Alice Ivers Duffield Tubbs Huckert

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I am forever interested in women from our past and how they made our lives today easier. Or, the tough ones who made a go of it in 'the olden times'. I thought this gal was pretty interesting. Alice Ivers Duffield Tubbs Huckert, was a famous poker player in the American West of the late 1800's. Born in Devon, England in 1851 her family moved first to Virginia where she went to a boarding school. Then her father moved them to Leadville, Colorado during the silver rush. She married a mining engineer named Frank Duffield at the age of twenty. She followed him to the gambling halls which were quite poplular in the mining camps of that time. At first she just watched but was quite a quick learner and became good at both poker and faro. After his death in an explosion she was left with no means of support for herself. She could have gotten a teaching job but there was no school. So she became a dealer and player of poker and faro. Traveling from camp to camp she soon had the nickname of "Poker Alice" and was quite the rarity in the gambling rooms of the mining camps. She was often seen with a black cigar in her mouth and she carried a .38 revolver. She was always seen as a challenge and so she was always excepted in the gambling halls. She won over $6,000 when she left Colorado and went to Silver City, New Mexico. She then returned to Creede Colorado and took a job in the saloon owned by Bob Ford who had earlier killed Jesse James. She put a bullet in the arm of a man who had threatened her friend, Warren G. Tubbs, with a knife. They had moved their operation to Deadwood, South Dakota where she married him and they had seven children. They homesteaded a ranch near Sturgis on the Moreau River. Tubbs was diagnosed with tuberculosis and died of pneumonia during the winter of 1910. She had enjoyed the peace and quiet of the life on the ranch but once again she had to made an living. She hired a man named George Huckert to take care of the ranch while she went to Sturgis to earn a living. She felt it would be cheaper to marry him than to pay him so she married him when he proposed to her. He died in 1913. She opened a saloon called "Poker's Palace" but shot a man that was tearing it up one night and ended up in jail. Though she was acquitted of the charges the saloon had been closed during the trial. By then she was in her 70's and wearing men's clothes. She was featured as a true frontier character. She ran a house of ill repute for many years. Was fined and actually arrested for repeated offenses and was sentenced to prison but was pardoned by the governor. She underwent a gallbladder operation at the age of 79 but died of complications. This was in Rapid City, South Dakota on February ,27,1930. She was buried at St. Aloysius Cemetery in Sturgis, South Dakota. She claimed to have won $250,000 in her life. She was famous for saying such things as: "Praise the Lord and place your bets. I'll take your money with no regrets."