Myspace Layouts at Pimp-My-Profile.com / White flowers on pink
Hello,My name is Mrs. Kate Cummings...some of you may know me as "Big Nose Kate" or "Kate Elder".I was given the name by Wyatt Earp because he felt I "nosed" into business where a woman of the 19th century didn't belong.
I was born in Pest, Hungary on November 7th, 1850. I am the second oldest daughter to Marchal Doctor Michael Horony. My mother is Katherine Baldizar Horony. I came to the United States with my brothers and sisters in 1860 on board the sailing ship the Bremen. Many historians have written that my family moved to Mexico along with Mexican Emperor, Maximillian in 1862. But when my father visited Mexico, he discovered an uprising against Maximilian and decided that Davenport, Iowa was where we would make home.
Sadly, in 1865, both of my parents died and left us in the care of my step-sisters' husband, Gustav Susemihl. He was also my family's attorney. In my opinion, he was a crotchety old man and much too old to be my brother-in-law. He passed my brothers and sister off to another attorney, Otto Smith. Not only was Smith responsible for the liquidation of my family's belongings after my parents died but Smith hired us all out to do work for him so he could make money for us to survive. But I had enough and left for St. Louis.
Many Old west people write that I stowed aboard a riverboat and was shown pity by the boat's captain, a man named Fischer. But in my old age, I forget the series of events. I never lived in any convent and actually changed my name to Fischer after a stage actress named Kate Fischer who starred in a risque stage play called "Mazeppa". This was a perfect get away name for me hiding from Otto Smith. Being 16, he was frisky and I wanted more out of life.
To be able to hide away from Smith and not be returned to his custody...so I was enumerated as "Kate Fischer" and worked as a brothel house girl in St. Louis. There I met a man named Silas Melvin. At about the same time I met a dentist by the name of Doc Holliday who shared an office space with another dentist not too far from where I was living. Since in my old age I needed money, I told a story about a marriage to Melvin and a son being born. I also confused Doc the dentist with Silas and many authors reported me saying that Silas was a Dentist too.
From St. Louis I moved on the Texas and worked occasionally for Bessie Earp, the wife of James Earp. I also worked as a dance hall girl for a man named Tom Sherman in Shackleford, Texas. This was alot of fun and we made our keep but through Bessie I met that scoundrel Wyatt Earp and I am so sorry I did. He was an opportunist and he knew I knew that so he never cared for me than on.
I was lucky through Wyatt to meet Doc again. Doc and I struck up a relationship that lasted his whole lifetime. We traveled many places and I stayed with Doc to help him get over his vapors and bloody coughing spells. My favorite place that I had time alone with Doc was in Prescott, Arizona.
The Earps has also been in Prescott beginning with Virgil and his wife, Allie. Wyatt and the other brothers, James and Morgan all came to Prescott and heard about a God Forsaken place called "Tombstone". They all packed up on Wyatt's word and moved to Tombstone in 1879. Doc and I stayed until the fall of 1880 when we also traveled to Tombstone.
Later on, Doc had been accused of killing a man and robbing the stage. Doc and I fought off and on and I took to the comforts of the bottle to soothe my sorrow. Tombstone was home to a man named Johnnie Behan. Behan had an axe to grind against Wyatt over a woman and thought Doc's arrest for a stage robbery and shooting might be the way through to Wyatt. When I was out again drowning my sorrows, Behan and Ike Clanton got me even more drunk and made me lie to say Doc was responsible. Doc never forgave me and I left for Globe to open a boarding house in the center of town.
I saw Doc once after the OK Corral mess and watched him die in 1887. Afterwards in 1890, I remarried a blacksmith named George Cummings. We moved back to Arizona first to Bisbee where I owned a bakery in the Italian section of town. George got to be an abusive drunk and when he tried to beat me even more, I left him. I got a job with John and Lulu Rath in Cochise at the Cochise Hotel which was once near Tucson. After John was killed as a rider for the Pony Express, Lulu helped me to find work for John Howard. He was a nice man and treated me with great respect as his housekeeper. When John died, I wasn't making any money and I had to petition the State of Arizona as a ward of the state. I wasn't a citizen and it took me 6 long months to get into the Pioneer Home up in Prescott. I packed the rest of my belongings, settled John's estate with daughter who lived in Tempe with Grandson, Tungsten Steel, (imahine that) and came back to Prescott.
A week before my 90th birthday, I died of athlerosclerosis. Out of all of the Earps, Doc Holliday and the other more written about people of the Arizona Old West, I am the one who died of old age!!
I am buried among the other Arizona Pioneers including Albert Behan and Shalot Hall on a sloping hillside in Prescott. The modest stone on the top simply reads "Mary K.Cummings" 1850-1940.
Come and pay your respects sometime.....