ELIZABETH BONDUEL MCCOURT TABOR
"BABY DOE"
image of Baby Doe from Find A Grave April 2024
1854-1935
She was beautiful - vain - flirty - desirable from her teenage years on in Oshkosh Wisconsin. The boys were attracted to her. She could have her pick. She picked the wrong man the first time around.
Healthy, vital, and ambitious, hard working when she had to be, it made sense that the richest man in a silver mining town, Leadville, Colorado, would marry her next. He may have been the richest man in the United States! First though she was his Mistress
As feminine as she was, she was also not above putting on men's clothing and doing the backbreaking labor of mining herself. She tried, she really did, to help her first husband be a success for the both of them, but it didn't work. He just didn't have what it took. As he lost assets that he'd inherited and earned, including his own gold mine, they slid down financially until their accommodations were reduced to boarding houses. He drowned his failures and used up the money they had in drink and womanizing, including patronizing prostitutes.
How much could any young woman put up with? Why stick with him?
Baby, a nickname first given to her as an infant by one of her siblings, was born Elizabeth Bonduel McCourt in 1854. She had married William Harvey Doe (real name) Jr. in 1877 when she was 22. So she was called Baby Doe, with the connotations of a sweet pretty deer.
Her own father had owned clothing stores and she worked in retail sometimes, though it bored her. One of, eventually, thirteen children, her family was not rich but not poor. Many Mistresses started out with less.
She wasn't married long to William when she knew she wanted and needed more. She was 25 years old and had already given birth to a stillborn son when she met the 49 year old very married Horace Tabor. Lore has it that they couldn't help themselves; it was love at first sight.
Around town his wife of more than two decades, Augusta, was known for her New England sensibility and sharp tongue but she was also admired for having stuck with it through many years of poverty, before Horace bought a mine that actually produced. She'd done the hard work of taking in boarders and doing other people's laundry. She is credited historically as being the first white woman to live in the mining boom town of Leadville.
Baby Doe set her sights on a rich man easily taken from a wife with a demanding personality even if, mining town values prevailing, this would be considered scandalous. And in the end it was Augusta, the wife, who would continue to have the social clout, a decent house, and become a charity doyenne, though she had to go back to running a boarding house, which included doing the cleaning, laundry, and cooking for up to twenty boarders to keep that house. Which goes to show you that in Colorado at the turn of the century being accepted by society was not just about money but conservative values and an impeccable reputation. No doubt society was with the long suffering wife and considered Baby Doe a home wrecker.
She wasn't married long to William when she knew she wanted and needed more. She was 25 years old and had already given birth to a stillborn son when she met the 49 year old very married Horace Tabor. Lore has it that they couldn't help themselves; it was love at first sight.
Around town his wife of more than two decades, Augusta, was known for her New England sensibility and sharp tongue but she was also admired for having stuck with it through many years of poverty, before Horace bought a mine that actually produced. She'd done the hard work of taking in boarders and doing other people's laundry. She is credited historically as being the first white woman to live in the mining boom town of Leadville.
Baby Doe set her sights on a rich man easily taken from a wife with a demanding personality even if, mining town values prevailing, this would be considered scandalous. And in the end it was Augusta, the wife, who would continue to have the social clout, a decent house, and become a charity doyenne, though she had to go back to running a boarding house, which included doing the cleaning, laundry, and cooking for up to twenty boarders to keep that house. Which goes to show you that in Colorado at the turn of the century being accepted by society was not just about money but conservative values and an impeccable reputation. No doubt society was with the long suffering wife and considered Baby Doe a home wrecker.
In love with Baby all at once, Horace Tabor offered to pay off her personal debts, which included those to a man named Jake Sands, who had suggested she go to Leadville with him when he opened a women's clothing store where she could earn a living. Sands was rumored to be the real father of that stillborn son. True or not, Sands had given the young woman a way out of her broken marriage.
HORACE AND BABY DOE - From PB Wiki - Identified as at the Opera House they owned.
Tabor moved her into the Clarendon Hotel, the best suite, but if they tried to hide their affair, after that it was hot news that made it all the way to Denver. Back to town, the two of them lived together in the best hotel Leadville had to offer while he sought a divorce.
Baby Doe and Horace married, while her divorce was not finalized and neither was his. His wife resisted giving him a divorce and so theirs was called one-sided. Hers had been filed years before. They were both probably bigamists for a while, though it eventually got all straightened out.
The "Silver King and Queen" moved to Denver and lived in a mansion in Capitol Hill but society didn't approve of them there either. The couple spent a lot on lavish entertaining and invitations were accepted but Baby Doe would find herself without any society women friends to count on. Among the newly rich they were thought to not have good taste.
Now dates get a bit turned around. Baby would not be the first woman to take a few years off her age and their marriage was said to be either September of 1882 or March of 1883. They had two daughters in the next several years, Elizabeth, called Lily, and Rose Mary, called Silver Dollar. Though enemies might like to think that these two would end up unhappy with each other, from all reports their years together as a couple and as a family were happy.The "Silver King and Queen" moved to Denver and lived in a mansion in Capitol Hill but society didn't approve of them there either. The couple spent a lot on lavish entertaining and invitations were accepted but Baby Doe would find herself without any society women friends to count on. Among the newly rich they were thought to not have good taste.
But then there was The Sherman Act and with that came the crash of fortune. An antitrust action that changed the law in 1893, Baby Doe and Horace Tabor were no longer one of the richest families in America. (OUR DOCUMENTS- GOV : THE SHERMAN ANTITRUST ACT)
Horace Tabor died in 1899 and by then they had little money left. He had urged Baby Doe before his death to keep their asset called Matchless Mine, expecting it to turn a profit, but it did not. Instead Baby Doe - Elizabeth - went to live in a raw wood dwelling described as a tool shed, a miner's shack, or a cabin. There she lived in poverty and humility for the next 30 years. Finally unable to even afford shoes, she wrapped her feet in rags like a peasant. The inside of the shake was a mess - like a homeless encampment. Baby Doe died at age 80 of heart failure but when a friend found her dead she was frozen. Thus was the fate of the woman who had once been called The Silver Queen."
If interested in American Boom Town Mistresses you might want to look through my archives for:
PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE - April 2010
KLONDIKE KATE - August 2012
Yukon Gold Rush Mistress
LOLA MONTEZ - February 2019
Volatile Temptress and Mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria - Who Changed History
LOLA MONTEZ - February 2019
Volatile Temptress and Mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria - Who Changed History
This post and others throughout the month are based in research on Baby Doe including articles and web sites on the Internet such as the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame and the Colorado Virtual Library.
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