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Authors: Elizabeth Mahon

Tags: #General, #History, #Women, #Social Science, #Biography & Autobiography, #Biography, #Women's Studies

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BOOK: Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History's Most Notorious Women
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Calamity led a nomadic life, following the railroad from one boomtown to the next, searching for excitement in Montana and Wyoming. She stayed just long enough in each town to make her presence known before moving on. Over a period of ten years, she made her way from Billings, Miles City, and Livingston in Montana to Rawlins and Lander in Wyoming. When she was sober, she worked a series of jobs as a cook, dance hall girl, or laundress. She had several “husbands” over the years, and gave birth to two children, a boy who died young and a little girl named Jessie.
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Local newspapers were filled with “Calamity sightings” during these years, usually detailing some brawl or drunken escapade that she’d gotten into.
Although Calamity claimed to hate the dime novels and journalists whom she constantly accused of printing lies about her, she wasn’t above spinning a few yarns herself, giving herself a bigger role in events that she was on the periphery of, especially when she was in her cups. One of her more interesting claims was that she went after Wild Bill Hickok’s murderer Jack McCall
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with a meat cleaver when she heard the news of his death. Another story she told was the time that she rescued a stagecoach besieged by Indians, driving it to Deadwood. While the story of the stagecoach was true, Calamity had nothing to do with it. Deciding to cash in on her notoriety, she had photographs taken of her in her buckskin suit and peddled them to tourists. In 1896, she wrote her autobiography to coincide with her brief stint as the star attraction in a traveling dime museum. Her notoriety came in handy when she fell ill and ended up in the poorhouse. Her plight made the newspapers and money came pouring in to help the notorious Calamity Jane. While she was peeved at having her plight publicized, she wasn’t too embarrassed to take the money, which she spent in the nearest saloon as soon as she was able.
Calamity’s downfall was booze. Her favorite libation was whiskey but she’d settle for beer in a pinch. Calamity would try to stay off the hooch, and for a while she would succeed, but inevitably she would fall off the wagon. When she was sober, her deportment was no different from other women of her class. When she was drunk it was a different story: she fired her guns, cursed at the top of her voice, howled like a coyote, and was willing to fight anyone who tried to stop her. Although her friends were aware that booze was killing her, instead of helping her they just enabled her by drinking with her.
In 1901, a wealthy easterner named Josephine Brake heard about Calamity’s most recent arrest and illness. She claimed that she wanted to take Calamity back East to take care of her. However, when they arrived in Buffalo, Calamity realized she’d been hoodwinked. Brake wanted Calamity to help her publicize her writing at the Pan-American Exposition. Calamity, not one to be used, went to work instead for Colonel Frederic T. Cummins’s Indian Congress show. She managed to stay off the booze for a while, but it didn’t last. Calamity drank her way back West.
As if sensing that her time was coming to an end, in the last two years of her life, Calamity made a pilgrimage of sorts to the places of her youth. But the boomtowns were now respectable and Calamity’s antics were not welcome anymore. By spring of 1902, she was suffering from a lingering illness and once again was committed to a Montana poorhouse. Leaving Montana behind, Calamity headed back to Deadwood. She finally passed away on August 1, 1903, from an inflammation of the bowels. She was buried near Wild Bill Hickok in the Mount Moriah Cemetery. No doubt the leading citizens realized what a draw it would be to have two of Deadwood’s most famous citizens lying near each other.
On the surface, Calamity Jane’s life seems tragic: poverty, drunkenness, lack of family. But Calamity was also an independent woman trying to make her way in the American West, which was rapidly changing from a lawless frontier to more respectable society. Calamity tried to settle down, to be a wife and mother, but she was just too restless to stay in one place for long.
In the years since her death, Calamity Jane has been depicted in films, novels, and history books as everything from a gun-toting, rowdy wildcat to a romantic tomboy warbling about her secret love for Wild Bill to the revisionist depiction of her as a sad-eyed drunken cross-dresser waiting to die, having outlived the notion of the Old West. Despite historians’ attempts to debunk the myths surrounding Calamity Jane, the image of a lively, rambunctious hellcat continues.
But the real Martha Canary is the story of a young orphan girl who refused to conform, who was as wild and stubborn as the Black Hills. In her forty-seven years, Martha Canary witnessed firsthand the most dramatic period in the American West. Her story gives voice to the poor, the ones who came out West hoping to make their fortune, a part of western history that is often forgotten.
 
Elizabeth “Baby Doe” Tabor
 
1854-1935
 
I have only this one legacy of my great love. It is my mission and my life.
—BABY DOE ABOUT THE MATCHLESS MINE
 
 
On March 7, 1935, Sue Bonnie noticed that there was no smoke coming from the chimney of her neighbor Baby Doe Tabor’s cabin near the Matchless mine in Leadville, Colorado. Worried about the frail elderly woman who seemed to have no family, Sue Bonnie and a friend dug their way through six feet of snow up to the cabin. When they peered through a window they saw her partially clothed body frozen on the floor of the cabin, although there was firewood left. The one remnant of Baby Doe’s legendary beauty was her hair, which contained no gray.
 
In her obituaries, she was called “the Wallis Simpson of the American Empire.” She lived one of the most amazing and dramatic lives ever in American history. “Abject Poverty. Fabulous Riches,” screamed the headline in
True Story
magazine after her death. She was a Rocky Mountain Cinderella who went from rags to riches and back again. Her so-called sins were many: gold digging, husband stealing, and lousy mothering. Like many women of the Old West, myth and reality have become so intertwined that the legendary Baby Doe has superseded the real woman.
Baby Doe had enjoyed tremendous wealth as the pampered second wife of “Silver King” Horace Tabor. After his bankruptcy and subsequent death, she lived on for over thirty years in poverty but rumors abounded that she maintained a massive stash of silver. She became a public spectacle in her last years, dressed in baggy clothing, wearing a large crucifix, feet wrapped in rags. When they heard the news of her death, scavengers came running to see the madwoman’s home, destroying it to search for silver. All they found were scraps of paper, the ravings of a madwoman. The silver was long gone.
She was born Elizabeth Blonduel McCourt in 1854 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. By the time she was sixteen, there were eight McCourt children, and they were moderately comfortable. Her parents owned a clothing store, McCourt and Cameron, that was patronized by those who had made money in the booming lumber industry. By her midteens, Elizabeth was known as “the Belle of Oshkosh.” As pretty as a Dresden doll, she couldn’t help but attract attention with her striking blue eyes, reddish blond hair, and a come-hither manner. Her frantic social life consisted of dances, the theater, buggy rides, and yachting parties on Lake Winnebago.
Elizabeth wasn’t willing to settle for just any old husband. She was looking not just for a great match, but also for love. She thought she had found it in Harvey Doe, the son of a former mayor. Harvey seemed perfect; he had a fine singing voice and played the piano well, not to mention his family was wealthy. Here was the man who would be her knight in shining armor. Harvey’s mother was not happy at her son’s choice. As far as she was concerned, Elizabeth was nothing but an Irish Catholic tramp that wasn’t good enough for her son. Still, the two sweethearts were married.
The newlyweds headed for Colorado, where Harvey’s father owned the Fourth of July, a silver mine in Center City. The West still represented opportunity for anyone willing to work hard. For Elizabeth, it meant freedom from gossiping women. The town was noticeably lacking in women, which meant that she was the center of attention. Although she was married, men were drawn to her flashy figure and friendly manner. It was here that she acquired the nickname Baby Doe, whether for her striking doelike eyes or as a sign of affection, no one knows for sure.
Unfortunately for the newly christened Baby Doe, her husband was allergic to hard work. Although his father had promised him the profits from the mine, Harvey had to dig for it first. That wasn’t their only problem. Gold had been king but it was being challenged by silver as currency, and most mines were now owned by large corporations that could afford to hire experienced miners to work a claim. Baby Doe proved herself a willing wife when she donned men’s clothing to help supervise the workers. The
Town Talk
newspaper wrote, “The young lady manages one half of the property while her liege lord manages the other. This is the first instance where a lady, and such she is, has managed a mining property.”
Their bad luck held when they ran out of money to pay their workers. Harvey became a day laborer in the nearby town of Black Hawk. Soon they had to move from their modest cottage to a rented room above a store. This was not what Baby Doe had signed up for. The few women in Black Hawk didn’t throw out the welcome wagon for her, so she and Harvey made friends with Jake Sands, the proprietor of a clothing store. Soon there was speculation that she and Jake were more than just friends. Baby Doe wrote in her diary, “He kissed me three times and oh! How he loved me and does now!” Whether it was just a romantic friendship or a real physical love affair, both parties took the answer to their grave.
Depressed over his failures, Harvey left Elizabeth and went back to Wisconsin, leaving her alone and pregnant. The baby boy was stillborn in July 1879. Baby Doe began to spend more and more time with Jake Sands, who lent a sympathetic ear and lavish gifts. She decided to end her marriage, a relatively easy matter out West, which had the highest divorce rates in the country. When she had caught Harvey entering a brothel it gave her grounds for divorce. Harvey pleaded innocence, claiming he was meeting a business acquaintance. They divorced in 1880, the grounds modified to nonsupport. Baby Doe was given a small settlement by Harvey’s parents.
To make a fresh start, she moved to Leadville, Colorado, the second-largest city in the state. While Sands would have been happy to marry Baby Doe, marriage to a clothing merchant like her father was not exactly appealing. Baby Doe was still looking for her prince, a strong, self-confident man. She was sure she would find him in Leadville. She didn’t have far to look. The name Horace Tabor was everywhere in Leadville, including the Tabor Grand Opera House, which had recently welcomed Oscar Wilde. All of Leadville knew the story of the dumb luck that had led to Horace’s success. Running a supply store, Horace gave two miners sixty-five dollars’ worth of groceries in exchange for a one-third share in the Little Pittsburg mine. The miners found a rich vein of silver, and soon Horace had five hundred thousand dollars. By the time he met Baby Doe, he had parlayed that into millions by buying into other stakes that came through. Tabor had been mayor of Leadville and lieutenant governor of Colorado, parlaying his wealth into political power. The whiff of success must have been a powerful aphrodisiac to Baby Doe. Later, she confessed that she had been half in love with Horace, or at least his legend, before she met him.
Horace met Baby Doe one evening at the Saddle Rock Café, where she was dining alone on oysters. He took one look at her blue eyes and luscious figure, so different from his sour-faced wife, and invited her to join him. Horace was a frisky fifty years old, and Baby Doe at twenty-six was at the height of her beauty when they met. They talked all night, Baby Doe confiding in him about her troubles, finding his a sympathetic ear. Horace told her about his marriage, how his wife didn’t understand him. His wife, Augusta, reminded him of the past when he was poor, but Baby Doe was his future. By morning, Horace had paid all her debts and they were a couple. Over the next two years, their affair would be covered in detail by all the major newspapers, shattering their reputations.
BOOK: Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History's Most Notorious Women
6.78Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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