Baby Doe Tabor - Marriage To Horace Tabor

Marriage To Horace Tabor

In January 1883, Augusta sued Tabor again, and at that time he compensated her with real estate in Denver and stock in his mines. Tabor finally obtained a legal divorce in January 1883. That same month, the Colorado State Legislature appointed him to a 30-day term as United States Senator, to fill a temporary vacancy, when the sitting senator, Henry Teller, was appointed as a cabinet member. Baby Doe and Horace married publicly on 1 March 1883, just two months after Tabor divorced Augusta. He was 52 and she 28, although she claimed at that time to be only 22. The marriage took place during Tabor’s brief tenure as a US senator, at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC. Baby Doe invited President Chester A. Arthur and other dignitaries who attended, as reported by the media at the time of her death, though a more recent biography claims many invitations were declined.

She planned a lavish wedding, going first to Oshkosh, making arrangements for her family to attend the event, and purchasing clothing and jewelry for them. Her mother was proud that her daughter was marrying a wealthy man, and Baby Doe herself was quite happy. At her wedding in Washington, she wore a white satin dress that cost $7,000 and the $90,000 necklace known as the "Isabella" necklace. Two days after the wedding, the priest who performed the ceremony refused to sign the marriage license when he learned that both the bride and the groom had previously divorced and Baby Doe was Catholic. Although Tabor’s contemporaries had winked at or ignored his dalliance with Baby Doe, Tabor’s divorce and quick remarriage created a scandal which prevented the couple from being accepted in polite society. Only a few months later, Horace's bid to be elected governor of Colorado ended in failure. Baby Doe's father died at around the same time.

The couple returned to Colorado, where they took up permanent residence in a Denver mansion. Denver socialites snubbed Baby Doe from whom she received neither visits nor invitations. Although she did not join charities or clubs, as was customary during that period for wealthy women, she was generous with her money, donating funds to various charities, such as free providing offices to the Colorado suffragette movement. To keep herself busy, she shopped, bought jewelry and clothing, had her hair done and continued with the hobby of scrapbooking she took up when living in Central City.

On July 13, 1884, she gave birth the first of two daughters, Elizabeth Bonduel Lily Tabor. Although the infant was christened in an extravagant and frilly outfit costing $15,000, Baby Doe was reportedly a good mother, staying at home with her daughter instead of accompanying Horace on his frequent trips to look after widespread business interests. The second daughter, Rose Mary Echo Silver Dollar Tabor, was born on December 17, 1889. Both girls were attractive and well-looked after and their mother doted on them. The second child was fondly called Silver, whom Baby Doe "defiantly nursed ... as she rode through the streets in Denver in one of her carriages."

A year after the birth of their second child, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act was enacted, in 1890, which brought to Colorado, and Colorado mine-owners, the hope that wildly fluctuating silver prices would stabilize. Profits from silver mining had diminished as the supply declined, and the extraction process and labor costs increased. When a few of Horace's investments began to fail, he was forced to mortgage the Tabor theater in Denver and other real estate he bought during the past decades.

Horace Tabor lost his fortune in 1893 when the repeal of the Silver Act caused the Panic of 1893. Silver prices plummeted and fortunes in Colorado were instantly wiped out. As she had with her first husband, Baby Doe pitched in. Horace gave her the legal power to run his business concerns in Denver and she made decisions for him during his absences. To raise money, she sold her jewelry, and when the couple had the power turned off in their mansion, she made a game of it for the children. Eventually, the mansion and its contents were sold and at age 65, to earn a living, Horace took a job as a common mineworker while the family lived in a boarding house. From 1893 to 1898 the Tabors endured great poverty although some friends lent them money. To save him from poverty, some political friends arranged his appointment as postmaster of Denver in 1898. The family, at that time lived on his annual salary of $3700 per year, and took up residence in a plain room at the Windsor Hotel. Horace's health soon gave out, and 15 months after his appointment to the position, he died.

His funeral was well attended with perhaps as many as 10,000 there. On his deathbed he is said to have told Baby Doe, "hold on the Matchless mine … it will make millions again when silver comes back", although the story might not be true; by then they had mortgaged and/or lost the Matchless mine. At the time of her husband's death, Baby Doe was still an attractive woman in her mid-forties.