b'Jews in the Old WestPART 4 By Alan RockmanI you only my broken heart. I know you would talk a am respectfully dedicating this installment to my latefew kind words to me, or is this my fault? I know you friendly acquaintance,(distorted: likely loved) me once, truly and faithful the former Eagles and Pocoall a woman can (damaged and distorted) and I know bass player and singer RandyI was not deceived in your (distorted: likely love, Meisner, who passed away aand an undetermined conjunction) dear to you. I am little over a month ago. He wasliving for you and you only. It is no matter how you known by many as the nicest,hate me, but I shall always love you, it is not a hour in sweetest man in Rock and Roll. I will never forget thethe day but I think of thee and your sweet face stands kindness both he and his late wife showed me at a Chrisbefore me, before living central (the first portion of Hillman-Herb Pedersen concert at McCabes Guitarthis line is torn and missing) so dear to you and to me, Shop in Santa Monica, California a little over 15 yearsand I thought it is it possible that you have learned to ago, and although Meisner wasn\'t Jewish, he was quitehate me. I cannot for one moment believe it.familiar with Colorado from the years he spent there as a member of the two aforementioned Country RockIt seemed that Baby Doe Tabor had it made, and the bands. "Take it to the Limit" Randy Meisner, RIP. broken-hearted Sands was literally left out in the cold. (Although according to the aforementioned JewishLeadville.org website things were not only COLORADOTHE SAGA OF JACOBa bit more complex in the Sands-Baby Doe-Tabor SANDELOWSKY AND "BABY DOE" relationship but that a cordial correspondence between The story of Jewish life in Colorado is a rich andJacob and Baby Doe was renewed around the time fascinating one that includes the account of aHorace Tabor passed on and continued for almost 20 German-born midwestern merchant who went westyears before Sands\' passing in 1917 and before things to cure his asthma and ended up founding one ofwent all bad for Baby Doe Tabor). But history has a America\'s most famous department store chains. Afunny way of turning tricks on people, and in the long Russian-born orphan, who after brief stays in Newrun it was Sands who turned out to be much more York, San Francisco, and the California gold minesfortunate than his unfaithful former girlfriend.also chose to venture to the lands beside the RockyBaby Doe TaborMountains, a man whose courtesy and compassionBaby Doe Tabor having moved in surreptitiously with made him a friend to the Colorado Indian tribesthe Silver King at the Clarendon in Leadville, now where he helped stop a war, and whose vision builtstore too confining and not to her liking. According toopenly moved in with him at the luxurious Windsor roads for the wagons and a railroad through thelegend, one evening in 1880, at a Leadville restaurantHotel in Denver. She would have the fairy-tale mountain passes.she encountered the already famously wealthy Horacewedding she always dreamed of, marrying the now (HAW) Tabor. Tabor, "The Silver King" of ColoradoUS Senator Horace Tabor (Tabor having climbed up Even a future Israeli Prime Minister spent herwas, like Sands, immediately smitten with the beautyon the ladder of what would prove to be a temporary adolescent years in Denver working as a clothesof Elizabeth McCourt even though he was marriedsuccess) at the lavish Willard Hotel in Washington, presser in her brother-in-law\'s laundry! While itto the faithful, suffering but unattractive Augusta.D.C. It was a wedding fit for a Silver King attended by is unclear when the first immigrant Jews settled inThe multi-millionaire gave her $5000 on the spot andPresident Chester A. Arthur himself - but only after Colorado, it is known that by 1870 there was a sizableurged her to leave Sands, promising to set her up fora very messy divorce granted to the justly vengeful Jewish community in Denver and its environs. life. Elizabeth, by then known as Baby Doe, knowingAugusta. For about a decade, they lived well and of Tabor\'s wealth and the fact that he was, by then, thelavishly, spending Tabor\'s silver money as if it was The famed Baby Doe Tabor, the future ill-fated wifelieutenant governor of Colorado, left Sands, sendinggoing out of style - but then the bubble burst and the of the equally ill-fated Colorado "Silver King" Horacehim a note and allegedly $1000 of the money Taborsilver mines went south. Tabor, had deserted her first husband and had takengave her, and promptly moved into Tabor\'s Leadville up with the owner of the clothing store in a smallestablishment, the Clarendon Hotel, ironically rightTabor, losing his entire fortune and dependent on Colorado town called Black Hawk, a Jewish merchantnext door to Sandelowsky\'s general store, Sands,friends whom in better times he had given away much by the name of Jacob Sandelowsky, later shortened toPelton and Company! of his fortune to, "fearfully accepted a job as Denver\'s Sands. The debonair Sandelowsky fell madly in lovepostmaster and not long thereafter dropped dead" with the young, luscious Elizabeth McCourt Doe.Sandelowsky took the break-up extremely hard, as(Lavender, David, The Big Divide,Castle Books, evidenced by this letter from the JewishLeadville. Edison, New Jersey, 2001, p. 134). Before dying, he Having deserted her miner husband after a very uglyorg website. The evidence of a rift and/or separationgrabbed Baby Doe, pulled his still (and unbelievably) conversation with her soon-to-be ex, Harvey Doe,developing between Jake and Elizabeth in 1880 isfaithful wife close to him, and in a stilted whisper he yelled out to her, "I hear you\'re going to have asubstantial and coincides with her meeting withbegged her to hold on to the very last mine they still Jewish brat" (Florin, Lambert, Ghost Towns of theHorace. It surfaces in Jakes letters as written duringpossessed:"Hang on to the Matchless, it will make West, Promontory Press, New York, 1971, p. 291), shethis period: millions again" (Florin, Ghost Towns of the West, p. took up with the well-to-do merchant and together323). And Elizabeth McCourt Baby Doe Tabor did they moved to the growing mining community ofI was very sad thinking you would not open yourjust that for almost another 50 years, when, her beauty Leadville, high up in the Rocky Mountains (whichdoor for the man who loves and worships you. I waslong gone and reduced to wearing a coarse miner\'s had already seen much mercantile activity on the partupset to learn that yesterday and thinking of the pastgarb, she would be found, lifeless, half-clad, frozen to of Jewish entrepreneurs, drawn to the silver mines),made me very very sad, looking at the old windowsthe death on the floor of her squalid hut.where Sands and his partner Sam Pelton (sometimesfrom which I received once many smiles and today Felton) opened up a mercantile establishment. you would not look at me coming at your door. BabeAs for the once-heartbroken Jacob Sandelowsky, now I know you are awful proud, but remember you mustJacob Sands, he prospered and eventually got over McCourt almost married the romantic Sands but beingnot throw such a dreadful blow upon me at once. TheBaby Doe. Having left Leadville for Aspen in the ambitious found that being a clerk in Sands\' generalman could once, and I believe with all your heart, ifwake of Tabor\'s taking up with his former girlfriend, 18 October 2023'