Baby Doe Tabor

Elizabeth Bonduel McCourt was born in September 1854 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, to Irish-Catholic immigrants Elizabeth Anderson Neilis and Peter McCourt. at St. Peter's Catholic Church. Called Lizzie as a child, the fourth of eleven children, she grew up in a middle-class family in a two-story house. Her father was a partner in a local clothing store and owner of Oshkosh's first theater, McCourt Hall. 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. Concerned by his wife's indulgence in their young and striking daughter, Peter McCourt thought it prudent to put her to work at the clothing store, where she was often in the company of fashionable young men. At age 16, she was a "fashionably plump" blond-haired young woman with a hectic social schedule. Oshkosh was a frontier lumber town, filled with mills. When fires raged through Oshkosh in 1874 and again in 1875, the McCourts lost their home, the clothing store, and the theater. They mortgaged their property to rebuild the home and the business, but this put Peter McCourt deeply in debt. The family was forced to live on what amounted to little more than a clerk's salary. In 1876, Lizzie McCourt met William Harvey Doe Jr., who was a Protestant. 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. Lizzy and Harvey were married on June 27, 1877 at St. Peter's Catholic Church in Oshkosh, There she may have gained the nickname "Baby Doe". ==Move to Colorado==

In Central City, she quickly found that her husband's reserved temperament was unsuitable for a boisterous frontier mining town, and that he was unable either to manage a mine on his own or to follow his father's instructions on how to do so. Rather than see him fail, and enchanted with the possibility of becoming wealthy from mining gold, she helped her husband. She often dressed in mining clothes and worked directly in the mine. 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. He told his wife to stop wearing men's clothing and stay at home. during the period Baby Doe Tabor lived there. At that time, they moved from Central City to Black Hawk to live in a less expensive rooming house. Greatly disappointed and disenchanted by the noise and dirt in Black Hawk, Baby Doe began to take walks around the city each day. Then aged 23, she may have gained the name "Baby Doe" from the local men watching. She lacked domestic skills with which to work and earn money, and she had nothing in common with the women of the town. Often, having little to do with her time, she visited the local clothing store, attracted in part by the expensive fabrics. She became friendly with the owner of the town's clothing store, Jake Sandelowsky (Sands). At the same time Harvey lost his job, and their marriage began to deteriorate. By that time Baby Doe was pregnant. Suspecting the child was Jake's, Harvey left her temporarily, and in July 1879, Baby Doe gave birth to a stillborn boy. ==Leadville==

In Leadville, she caught the attention of Horace Tabor, mining millionaire and owner of Leadville's Matchless Mine. Tabor was married, but in 1880 he left his wife Augusta Tabor to be with Baby Doe; he established her in plush suites at hotels in Leadville and Denver. At an altitude of 10,000 feet, Leadville was the second largest city in Colorado. It boasted over 100 saloons and gambling places, multiple daily and weekly newspapers, and 36 brothels. Tabor's presence seemed to be everywhere. 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. He spent his money lavishly, mostly on his own entertainment—drinking, gambling and frequenting brothels. In 1880, Augusta moved away from him to live in Denver while Tabor enjoyed himself in Leadville. Some months later, Tabor moved Baby Doe to the Windsor Hotel in Denver. A newly constructed turreted building, meant to look like Windsor castle, the hotel had extremely lavish decorations, such as mirrors made of diamond dust. Tabor had a gold-leafed bathtub in his suite. Guests were wealthy, well-known and well-connected. Baby Doe claimed to love Tabor, and he loved her. He moved permanently out of his Denver home and asked his wife Augusta for a divorce. She refused him. He, in turn, refused to send her an invitation to attend the grand opening of Denver's Tabor Grand Opera House. He stopped giving his wife money; she sued him but failed; he again demanded a divorce. Baby Doe suggested that he seek a divorce in a different jurisdiction, and in 1882 a Durango, Colorado, judge granted them a divorce. However, the filing was irregular, and once Tabor realized that, 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. At that time, both were bigamists: his divorce was questionable and hers was not yet recorded. ==Marriage to Horace Tabor==

In January 1883, Augusta sued Tabor again, and now he compensated her with real estate in Denver and stock in his mines. Baby Doe and Horace married publicly on 1 March 1883, just two months after Tabor and Augusta had divorced. He was 52 and she 28, and she claimed to be only 22. The marriage took place at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC, during Tabor's brief tenure as a US senator. Baby Doe invited President Chester A. Arthur and other dignitaries, all of whom attended, as reported by the media at the time of her death, She planned a lavish wedding, going first to Oshkosh, making arrangements for her family to attend the event, and purchasing clothing and jewelry for them. Her mother was proud that her daughter was marrying a wealthy man, and Baby Doe herself was quite happy. At her wedding in Washington, she wore a white satin dress that cost $7,000 On July 13, 1884, she gave birth to the first of her and Tabor's two daughters, Elizabeth Bonduel Lily Tabor. The infant was christened in an extravagant and frilly outfit costing $15,000. 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. Their second daughter, Rose Mary Echo Silver Dollar Tabor, was born on December 17, 1889. Both girls were attractive and well looked-after, and their mother doted on them. The second child was fondly called Silver or Silver Dollar, whom Baby Doe "defiantly nursed ... as she rode through the streets in Denver in one of her carriages." A year after the birth of their second child, in 1890, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act was enacted, which brought to Colorado, and Colorado mine-owners, the hope that wildly fluctuating silver prices would stabilize. Profits from silver mining had diminished as the supply had declined and the extraction process and labor costs had increased. 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. His funeral was well attended, with perhaps as many as 10,000 there. 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." However, that story might not be true; by then, it appears they had mortgaged and/or lost the Matchless mine. At the time of her husband's death, Baby Doe was still an attractive woman in her mid-forties. ==Later years==

The Matchless mine After her husband's death, Baby Doe stayed in Denver for a period, according to her diaries and correspondence. 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. For two years, she unsuccessfully tried to find investors to bring the Matchless back into production. The family may have tried to regain ownership of the Matchless mine, but documentation is fragmented, and it is unclear to whom the mine belonged at that time. Of the two daughters, Lily, born into wealth, seemed more affected by the fall into poverty. When in 1902, Baby Doe traveled with her daughters to Oshkosh to visit her relatives, Lily decided then to prolong her visit, to stay and provide care for her elderly grandmother. Later, Lily moved to Chicago, where in 1908 she married her first cousin, and soon after gave birth to Baby Doe's grandchild. In 1911, Baby Doe and Silver Dollar again visited relatives in Wisconsin, going on to visit Lily in Chicago. After such a prolonged absence, Lily claimed she barely knew Silver Dollar. After Lily's departure, Baby Doe and Silver Dollar moved into a cabin on the site of the Matchless mine. The living quarters were basic and inadequate for Colorado winters: "All told, it was no larger than a medium sized room. Two windows had been cut into the flimsy weatherboards, but these had been nailed up". The cabin was isolated, located above Leadville in Little Strayhorse Gulch, and had an unimpeded view of Mount Elbert and Mount Massive. 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." During these years, she wrote incessantly. 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." At that time, Leadville had lost much of its boomtown population and was becoming a ghost town. She often walked the empty streets at night, dressed in a mixture of women's and men's clothing, wearing trousers and mining boots. She protected the mine from strangers with a shotgun and "she became a sad spectre of Baby Doe to old-timers; a spectacle to the young." The Rocky Mountain News reported that a miner named Tom French and neighbor Sue Bonney, concerned at not seeing her for some days, broke into the cabin and found the body. While a gravesite was being prepared in Leadville—the ground had to be dynamited—wealthy Denverites raised money to have her body brought there. A funeral mass was held in Leadville, then her casket was sent by train to Denver. Baby Doe Tabor is buried with her husband in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. ==Reputation and legacy==

Baby Doe Tabor is a legend among the women of the mining West. She holds the reputation of being a great beauty, a home-wrecker, and in her later years, a madwoman. 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". 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. Temple speculates that Baby Doe's move to Leadville after Horace's death may have been self-shunning from Denver society. 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. 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. In 1985, Baby Doe Tabor was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame. ==See also==