Baby Doe Tabor

Elizabeth McCourt Tabor (September 1854 – March 7, 1935), 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,^[1] 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,"^[2] she lived in poverty and solitude for the 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.^[2] 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."^[3] Her story inspired the opera The Ballad of Baby Doe.