Silver, 1903

Rose Mary Echo Silver Dollar Tabor, 1903, photo credit: Western History/Genealogy Dept., Denver Public Library
Searching for information about Silver online is really embarking on a treasure hunt. The information at first seems plentiful, then you realize that most of the information/interest is about her mother, Baby Doe, then you realize that the few morsels out there actually about Silver get repeated over and over again. Her "downward spiral" and her failed literary career. Her many moves and her living under assumed names. Nothing, before Temple's book, from a more "enlightened" point of view. Nothing that postulates why she was living under assumed names, or very little, or why she moved so often. In other words, not many sympathetic storytellers out there. The facts are so slim, somet type of fiction has to be made. Why does it have to assume the worst? What if she was doing the best that could be done as a single woman pursuing a career in the years 1903 - 1925? Almost all of the source material paints a tawdry picture, as if that were the only explanation. Maybe somethine else is possible. Maybe the reports were slanted. Facts seem to be difficult to come by, opinions are plentiful.