Baby Doe Tabor
Elizabeth McCourt Tabor (1854, Oshkosh, Wisconsin – 7 March 1935, Leadville, Colorado), better known as Baby Doe, was the second wife of pioneer Colorado businessman Horace Tabor. Horace Tabor's divorce and subsequent marriage to the young and beautiful Baby Doe caused a major scandal in 1880s Colorado. Although Tabor was one of the wealthiest men in Colorado when she married him, he later lost his entire fortune, and Baby Doe Tabor lived the rest of her life in poverty. Her tragic story inspired the opera The Ballad of Baby Doe.
Early life and marriage
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Baby Doe was born Elizabeth Bonduel McCourt in Oshkosh, Wisconsin to Irish immigrant parents. At age 17, Elizabeth McCourt married Harvey Doe, and in 1877 went with her husband to Central City, Colorado, where he operated the Fourth of July gold mine, and she soon gained the nickname “Baby Doe”.[1]
Harvey Doe fell into financial and drinking problems. Disenchanted with her husband, Elizabeth "Baby" Doe moved to Leadville, Colorado, where she caught the attention of mining millionaire Horace Tabor. Like Baby Doe, Tabor was married, but in 1880 he left his wife Augusta to be with Baby Doe. Baby Doe divorced Harvey Doe in March 1880, and Tabor established her in plush suites at hotels in Leadville and Denver.
Augusta Tabor refused to grant a divorce, but Horace Tabor had his lawyer file divorce proceedings in Durango, Colorado in January 1882. However, the filing was irregular and once Tabor realized he had the county clerk paste together two pages in the records, to hide the action. Despite his existing marriage to Augusta, Horace Tabor and Elizabeth McCourt Doe married secretly in St. Louis, Missouri, in September 1882.[2]
Tabor finally obtained a legal divorce in January 1883. That same month, the Colorado State Legislature appointed him to a 30-day term as United States senator, to fill a temporary vacancy.[3]
Marriage to Tabor
Baby Doe and Horace married publicly on 1 March 1883, just two months after Tabor divorced his first wife. She was 28; he was 52. The marriage took place during Tabor’s brief tenure as a US senator, at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC, attended by US President Chester A. Arthur. After he performed the ceremony, the Catholic priest learned that both Horace and Baby Doe had been divorced, and refused to sign the marriage license. Although Tabor’s contemporaries had winked at or ignored his dalliance with Baby Doe, Tabor’s divorce and quick remarriage created a scandal which prevented the couple from being accepted in polite society.
Baby Doe and Tabor had two daughters: Elizabeth Bonduel Lily Tabor, born in 1884 and known as Lily, and Rose Mary Echo Silver Dollar Tabor, born in 1889 and known as Silver Dollar.
Horace Tabor lost his fortune in 1893 because of unwise investments and the drop in the price of silver. To save him from poverty, some political friends arranged his appointment as postmaster of Denver in 1898, a post which he held until his death in 1899 at age 69.
The Matchless mine
According to stories, Horace Tabor’s dying instructions to his wife were: “Hold onto the Matchless mine. It will make millions.” After some years in Denver, Baby Doe moved into a cabin next to the Matchless mine, near Leadville. She lost the mine in 1927, when it was sold to satisfy a debt, but the new owners allowed Baby Doe to stay in the cabin until her death.
Daughter Lily Tabor left her mother to live with Baby Doe’s family in Wisconsin, and later even denied that she was Baby Doe’s daughter. Baby Doe’s other daughter, Silver Dollar Tabor, became a dancer in Chicago under various names. In 1925, Silver Dollar was found scalded to death under suspicious circumstances in her Chicago boarding house, where she was living as "Ruth Norman".[4]
In the winter of 1935, after a snowstorm, some neighbors noticed that no smoke was coming out of the chimney at the Matchless mine cabin. Investigating, they found Baby Doe dead, her body frozen on the floor.[5][6][7] Her remaining possessions were auctioned off to souvenir collectors for $700.[8] Baby Doe Tabor is buried with her husband in Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Wheat Ridge, Colorado.
Legacy
Baby Doe was portrayed in the Warner Brothers film Silver Dollar, which premiered in Denver in 1932. "Lily", the fictionalized character of Baby Doe, was portrayed by actress Bebe Daniels; Edward G. Robinson played Yates Martin, a fictionalized Horace Tabor.[9]
Douglas Moore's opera The Ballad of Baby Doe premiered in Central City, Colorado in 1956. In the New York premiere in 1958, Baby Doe was sung by Beverly Sills.[10]
In the 1970s, a string of western-themed "Baby Doe's Matchless Mine" restaurants was established in a number of US cities. Almost all are now closed.[11]
References
- ^ Colorado Historical Society, Baby Doe Tabor, Colorado's silver queen, PDF file.
- ^ Leadville.com, Leadville's famous love triangle: Horace, Augusta, and "Baby Doe" Tabor.
- ^ George F. Willison, Here They Dug the Gold (New York: Ballantine, 1972) 219-226.
- ^ Judy Nolte Temple, Baby Doe Tabor: the Madwoman in the Cabin (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007) 35.
- ^ Julie Nolte Temple, “The demons of Elizabeth Tabor,” Colorado Heritage, Winter 2001, p.3-21.
- ^ Michael Madigan, "March 8, 1935: the death of 'Baby Doe',", Rocky Mountain News.
- ^ Time, "Women: the end of Baby Doe," 18 March 1935.
- ^ Time, "People," 1 July 1935.
- ^ Time, "Cinema: the new pictures," 2 January 1933.
- ^ US Opera, The Ballad of Baby Doe.
- ^ Baby Doe's Restaurant
Bibliography
- Smith, Duane A., Horace Tabor: His Life and Legend (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1989).
- Temple, Judy Nolte, Baby Doe Tabor: the Madwoman in the Cabin (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007).
External links
- Babydoe.com, Baby Doe Tabor
- Babydoe.org, "DoeHeads" site, Elizabeth Bonduel McCourt "Baby" Doe Tabor
- Matchless mine website