Colorado’s spirited beauty: Baby Doe Tabor | Rick Zand

Born in 1854, Baby Doe Tabor, originally Elizabeth Bonduel McCourt, came from a middle-class Irish Catholic family in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. As she grew and matured, her mother considered her daughter’s beauty a treasure worth preserving for marriage to a wealthy gentleman.

That gentleman was Harvey Doe, a rich man from a mining family. Harvey married Elizabeth on June 22, 1877, and took her with him to manage his family’s interests in the mining town of Central City, Colorado. Elizabeth Doe charmed the male-dominated mining town with her outgoing personality and disregard for Victorian formalities. She became known as “Baby Doe” for her youthful beauty.

His father’s investments had secured Harvey a position as a manager at a Central City mine. However, Harvey’s reserved manner did not bode well with the miners, and it was his wife Elizabeth who donned overalls and went down to the mines to work alongside the men, much to the dismay of Central City’s polite society, who avoided her. Audacious as she was, Baby Doe forged ahead, hoping to see riches in return for her labor.

Baby Doe’s efforts, however, could not save the couple. Eventually, her incompetent, temperamental and lazy husband was forced out of his position and took a mining job in nearby Blackhawk, where they rented a cheap flat. Baby Doe took to roaming the streets while her husband worked the mine. Soon a regular at a fine clothing store, she became close friends with its co-proprietor, Jake Sandelowsky. Meanwhile, Harvey lost his job and began to wander, leaving Elizabeth for long periods of time. Elizabeth spent time with the handsome Sandelowsky (who later changed his last name to Sandy) at the local Shoo-Fly saloon, a gambling hall and brothel. Elizabeth’s lively spirit won over the raucous miners, and she became a popular figure. As her marriage began to crumble, Elizabeth suddenly found herself pregnant. Suspicious that the baby wasn’t his but Sandelowsky’s, Harvey bolted to Denver, leaving his wife to give birth to a stillborn baby boy. Meanwhile, Sandelowsky looked after Elizabeth and covered all of her expenses.

After a brief visit to Leadville where Sandelowsky had opened a store, Elizabeth relunctantly followed Harvey to Denver to try and revive their marriage. However, Harvey was caught up in drinking and gambling, most likely spending his time on Holladay Street (later changed to Market Street), famous for its red-light district. After seeing Harvey with a prostitute, Elizabeth filed for divorce in 1880, which was granted on the grounds of infidelity.

Baby Doe soon made her way to Leadville, Colorado, most likely under Sandelowsky’s beckoning, as he had opened a store in town and wanted her to work there. Perhaps upon reflecting on her mother’s aspirations for the once burgeoning beauty, she decided that working in a clothing shop only promised the same dull, ordinary life she could have had in Oshkosh.

While in Leadville, however, she met Horace Tabor, a one-time Leadville merchant who had struck it rich in the silver mines. Baby Doe and Tabor started an affair while Tabor was still married to his wife of twenty years, Augusta Pierce Tabor. Once their affair was exposed, Tabor divorced his wife in 1883 and two months later, while serving as Colorado’s interim US senator in Washington, D.C., he married the much younger Baby Doe. Baby Doe had arranged a lavish wedding where she wore a $7,000 silk dress accentuated by a $90,000 necklace, reportedly made from Queen Isabella’s jewels. Also, at Baby Doe’s invitation and no doubt to her mother’s delight, President Chester A. Arthur attended. Tabor was 52 and Baby Doe, 28.

The Tabors moved into a Denver mansion where Elizabeth spent her time scrapbooking and supporting various charities. She involved herself in the Colorado Women’s Suffrage movement and spread her wealth generously. They built the fabulous Tabor Opera House in Denver, in what Horace hoped would help turn the city into the “Paris of the West.” However, Denver society shunned the couple over their scandalous Leadville relationship and the two never enjoyed life in Denver’s high society.

Baby Doe gave birth to Elizabeth Bonduel Lily Tabor in 1884 and Rose Mary Echo Silver Dollar Tabor in 1889. While ‘Silver Dollar’ may have seemed an auspicious middle name at the time, the commodity took a downward turn in 1893 during a silver panic after the repeal of the Sherman Act, which had guaranteed the government’s purchase of silver. As a result, the Tabors’ fortunes dissolved.

Tabor’s Denver mansion at 13th and Sherman on Capitol HillPhoto byCourtesy of the Denver Public Library

Baby Doe tried to revive their business interests in Denver while a 65-year-old Horace was forced to work as a common miner at the Cripple Creek mine. The family sold off everything and took up occupancy in a boarding house. The next years were spent in abject poverty until, in 1898, political friends of Tabor secured him a position as postmaster of Denver. The salary was just enough to get them a no-nonsense room at the Windsor Hotel. However, Horace died the next year, leaving his family penniless.

Some rumors speculate that Elizabeth took her children back to Leadville to try and revive the Matchless mine, the only mine Tabor had owned exclusively, hoping to revive its fortune. It’s hard to know exactly who had ownership of the mine, but Baby Doe tried to get investors involved without much success, as the Leadville boom had ended.

Baby Doe had other problems as well. Her youngest daughter, Silver Dollar, had turned to drinking and promiscuous sex in the small mountain town. Perhaps at Elizabeth’s urging she eventually relocated to Denver where she wrote for the Denver Post, sending some of the earnings back to her mother. After forging a reputation for heavy drinking, Silver left Denver for Chicago to pursue writing, but instead worked as a burlesque dancer and became the mistress of a Chicago gangster. In 1925, Silver was found scalded to death at the boarding house where she’d been staying. Baby Doe never acknowledged her daughter’s death, maintaining that Silver Dollar had instead gone to a convent.

Silver Dollar TaborPhoto byCourtesy of the Denver Public Library

For the next 35 years, Elizabeth lived in a Leadville cabin. She wandered the streets wearing mining boots and a mixture of men and women’s clothes. One account claims that children threw rocks at her as she passed. She occasionally guarded the Matchless mine with a rifle, even as Leadville was becoming a ghost town. Locals saw her as a sad reminder of everything lost after the mining boom. Some said she deserved her lot for breaking up Tabor’s first marriage. She kept a journal where she shared her thoughts, dreams and observations, sometimes writing them on scraps of paper. By now she had returned to Catholicism and spent a great deal of time doing penance for her previous life of luxury.

In the winter of 1935, after a severe snowstorm, concern for Baby Doe grew as she hadn’t appeared from her cabin and smoke failed to arise from the chimney. She was discovered frozen on the cabin floor at the age of 81. Her things were auctioned off for $700 and her remains were transferred to Denver. She is buried at the Mount Olivet Cemetery in Wheat Ridge.

baby Doe at her Leadville Cabin, 1933Photo byCourtesy of the Denver Public Library

What started as a promising life from humble origins and reached the height of wealth and luxury ended in loneliness and poverty. However, Baby Doe’s story has become stuff of legend, and in 1985 she was inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame. Her writings have been carefully studied and remain the property of the Denver Public Library.