Baby Doe Tabor - Early Life and Marriage

Early Life and Marriage

Elizabeth Bonduel McCourt, (or according to some accounts Elizabeth Nellis McCourt) was born in 1854 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin to Irish-Catholic immigrants Peter and Elizabeth McCourt, although she would later change her birth date to 1860. 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 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 McCourt's lost their home, the clothing store and theater. They mortgaged their property to rebuild the home and the business, but this put Peter McCourt deeply in debt, and at that time the family was forced to live on what amounted to little more than a clerk's salary.

In 1876, Lizzie McCourt met Harvey Doe, who was Protestant. She enchanted him when, as the only woman competitor, she entered and won a skating competition, while at same time scandalizing many of the townspeople by wearing a costume that showed glimpses of her legs. Lizzy and Harvey were married in 1877 at the Catholic church, 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 soon gained the nickname “Baby Doe”.