Edith Gaylor

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Marble Springs 2.0 screenshot of Edith Gaylor

What we know

Edith Gaylor née Huntington
1854 - 1887
Married to Clancy Gaylor. Had eight children, with four sons surviving infancy: Douglas, Gilbert, Andrew, and Earle. Was convicted of killing Clancy with a pick-axe and sentenced to thirty years. Asa Miller, an old friend of Clancy's, defended her. During the trail, Abigail visited her frequently at the jail. After three years in Colorado City Women’s Prison, she killed several inmates before knifing herself to death.

Promises

Now the vein would be struck.
Now the earth would yield up
to her shame, and she would sink
into that promised silver mine.

Pick-axes strike wood, bone—
echoes of those winks, whispers,
his leave-takings in the quiet nights.

Pick-axes fall into earth, flesh
like spring snows striking meadows
that tease with Clancy's old promises.

After now the rocks would again be
as still as her husband’s chest
when the pick-axe went through it again.
and
again
and
again1.

Connections

connect-gaylor.jpg

Portal

Sources

Silver
Hall, Henry.Inch by Inch; or The Guide of Guides into the Rocky Mountains, and among the Silver Mines of San Juan. Topeka, Kansas: Kansas Farmer Printing House, 1878. Available at the Western History Department, Denver Public Library.

Female Offenders
Glueck, Sheldon.Five Hundred Delinquent Women. Reprint of 1934 edition. New York: Kraus Reprint Corporation, 1965.

Vincent, Arthur.The Lives of Twelve Bad Women, Illustrations and Reviews of Female
Turpitude Set Forth by Impartial Hands
. Boston, Massachusetts: L.C. Page, 1897. Available at the Western History Department, Denver Public Library.

Portal caption and links

Drawing of a pick axe.
Enid Grimes, who had the strength to wield the axe
Abigail Miller, who should have felt the axe

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Portal for secret connections
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