[4] According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 1.29 square miles (3.34 km2), all land.

[5] In 1852 the city of Tabor was founded by "a few families from Oberlin, Ohio, almost all of them Congregationalists,"[6] "generous people, early settlers from New England and Ohio who had brought with them Puritan ideas of religion, and Sumner's and Phillips' and Garrison's ideas of freedom.

"[7] Among them were the Christian clergymen George Gaston, Samuel A. Adams, and Rev.

The founders were impressed with this high location and mutually selected the name "Tabor" after the Biblical name of Mount Tabor, a mountain near Nazareth, the town of Jesus' childhood.

Todd, co-founder of Tabor College, was a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad.

The residents of Tabor held monthly abolitionist prayer meetings,[9]: 90  and helped runaway slaves whenever they could.

[6] A shipment of 200 Sharps rifles, sent from Boston for use in Kansas by free-state partisans, were stored there (in John Todd's barn).

[6] In 1857–1858 abolitionist John Brown spent the winter in Tabor, assembling and training men for his raid on Harpers Ferry.

[6] Tabor College was located in the city from 1853 until 1927, when it closed for financial reasons.

[citation needed] The Tabor & Northern Railway, a 9-mile line connecting with the Wabash Railroad at Malvern, operated from 1889 to 1934.

31.6% of all households were made up of individuals, and 15% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.