Ft. Griffin and Jacksboro where Doc Holliday had some of his gambling problems no longer exist. However, the Old Jail Art Center located in Albany had custody of the old county court records and Ms. Joan Farmer, Archivist gave me a hand with my research project.
From prior research I had a good idea about Doc's exploits in Shackelford County, but going over the court documents I corroborated and expanded my previous knowledge. Through various court documents and Warrents I found some of Doc's Ft. Griffin assosiates including the saloon owner and saloon girls.
One of the Warrents issued by the Shackelford County court is for Doc Holliday and Big Nose Kate, his accomplice in their escape from Ft. Griffin in which they were charged with arson. (Kate set fire to an out building as a distraction to facilitate their escape.)

Ms. Farmer also told me that many researchers that had gone through the files had stolen some of the old records. She said county clerks had been careless about people going through things without close supervision and that had resulted in the removable of many of the early records.
In my opinion that's the same as stealing art from a museum.

From Albany, Texas I drove west and made another stop at Tombstone. From talking to dozens of people in Tombstone I conclude that about half the town is holding onto the myth that the genuine heroes at the shootout at the OK Corral were the outlaws.
But for my part, I'm a writer and researcher still looking for the facts.

Next on my trip agenda was the public library in Tucson. Less than a hundred miles away from Tombstone I sensed a more open attitude and found them much more even handed when dealing with western history.

The Arizona Historical Society in Phoenix was very helpful and provided me with some good solid facts about the formation of Cochise County and Tombstone politics.
By the time I left Phoenix for Los Angeles I was ready for a good rest. Back in LA I planned to take a couple of weeks off and do nothing, but I didn't make it past the first week.
During the drive west my thoughts were always on my next objective, what I needed to accomplish at that particular place. However, once I got to Los Angeles and started to organize my research material the story line began to fall into place and it all started back east.
Three characters I found at the Griffin Court Annex popped into my conscious mind. Henry B. Holliday's purchase of those slaves back in 1857 came alive as Uncle Lew, Aunt Susie and her child H.C.
Those three characters alone changed my approach to the story from a nonfiction work to fiction. It would not be true fiction but it would be fact based fiction or as some call it creative nonfiction. As a storyteller I first wanted to tell a good story – as a historian I needed to stick to the facts. The trade off was simple, my characters, no matter what situation they find themselves in are always true to their own convictions honesty, loyalty and integrity. In other words all of their basic beliefs.

My story begins in 1864 when John Henry Holliday was 13 years old and at the time his family was moving from Griffin to South Georgia.

The first draft of my story went well and with every scene I wrote my characters became more real to me. The fact that I followed Doc Holliday from that early age I got to know him very well. The first draft was done and I had answered many of my original questions, howerver two very large ones remained unanswered. (To be continued)

Writers Notebook:

What I've said about character integrity is exactly what Sherwood Anderson said years ago about respecting the characters you write about.

'Consider for a moment the material of the prose writer, the teller of tales. His materials are human lives. To him these figures of his fancy, these people who live in his fancy should be as real as living people. He should be no more ready to sell them out than he would sell out his men friends or the woman he loves. To take the lives of these people and bend or twist them to suit the needs of some cleverly thought out plot to give your readers a false emotion is as mean and ignoble as it is to sell out living men or women. For the writer there is no escape, as there is no real escape for any craftsman. If you handle your material in a cheap way, you become cheap. The need of making a living may serve as an excuse but it will not save you as a craftsman. Nothing will save you if you go cheap with tools and materials. Do cheap work and you are yourself cheap. That is the truth.'
Sherwood Anderson

Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.www.tombarnes39.com
www.RocktheTower.com
http://TheHurricaneHunter.blogspot.com

Doc Holliday's Dental College

‘Doc Holliday’s gambling skills, six-gun and caustic wit created a western legend. But Sister Mary Melanie, Margaret Mitchell and ‘Gone With the Wind’ tell the rest of the story and give us the real Doc Holliday.’
'Doc Holliday's Road to Tombstone' goes behind the scenes, that western myth has established over the years, and tells the truth about Doc Holliday's life in the east and the west.
Researching a Legend Part 9
Continuing: The next memo was dated February 26, 1872. The board of trustees of The Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery met and endorsed the faculty’s nominations for graduation. And accompanying that memo was a modified hand written list of potential graduates. John H. Holliday…Georgia replaced J.H. Holliday.
Next was a printed list of graduates plus other information used to make up the graduation program. The head of that page simply stated:
Philadelphia Dental College.
Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery.
The 16th Annual Commencement of The Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery will be held at the Musical Fund Hall, Philadelphia, Friday evening, March 1, 1872
The Valedictory Address to be delivered by Professor James Tyson, M.D
The Number of matriculates for the session was 63.
Degrees of DDS was conferred on the following members of the graduating class by
Dr. W.W. Fouche:
Following that was a full list of the graduates. The only change to Doc’s description line on the printed edition was John H. Holliday…Georgia … then the addition of a title for his thesis, ‘Disease of the Teeth.’
There was one other page in the file and that was a replica of the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery graduation certificate presented to the graduates.
To say I was excited might be an understatement; I was giddy with excitement thinking about the past month of research. I had uncovered facts about Doc Holliday that had never been in print before. But as I sat musing about my good fortune in research I spotted a large framed plaque on the wall dedicated to Zane Grey. Grey was one of our most famous western writers. Zane Grey graduated from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery with the class of 1895.
I thanked Dr. Whittock for his help asked his direction to Bookbinders, one of the old Philadelphia restaurant’s that was open and serving food in the 1800’s. I had lunch there and enjoyed the food along with the ambiance.
I spent the afternoon at the Philadelphia Historical Society and early that evening took a cab to the airport and a Delta Airlines flight to Atlanta.
(To be continued)

Doc Holliday's Birthday August 14, 1851
The intrepid Bill Dunn has assembled his full collection of Doc Holliday's memorabilia in one place. A new museum will open in Griffin, GA on Doc's birthday:
209 N. 13th Street
Griffin, Georgia, 30223
Phone 770 229-2705
Bill Dunn a distant cousin of Doc Holliday, is the museum cureator and has a great passion for his work. Bill has assembled a wonderful collection of documents, artwork, books, photographs, which includes a photo of Doc's boyhood home. The collection includes a number of items of interest from the period.
IF you find yourself in Central Georgia stop by the museum, take a look at the past and have a chat with Bill Dunn about the legendary Doc Holliday. You'll be glad you did.

Writers Notebook:
How my Writers Notebook got started. For a number of years I saved file copies of famous writers interviews or writings regarding their approach to writing.
Eventually I put them all in a binder. I believe Gustave Flaubert of Madame Bovary fame was one of my first entries. I took it from an obscure book of letters he wrote to friends where he talks a lot about his writing and especially his approach to Bovary.
Hemingway’s ‘A Moveable Feast’ was another early entry. I made copies of pages 12 and 13 of that book. In those two pages Hemingway made several good points about his approach to writing.
To begin, he said, ‘Write the truest sentence you know and go from there.’ As to work in progress he said. ‘I always worked until I had something done and I stopped when I knew what would happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day.’ Then he said something that really got my attention. ‘I learned not to think about anything I was writing from the time I stopped writing until I started again the next day. That way my subconscious would be working on it while at the same time I’d be listening to other people and noticing everything.
Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter. Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.www.tombarnes39.com
www.RocktheTower.com
http://TheHurricaneHunter.blogspot.com

Western Myth and a Tip From Max Perkins

Researching a Legend Part 8

The Atlanta Historical Society had provided another piece to the Holliday puzzle, an important piece and yet I sensed that there was much more that I didn’t know, that no one knew or at least no one had published.
Too many western historians and writers had relied on myth – not well enough sourced to be called fact. Too many footnotes, taken as fact, could not stand the critical test when it came to providing multiple sources. I believe that the true Holliday legend was hidden beneath a veneer that Dime Store novels had drawn and Hollywood perpetuated.
Wallace Clayton, Tombstone Epitaph Publisher and editor said, ‘MOST Western history isn’t about history. It’s about reinforcing the myth.’
With that slogan in mind my next two stops were New York and Philadelphia. The New York public library was just to take a look at their western section and see if they had material that I wasn’t acquainted with.
Philadelphia would be more focused.
Our ‘Georgia’s Heritage’ consultant for the Holliday segment, Susan McKey Thomas had located Doc’s dental college records. The Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery no longer existed, but the academic records had been preserved and housed at the main library of the University of Pennsylvania.

I flew to New York and spent less than half a day looking at the New York Public Library’s western collection and didn’t find anything new.
I spent the balance of that day visiting with pals I’d made acting rounds with when I lived in Manhattan from the mid 50’s to the early 70’s.
The next morning I took a bus from the Westside Terminal to the Rail Road Station in Newark, New Jersey and boarded a train to Philadelphia.
I got off the train at the North Philadelphia Station and was directed to the University of Pennsylvania Campus located nearby.
I needed to find Dr. John Whittock, the library curator. I located the library and entered the front door, and then I walked through a foyer and observed a spacious room, which reminded me of the largest study hall I’d ever seen. Straight ahead of me I saw a white haired gentleman standing behind a lectern.
I approached the man and said, ‘I’m looking for Dr. John Whittock?’
He smiled. ‘You’ve found him. How can I help you?’
I introduced myself and said, ‘I’m doing some research on Doc Holliday and I’m under the impression that his dental college records are here.’
‘We do have the records and if you’ll give me a moment I get them for you.’
‘Thank you, Dr. Whittock.’ I don’t believe it took more than two or three minutes for Dr. Whittock to return with a folder, which he handed to me. Then he pointed and said, ‘Why don’t you have a seat over there and go through the material. When you’re finished let me know and we’ll copy the pages you’re interested in.’
I thanked him and walked to the table. The first page that interested me was headed: ‘At a special meeting of the faculty held on February 25, 1872 – all members present…’
Candidates for graduation had been picked and nominated by the faculty for graduation. During that meeting they finalized a list, which contained 26 names that qualified through their work for graduation that year. I looked down the handwritten list, and when I got to number 10 there was the name J.H. Holliday.
(To be continued)

The Goring Collection
Prologue Final Part 7

During the long bus ride he was haunted by one decision that he made, that of leaving Luke, his CIA contact, out of the process. They had established a good working relationship over the years and Jacob was sure that Luke would have provided him with a safe house, but even with his best intentions the case would eventually be taken out of the agents hands and wind up on some bureaucrats’ desk at Langley. He did not trust bureaucrats or their decision-making process. So instead of taking that chance, Jacob decided to call Tom Brannan an ex CIA connection he had maintained for more than a decade. They first met when Tom Brannan picked him at the Reno, Nevada airport and flew him to a clandestine meeting in Northern Idaho, a hunting lodge, near the Canadian border. And from that first mission a cordial and trusting relationship had developed between the two men.
Jacob stepped off the bus in Oklahoma City, and immediately called the ex CIA man in Wichita and set up a meeting for the following day. Jacob got a warm and sympathetic reception from Tom Brannan. Their talks and planning sessions leading to Jacob’s new identity, which included a social security card reflecting his original name, lasted for more than two weeks.
It was August of 1974 and the weather was hot in Wichita, but not nearly so hot as it was in Washington, D.C. Richard M. Nixon had just resigned the presidency and the picture on Tom Brannan’s television was of the ex president waving to the press as he boarded a helicopter on the South Lawn of the White House. The picture of Nixon with his arms up in a V seemed to freeze in place as Tom hit the TV off button and turned to
Jacob. “Well, they finally got him, the lefties. Maybe he should have burned those damned tapes.”
“Maybe,” Jacob said, “but if you ask me, Nixon got too wrapped up in his own importance, got a bit too arrogant.”
“I won’t disagree with that,” Tom Brannan said. “Now, Jacob let’s get back to your problem. That resume we made up might get you a teaching job and possibly a place on the lecture circuit, however I suspect that much travel might give you a little too much exposure.”
Jacob grinned soberly. “That’s my thinking, Tom.”
Tom Brannan pursed his lips and said, “I have an idea. It just so happens that I know a group of patriotic activist in New York that is in the process of forming a political watchdog group. And I have a feeling, Jacob that you might fit very nicely into their program.”

Writers Notebook:
Maxwell Perkins was the best-known book editor of his time. Perkins worked for Scribner and some of his clients included Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolf. Perkins corresponded frequently with his writer clients and shared many of his thoughts about writing. I found this gem of a writing tip in one of those letters to a lesser know client. ‘What really makes writing is done in the head, where impressions are stored up, and it is done with the eye and the ear. The agony comes later, when it has to be done with the hand, and that part of it can gain greatly from seeing how others do it, by reading.’
Note: I suspect that if pinned down Max would have said …’from seeing how others (great writers) do it, by reading.’

Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
www.RocktheTower.com
http://TheHurricaneHunter.blogspot.com