6 Wild Women of the old west.
1. Lottie Deno - Wikipedia
Carlotta J. Thompkins, also known as Lottie Deno (April
21, 1844 – February 9, 1934), was a famous gambler in the U.S. state of
Texas during the 19th century known for her poker skills as well as her
courage.
She was born in Kentucky and traveled a great deal in
her early adulthood before coming to Texas. Much of her earlier life and
even her real name at birth are a matter of debate among historians, but
her fame as a poker-player in the Southwest is not. According to author
Johnny Hughes, "In the late 1800s Texas' most famous poker player was Lottie
Deno (a shortened form of 'dinero' - Spanish for money)."
Early life
Carlotta J. Thompkins (her presumed real name) was born
on April 21, 1844 in Warsaw, Kentucky. Her family was reportedly quite
wealthy and her father, a racehorse breeder and prominent gambler, is said
to have traveled extensively with Lottie, teaching her the secrets of winning
at cards at some of the finest casinos. After her father's death in the
Civil War, Lottie's mother sent her to Detroit to find a husband. She was
accompanied by Mary Poindexter, her loyal slave and nanny. After running
out of money in Detroit, Thompkins fell into a life of gambling, traveling
the Mississippi River. Poindexter, reportedly seven-feet tall and formidable,
acted as Thompkins' protector during their travels.
Gambling days in Texas
Lottie arrived in San Antonio in 1865. She became a house
gambler at the University Club working for the Thurmond family from Georgia.
It was during this time that she met and fell in love with Frank Thurmond,
a fellow gambler.
|
|
After being accused of murder, Frank fled San Antonio and
Lottie followed. The pair traveled for many years throughout the frontier
areas of Texas, including Fort Concho, Jacksboro, San Angelo, Denison,
Fort Worth, and Fort Griffin. Their travels occurred during a local economic
boom on the Texas frontier as demand for bison hides spiked in the mid
and late 1870s. Cowboys and traders flush with cash during the period became
targets for gamblers in frontier communities. It was at Fort Griffin, where
Lottie lingered for some time, that her notoriety and legend became most
established. Fort Griffin, which was a frontier outpost west of Fort Worth
near the Texas Panhandle, was known for its saloons and the rough element
it attracted. Gaining fame as a gambler Lottie became associated with various
old west personalities, including Doc Holliday.
During her travels she gained numerous nicknames. In San
Antonio she was known as the "Angel of San Antonio." At Fort Concho she
became known as "Mystic Maud." At Fort Griffin she was called "Queen of
the Pasteboards" and "Lottie Deno." It was this last moniker by which she
became best known. Her escapades during this period became part of the
folklore of the American Wild West.
Later life
Lottie and Frank moved to Kingston, New Mexico, in 1877,
where they ran a gambling room in the Victorio Hotel. Lottie later became
the owner of the Broadway Restaurant in Silver City.
In 1880, Lottie and Frank were married in Silver City.
In 1882 they moved to Deming, New Mexico, where they settled permanently
and gave up their gambling life. They became upstanding citizens in the
community, with Frank eventually becoming vice president of Deming National
Bank and Lottie helping to found St. Luke's Episcopal Church. Lottie died
on February 9, 1934 and was buried in Deming as Charlotte Thurmond.
Legacy
Miss Kitty Russell, a character from the long running
American radio and television show Gunsmoke is based on Lottie Deno.
|
2. Baby Doe Tabor - Wikipedia
Elizabeth McCourt Tabor (1854 – March 7, 1935), better
known as Baby Doe, was the second wife of pioneer Colorado businessman
Horace Tabor. Her rags-to-riches and back again story made her a well-known
figure in her own day, and inspired an opera and a Hollywood movie based
on her life.
Born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, she moved to Colorado in the
mid-1870s with her first husband, Harvey Doe, whom she divorced for drinking,
gambling, frequenting brothels, and being unable to provide a living.
She then moved to Leadville, Colorado, where she met Tabor,
a wealthy silver magnate almost twice her age. In 1883 he divorced his
first wife, to whom he had been married for 25 years, and married Baby
Doe in Washington, D.C. during his brief stint as a US senator, after which
they took up residence in Denver. His divorce and remarriage to the young
and beautiful Baby Doe caused a scandal in 1880s Colorado. Although Tabor
was one of the wealthiest men in Colorado, supporting his wife in a lavish
style, he lost his fortune when the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase
Act caused the Panic of 1893 with widespread bankruptcies in silver-producing
regions such as Colorado. He died destitute, and she returned to Leadville
with her two daughters, living out the rest of her life there.
At one time the "best dressed woman in the West", for
the final three decades of her life, she lived in a shack on the site of
the Matchless Mine, enduring great poverty, solitude, and repentance. After
a snowstorm in March 1935, she was found frozen in her cabin, aged about
81 years. During her lifetime she became the subject of malicious gossip
and scandal, defied Victorian gender values, and gained a "reputation of
one of the most beautiful, flamboyant, and alluring women in the mining
West". Her story inspired the opera The Ballad of Baby Doe.
|
1883 |
Early life and marriage
Elizabeth Bonduel McCourt (or according to some accounts
Elizabeth Nellis McCourt) was born in 1854 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin to Irish-Catholic
immigrants Peter and Elizabeth McCourt. She later claimed to have been
born in 1860. She appears to have been christened on October 7, 1854 at
St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church. Called Lizzie as a child, the fourth
of eleven children, she grew up in a middle-class family in a two-story
house. Her father was a partner in a local clothing store and owner of
Oshkosh's first theater, McCourt Hall. Her mother fostered in her beautiful
daughter the belief that her looks were of great worth, excusing her from
domestic chores so as to preserve her skin and allowing her to dream of
a future as an actress. Concerned by his wife's indulgence in their young
and striking daughter, Peter McCourt thought it prudent to put her to work
at the clothing store, where she was often in the company of fashionable
young men. At age 16, she was a "fashionably plump" blond-haired young
woman with a hectic social schedule.
Oshkosh was a frontier lumber town, filled with mills.
When fires raged through Oshkosh in 1874 and again in 1875, the McCourts
lost their home, the clothing store, and the theater. They mortgaged their
property to rebuild the home and the business, but this put Peter McCourt
deeply in debt. The family was forced to live on what amounted to little
more than a clerk's salary.
In 1876, Lizzie McCourt met Harvey Doe, who was a Protestant.
She enchanted him when, as the only woman competitor, she entered and won
a skating competition, while at same time scandalizing many of the townspeople
by wearing a costume that showed glimpses of her legs. Lizzy and Harvey
were married in 1877 at the Catholic church, to the dissatisfaction of
his parents. They then traveled with Harvey's father to Colorado to look
after his mining investments, most importantly his half-ownership of the
Fourth of July Mine in Central City. After a two-week honeymoon in Denver's
American House, the newlyweds joined the elder Doe in the mining town in
the mountains. Lizzie found Colorado enchanting. There she may have gained
the nickname “Baby Doe”.
Move to Colorado
In Central City, she quickly found that her husband's
reserved temperament was unsuitable for a boisterous frontier mining town,
and that he was unable either to manage a mine on his own or to follow
his father's instructions on how to do so. Rather than see him fail, and
enchanted with the possibility of becoming wealthy from mining gold, she
helped her husband. She often dressed in mining clothes and worked directly
in the mine. Despite a somewhat relaxed culture in the frontier mining
town, those in the highest strata of the city's society considered her
behavior and dress scandalous, causing her to be ignored. Through both
their efforts, the Does did manage to bring up a small amount of gold,
but when the vein ran out and a poorly constructed shaft collapsed, Harvey
gave up and decided to take a job as a common mucker at another mine. He
told his wife to stop wearing men's clothing and stay at home.
At that time, they moved from Central City to Black
Hawk to live in a less expensive rooming house. Greatly disappointed and
disenchanted by the noise and dirt in Black Hawk, Baby Doe began to take
walks around the city each day. Then aged 23, she may have gained the name
"Baby Doe" from the local men watching. She lacked domestic skills with
which to work and earn money, and she had nothing in common with the women
of the town. Often, having little to do with her time, she visited the
local clothing store, attracted in part by the expensive fabrics. She became
friendly with the owner of the town's clothing store, Jake Sandelowsky.
At the same time Harvey lost his job, and their marriage began to deteriorate.
By that time Baby Doe was pregnant. Suspecting the child was Jake's, Harvey
left her temporarily, and in July 1879, Baby Doe gave birth to a stillborn
boy.
Meanwhile, Harvey's parents, expecting a grandchild, had
moved to Colorado to be near the family. Disappointed, they severed their
ties with the two and moved to Idaho Springs, while Baby Doe followed Harvey
to Denver despite wishing for a divorce from him. In Denver, Harvey frequented
saloons and brothels. After witnessing him with a prostitute, Baby Doe
filed for divorce on the grounds of adultery. The divorce was quickly granted
in March 1880, but for unknown reasons was not officially recorded until
April 1886. Baby Doe then moved to Leadville, Colorado, almost certainly
invited there by Sandelowsky, who changed his name to Sands. Alone and
without a husband, Baby Doe needed to find a means of financial support
quickly. Jake Sandelowsky, who opened a store in Leadville and almost certainly
wanted to marry her, offered her employment. Working at a clothing store,
however, was a prospect Baby Doe found dull, boring, and too similar to
the life she had left behind in Oshkosh.
Leadville
In Leadville, she caught the attention of Horace Tabor,
mining millionaire and owner of Leadville's Matchless Mine. Tabor was married,
but in 1880 he left his wife Augusta to be with Baby Doe; he established
her in plush suites at hotels in Leadville and Denver.
Horace and Augusta Tabor had lived for 25 years
on the frontier, first moving to Kansas where they tried their hand at
agriculture, then following the gold rush to Colorado, but never striking
it rich. Eventually they found their way to Leadville, where Horace, in
1878, grub-staked two prospectors with about $60 worth of goods in return
for one-third of their profits. To everyone's surprise, the two men's stake
was successful, beginning Tabor's path to wealth. With his profits, he
bought out the two, then bought stakes in more mines, and had a house built
in Denver. He ran successfully for Lieutenant Governor of Colorado in 1878,
(when still a territory), and established the Little Pittsburg Consolidated
Mining Company, which quickly gained a worth of about $20 million. He bought
the Matchless Mine, which for many years produced large amounts of silver.
His profits were so great that he was quickly on his way to becoming one
of the richest men in the country.
At an altitude of 10,000 feet, Leadville was the second
largest city in Colorado. It boasted over 100 saloons and gambling places,
multiple daily and weekly newspapers, and 36 brothels. Tabor's presence
seemed to be everywhere. He opened the Tabor Opera House in Leadville,
bought luxury items for his wife, Augusta, and established a private army
that he used for protection of his holdings and as a force against striking
miners. He spent his money lavishly, mostly on his own entertainment—drinking,
gambling and frequenting brothels. In 1880, Augusta moved away from him
to live in Denver while Tabor enjoyed himself in Leadville. A Denver newspaper
columnist described him as "Stoop-shouldered; ambling gait ...black hair,
inclined to baldness ....dresses in black; magnificent cuff buttons of
diamonds and onyx ...worth 8 million dollars." Historian Judy Nolte Temple
writes that it "seemed inevitable that the prettiest woman in the mining
West would eventually meet the richest man."
Baby Doe met Horace Tabor in a restaurant in Leadville
one evening in 1880. She told him her story and that she had arrived in
Leadville because of Jake Sandelowsky's generosity. Tabor gave her $5000
on the spot. Baby Doe then had a message, and $1000, delivered to Sandelowsky,
in which she declared that she would not marry him. Instead, Tabor moved
her to the Clarendon Hotel, next to the opera house and Sandelowsky's store,
Sands, Pelton & Company. Sandelowsky later moved to Aspen, where he
opened another store, married, and built a house.
Some months later, Tabor moved Baby Doe to the Windsor
Hotel in Denver. A newly constructed turreted building, meant to look like
Windsor castle, the hotel had extremely lavish decorations such as mirrors
made of diamond dust. Tabor had a gold-leafed bath-tub in his suite. Guests
were wealthy, well-known and well-connected.
Baby Doe claimed to love Tabor, and he loved her. He moved
permanently out of his Denver home and asked his wife Augusta for a divorce.
She refused him. He, in turn, refused to send her an invitation to attend
the grand opening of Denver's Tabor Grand Opera House. He stopped giving
his wife money; she sued him but failed; he again demanded a divorce. Baby
Doe suggested that he seek a divorce in a different jurisdiction, and in
1882 a Durango, Colorado, judge granted them a divorce. However, the filing
was irregular, and once Tabor realized that, he had the county clerk paste
together two pages in the records to hide the action. Despite his existing
marriage to Augusta, Horace Tabor and Elizabeth McCourt Doe married secretly
in St. Louis, Missouri, in September 1882. At that time both were bigamists:
his divorce was questionable and hers was not yet recorded.
Marriage to Horace Tabor
In January 1883, Augusta sued Tabor again, and now he
compensated her with real estate in Denver and stock in his mines. Tabor
finally obtained a legal divorce at that time. That same month, the Colorado
State Legislature appointed him to a 30-day term as United States Senator
to fill a temporary vacancy because the sitting senator, Henry Teller,
had been appointed a cabinet member. Baby Doe and Horace married publicly
on 1 March 1883, just two months after Tabor and Augusta had divorced.
He was 52 and she 28, and she claimed 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 had performed the ceremony refused to sign the marriage
license when he learned that both the bride and the groom had previously
divorced and that Baby Doe was a Roman 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. Baby Doe was snubbed by Denver socialites,
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,
and providing free 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 had taken up when living
in Central City.
On July 13, 1884, she gave birth to the first of her and
Tabor's two daughters, Elizabeth Bonduel Lily Tabor. 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.
Their 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 or
Silver Dollar, 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, in 1890,
the Sherman Silver Purchase Act was enacted, 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
had declined and the extraction process and labor costs had 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 had 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 most of 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. 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 to "hold
on the Matchless mine … it will make millions again when silver comes back."
However, that story might not be true; by then, it appears 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.
Later years
The Matchless mine
After her husband's death, Baby Doe stayed in Denver for
a period, according to her diaries and correspondence. Why she decided
to leave Denver and the society there to make a return to Leadville, in
the high mountains with its cold winters, is unknown, but it almost certainly
had to do with the Matchless mine. For two years she unsuccessfully tried
to find investors to bring the Matchless back into production. The family
may have tried to regain ownership to the Matchless mine, but documentation
is fragmented, and it is unclear to whom the mine belonged at that time.
In 1901, one of her McCourt sisters may have attempted to buy the mine
at a sheriff's sale, but again the fragmented documentation is murky about
ownership. When Baby Doe moved with her girls back to Leadville, she claimed
she would work the mine herself, despite its deteriorated condition. Temple
writes that the mine's shafts were flooded and had not been in working
condition for many years, and furthermore that Horace would have known
this. To earn money, she took on menial domestic jobs. Unknown to
her, her brother paid the grocer so that the three women had food. Eventually,
in an attempt to keep the decrepit mine going and to raise funds, she reluctantly
sold the "Isabella necklace" Tabor had given her, but during her lifetime
she refused to sell his gold watch fob.
Her older daughter, Lily, left her mother to live with
Baby Doe’s family in Wisconsin. Later, after her mother died, Lily denied
being Baby Doe’s daughter. Of the two daughters, Lily, born into wealth,
seemed more affected by the fall into poverty. When in 1902, Baby Doe traveled
with her daughters to Oshkosh to visit her relatives, Lily decided then
to prolong her visit, to stay and provide care for her elderly grandmother.
Later, Lily moved to Chicago, where in 1908 she married her first cousin,
and soon after gave birth to Baby Doe's grandchild. In 1911, Baby Doe and
Silver again visited relatives in Wisconsin, going on to visit Lily in
Chicago. After such a prolonged absence, Lily claimed she barely knew Silver
Dollar.
After Lily's departure, Baby Doe and Silver Dollar moved
into a cabin on the site of the Matchless mine. The living quarters were
basic and inadequate for Colorado winters: "All told, it was no larger
than a medium sized room. Two windows had been cut into the flimsy weatherboards,
but these had been nailed up". The structure was a former tool shed located
adjacent to the hoisthouse, described by a visitor in 1927 as "crowded
with very primitive furniture, decorated with religious pictures, and stacked
high in newspapers." The cabin was isolated, located above Leadville in
Little Strayhorse Gulch, and had an unimpeded view of Mount Elbert and
Mount Massive.
Silver Dollar also left Leadville, soon after she had
turned to drink and had became sexually precocious. Worried, Baby Doe was
happy to send her away to Denver. There, Silver Dollar wrote for the Denver
Times, sending part of her earnings to her mother on a weekly basis. She
then attempted to become a novelist, while at the same time gaining a bad
reputation in Denver for her drunken antics. Perhaps to escape Colorado,
she moved to Chicago where again she tried her hand at writing. Eventually,
after working as a dancer under various names, she became the mistress
of a Chicago gangster. In 1925, Silver Dollar was found scalded to death
under suspicious circumstances in her Chicago boarding house, where she
had been living under the name "Ruth Norman". For the rest of her life,
Baby Doe refused to believe the woman found as Ruth Norman had been her
daughter, stating, "I did not see the body they said was my little girl."
Alone in the cabin outside Leadville, Baby Doe turned
to religion. She considered her life of great wealth a period of vanity
and created penances for herself. During the frigidly bitter Colorado high-country
winters, she wound burlap sacks around her legs. With no money, she ate
very little, living on stale bread and suet, and refused to accept charity.
Baby Doe lived like this for 35 years. During these years she wrote incessantly.
In diaries, letters, and scraps she called "Dreams and Visions", consisting
of about 2000 fragments later found bundled in piles of paper in her cabin,
she wrote entries such as: "Nov. 26—1918 Papa Tabor's Birthday I owe my
room rent & am in need of food and only enough bread for tonight &
breakfast .... my shoes and stockings only 1 pair are in rags." An eyewitness
described her in 1927 as dressed "in corduroy trousers, mining boots, and
a torn soiled blouse .... [with] a blue bandana tied around her head",
and went on to say that "her eyes were very far apart and a gorgeous blue".
She wandered the streets of Leadville, rags on her feet,
wearing a cross, and came to be known as a madwoman. Some who had been
acquainted with her earlier thought she deserved to suffer for having broken
up the marriage between Horace and Augusta, and believed that she had been
the cause of his ruin. At that time, Leadville had lost much of its boomtown
population and was becoming a ghost-town. She often walked the empty streets
at night, dressed in a mixture of women's and men's clothing, wearing trousers
and mining boots. She protected the mine from strangers with a shot-gun,
and "she became a sad spectre of Baby Doe to old-timers; a spectacle to
the young."
Death
In the winter of 1935, after an unusually severe snowstorm,
some neighbors noticed that no smoke was coming out of the chimney at the
Matchless mine cabin. Investigating, they found Baby Doe dead, her body
frozen on the floor. The Rocky Mountain News reported that a miner and
friend, concerned at not seeing her for some days, broke into the cabin
and found the body. The newspaper went on to compare her to another female
Leadville resident, Molly Brown. For one last time, Baby Doe made the front
pages of the papers. The interment had to be postponed because the ground
in Leadville at that time of year was "still frozen five feet deep". While
a gravesite was being prepared in Leadville—the ground had to be dynamited—wealthy
Denverites raised money to have her body brought there. A funeral mass
was held in Leadville, then her casket was sent by train to Denver. She
was apparently 81 years old at the time of her death.
Her remaining possessions were auctioned off to souvenir
collectors for $700. Baby Doe Tabor is buried with her husband in Mt. Olivet
Cemetery in Wheat Ridge, Colorado.
Reputation and legacy
Baby Doe Tabor is a legend among the women of the mining
West. She holds the reputation of being a great beauty, a home-wrecker,
and in her later years, a madwoman. Judy Nolte Temple writes that Baby
Doe's legend, and her sins, grew quickly in retelling, as evidenced by
an exaggerated description of her death in an early biography: "The formerly
beautiful and glamorous Baby Doe Tabor ... was found dead on her cabin
floor .... only partially clothed ....frozen into the shape of a cross".
She was rumored to be a gold-digger and a poor mother. Scavengers searched
for non-existent treasure after her death, but Temple says the real treasure
was found in Baby Doe's writing, which has taken decades to archive, analyze
and study, and only now is beginning to reveal the inner life of the woman.
Temple sees her as one in a long line of women who endured shunning and
punishment for her beauty and for being disruptive to prevailing social
norms. Temple speculates that Baby Doe's move to Leadville after Horace's
death may have been self-shunning from Denver society.
Baby Doe was portrayed in the Warner Brothers film Silver
Dollar, which premiered in Denver in 1932. "Lily", the fictionalized character
of Baby Doe, was portrayed by actress Bebe Daniels; Edward G. Robinson
played Yates Martin, a fictionalized Horace Tabor. Douglas Moore's opera
The Ballad of Baby Doe premiered in Central City, Colorado, in 1956. In
the New York premiere in 1958, Baby Doe was sung by Beverly Sills. In the
1970s, a string of western-themed "Baby Doe's Matchless Mine" restaurants
was established in a number of US cities. Almost all are now closed.
|
3. Fannie Porter - from Wikipedia
Fannie Porter (February 12, 1873 - c.1940) was a well
known madam of the 19th century. She was best known for her association
with famous outlaws of the day, and for her popular brothel.
Career as a madam
Porter was born in England, and traveled to America around
the age of one with her family. By fifteen she was working as a prostitute
in San Antonio, Texas. By the age of 20, she had started her own brothel,
and became extremely popular for her cordial and sincere attitude, her
choosing only the most attractive young women as her "girls", her requirement
that her "girls" practice good hygiene, and for her always immaculate personal
appearance. Her brothel was located at the corner of Durango and San Saba
streets.
By 1895, her brothel in San Antonio was one of the most
popular of the Old West. It had by that time become known as a frequent
stop off for outlaws on the run from the law. Butch Cassidy, the Sundance
Kid, Kid Curry, and other members of the Wild Bunch gang frequented her
business. One of her "girls", Della Moore, became the girlfriend to Kid
Curry, remaining with him until her arrest for passing money from one of
his robberies. She was arrested, but acquitted, eventually returning to
work for Porter once again. Another of her "girls", Lillie Davis, became
involved with outlaw and Wild Bunch member Will "News" Carver. She later
claimed she had married Carver in Fort Worth prior to his death in 1901,
but there are no records to verify the alleged marriage. It is possible
that the Sundance Kid and his girlfriend Etta Place, whose true identity
and eventual disappearance from history has long been a mystery, first
met while she worked for Porter, but that has never been confirmed. Wild
Bunch gang member Laura Bullion is also believed to have at times worked
for Porter between the years of 1898 and 1901.
Porter was well respected for her discretion, always refusing
to turn in a wanted outlaw to the authorities. She also was known for being
extremely defensive of her "girls", insisting that any who mistreated them
never return to her brothel. She generally employed anywhere from five
to eight girls, all ranging in age from 18 to 25, and all of whom lived
and worked inside her brothel. Her business was not only popular with outlaws
of the day, but also with lawmen, and she made sure that any lawmen who
entered received the best treatment. William Pinkerton, of the Pinkerton
National Detective Agency, was said to have frequented her brothel.
By the early 20th century, the tide had begun to turn
against active, openly operating brothels. Eventually, she retired, and
faded from history. It is not known where she went following her retirement.
Most agree that she retired semi-wealthy, but it is unknown where she might
have gone. Some stories indicate that she married a man of wealth, some
indicate she retired into seclusion, while others indicate she returned
to England. None of those are confirmed. Later rumors indicated that she
lived until 1940, when she was killed in a car accident in El Paso, Texas.
However, that also is not certain. |
|
|
4. Charley Parkhurst - from Wikipedia
Charley Darkey Parkhurst, born Charlotte Darkey Parkhurst
(1812–1879), also known as One Eyed Charley or Six-Horse Charley, was an
American stagecoach driver, farmer and rancher in California. Born and
reared as a girl in New England, mostly in an orphanage, Parkhurst ran
away as a youth, taking the name Charley and living as a male. He started
work as a stable hand and learned to handle horses, including to drive
coaches drawn by multiple horses. He worked in Massachusetts and Rhode
Island, traveling to Georgia for associated work.
In his late 30s, Parkhurst sailed to California following
the Gold Rush in 1849; there he became a noted stagecoach driver. In 1868
he may have been the first female (though passing as a man) to vote in
a presidential election in California. At his death, it was discovered
that his gender assigned at birth was female, as was the fact that he had
given birth at an earlier time
Life and career
Charley Parkhurst was born Charlotte Darkey Parkhurst
in 1812 in Sharon, Vermont, to Mary (Morehouse) Parkhurst and an unknown
father. Some reports say the father's first name was Charles. Parkhurst
had two siblings, Charles D. and Maria. Charles D. was born in 1811 and
died in 1813. The mother Mary died in 1812. Some time after Charley D.
died, Charlotte and Maria were taken to an orphanage in Lebanon, New Hampshire.
(Some sources say she was born there.) They were raised under the care
of Mr. Millshark. |
|
Parkhurst ran away from the orphanage at age 12. She adopted
the name Charley and assumed a more masculine self-presentation reflecting
his gender identity. According to one account, Parkhurst soon met Ebenezer
Balch, who had a livery stable in Providence, Rhode Island. He took what
he thought was an orphaned boy under his care and returned to Rhode Island.
Treating Parkhurst like a son, Balch taught him to work as a stable hand
and gradually with the horses. The boy developed an aptitude with horses,
and Balch taught him to drive a coach, first with one, then four, and eventually
six horses. Parkhurst worked for Balch for several years. He may have gotten
to know James E. Birch, who was a younger stagecoach driver in Providence.
In 1848, the 21-year-old James E. Birch and his close
friend Frank Stevens went to California during the Gold Rush to seek their
fortunes. Birch soon began a stagecoach service, starting as a driver with
one wagon. He gradually consolidated several small stage lines into the
California Stage Company.
Seeking other opportunities in California, Parkhurst in
his late 30s also left Rhode Island, sailing on the R.B. Forbes from Boston
to Panama; travelers had to cross the isthmus overland and pick up other
ships on the west coast. In Panama, Parkhurst met John Morton, returning
to San Francisco where he owned a drayage business; Morton recruited the
driver to work for him. Shortly after reaching California, Parkhurst lost
the use of one eye after a kick from a horse, leading to his nickname of
One Eyed Charley or Cockeyed Charley.
Later Parkhurst went to work for Birch, where he developed
a reputation as one of the finest stage coach drivers (a "whip") on the
West Coast. This inspired another nickname for him, Six-Horse Charley.
He was ranked with "Foss, Hank Monk and George Gordon" as one of the top
drivers of his time. Stagecoach drivers were also nicknamed "Jehus," after
a Biblical passage in Kings 9:20: “…and the driving is like the driving
of Jehu the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously.”
Among Parkhurst's routes in northern California were Stockton
to Mariposa, "the great stage route" from San Jose to Oakland, and San
Juan to Santa Cruz. Stagecoach drivers carried mail as well as passengers,
and had to deal with hold-up attempts, bad weather, and perilous, primitive
trails. As historian Charles Outland described the era, "It was a dangerous
era in a dangerous country, where dangerous conditions were the norm."
Seeing that railroads were cutting into the stagecoach
business, Parkhurst retired from driving some years later to Watsonville,
California. For fifteen years he worked at farming, doing lumbering in
the winter. He also raised chickens in Aptos.
He later moved into a small cabin about 6 miles from Watsonville
and suffered from rheumatism in his later years. Parkhurst died there on
December 18, 1879, due to tongue cancer.
Posthumous revelation
After Parkhurst died in 1879, neighbors came to the cabin
to lay out the body for burial and discovered that his body appeared to
be female to them. Rheumatism and cancer of the tongue were listed as causes
of death. In addition, the examining doctor established that Parkhurst
had given birth at some time. A trunk in the house contained a baby's dress.
"The discovery of her true [sic] gender became a local sensation." and
was soon carried by national newspapers.
The obituary about Parkhurst from the San Francisco Call
was reprinted in The New York Times on 9 January 1880, so the extraordinary
driving career and the post-mortem discovery of Parkhurst's "true gender"
received national coverage. The headline was: "Thirty Years in Disguise:
A Noted Old Californian Stage-Driver Discovered. After Death. To be a Woman."
He was in his day one of the most dexterous
and celebrated of the famous California drivers ranking with Foss, Hank
Monk, and George Gordon, and it was an honor to be striven for to occupy
the spare end of the driver's seat when the fearless Charley Parkhurst
held the reins of a four-or six-in hand...
{{Last Sunday [December 28, 1879],
in a little cabin on the Moss Ranch, about six miles from Watsonville,
Charley Parkhurst, the famous coachman, the fearless fighter, the industrious
farmer and expert woodman died of the cancer on his tongue. He knew that
death was approaching, but he did not relax the reticence of his later
years other than to express a few wishes as to certain things to be done
at his death. Then, when the hands of the kind friends who had ministered
to his dying wants came to lay out the dead body of the adventurous Argonaut,
a discovery was made that was literally astounding. Charley Parkhurst was
a woman.}}
The article noted how unusual it was that Parkhurst could
have lived so long with no one discovering his assigned gender, and to
"achieve distinction in an occupation above all professions calling for
the best physical qualities of nerve, courage, coolness and endurance,
and that she should add to them the almost romantic personal bravery that
enables one to fight one's way through the ambush of an enemy..." was seen
to be almost beyond believing, but there was ample evidence to prove the
case.
1868 vote
The Santa Cruz Sentinel of October 17, 1868, lists Charles
Darkey Parkurst on the official poll list for the election of 1868. There
is no record that Parkhurst actually cast a vote. If he had voted, Parkhust
may have been the first "female" to vote in a presidential election in
California.
Local legend and Parkhurst's gravestone claims that Parkhurst
was the first "female" in the United States to vote. This is incorrect
as a few states allowed women to vote before 1868.
Legacy and honors
The fire station in Soquel, California, has a plaque
reading:
"The first ballot by a woman in an
American presidential election was cast on this site November 3, 1868,
by Charlotte (Charlie) Parkhurst who masqueraded as a man for much of her
life. She was a stagecoach driver in the mother lode country during the
gold rush days and shot and killed at least one bandit. In her later years
she drove a stagecoach in this area. She died in 1879. Not until then was
she found to be a woman. She is buried in Watsonville at the pioneer cemetery."
In 1955, the Pajaro Valley Historical
Association erected a monument at Parkhurst's grave, which reads:
Charley Darkey Parkhurst (1812-1879)
Noted whip of the gold rush days drove stage over Mt. Madonna in early
days of Valley. Last run San Juan to Santa Cruz. Death in cabin near the
7 mile house. Revealed 'one eyed Charlie' a woman. First woman to vote
in the U.S. November 3, 1868.
In 2007, the Santa Cruz County Redevelopment
Agency oversaw the completion of the Parkhurst Terrace Apartments, named
for the stagecoach driver and located a mile along the old stage route
from the place of his death.
|
5. Eleanor Dumont - from Wikipedia
Madame Moustache was the pseudonym of Eleanor Dumont
(also called Eleonore Alphonsine Dumant), a notorious gambler on the American
Western Frontier, especially during the California Gold Rush. Her nickname
was due to the appearance of a line of dark hair on her upper lip.
She was thought to have been born in France and moved
to America as a young woman.
She was an accomplished card dealer and made a living
from twenty-one and other casino games. Moving from place to place, she
was reported to work in Bodie, California; Deadwood, South Dakota; Fort
Benton, Montana; Pioche, Nevada; Tombstone, Arizona; and San Francisco,
California, among other places.
In Nevada City, California, she opened up the gambling
parlor named "Vingt-et-un" on Broad Street. Only well-kept men were allowed
in, and no women save herself. All the men admired her for her beauty and
charm, but she kept them all a nice distance away. She was a very private
lady, so she flirted, but only to keep the boys coming. Men came from all
around to see the woman dealer - this was rare then - and considered it
a privilege. The parlor found much success, so she decided to go into business
with Dave Tobin, an experienced gambler. They opened up Dumont's Place,
which was very successful until the gold started to dry up in Nevada City.
She left Tobin and Nevada City for brighter things.
There was a brief period in Carson City where she bought
a ranch and some animals. It was there that she fell in love with Jack
McKnight, who conned her out of all of her money. |
|
She moved around from city to city, gambling and building
up her money again. Her age started to increase, and with that a lot of
the beauty that once entranced miners, faded. This is when the famous mustache
began to grow. She still drew crowds, though, and had a long-standing reputation
for dealing fair.
She also added prostitution to her repertoire during these
later years - she became a "madame" of a brothel in the 1860s. To promote
her business, she would parade her girls around the town in carriages,
showing off their beauty in broad daylight, much to the gasping of the
'proper' women.
Her last stop was Bodie, California. One night while gambling,
she misjudged a play and suddenly owed a lot of money. That night she wandered
outside of town and was found dead on September 8, 1879, of an overdose
of morphine, apparently a suicide. Her funeral was attended by a multitude
of all kinds of people.
Though her professions were usually found shady, all who
knew her deemed her honorable and fair. No one dared speak ill against
her.
|
6. Big Nose Kate - from Wikipedia
Big Nose Kate (born Mary Katherine Horony Cummings November
7, 1850 – November 2, 1940) was a Hungarian-born prostitute and longtime
companion and common-law wife of Old West gunfighter Doc Holliday.
Early life
Mary Katherine Horony (also spelled Harony, Haroney, and
Horoney) was born on November 7, 1850 in Pest, Hungary, the second-oldest
daughter of Hungarian physician Michael Horony.
Immigration to the United States of America
In 1860, Dr. Horony, his second wife Katharina, and his
children left Hungary for the United States, arriving in New York on the
German ship Bremen in September 1860. Earp researcher Glenn G. Boyer was
the first to state that Kate was descended from nobility and that after
her father was appointed personal physician to Emperor Maximilian I of
Mexico the family accompanied the monarch's retinue to Mexico. However,
in none of his published works did Boyer ever cite a source for these assertions.
Furthermore, Gary L. Roberts, in his book, Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend,
the definitive work on the subject, commented: “Patrick A. Bowmaster, “A
Fresh Look at ‘Big Nose Kate,’” NOLA Quarterly 22 (July – September 1998):
12-24, exposes the fallacy of this tale.”
The Horony family settled in a predominantly German area
of Davenport, Iowa in 1862. Horony and his wife died only three years later,
in 1865, within a month of one another. Mary Katherine and her younger
siblings were placed in the home of her brother-in-law, Gustav Susemihl,
and in 1870 they were left in the care of attorney Otto Smith. The 1870
United States Census records for Davenport, Iowa show Kate's younger sister,
15-year-old Wilhelmina (Wilma), living with and working as a domestic for
Austrian-born David Palter and his Hungarian wife Betty.
St. Louis and Dodge City
At age 16, Kate ran away from her foster home and stowed
away on a riverboat bound for St. Louis, Missouri. Kate later claimed that
while she lived in St. Louis she married a dentist named "Silas Melvin"
with whom she had a son, and that both died of yellow fever. No record
has been found to substantiate marriage, birth of a child, or the death
of either Melvin or the child.[original research?] United States Census
records report that a Silas Melvin lived in St. Louis in the mid 1860s
but that he was married to a steamship captain's daughter named Mary Bust.
The census also shows that another Melvin was employed by a St. Louis asylum.
Since Kate met Doc Holliday in the early 1870s, there is speculation that
she may have confused the two and their occupations when recalling the
facts later in her life.
Researcher Jan Collins states that Cummings entered the
Ursuline Convent but didn't remain long. In 1869, she is recorded as working
as a prostitute for madam Blanch Tribole in St. Louis. In 1874, Kate She
was fined for working as a " sporting woman" in a sporting house in Dodge
City, Kansas, run by Nellie "Bessie" (Ketchum) Earp, James Earp's wife.
|
Kate Horony (seated at left) and younger
sister named Wilhelmina in about 1865,
at the time they were orphaned. Kate
is about 15-years-old. |
Joins Doc Holliday
In 1876, Kate moved to Fort Griffin, Texas, where in
1877 she met Doc Holliday. Doc said at one point that he considered Kate
his intellectual equal. Kate introduced Holliday to Wyatt Earp. The couple
went with Earp to Dodge City and registered as Mr. and Mrs. J.H. Holliday
at Deacon Cox’s boarding house. Doc opened a dental practice by day but
spent most of his time gambling and drinking. The two fought regularly
and sometimes violently.
According to Kate, the couple later married in Valdosta,
Georgia. They began traveling frequently, but lived in Las Vegas, New Mexico
for about two years. Holliday worked as a dentist by day and ran a saloon
by night. Kate also occasionally worked at a dance hall in Santa Fe.
There are unproven reports that Kate owned and operated
a bordello in Tombstone. (Amongst amateur historians, Big Nose Kate has
often been confused with a Tombstone sporting woman who went by the name
"Rowdy Kate".) She did own a miner's boarding house in Globe, Arizona,
along Broad Street.
By her own account, Kate and Doc went to Trinidad, Colorado,
and then to Las Vegas, New Mexico, where Holliday was briefly a barkeeper
at a saloon on Center Street. Doc and Kate met up again with Wyatt Earp
and his brothers on their way to the Arizona Territory. Virgil Earp had
already been in Prescott before Wyatt persuaded his brothers to move to
Tombstone. Holliday was making money at the gambling tables in Prescott,
and he and Kate parted ways when Kate left for Globe, Arizona, but she
rejoined Holliday soon after he arrived in Tombstone.
|
|
Move to Tombstone
Holliday, like his friend Wyatt, was always looking for
an opportunity to make money and joined the Earps in Tombstone during the
fall of 1880. On March 15, 1881, at 10:00 pm, three cowboys attempted to
rob a Kinnear & Company stagecoach carrying $26,000 in silver bullion
(by the inflation adjustment algorithm: $635,386 in today's dollars) near
Benson, Arizona, during which the popular driver Eli "Budd" Philpot and
passenger Peter Roerig were killed. Cowboy Bill Leonard, a former watchmaker
from New York, was one of three men implicated in the robbery, and he and
Holliday had become good friends.:181 When Kate and Holliday had a fight,
County Sheriff Johnny Behan and Milt Joyce, a county supervisor and owner
of the Oriental Saloon, decided to exploit the situation.
Behan and Joyce plied Big Nose Kate with alcohol and suggested
to her a way to get even with Holliday. She signed an affidavit implicating
Holliday in the murders and attempted robbery. Judge Wells Spicer issued
an arrest warrant for Holliday. The Earps found witnesses who could attest
to Holliday's whereabouts elsewhere at the time of the murders. Kate said
that Behan and Joyce had influenced her to sign a document she didn't understand.
With the Cowboy plot revealed, Judge Spicer freed Holliday. The district
attorney threw out the charges, labeling them "ridiculous".[ After Holliday
was released, he gave Kate money and put her on the stage. Kate returned
to Globe for a time, but she returned to Tombstone in October of that year.
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
Main article: Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
In a 1939 letter to her niece Lillian Rafferty, Kate claimed
that she was in the Tombstone area with Holliday during the days before
the shootout. Kate reminisced about her stay with Holliday at Fly's Boarding
House, above the photography studio and alongside the alley where the gunfight
at the O.K. Corral took place. Kate is precise regarding minor details
and states that she was with Holliday in Tucson. She recalled attending
a fiesta, which was the San Augustin Feast and Fair in Levin Park on October
1881. On October 20, 1881, Morgan Earp rode to Tucson to alert Holliday
of the impending trouble. According to Kate, Holliday asked her to remain
in Tucson for her safety, but she refused, instead going with Holliday
and Earp.
Kate wrote that on the day of the gunfight, a man entered
Fly's Boarding House with a "bandaged head" and a rifle. He was looking
for Holliday, who was still in bed after a night of gambling. Kate recalled
that the man who was turned away by Mrs. Fly was later identified as Ike
Clanton, whom city marshal Virgil Earp had buffaloed earlier that day when
he found Clanton carrying a rifle and pistol in violation of city ordinances.
Clanton's head was bandaged afterward.
However, it's unlikely that Clanton could have been both
bandaged and carrying a rifle. Virgil Earp had disarmed him earlier that
day and told Ike he would leave Ike's confiscated rifle and revolver at
the Grand Hotel, which was favored by cowboys when they were in town. Ike
testified afterward that he had tried to buy a new revolver at Spangenberger's
gun and hardware store on 4th Street but the owner saw Ike's bandaged head
and refused to sell him one. Clanton was unarmed at the time of the shootout
later that afternoon. Ike testified that he picked up the weapons from
William Soule, the jailer, a couple of days later.
Author Glenn Boyer disputes that Kate saw the gunfight
through the window of the boarding house. Boyer's work, however, has been
rejected by serious scholars.
Kate stated that after Doc Holliday returned to his room,
he sat on the edge of his bed and wept from the shock of what had happened
during the close-range gunfight. "That was awful," Kate claims he said.
"Just awful." Other researchers dispute Boyer's account of events.
After the O.K. Corral and later life
Kate is reported to have made trips to Tombstone to see
Holliday until he left for Colorado in April 1882. In 1887, Kate traveled
to Redstone, Colorado, close to Glenwood Springs, Colorado, to visit with
her brother Alexander. Some historians have tried to connect Kate and Doc
to possible reconciliation attempts between the two.
Marries George Cummings
After Doc Holliday died in 1887, Kate married Irish blacksmith
George Cummings in Aspen, on March 2, 1890. After working several mining
camps throughout Colorado, they moved to Bisbee, Arizona, where she briefly
ran a bakery. After returning to Willcox, Arizona, in Cochise County, Cummings
became an abusive alcoholic and they separated. In 1900, Kate moved to
Dos Cabezas or Cochise and worked for John and Lulu Rath, owners of the
Cochise Hotel. Cummings committed suicide in Courtland, Arizona, in 1915.
Kate is enumerated in the 1910 U.S. Census in Dos Cabezas,
Arizona, as a member of the home of miner John J. Howard. When Howard died
in 1930, Kate was the executrix of his estate. She contacted his only daughter,
who lived in Tempe, Arizona, and settled the inheritance.
In 1931, now 80, Kate contacted her longtime friend, Arizona
Governor George Hunt, and applied for admittance to the Arizona Pioneers'
Home in Prescott, Arizona. The home had been established in 1910 by the
State of Arizona for destitute and ailing miners and male pioneers of the
Arizona Territory. It took Kate six months to be admitted, since the home
had a requirement that residents must be United States citizens. According
to the 1935 Bork interview, Kate was owed money by the Howard estate, but
the amount owed was not enough to buy firewood through the winter, as Kate
had complained in her letters to the governor.
She was admitted as one of the first female residents
of the home. She lived there and became an outspoken resident, assisting
other residents with living comforts. Kate wrote many letters to the Arizona
state legislature, often contacting the governor when she was not satisfied
with their response.
Death and discrepancies in records
Kate died on November 2, 1940, just five days before her
90th birthday, of acute myocardial insufficiency, a condition she started
showing symptoms of the day before her death. Her death certificate states
that she also suffered from coronary artery disease and advanced arteriosclerosis.
Kate's death certificate contained significant discrepancies regarding
her parents' names and her birthplace. Although she was born in Hungary,
her death certificate states she was born in Davenport, Iowa, to father
Marchal H. Michael and mother Catherine Baldwin. The birthplace of both
her parents is shown on the certificate as "unknown". However, it is unknown
who provided the information for the death certificate.
Near the end of her life, several reporters tried to record
Kate's life story, her relationship with Doc Holliday and her time in Tombstone.
She only talked to Anton Mazzonovich and Prescott historian A.W. Bork.
Kate was buried on November 6, 1940, under the name "Mary
K. Cummings" below a modest marker in the Arizona Pioneer Home Cemetery
in Prescott, Arizona.
|
.
All articles submitted to the "Brimstone
Gazette" are the property of the author, used with their expressed permission.
The Brimstone Pistoleros are not
responsible for any accidents which may occur from use of loading
data, firearms information, or recommendations published on the Brimstone
Pistoleros web site. |
|