By Donna Baier Stein
Serving House Books
ISBN 978-0-997010-6-5
Reviewed by Forrest Whitman
Lizzy “Baby Doe” Tabor is a tough subject for any novelist to pick, and Donna Stein has done a good job here. There are hundreds of books and articles written about this famous figure from Colorado history. There are also plays and one full length opera. The interpretations of her life and writings are many indeed. What can another historical novel add?
By Craig Wagner
Leadville is home to one of the last legends of the Old West. Not a gunfighter or gambler but a tiny old woman who displayed extraordinary grit in the name of love and pride, and possibly madness. Her story has spawned books, movies and a famous opera.
Baby Doe Tabor’s scandalous affair and subsequent marriage to Horace Tabor has been well told. After Horace’s death, she returned to Leadville in 1901 at the age of 46. The 30 years she lived in a small cabin are more mysterious.
Her solitary life has drawn the attention of authors, researchers and paranormal detectives. But the elderly woman remains an enigma. Who was she? What kind of woman lives alone in a shack on the side of a mountain for thirty years?
by Francisco A. Rios
(Editor’s note: Dr. Rios, a retired professor from the University of Colorado at Denver, spent 805 volunteer hours over a span of one year and seven months cataloging hundreds of letters from the Tabor Collection at the Colorado Historical Society (CHS) onto a computer database. We are reproducing some of these letters as a series with the generous permission of the CHS.)
In the Tabor correspondence, no one uses the name Baby Doe. Her family calls her Lizzie, and Horace, after opening his letters with “My Darling Wife,” calls her Babe. In the Tabor collection at the Historical Society, she appears, for brevity’s sake, as EBT, for Elizabeth Bonduel Tabor, which will come in handy for her later, as she plays off this name to create aliases for herself. This series will refer to her as EBT or Mrs. Tabor and reserve the name Baby Doe for her early years in Leadville.
by Francisco A. Rios
(Editor’s note: Dr. Rios, a retired professor from the University of Colorado at Denver, spent 805 volunteer hours over a span of one year and seven months cataloging hundreds of letters from the Tabor Collection at the Colorado Historical Society (CHS) onto a computer database. Over the next several months we will be reproducing some of these letters as a series with the generous permission of the CHS.)
Why would you, the readers of Colorado Central, want a reintroduction to the Tabors? Can’t many of you recite the Tabor tale of rags-to-riches-to rags by memory, citing chapter and verse? Haven’t scores of you been up to Fryer Hill and seen Horace’s Matchless Mine and Baby Doe’s cabin? Is there more to say about the Tabors?
