Mary Katharine Horoney ~ "Big Nose Kate"

Maria Katalin Horony, daughter of Dr. Miklos Horony and Katharina Baldizar, was born on 7 November 1850 in Pest, Hungary. In 1860, Dr. Horony, his second wife, and his children left Hungary for the United States, arriving in New York in September 1860 aboard the Bremen.

The Horony family settled in the predominantly German area of Davenport, Iowa in 1862. Dr. Horony and his wife died only three years later, in 1865, within a month of one another. Maria 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.

At age 16, she ran away from her foster home and stowed away on a riverboat bound for St. Louis, Missouri. She later claimed that while she lived in St. Louis she married a dentist named Silas Melvin with whom she had a son, and that both died of yellow fever. No record has been found to substantiate marriage, birth of a child, or the death of either Melvin or the child.

Kate Elder, the name she was using by then, eventually found work as a prostitute in a Wichita, Kansas dance hall and sporting house owned by Bessie Earp, Wyatt Earp's sister-in-law. It was here that she probably met Wyatt Earp. According to researcher Glenn Boyer, Kate was a favorite lover of Earp’s for a while, but he cast her off before she met Holliday.

She then moved on to other dance halls and saloons, including one in Fort Griffin, Texas, where in 1876 she met John Henry “Doc” Holliday, the man who would become the love of her life. Kate charmed him with her dark good looks, intelligence, and fiery temper, and she, in turn, was smitten with him. Kate told Bork, the historian, that the two were married that year at Holliday’s home in Georgia, though Bork and Boyer believe the marriage was a common-law one, and never made official.
Kate also introduced Holliday to Earp, a move she regretted in her later life, according to Boyer and historian Jan MacKell. "The Earps had such a power I could not get Doc away from them," Kate said. And despite her relationship with Holliday—and his disapproval—Kate continued to work as a prostitute, sometimes for Bessie Earp (the wife of Wyatt’s brother James).

Doc & Kate

Kate's association with the famed sometimes-lawmen, sometimes-outlaws gave her a number of colorful stories. For example, in Texas, Holliday apparently got into a fight after a card game and a little too much to drink one night. The fight turned deadly, and Holliday ended up being arrested and held in a nearby hotel. That's when Kate set the hotel on fire and helped Holliday make his escape. Kate also admitted to Boyer that when she and Doc were in Las Vegas, New Mexico, she held up the local lawmen with a six-shooter—in her nightgown.

When Holliday and the Earp brothers moved to Tombstone, Arizona, Kate and Doc temporarily split and she moved to Globe, a little over 180 miles away, where she eventually bought a hotel. They stayed in contact through letters until he convinced her to move to Tombstone.

She had a front-row seat for the Gunfight at the OK Corral in 1881. The 30-second gun battle, which actually took place down the street from the paddock it was named after, was the culmination of months of tension between a group of cowboys known for murder and cattle rustling and the Earps, who served as the town’s lawmen. The brothers made Holliday a temporary policeman for the fight, which ended with three of the cowboys dead (the Earps and Holliday were wounded).

Kate and Doc's relationship was stormy and often violent. According to witnesses, she once tried to shoot him in his sleep, firing bullets into the mattress, only for him to wake, grab the gun from her hands and hit her over the head with it. Yet the two were said to be "like newlyweds" the next day. In another incident, she got him briefly arrested on false murder charges. But she always came back, eventually.

After the Gunfight at the OK Corral, Holliday, worried for her safety, told Kate to return to Globe. (The Earp wives were sent away for a time as well.) They didn’t see each other for several years, during which time Kate ran her hotel and traveled around Arizona. Things changed in 1887, when she heard that Holliday was in the final stages of tuberculosis in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Kate reportedly went to stay at the nearby ranch of her brother Alexander Haroney, so she could visit Holliday during his final days.

Throughout their relationship, Kate was her own woman, refusing to give up her work or her independence. But Doc's death left her a changed woman. She gave up life as Big Nose Kate and became Mary, a mine cook.

In 1888 Kate married George Cummings, believed by biographers to be a "meal ticket marriage". By 1898, she had left him because he was a drinker. She spent the next three decades as the housekeeper of miner John J. Howard, who named her as his heir. She was 80 years old when he passed away and he wasn’t able to leave her much.

She applied for space in the Arizona Pioneers Home in Prescott, which had just begun to admit women. While her application gave only sparse details of her background, other residents of the home recognized Mary K. Cummings as Big Nose Kate, the wild Hungarian beauty who had reigned over the dance halls and saloons of the Wild West. It was at the Pioneers Home where she finally had the chance to share her side of the story with Dr. Bork, who described her as "a trim, well-spoken little old lady and, like a lot of them, seeking respectability in old age."

Bork and Boyer note that as she recounted her tales, she added or changed details for propriety’s sake—such as recalling her common-law marriage to Holliday as an official one, and listing her birthplace as Iowa because she never actually became a U.S. citizen. She died on 2 November 1940, days before her 90th birthday.