Our adventure for today was to find the burial spot of a legend of the Wild West – John Henry “Doc” Holliday. Doc Holliday was born in our hometown of Griffin, GA. No one is certain of where Doc is buried. Some people believe he’s buried in Gleenwood Springs, Colorado while others believe that he is buried here in Griffin, Georgia in the Oak Hill Cemetery.
While surfing the web this week, I read an article by David Boyd. In the article Mr. Boyd quoted Bill Dunn of Griffin, who is the head of the Doc Holliday Society and also a distant relative of Doc’s who said:
There is no doubt in my mind why the people in Glenwood Springs don’t know exactly where Doc is buried, as he isn’t there. I believe Doc is buried right here in his hometown of Griffin. Doc was originally buried in Linwood Cemetery, but he is not there now. You just don’t lose the grave of a man who held his celebrity status.”
Mr. Dunn believes that Doc and his father Major Henry Holliday are buried in two unmarked graves in Griffin’s Oak Hill Cemetery in a Thomas family plot. The families were very close and the Thomas family may have agreed to an anonymous burial of Doc in their family plot to avoid vandalism of his grave. Mr. Dunn questions , “Why would a plot containing expensive marble markers of the Thomas family contain two concrete slab graves with no marking? Could it be they wanted them to remain anonymous?
He also shares stories of Griffinites who, over the years, had indicated that they had knowledge of the graves. They all pointed to the same graves. You can read a little more about it from another article here.
With a photo showing the graves resting beneath a giant old Oak Tree and the Thomas name in mind, we headed to the cemetery to look for the graves. We found them right away since there were not many Oak Trees.
I choose to believe that this is the final resting spot of Doc and his father. It’s sad for me to think that no one alive today knows for sure where Doc or Major Holliday are buried., but I feel certain that the people who truly mattered to these men did know, and that’s what really matters.
Very interesting. I didn't know Doc Holliday was from Georgia.
ReplyDeleteIn the early 1990's, not longer after moving from Griffin, I became intrigued by Doc's association with my hometown. I went on an amatuer "quest" back in Griffin and went around talking to a lot of old timers and doing some research before, during and after the trip.
ReplyDeleteWhile I never did learn whether he is truly buried there (I believe he is as well) - I did learn from an old timer cemetery keeper that the family house sat close to where the Sock Shoppe is. I also located the building in the old part of downtown (I forget which street) that the dental practice was in that he worked at before moving out west. We went into the store on the bottom floor and two older gentleman who ran the store at the time were in there. I asked them and they confirmed that indeed that was the right building. They took us up the old stairs and into the little single room where the practice was. I think they even had a little newspaper article hanging up in that room talking about it.
Very interesting!
ReplyDeleteI am soooooooo behind on your blog (and everyone elses, lol)...but I do keep an eye out on what you are doing through Facebook. :)