Rose Mary Echo Silver Dollar Tabor, known simply as “Silver,” was born in 1889.
She was the second daughter of “Silver King” Horace Tabor — whose silver mines had made him one of the wealthiest men in Colorado — and Elizabeth “Baby Doe” McCourt, his second wife.
On the back of the photo above, a friend of Silver’s wrote this about Silver’s name:
‘Rosemary’ given by her mother after the saint and ‘Echo’ given by her mother because she loved the echoes in the mts around Leadville. ‘Silver Dollar’ given by her father because it was the Silver ore that made him his millions. This picture was given to me in Leadville, Colo. 1903 by Silver.
Other sources say the “Silver Dollar” part was suggested by none other than William Jennings Bryan, a family friend.
Unfortunately the Tabors lost their fortune in the early 1890s, thanks in large part to the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act.
The family’s riches-to-rags story was made into both a film (Silver Dollar, 1932) and an opera (The Ballad of Baby Doe, 1956). Sadly, Silver didn’t live to see either; she died in 1925 at just 36 years old.
Images: Rose Mary Echo Silver Dollar Tabor & Baby Doe Tabor, Denver Public Library Digital Collections
