Baby Doe Tabor
Elizabeth McCourt Tabor, better known as Baby Doe, was the second wife of Colorado pioneer businessman Horace 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, 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.
She then moved to Leadville, Colorado, where she met Horace Tabor, a wealthy silver magnate almost twice her age. In 1883, he divorced his first wife, Augusta Tabor, to whom he had been married for 25 years, and married Baby Doe in Washington, D.C., during his brief stint as a US senator. They then took up residence in Denver. His divorce and remarriage to the young and beautiful Baby Doe caused a scandal in 1880s Colorado. Although Tabor was one of the wealthiest men in Colorado, and supported his wife in a lavish style, he lost his fortune when the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act caused the Panic of 1893, resulting in widespread bankruptcies in silver-producing regions such as Colorado. He died destitute, and Baby Doe returned to Leadville with her two daughters, living out the rest of her life there.
Once known as the "best dressed woman in the West," she lived in poverty and solitude for the last three decades of her life in a shack on the site of the Matchless Mine. She was found frozen in her cabin, aged about 81 years, after a snowstorm in March 1935. 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 story inspired the opera The Ballad of Baby Doe.
Early life and marriage
Elizabeth Bonduel McCourt was born in September 1854 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, to Irish-Catholic immigrants Elizabeth Anderson Neilis and Peter McCourt. She later claimed to have been born in 1860 but appears on the 1860 Oshkosh census at 6 years of age. Born in September, according to the 1900 census, she appears to have been christened on October 7, 1854, 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, to the dissatisfaction of his parents. They then traveled with Harvey's father to Colorado to look after his mining investments, most importantly his half-ownership of the Fourth of July Mine in Central City. After a two-week honeymoon in Denver's American House, the newlyweds joined the elder Doe in the mining town in the mountains. Lizzie found Colorado enchanting. 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.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. 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.
Meanwhile, Harvey's parents, expecting a grandchild, had moved to Colorado to be near the family. 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. In Denver, Harvey frequented saloons and brothels. After witnessing him with a prostitute, Baby Doe filed for divorce on the grounds of adultery. The divorce was quickly granted in March 1880, but for unknown reasons was not officially recorded until April 1886 . Baby Doe then moved to Leadville, Colorado, almost certainly invited there by Sandelowsky, who changed his name to Sands. Alone and without a husband, Baby Doe needed to find a means of financial support quickly. Jake Sandelowsky, who opened a store in Leadville and almost certainly wanted to marry her, offered her employment. 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.
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.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. Eventually they found their way to Leadville, where Horace, in 1878, grub-staked two prospectors with about $60 worth of goods in return for one-third of their profits. To everyone's surprise, the two men's stake was successful, beginning Tabor's path to wealth. With his profits, he bought out the two, then bought stakes in more mines and had a house built in Denver. He ran successfully for Lieutenant Governor of Colorado in 1878 and established the Little Pittsburg Consolidated Mining Company, which quickly gained a worth of about $20 million. He bought the Matchless Mine, which for many years produced large amounts of silver. His profits were so great that he was quickly on his way to becoming one of the richest men in the country.
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. A Denver newspaper columnist described him as "Stoop-shouldered; ambling gait ...black hair, inclined to baldness ....dresses in black; magnificent cuff buttons of diamonds and onyx ...worth 8 million dollars." Historian Judy Nolte Temple writes that it "seemed inevitable that the prettiest woman in the mining West would eventually meet the richest man."
Baby Doe met Horace Tabor in a restaurant in Leadville one evening in 1880. She told him her story and that she had arrived in Leadville because of Jake Sandelowsky's generosity. Tabor gave her $5,000 on the spot. Baby Doe then had a message, and $1,000, delivered to Sandelowsky, in which she declared that she would not marry him. Instead, Tabor moved her to the Clarendon Hotel, next to the opera house and Sandelowsky's store, Sands, Pelton & Company. Sandelowsky later moved to Aspen, where he opened another store, married, and built a house.
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.