Next stop: Leadville

As a historic biographer, my focus is writing about pioneer characters, which often takes me to places with a colorful past. When I researched and wrote my award-winning biography, Baby Doe Tabor: Matchless Silver Queen, my search for truth and information about The Tabors and their Matchless Mine took me to the nooks and crannies of Leadville’s mining district. Interestingly, the fun did not end once the book was published by Filter Press in 2011.…

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Baby Doe is on a Roll!

This week, Women Writing the West announced winners and finalists of the 2012 WILLA Literary awards. Lo and behold, Baby Doe Tabor: Matchless Silver Queen is a finalist in the Scholarly Nonfiction category, its second award this year after winning Best Biography from CIPA. What an honor! WILLA awards will be presented October 19-21 in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the Annual WWW Conference. Baby Doe, who loved jewels, now has gold and silver emblems for…

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Real Boom Town Treasures

Publication date of my latest book, Baby Doe Tabor: Matchless Silver Queen, is fast approaching. As we struggle through final edits in an attempt to provide the most interesting and correct factual information possible, I am enjoying revisiting Colorado’s mining history as I have throughout the process. Just as I learned about railroads and their impact on our country’s western expansion during my work on General William Palmer: Railroad Pioneer, I have experienced a similar…

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Closure and Reflection

Finalizing a book manuscript to hand over to the publisher is a strange and wonderful time. I could continue editing indefinitely, but the time has come to finalize it. The danger with over-editing is that the life and character might be sucked out of the text, rendering it ordinary. Thus, I bid farewell to Baby Doe Tabor while she is still lively and colorful so her story can move on to the next step. I…

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Historic Shadows and Footsteps

Busy times and family fun have arrived with the onset of summer. As I push hard to finalize my latest biography, I cannot resist the lure of a mountain road on a sunny day in the name of history research. Once again, my intrepid research pal Christie accompanied me on a field trip to the mining town of Leadville. With Christie driving her 4×4, we explored the routes of the Silver Kings through the Oro…

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Forever Young

As Women’s History Month winds down, census records are on my mind. They are a blessing and a curse to the biographer. Once again, I am researching a Victorian Colorado woman who was fashionably demure about revealing her age and birthdate. Elizabeth “Baby Doe” Tabor was born in 1854. I am not sure of the exact date, because I have encountered negative evidence in that regard. She attained the age of six by the 1860…

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History In My Hands

  History researchers in Denver beware and be aware. As of Oct. 31, the Colorado Historical Society is closing its library for the next two years while they move and reconstruct their museum. Yes, I said two YEARS!! Realization of this closure has thrown my research schedule for my next biography into panic mode. The subject for the next book is Elizabeth Tabor, known around Colorado as “Baby Doe”, the Silver Queen of Leadville. Although…

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