Our family connection to Doc, is through my husband’s great grandfather’s Dodge City, Kansas connection. Doc Holliday set up his dental business in the old Dodge House Hotel. Our relative, Chalkley McCartor Beeson, owned the Long Branch Saloon. Doc & the Earp brothers were regulars. Chalkley and my husband’s great grandfather, were raised like brothers. Richard Benton Beeson lost his parents at age 7 and was taken in by his uncle, Samuel Beeson, Chalkley’s Dad & Mom. My husband’s great grandfather also followed Chalkley to Dodge City as a young man, but did not like the weather. he became a banker and land agent with the railroad. Not too many know, but the Long Branch Saloon, also served as a lending institution, Chalkley gave out loans up to $3,000. My husband’s grandfather, Maris Lewis Beeson road his tandem bike with a friend from North Dakota to Dodge City to visit “Uncle Chalk,” and was mesmerized by the old west artifacts that were in his collection. Doc Holliday’s medical bag was one of these items. Chalk opened the 1st “Beeson” museum in Dodge City, later the collection went to the “Dodge City Museum” still in operation, but most truly historic papers and pieces are at the Kansas Historical Society. My husband, Rick Beeson, feels a connection to Doc Holliday much greater than their lineage. On his maternal side, his other great grandfather, was a barber, briefly in Dodge City, Kansas, but his Civil War imprisonment, plagued him with illness, and Hugh McCalip, barber turned preacher and moved back to Indiana. Rest In Peace, Doc Holiday.
