"Tough, stubborn and fearless", she was educated, but chose to work as a prostitute due to the independence it provided her.

[3] In 1860, Dr. Horony, his second wife Katharina, and his children left Hungary for the United States, arriving in New York City on the German ship Bremen in September.

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.

[5] The 1870 United States Census records for Davenport show Kate's younger sister, 15-year-old Wilhelmina (Wilma), living with and working as a domestic for Austrian-born David Palter and his Hungarian wife Bettina.

[citation needed] In 1866, at age 16, Kate ran away from her foster home and stowed away on a riverboat bound for St. Louis, Missouri.

[6] Kate 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.

[7] The United States Census records report that a Silas Melvin lived in St. Louis in the mid 1860s but that he was married to a steamship captain's daughter named Mary Bust.

Since Kate met Doc Holliday in the early 1870s, she may have confused the two and their occupations when recalling the facts later in her life.

[8] Researcher Jan Collins states that Kate entered the Ursuline Convent but did not remain long.

[2] By her own account, Doc and Kate met up again with Wyatt Earp and his brothers on their way to the Arizona Territory.

[5] On March 15, 1881, at 10:00 pm, three cowboys attempted to rob a Kinnear & Company stagecoach carrying $26,000 in silver bullion (by the inflation adjustment algorithm: $820,000 in today's dollars) near Benson, Arizona, during which the popular driver Eli "Budd" Philpot and passenger Peter Roerig were killed.

[15] Cochise County Cowboy Bill Leonard, a former watchmaker from New York City, was one of three men implicated in the robbery, and he and Holliday had become good friends.

[citation needed] In a 1939 letter to her niece Lillian Rafferty, Kate claimed that she was in the Tombstone area with Holliday during the days before the shootout.

According to Kate, she was with Holliday in Tucson, Arizona when they attended the San Augustin Feast and Fair in Levin Park during October 1881.

[17] Kate accurately described minor details of the shootout, writing that on the day of the gunfight a man entered Fly's Boarding House with a "bandaged head" and a rifle.

Also according to him, Kate stated that after Doc Holliday returned to his room, he sat at the edge of his bed and wept from the shock of what had happened during the close-range gunfight.

[citation needed] After Doc Holliday died in 1887, Kate married Irish blacksmith George Cummings in Aspen, Colorado, on March 2, 1890.

After working several mining camps throughout Colorado, they moved to Bisbee, Arizona, where she briefly ran a bakery.

[21] Kate is enumerated in the 1910 U.S. Census in Dos Cabezas, Arizona, as a member of the home of miner John J. Howard.

Kate wrote many letters to the Arizona state legislature, often contacting the governor when she was not satisfied with their response.