Big Nose Kate

Mary Katherine Horony Cummings
Big Nose Kate at about age 40, photo about 1890
Born	November 7, 1850(1850-11-07) Pest, Hungary
Died	November 2, 1940(1940-11-02) (aged 89) Prescott, Arizona, United States
Occupation	Prostitute? Boarding house owner Baker
Spouse	Doc Holliday (common-law), George Cummings
Children	none

Mary Katherine Horony Cummings (November 7, 1850 – November 2, 1940), known as Big Nose Kate, was the Hungarian-born long-time companion and common-law wife of fabled gambler and gunfighter Doc Holliday in the American Old West.

Early life

Immigration to the United States of America

Kate Harony (seated at left) and younger sister named Wilhemina in about 1865, at the time they were orphaned. Kate is about 15-years-old.

Mary Katherine Horony was born on November 7, 1850, in Pest, Hungary, the second-oldest daughter of a Hungarian physician, Dr. Michael Horony. 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 Emperor, Maximilian I of Mexico. Many authors have stated, without proof, that Horony left Mexico in 1863 with his family long before the crumble of Maximilian's rule. The family settled in a predominantly German area of Davenport, Iowa, in 1862. Horony and his wife 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.^[1] The 1870 United States Census records for Davenport, Iowa, show Kate's younger sister, Wilhemina (Wilma), living with and working as a domestic for Austrian-born David Palter and his Hungarian wife Betty when Wilhemina was 15 years old.^{[citation needed]}

St. Louis and Dodge City

At the age of 16, Kate ran away from her foster home and is reported to have stowed away on a riverboat bound for St. Louis, Missouri. While in St. Louis, Kate claimed she married a dentist named "Silas Melvin" and that the two had a son. Subsequently, 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. What is known through United States Census records is that a Silas Melvin lived in St. Louis in the mid-1860s but was married to a steamship captain's daughter named Mary Bust. The census further show Melvin's occupation to be 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.^[2]

By 1874, Kate had left St. Louis and made her way to Dodge City, Kansas. It is alleged that she and Bessie Earp were fined for working as "sporting women" in a sporting house run by Bessie Earp, wife of James Earp. Through the years, a number of historians and biographers have labeled Kate as a prostitute. To date, there is no (conclusive) proof that this was ever the case.

Doc Holliday and the O.K. Corral

In 1876, Kate moved to Fort Griffin, Texas, where she met Wyatt Earp and began her long-time involvement with Doc Holliday. Doc said at one point that he considered Kate his intellectual equal. There are unproven reports that Kate owned and operated a bordello in Tombstone. Amongst amateur historians, Big Nose Kate has often been confused with a Tombstone sporting woman who went by the name "Rowdy Kate". She did own a miner's boarding house in Globe along Broad Street.

By her own account, Kate and Doc went to Trinidad, Colorado, and then to Las Vegas, New Mexico, where Holliday was briefly a barkeep 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 persuaded his brothers to move to Tombstone. Holliday and Kate parted ways when Kate left for Globe, Arizona. Holliday, like his friend Wyatt, was always looking for a opportunity to make money and joined the Earps in Tombstone during the fall of 1880.^[1]

After the March 15, 1881 robbery and murder of stagecoach driver Eli "Bud" Philpot and a passenger between Tombstone and Benson, Arizona, Cowboy Bill Leonard was one of three men implicated in the robbery. Holliday had become friends with Bill Leonard. When Kate and Holliday had a fight, County Sheriff Johnny Behan and Milt Joyce, a county supervisor and owner of the Oriental Saloon, decided to exploit the situation.

Behan and Joyce plied Big Nose Kate with more booze and suggested to her a way to get even with Holliday. She signed an affidavit implicating Holliday in the attempted robbery and murders. Judge Wells Spicer issued an arrest warrant for Holliday. The Earps found witnesses who could attest to Holliday's whereabouts at the time of the murders and Kate sobered up, revealing that Behan and Joyce had influenced her to sign a document she didn't understand. With the Cowboy plot revealed, Spicer freed Holliday. The district attorney threw out the charges, labeling them "ridiculous."^[3] After Holliday was released, he gave Kate money and put her on the stage. Kate returned to Globe for a time but returned to Tombstone in October that year.

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

There is some historical evidence authenticating Kate's claims of being in the vicinity of Tombstone with Holliday during the days leading up to the fight.^{[citation needed]} In a 1939 letter Kate wrote to her niece, Lillian Rafferty, Kate revealed 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. 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.

Kate wrote that 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. This follows the historical record, as Clanton was buffaloed by City Marshall Virgil Earp after Clanton was found carrying a pistol in violation of city ordinances.^[1][2] Clanton was bandaged when he vistied Spartenberg's gun shop after noon that day, so her story is corroborated by other records of the event.

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 then repeated them in her letter to her niece.^[2]

Kate stated that 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."^[1][2] Other researchers dispute her account of events.

After the OK Corral and later life

Kate is reported to have made trips to Tombstone to see Holliday until he left for Colorado in April 1882. In 1887, Kate traveled to Redstone, Colorado, close to Glenwood Springs, Colorado, to visit with her family, brother Alexander. Some historians have attempted to connect Kate and Doc in attempts at a possible reconciliation between the two. After Holliday had died, Kate married Irish blacksmith George Cummings in Aspen, on March 2, 1890. After working several mining camps throughout Colorado, 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, Kate moved to Dos Cabezas or 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, Kate is enumerated in the U.S. Census in Dos Cabezas, Arizona, as a member of the home of miner John J. Howard. When Howard died in 1930, Kate was the executrix of his estate. She contacted his only daughter who lived in Tempe, Arizona, and settled the inheritance.^[4]

In 1931, now 80, Kate contacted her long-time friend, Arizona Governor George Hunt, and applied for admittance to the Arizona Pioneers' Home in Prescott, Arizona. In 1910, the home was established by the state of Arizona for destitute and ailing miners and male pioneers of the Arizona Territory. It took Kate six months to be admitted, since the home had a requirement that residents must be United States citizens. 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.^[5]

She was admitted as one of the first female residents of the home. She lived there and became an 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 state governor.^[6]

Death and discrepancy

Kate died on November 2, 1940, of acute myocardial insufficiency, a condition she showed symptoms of for one day before her death. Her death certificate states that she also suffered from coronary artery disease and advanced arteriosclerosis. Kate's death certificate showed significant discrepancies regarding her parents' names and her stated birthplace. While history has always stated Kate was born in Hungary, her death certificate states she was born in Davenport, Iowa, to father Marchal H. Michael and mother Catherine Baldwin. The birthplaces for both parents on the certificate state "unknown".^[7]

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

Kate was buried on November 6, 1940,^[7] under the name of "Mary K. Cummings" below a modest marker in the Arizona Pioneer Home Cemetery, Prescott, Arizona.^[8]

In other media

Big Nose Kate was depicted by Joanna Pacula in Tombstone (1993 film), and Isabella Rossellini in Wyatt Earp (1994 film) respectively.

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d} 1935 Bork interview, Arizona Historical Society, Boyer Collection, Tucson, AZ
2. ^ ^{a b c d} Glenn Boyer, Who Is Big Nose Kate?
3. ^ "Wyatt Earp Trial: 1881 - A Mysterious Stage Coach Robbery - Clanton, Holliday, Told, Leonard, Doc, and Ike". http://law.jrank.org/pages/2653/Wyatt-Earp-Trial-1881-Mysterious-Stage-Coach-Robbery.html. Retrieved 2011-02-08. 
4. ^ Ancestry.com.^{[clarification needed]}
5. ^ Letters to Governor Hunt, Arizona State Legislature^{[clarification needed]}
6. ^ Letters to A.N. Kelly, State Legislature^{[clarification needed]}
7. ^ ^{a b} ADHS Arizona Genealogy Birth and Death Certificates online. Retrieved 2010-03-11.
8. ^ Big Nose Kate at Find a Grave

Additional reading

• On the Paper Trail of Big Nose Kate, Angel M. Brant, Self-published September 2008. This book contains pictorial info never published by past Cummings' authors.
• Arizona State Archives and Genealogy Division, Phoenix, Arizona.
• Ace High Gunfighters & Company, an Old West reenactment group in Mesa, Arizona, ([e-mail]).
• Old West Researcher, A. M. Brant.
• Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend, Dr. Gary Roberts, John Wiley Publisher, 2006 (ISBN 0471262919). Contains a great deal about Kate and debunks many older claims about her.
• Scott County Recorder's Office (Holly), Davenport, Iowa
• Davenport City Library, Davenport, Iowa
• Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait, Karen Holliday Tanner, University of Omaha Press, 1998 (ISBN 0-8061-3036-9). Contains 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). 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 letters to family members and the governor of Arizona.

External links

• Find a Grave Listed under "Kate Elder." Link includes a photo of her grave marker.
• Arizona Pioneers' Home

Persondata
Name	Horony, Mary Katharine
Alternative names	Big Nose Kate; Fisher, Kate Cummings, Mary Katherine Horony
Short description	Common-law wife of Doc Holliday
Date of birth	1850-11-07
Place of birth	Pest, Hungary
Date of death	1940-11-02
Place of death	Prescott, Arizona, United States