Abigail Miller

Marble Springs 2.0 screenshot of Abigail Miller

What we know

1850 - 1888
Wife of town lawyer Asa Miller. Blackmailed by Clancy Gaylor. One daughter, Cassandra (Zandra). Died in childbirth along with a stillborn son.

Cover Up

When Edith’s husband
Clancy was found
down in Willow Creek
with twenty-nine pick-axe
wounds to the chest,
Mr. Miller, the town lawyer,
was called in Edith’s defense.

His wife, Abigail¹, went down to Alvina’s
with her famous chokecherry pies
in the long summer twilight.

She brought back
packets tied with Alvina’s
coarse black hairs
at midnight.
Scattered some
into the White Owl's well
to blind the gossips.
Strewed some
through the courtroom
to blind the jurors.
Ground some
into the muddy boardwalks
to blind the rest.

Now no one would see
Clancy’s obvious eyes
in her little Cassandra.
No one now could condemn her.

Abigail never dared
to call at Clancy’s secret mine,
to search out her old case:
the one with her hearts-ease worked on it.
He had leered when he said he kept
her letters there,
along with five months of her
house-keeping money
(letters drenched in the perfume of another time
when they both had been
too young, too foolish, too daring).

Had she dared,
she would have opened
her case to find
only her blue sateen ribbons
and some dusty papers for failed claims.

Marble Springs never saw a thing.

Footnotes

1. Item 1965. A Wife’s Power. The power of a wife for good or evil is irresistible. Home must be the seat of happiness, or it must be forever unknown. To recover his equanimitiy and composure, home must be to a man a place of repose, of peace, of cheerfulness, of comfort ; and his soul renews its strength again, and goes forth with fresh vigour to encounter the labour and troubles of his life. Enquire within upon Everything

Connections

Portal

Sources

Kania, Alan J.The Bench and the Bar: a Centennial View of Denver’s Legal History. Chatsworth, California: Windsor Publications, 1993.

Parkhill, Forbes.The Law Goes West. Denver, Colorado: Sage Books, 1956. Available at the Western History Department, Denver Public Library.

Portal caption and links

A drawing of a set of scales, as one might see in a courtroom.

Edith Gaylor
Alvina Heollstar
Marble Springs

Portal for secret connections