Biography
Mabel "Mabs" Barbee (Lee) was born in Silver Reef, Utah April 11, 1884.
Mabel had a younger sister, Nina, who died in infancy from an accidental
drowning and also had a brother, William Johnson Barbee, born in March
1893. Her parents, Johnson (John) R. Barbee (1843-1905) and Kate "Kitty"
(1861-1904), were married in Silver Reef. John Barbee served four years
in the Confederate army and after their defeat went west to start a new
life. After John Barbee had staked out a moderately successful silver claim
in Silver Reef, Utah, he met and married Kitty, a homemaker, who was twenty
years younger.
By the summer of 1892, John Barbee's mine in Silver Reef had stopped
producing and about this same time he heard about the gold strike in
Cripple Creek, Colorado.
Soon after hearing of the gold strike in Cripple Creek, John Barbee sent
his wife and Mabel east to to live with his brother Graham's family in
Kansas City while he went to Cripple Creek to look for a claim and place
to stay for his family.
In October 1892 at the age of eight, Mabel arrived in Cripple Creek
with her mother after a train trip from Kansas City to Florence, Colorado
and from Florence to Cripple Creek by stage coach. They spent their first
night at the elegant Continental
Hotel on Meyers Avenue, which was later torn down in 1919. The Barbee
family then lived in a tent for about a year, during which time her brother
William was born, until John Barbee bought a four-room house on West Golden
Avenue. The home was destroyed in the second Cripple Creek fire on April
29, 1896. The Barbee family then moved into a fire victim relief tent sent
by W. S. Stratton
until John Barbee was able to rebuild their home on West Golden Avenue.
Mabel attended three years of High School at Cripple Creek and spent
her senior year at Cutler Academy in Colorado Springs, graduating in the
spring of 1902. Mabel attended Cutler Academy because her father had sold
his Cripple Creek Columbia mine and had decided to move with his wife and
son back to Silver Reef, Utah. Upon the Barbee's return to Silver Reef,
they discovered it to be an abandoned mining town so they returned to Cripple
Creek the following year.
In the fall of 1902, Mabel enrolled at Colorado College
in Colorado Springs, graduating in the spring of 1906. While in college
both of Mabel's parents died; her mother from pneumonia in 1904 and
her father in his sleep in 1905. Mabel's brother, William, was sent to
live with his mother's parents in Salt Lake City after her death. Mabel's
college expenses were covered partly by her parents, partly by summer jobs,
partly by a scholarship and during her senior year after her parents had
died by $150 donated from the residents of Cripple Creek, sent at the rate
of $15 a month by Griff Lewis, a druggist in Cripple Creek. Mabel writes
in Cripple Creek Days that without the extra $15 a month she would
not have had enough funds to attend her senior year and graduate from Colorado
College.
1
Mabel had only agreed to accept the fifteen dollars
a month from Griff Lewis on the condition that it be considered a loan
to be repaid as soon as possible after her graduation. When Mabel attempted
to repay Griff Lewis the $150 she had received he refused indicating the
money had been donated by the residents of Cripple Creek and Victor into
a large glass fishbowl labeled "For John's Girl" in his Pharmacy window
and that every month he had only mailed the money to her.
2
After graduation in 1906, Mabel accepted a teaching position at Victor
High School. She then sent for her brother and arranged for him to live
and go to school in Colorado Springs. That fall, her first teaching, she
became the tenth grade teacher of history and spanish for famous broadcaster
Lowell Thomas, who
years would later write the introductions to her biographical history
books of the Cripple Creek Victor area titled Cripple Creek Days
and a follow-up titled Return to Cripple Creek.
In 1908 at the age of twenty-four, she married a mining engineer she
had met while teaching at Victor High School named Howard "Howe" S. Lee
at his home in Denver. Mabel moved with Howe while he briefly worked at
the Camp Bird Mine located between Ouray and Telluride, Colorado until
Howe accepted a field engineering position with United States Smelting,
Refining & Mining Co. headquartered in Boston. Mabel then moved to
Los Angeles while Howe traveled on company business. Within a year,
Mabel moved to Oregon in July 1911 to be with Howe when he was promoted
to head the Rainbow Mine, about twenty-five miles west of Huntington.
In 1912, while living in Oregon, Mabel travelled to Denver to give birth
to their daughter, Barbara Lee on May 26th (d.11/11/1986 Marin Co. CA).
After four years at the Rainbow mine, Howe had short term positions at
other company mines in Alaska, Canada and Mexico. Around 1915, Howe began
working at the Fryer Hill mines near Leadville, Colorado and in 1918 was
sent on an inspection trip to the Sunnyside mine near Silverton, Colorado
where he caught influenza
in an epidemic that was sweeping the area and died.
After Howe's death, Mabel came back to Colorado with her daughter Barbara
and became Dean of Women at her alma mater, Colorado College in Colorado
Springs from 1922 to 1929. In April 1930, she had an article titled
Censoring
The Conduct of College Women published in Atlantic Monthly magazine
and in 1931 became an administrator involved in the founding of Bennington
College in Vermont. Mabel later became an administrator with Radcliffe
College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington
and the University of California at Berkeley.
In 1951 after retiring from a career in education at the age of 67,
she went back to the Cripple Creek/Victor area during the summer of 1952,
partly at the urging of Lowell Thomas, with the idea of writing a book
about her memories growing up in the area during the gold rush boom town
days and the result was Cripple Creek Days published in 1958 which
was followed by four more books including a book about the 1952 visit titled
Back in Cripple Creek.
Mabel Barbee Lee's correspondence with Lowell Thomas is housed at the
Tutt
Library at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Mabel Barbee Lee died at the age of 94 on December 12, 1979 in a nursing
home in Santa Barbara, California and was buried beside her parents in
the Mount Pisgah Cemetery in Cripple Creek, Colorado. The primary sources
for this biography were two of the auto biographical books Mabel Barbee
Lee wrote; the first Cripple Creek Days and second Back in Cripple
Creek.
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Book
List
Cripple Creek Days - 1958, reprinted 1984
(About Gold rush period in Cripple Creek/Victor area, Lowell Thomas
wrote forward)
And Suddenly It's Evening - 1963
The Rainbow Years - 1966
(About four years spent at Rainbow mine in Oregon with Howard Lee including
birth of daughter Barbara Lee)
Back in Cripple Creek - 1968
(About going back to Cripple Creek/Victor area in 1952 to research
Cripple Creek Days book, Lowell Thomas wrote forward)
The Gardens in My Life - 1970
Television Appearance
This is Your Life - Appeared as guest when host Ralph Edwards
profiled Lowell Thomas' life September 30, 1959
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Links
Voices
of the Past - Mabel Barbee Lee appears in this 1966 video about Cripple
Creek - You Tube.
Mabel Barbee
Lee - Wikipedia Encyclopedia.
Mabel Barbee Lee
- This Is Your Life Lowell Thomas show appearance information -
IMDB.
Mabel
Barbee Lee - Obituary - Find a Grave.
Censoring
The Conduct of College Women - Mabel Barbee Lee article published April
1930 in Atlantic Monthly Magazine.
Cripple
Creek - World's Greatest Gold Camp - Historic information about Cripple
Creek - Legends of America website.
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