Augusta Tabor 2

Augusta Tabor 2

Mrs. Hill was delighted and later described Augusta as a “frail,

delicate-looking woman with pleasing manners.”

 

More importantly, Mrs. Tabor No. 1 wrote out a detailed account of her

early marriage, much of which Mrs. Hill used in her first book, “Tales

of the Colorado Pioneers,” but which has survived intact in the _Denver

Republican_.

 

Her romance with Tabor, a Vermont stone-cutter, began in Maine in

August, 1853, when Augusta L. Pierce was twenty years old and Horace

Austin Warner Tabor was twenty-two. He came to work for her father, a

contractor. After a couple of years’ employment he fell in love with the

boss’s daughter. A two-year engagement followed while Tabor homesteaded

a 160-acre farm in Riley County, Kansas.

 

“On January 31, 1857, we were married in the room where we first met,”

Augusta recalled.

 

Farming in Kansas proved bleak, arduous and lonely for the

twenty-four-year old bride, and unprofitable for her husband. When the

news of gold in Colorado broke, the Tabors joined the rush. On April 5,

1859, they set out in an ox-drawn covered wagon with two men friends and

their sixteen-month-old baby son, Maxcy, who was teething. They also

took along several cows to provide milk. The journey to Denver took them

until June 20. They camped there for two weeks because the cattle were

footsore, and then moved to a site near Golden.

 

Here, the men decided to push on to Gregory Diggings, now Central City,

and they went afoot since there was no adequate road for a wagon.

 

“Leaving me and my sick child in the 7 by 9 tent, that my hands had

made, the men took a supply of provisions on their backs, a few

blankets, and bidding me be good to myself, left on the morning of the

glorious Fourth. My babe was suffering from fever and I was weak and

worn. My weight was only ninety pounds. How sadly I felt, none but God,

in whom I then firmly trusted, knew. Twelve miles from a human soul save

my babe. The only sound I heard was the lowing of the cattle, and they,

poor things, seemed to feel the loneliness of the situation and kept

unusually quiet. Every morning and evening I had a ‘round-up’ all to

myself,” Augusta wrote.

 

After three “long, weary weeks” the men returned. On the 26th of July

they again “loded” the wagon and started into the mountains. Traveling

by way of Russell Gulch, it took them three weeks to reach Payne’s Bar,

now Idaho Springs. She remarked:

 

“Ours was the first wagon through and I was the first white woman there,

if white I could be called, after camping out three months.”

 

The men cut logs, laid them up four feet and put the 7 by 9 tent on top

for a roof. Horace went prospecting and Augusta opened a business. She

baked bread and pies, gave meals and sold milk from their cows.

 

[Illustration: AUGUSTA SAT WITH A PRESIDENT IN A BOX

 

_The Tabor Opera House in Leadville was the home of legitimate drama

and provided many cultural evenings for early-day bonanza barons._]

 

Horace found no gold, but Augusta was very successful. She made enough

money to buy their unpaid-for farm in Kansas and to keep them through

the winter in Denver. In February Horace returned to his prospect but

found his claim had been jumped. He decided to go prospecting farther

afield, on the Arkansas, and returned to Denver to make plans.

 

They traveled by way of Ute Pass and were a month on the road before

they reached South Park. Now she waxed lyrical.

 

“I shall never forget my first vision of the park. The sun was just

setting. I can only describe it by saying it was one of Colorado’s

sunsets. Those who have seen them know how glorious they are. Those who

have not cannot imagine how gorgeously beautiful they are. The park

looked like a cultivated field with rivulets coursing through, and herds

of antelope in the distance.”

 

After two hazardous crossings of the ice-caked and tumultuous Arkansas,

and after several weeks of unsuccessful placering when they could not

separate heavy black particles from the gold, they arrived in California

Gulch. It was May 8, 1860.

 

“The first thing after camping was to have the faithful old oxen

butchered that had brought us all the way from Kansas—yes, from the

Missouri River three years before. We divided the meat with the miners

in the gulch, for they were without provisions or ammunition.”

 

Once again Augusta was the first woman in the camp, and once again the

men built her a primitive log cabin. This one had a sod roof, no window,

and a dirt floor. She promptly went into business and Horace went

prospecting. As the Tabors were the only people in the upper end of the

gulch who owned a gold-scales, Augusta added weighing dust to her duties

of taking boarders and doing laundry. In a few weeks ten thousand men

were crowded in the gulch, and a mail and express office was needed.

Augusta was appointed postmistress of Oro City.

 

[Illustration: THE PASSAGE-WAY OVER ST. LOUIS AVENUE

 

_The Tabor Opera House was connected with the Clarendon Hotel for the

ease of Tabor and Bush who had private suites in the former._]

 

“I was very happy that summer,” she added.

 

By September 20th Horace had accumulated $5,000 in gold dust from his

claim. He gave $1,000 worth of this dust to Augusta, and she prepared to

leave the mountains to spend the winter with her father and mother.

 

“I put my wardrobe, what there was of it, in a carpet bag, and took

passage with a mule train that was going to the Missouri River. I was

five weeks in crossing and cooked for my board.”

 

(Horace and Maxcy also went to Maine that winter but Augusta did not

mention this.)

 

“With that $1,000, I purchased 160 acres of land in Kansas, adjoining

the tract we already owned. My folks dressed me up, and in the spring I

bought a pair of mules and a wagon in St. Joe to return with, which took

about all my money.”

 

Horace spent the $4,000 that was left of the gold dust for flour in Iowa

on the way back. In the spring they opened a store in Augusta’s cabin.

While he mined the claim, Augusta waited on customers and raised her

son. She even transported gold to Denver on horseback for the express

office. In order to fool highway robbers, Tabor carried a small amount

of gold, while large amounts were hidden under her skirts enjoying the

protection of chivalry to ladies! That summer of 1861 the store was more

profitable than mining because the easy placer gold was nearly played

out.

 

[Illustration: MARRIED

 

_In 1878 Tabor and his first wife were respectable citizens and

suitably wed. He kept a general store in the booming mining town of

Leadville and she, the mayor’s wife, had boarders to increase the

family earnings and budget._]

 

[Illustration: _In those days the Tabor residence stood on Harrison

Avenue; and can be seen toward the rear of this sketch, occupying the

space between the Clarendon Hotel and some new stores. Augusta’s

boarders would have looked exactly like these men. Although most of

her boarders in 1878 were Tabor’s clerks, they spent every hour of

their free time searching the hills for silver like everyone else.

This was a typical prospecting outfit._]

 

[Illustration: DIVORCED

 

_Tabor hardly looks like the sort of Lothario who would have been the

idol of two remarkable women. But such he was. Both wives were

courageous, articulate and full of initiative, besides adoring. The

first liked to work; the second to play. The first was downright; the

second, flattering. The first hated to show off; the second loved the

limelight. The first was economical and the second, extravagant. But

both were unusual women who made history. A detailed treatment of the

second Mrs. Tabor’s life will be found in the illustrated booklet,

“Silver Queen: The Fabulous Story of Baby Doe Tabor.” It is a

rags-to-riches and riches-to-rags tale, full of pathos._

 

_The photographs of Horace Tabor and Baby Doe, below, have never been

published before; also the photograph of Baby Doe on the next page.

The following sketch of Augusta, as a young woman with curls, was

printed with a write-up of the scandal in the national Police

Gazette._]

 

[Illustration]

 

[Illustration: BITTER FOES

 

_The first Mrs. Tabor, or the second, would tell her coachman to pass

the other’s carriage if they saw each other out driving. Their enmity

never relented the least bit during Augusta’s life._]

 

The camp fell off rapidly and by autumn was practically deserted. The

Tabors decided to try the other side of the Mosquito Range and the

booming camp of Buckskin Joe. Again they opened a store and again it was

selected as the post office. Horace had no better luck with mining in

South Park than in Oro and so resigned himself to their small business

venture.

 

But he still dreamt of bonanzas and hopefully grubstaked penniless

prospectors. The agreement was that in return for supplies, which he

gave them, they would share any rich finds. Augusta viewed the practice

with disfavor.

 

When the Printer Boy mine was expanded in 1868 in California Gulch, the

Tabors moved back to Oro City. This time they erected a four-room log

cabin about a mile above the present site of Leadville and settled down

to their usual routine of running a general store. For ten more years,

bringing the total to eighteen, Augusta kept at her labors and Horace

cherished his dreams.

 

As the years passed, Augusta’s natural New England frankness grew more

tart. She found Horace’s easy-going ways irritating. His off-hand

generosities made no sense to a woman who knew the value of a

hard-earned dollar. Or, perhaps, some psychic intuition warned Augusta

that that very same trait would bring her eventual heart-break, and she

was trying subconsciously to ward off the blow.

 

The blow came disguised as good fortune. In 1877 the news leaked out

that those heavy particles of black sand, which had been so difficult

for the placer miners to separate from gold, were really bits of

lead-silver carbonates. A second rush to California Gulch began. The

newcomers were silver-seekers and chose the lower part of the gulch in

which to settle. The Tabors decided to move their Oro City store a mile

farther down, and selected a site on the south side of Chestnut Street,

a door below the Harrison Avenue corner. They built a story-and-a-half

log and frame building with sleeping quarters upstairs, and dining and kitchen arrangements to the rear.