Brief by Central Staff
History – September 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
The charges against her are rather vague, but there’s going to be a trial anyway.
Margaret Tobin “Unsinkable Molly” Brown, along with many other characters from Colorado’s past, will rise from the grave for a mock trial, scheduled for 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 20 at the Tabor Opera House in Leadville.
At issue, according to organizer Tom Noel of the Colorado History Group, is whether Molly Brown was a true heroine or merely a pretentious fraud.
History, as is often the case, points toward both. She did command a lifeboat and save lives after the Titanic sank in 1912. But her attempts to join high society — from French lessons to extensive travel in Europe — inspired one Denver journalist to call her “Colorado’s largest fur-bearing mammal.”
Born in a Missouri shack in 1867, she migrated to Leadville when she was 19, and eventually married James Joseph Brown, superintendent of the Little Jonny Mine, one of the Ibex properties near timberline east of Leadville.
Silver prices, along with most of Colorado’s economy, had collapsed in 1893, so the mine owners were after gold. But the rock was not solid at the Little Jonny as they tunneled toward a vein; instead, it was sand that continued to cave in, no matter how well they timbered it.
Brown solved that problem by using baled hay to contain the sand. They reached the high-grade gold and copper deposits, and in 1894 the company paid more than $1 million in dividends. Brown, though a hired manager, got his share, since the grateful owners gave up 12,500 shares of stock.
The Browns were rich, and Mollie (known as Maggie to folks in Leadville) wanted to live the good life in a Capitol Hill mansion in Denver (now preserved as a museum). But her husband was never comfortable there, and they drifted apart as she traveled the world, frequenting Paris and Newport.
She never forgot Colorado, though. In 1914, she raced home from Europe to bring food and clothing to the widows and orphans of the striking coal miners killed in the Ludlow Massacre. Just before her death in 1932, as the Great Depression put miners out of work and winter loomed for their destitute families, she sent hundreds of mufflers, mittens, and boots to be strung on an enormous Christmas tree erected in Leadville.
So she should have a friendly venue at her 2003 trial, from which there can be no appeal, since this is the highest court in the nation, at 10,152 feet, presided over by Judge Neil V. Reynolds of Leadville.
She will be defended by Walter Gerash, Dennis Gallagher, and Marcia Goldstein. Prosecutors include Larry Bohning, Alan Boles, Josiah Hatch, and Tom Noel.
Scheduled witnesses include Denver Post sob sister Polly Pry (portrayed by Westword editor Patricia Calhoun), Eugene Field (Dan Corson), Mary Halleck Foote (Dr. Christine Smith), Mollie May (Jan MacKell), Baby Doe Tabor (Melva Touchette) and Horace Tabor (Duane Smith).
The trial is a benefit for the Leadville Arts Coalition, P.O. Box 1278, Leadville CO 80461; tickets are $12 per person, and advance purchase is suggested. Also scheduled for Sept. 20 in Leadville is the St. Practice Day Parade on Harrison Avenue at noon. For more information, call Candy Chant at 719-486-4206.
