What’s in a Name?

There’s a riddle hidden in plain sight at Tabor Academy. Walk through Marion today and you’ll find the Elizabeth Taber Library—known as the Marion Public Library until 1953— on Spring Street, named for the town’s greatest benefactor. Drive a few hundred yards to the school she founded—now on its waterfront campus—and you’ll see Tabor Academy blazoned on buildings, flags, shirts, and diplomas. One Woman. Two spellings.

For generations, local lore has offered a reasonable explanation: Elizabeth Taber was too modest to name the Academy after herself. As such, she chose to name the school after Mount Tabor in the Holy Land. This story neatly fits the image of Victorian female propriety. However, new research suggests the truth is far more interesting and reveals that Mrs. Taber might be a more deliberate architect of her own legacy than anyone realizes.

Evidence from recently digitized documents—including probate records and newspaper archives—reveals the answer is both more simple and more complex than legend might suggest. While there is no evidence that Elizabeth Taber legally changed her name, she deliberately changed the spelling of her name to “Elizabeth Tabor” —perhaps creating a new identity for herself and becoming the first woman in Marion’s history to understand the true power of a name.

The Paper Trail

The evidence begins with Elizabeth’s own hand and a story that unfolds over time thanks to six surviving signatures. This story starts with her personal correspondence. Three pieces include an autograph book inscription and letter of formal gift of the Library and Natural History Museum both from 1872, and an inscription in a Natural History book that predates those—all of which bear the same signature: Elizabeth Taber, with a narrow, sharp “e” that could never be mistaken for anything else.

Yet even as her personal signatures remained “Taber” in the early 1870s, something was shifting in the public sphere. The earliest documented instance of her “Elizabeth Tabor” spelling in the press dates to 1871, suggesting the transformation began earlier than her own handwriting reveals.

The pivotal moment comes in 1876 with the founding of Tabor Academy. This was the first building she named, and she chose what may have been her preferred spelling rather than her legal name. In the founding documents describing the new school, her name appears as Elizabeth Tabor—a notable change from the dedication program for the library just three years earlier, where she appeared as Elizabeth Taber.

At this point in time, her signature itself was beginning to evolve. We continue looking at her transformation, examining the other three remaining examples. The single surviving 1880 diploma for Mary Sanford Delano, one of Tabor’s first graduates, shows this shift clearly. The diploma itself is printed “Tabor Academy,” and Elizabeth’s signature at the bottom also reads “Elizabeth Tabor.”

Two additional pieces of personal correspondence—one post-1872 and the other presumed to be later in her life—both bear the updated spelling of Tabor, accompanied by a gradual softening of her once-bold script. This change in her writing hints at advancing age and failing eyesight. This same pattern of spelling appears in formal documents and newspapers of the time, with the use of “Tabor” becoming increasingly consistent as the years passed. By the mid-1880s, the “Tabor” spelling had become standard in public references. The New Bedford Evening Standard refers to her as “Mrs. Elizabeth Tabor” in 1884. The following year, the Boston Globe ran a profile declaring: “Her husband always spelled the name Taber, but after his death she has changed it to Tabor.” That same year, the Academy’s tuition notices billed families under the authority of “Mrs. Elizabeth Tabor.”

In 1885, she completed Tabor Chapel for the First Congregational Church—again using the “Tabor” spelling, making this the second time that she put her “own name” on a structure. The available evidence suggests a gradual transformation from Taber to Tabor over nearly fifteen years, though the full extent and timing of this shift remains partly obscured by the limited documentary record.

After a comprehensive search of Massachusetts court records, no petition for a legal name change could be found. No Acts of Legislature. No formal documentation of Elizabeth Taber becoming Elizabeth Tabor. She remained, in law and in parts of her life, Elizabeth Taber.

But in the rapidly expanding world of newspapers, institutional publicity, and regional philanthropy, she was increasingly “Elizabeth Tabor.” The Boston press corps embraced this spelling when covering her many gifts to Marion. Obituaries in Connecticut and Boston identified her as “Mrs. Elizabeth Tabor.” Her death record uses the Tabor spelling, yet her headstone bears the name Elizabeth Taber. Even later reports about contested claims on her estate used the O spelling. Her life had increasingly embraced the spelling of Tabor.

The Unsolvable Mystery

What drove this change remains one of Elizabeth’s most intriguing secrets. What might have led her to alter the spelling of her late husband’s family name, which she had used since 1824? Elizabeth’s personal inner thought process, and the exact timing, remain unknown and are perhaps undiscoverable.

The documented references to Mt. Tabor being the inspiration for her change are not in her own writing or words, nor are they references from within her lifetime. They are the musings of others after her death. Whether there is any truth to it or not, it remains a plausible theory given her deep religious faith. Was it a spiritual awakening tied to Mount Tabor’s biblical significance? A practical decision to distinguish her institutional work from her personal identity? Or something more mysterious and personal—the kind of individual reinvention that happens when someone decides, even in their 80s, that they’re not finished discovering who they really are?

Whatever the cause, Elizabeth chose to represent this transformation in a public way. The documentation, limited as it may be, indicates that over time she leaned further into this new identity in the final decade of her life, particularly after the 1876 founding of Tabor Academy.

We can see that when she chose to put her own name on buildings, she used “Tabor”—specifically for Tabor Academy (1876) and Tabor Chapel (1885), an educational and a religious institution, respectively.

Today, both versions of Elizabeth’s name live on in Marion. In one part of town, the library that bears the “Taber” spelling—renamed in her honor in 1953, long after her death—a decision made by others, not by Elizabeth herself. In another part of town, the Academy that bears the “Tabor” spelling represents her own choice, one made during the most transformative period of her long life.

While we can’t solve the mystery completely, the evidence shows us just how complex Elizabeth’s final years really were. Here was a woman who, in her later life, didn’t just change her philanthropic mission but may have reexamined who she was as a person. Whether it came from a religious experience, careful planning, or something we’ll never understand, she became someone new while still being authentically herself.

Legacy in Two Names

Today, the Elizabeth Taber Library still serves Marion residents, and Tabor Academy still prepares students—including many Marion residents—for meaningful lives. These institutions carry different spellings of her name, like bookends to one remarkable woman’s impact on the world.

We may never know why she became “Tabor,” but maybe that’s not the real story anyway. The real story might be how she used her final decades to transform her community and build something lasting based on what mattered most to her.

Elizabeth’s two names are more than just a historical puzzle. They show us that who we are can change and grow, that it’s never too late to transform ourselves. And, that the most interesting people in history are often the ones who can’t be easily explained or fully understood.