Baby Doe Tabor

Her rags-to-riches and back to rags again story made her a well-known figure in her own day, and inspired an opera and a Hollywood movie based on her life.

Born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin to Peter McCourt,[1] she moved to Colorado in the mid-1870s with her first husband, Harvey Doe, whom she divorced for drinking, gambling, frequenting brothels, and being unable to provide a living.

[2] During her lifetime she was the subject of malicious gossip and scandal, defied Victorian gender values, and gained a reputation as "one of the most beautiful, flamboyant, and alluring women in the mining West.

Her mother fostered in her beautiful daughter the belief that her looks were of great worth, excusing her from domestic chores so as to preserve her skin and allowing her to dream of a future as an actress.

She enchanted him when, as the only woman competitor, she entered and won a skating competition, while at the same time scandalizing many of the townspeople by wearing a costume that showed glimpses of her legs.

Despite a somewhat relaxed culture in the frontier mining town, those in the highest strata of the city's society considered her behavior and dress scandalous, causing her to be ignored.

Through both their efforts, the Does did manage to bring up a small amount of gold, but when the vein ran out and a poorly constructed shaft collapsed, Harvey gave up and decided to take a job as a common mucker at another mine.

Greatly disappointed and disenchanted by the noise and dirt in Black Hawk, Baby Doe began to take walks around the city each day.

Suspecting the child was Jake's, Harvey left her temporarily, and in July 1879, Baby Doe gave birth to a stillborn boy.

Disappointed, they severed their ties with the two and moved to Idaho Springs, while Baby Doe followed Harvey to Denver, despite wishing for a divorce from him.

Working at a clothing store, however, was a prospect Baby Doe found dull, boring, and too similar to the life she had left behind in Oshkosh.

[13] Horace and Augusta had lived for 25 years on the frontier, first moving to Kansas where they tried their hand at agriculture, then following the gold rush to Colorado, but never striking it rich.

[14] He opened the Tabor Opera House in Leadville, bought luxury items for his wife, Augusta, and established a private army that he used for protection of his holdings and as a force against striking miners.

"[14] Historian Judy Nolte Temple writes that it "seemed inevitable that the prettiest woman in the mining West would eventually meet the richest man.

A newly constructed turreted building, meant to look like Windsor castle, the hotel had extremely lavish decorations, such as mirrors made of diamond dust.

Despite his existing marriage to Augusta, Horace Tabor and Elizabeth McCourt Doe married secretly in St. Louis, Missouri, in September 1882.

[19] Two days after the wedding, the priest who had performed the ceremony refused to sign the marriage license, when he learned that both the bride and the groom had previously divorced and that Baby Doe was a Roman Catholic.

Baby Doe was reportedly a good mother, staying at home with her daughter instead of accompanying Horace on his frequent trips to look after widespread business interests.

When a few of Horace's investments began to fail, he was forced to mortgage the Tabor theater in Denver and other real estate he had bought during the past decades.

On his deathbed, he is said to have told Baby Doe to "hold on to the Matchless mine … it will make millions again when silver comes back."

Why she decided to leave Denver and the society there to make a return to Leadville, in the high mountains with its cold winters, is unknown, but it almost certainly had to do with the Matchless mine.

[22] Eventually, in an attempt to keep the decrepit mine going and to raise funds, she reluctantly sold the "Isabella necklace" Tabor had given her, but during her lifetime she refused to sell his gold watch fob.

[24] The structure was a former tool shed located adjacent to the hoisthouse, described by a visitor in 1927 as "crowded with very primitive furniture, decorated with religious pictures, and stacked high in newspapers.

In 1925, Silver Dollar was found scalded to death under suspicious circumstances in her Chicago boarding house, where she had been living under the name "Ruth Norman".

[25] For the rest of her life, Baby Doe refused to believe the woman found as Ruth Norman had been her daughter, stating, "I did not see the body they said was my little girl.

In diaries, letters, and scraps that she called "Dreams and Visions", consisting of about 2,000 fragments later found bundled in piles of paper in her cabin, she wrote entries such as: "Nov. 26—1918 Papa Tabor's Birthday I owe my room rent & am in need of food and only enough bread for tonight & breakfast .... my shoes and stockings only 1 pair are in rags.

She often walked the empty streets at night, dressed in a mixture of women's and men's clothing, wearing trousers and mining boots.

[19][30] The Rocky Mountain News reported that a miner and friend, concerned at not seeing her for some days, broke into the cabin and found the body.

Judy Nolte Temple writes that Baby Doe's legend, and her sins, grew quickly in retelling, as evidenced by an exaggerated description of her death in an early biography: "The formerly beautiful and glamorous Baby Doe Tabor ... was found dead on her cabin floor .... only partially clothed ....frozen into the shape of a cross".

[32] Temple sees her as one in a long line of women who endured shunning and punishment for her beauty and for being disruptive to prevailing social norms.