Silver Dollar the Story of the Tabors

Silver Dollar the Story of the Tabors by Karsner, David. Hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780517184912.

H. A. W. Tabor and his Yankee bride left the stone quarries of New England for the free soil of Kansas, thence pursuing their search for riches to the Colorado Mountains. They witnessed (and aided in) the birth of Denver; they kept store in mining camps; Augusta saved the pennies while "Haw" made friends and grubstaked itinerant adventurers; finally, out of a stake of $64.75 to a couple of Germans, Haw secured a one-third interest in the Little Pittsburgh Mine, which a few months later he sold for $1,000,000. The rise to wealth and the wholly incredible way of life of this latter-day Croesus are one of the major fables of the West. Tabor became lieutenant governor, U.S. senator, politician, capitalist, patron of the arts, and empire builder on a grand scale. He divorced his school-marm wife and married a dazzling divorcee of the mining camps. He astonished even the Gilded Age with his prodigality, and died a pauper when the gold-standard men of the East toppled the Western silver kings from their thrones. Three women are the mirrors of his fantastic career--Augusta, who shared his struggles; Baby Doe, who helped spread his wealth; and his daughter, Silver Dollar (so christened by William Jennings Bryan), who met a violent death in Chicagos Tenderloin. In this saga of a vanished frontier, Mr. Karsner has extracted with admirable judgment the bizarre truth that lay hidden under a mountain of apocrypha.