Sketches of Colorado: being an analytical summary and biographical history of the State of Colorado as portrayed in the lives of the pioneers, the founders, the builders, the statesmen, and the prominent and progressive citizens Vol. 1, Part 29

Author: Ferril, William Columbus, 1855-1939; Western Press Bureau Company, Denver
Publication date: 1911
Publisher: Denver, Colo., The Western Press Bureau Co.
Number of Pages: 442


USA > Colorado > Sketches of Colorado: being an analytical summary and biographical history of the State of Colorado as portrayed in the lives of the pioneers, the founders, the builders, the statesmen, and the prominent and progressive citizens Vol. 1 > Part 29


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He is a member of the Turnverein; the Denver Athletic Club, and the Elks. He married in Denver, in 1877, Miss Carrie Weigele a native of Indiana, and sister of William Weigele of this city. Of the five children born to them, one only is living, Emil, who is enaged in business with his father.


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JAMES JOSEPH BROWN


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JAMES JOSEPH BROWN.


BROWN, JAMES JOSEPH, mining, born in Wymart, Wayne county, Pa., Sep. 27, 1854, is the son of John and Cecelia (Pal- mer) Brown. His father came from Ireland to Canada, and removing to Pa. in 1848, there met Miss Palmer, a school teacher, who be- came his wife.


Both in his education, and in his business, Mr. Brown worked his way up to the front. Resolved upon obtaining an education, but without the opportunity presented in the regular way, he attended night school in his native state. Then, the mining excitements in the Black Hills, Leadville and other points in the Rocky Mountains, lured him to the west, where, in these after years, he became known as one of its most prosperous and successful miners. In 1877, he followed the excitement and rush to the Black Hills, in the Dakotas, in the old time rough days of mining in that region, so often interspersed with Indian raids, and the many dangers of the frontier. Here he was engaged in placer and other min- ing enterprises.


About this time, the great carbonate ex- citement, that was attracting world-wide at- tention, also induced him to try his fortune in Colorado, and, coming to this state in 1880, he engaged in mining in Georgetown, Lead- ville, and other places. He became especially known, as well as interested, in Leadville, but for a time, followed the rush to the Gun- nison, in the mining boom of the western slope. During this period, he spent two years in Aspen and Ashcroft.


Appreciative of his mining ability and skill as well as his good judgment, David H. Moffat and Eben Smith, added his name to their list of practical operators. He was in their employ about fourteen years, enjoying


their trust and confidence, engaged in some of their largest enterprises, and assisting in the development of their most valuable min- ing properties. His services were especially in demand by his employers in exploiting and directing underground developments. He had a special genius for practical and eco- nomic geology, having charge of this phase of the mining where these wealthy owners had interests. But all this time, he was only mak- ing fortunes for others, and concluded to use his experience in building up a wealth that would be his own.


Resigning from the Moffat and Smith in- terests in 1894, and coming to Denver in that year, he started out in business for him- self, making this city his home and family residence, while he engaged in mining in Leadville and elsewhere. He gave Creede its first big and healthy boom, when he in- fluenced Moffat and others to invest in that new camp.


Mr. Brown is a director and one of the heavy owners in the Ibex Mining Company, better known as the Little Johnny. Several but unsuccessful efforts had been made to develop this now rich mining property near Leadville. Mr. Brown undertook the task for himself, found the rich ores, enlisted cap- ital, and thus became one of Colorado's wealthy mine owners. He is also developing valuable mining interests in Arizona and the southwest.


He is a life member of both the Leadville Elks, and the Denver Athletic Club in Denver.


Mr. Brown married in Leadville, in 1886, Miss Margaret Tobin. They have two chil- dren, a son, Lawrence P., and a daughter, Helen. The son is now inining at Cripple Creek.


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LEONARD HENRY EICHOLTZ


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HENRY LEONARD EICHOLTZ.


FICHOLTZ, COLONEL LEONARD HENRY, railroad engineer, was born in the city of Lancaster, Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, April 23, 1827, being the old- est son of Henry and Elizabeth Eicholtz. The family is of German origin, his great- grandfather, Jacob Eicholtz, leaving the Palatine, Germany, and coming to Pennsyl- vania, where he settled in Lancaster county, in 1733.


Colonel Eicholtz was educated at the Moravian Academy at Lititz, situated in Lan- caster county, graduating from that institu- tion as a civil engineer. After his gradu- ation he moved with his father to Downing- town, Chester county, and in 1852, began his active practical work with a corps of en- gineers employed by the Pennsylvania Rail- road and remained with that company until 1854, when he accepted a position with the Philadelphia and Erie Railroad Company.


In 1857, he joined an engineering party, of which Mr. John C. Trantwine of Phila- delphia was chief engineer, and went to Hon- duras, Central America, and had charge of a party surveying a line from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean for the Interoceanic Railway Company. On completion of this work, in the summer of 1858, the party re- turned to New York and Colonel Eicholtz returned to the Philadelphia and Erie Rail- road.


Shortly after the outbreak of the civil war, he entered the government service as assistant engineer of military railroads in the Division of the Mississippi, serving under General Sherman, in the reconstruc- tion of railroads destroyed by the two armies during Sherman's campaign in Tennessee and Georgia and in the memorable march of Sherman from Chattanooga to Atlanta, and left the service in 1866 as acting chief engi- neer of military railroads of the Division of the Mississippi.


In the fall of 1866, Colonel Eicholtz was appointed resident engineer of the Kansas, Pacific Railway Company, with headquarters at Wyandotte, Kansas, and during the next two years conducted the survey of the thirty- second parallel through Colorado, New Mex- ico, Arizona and California, under the direc- tion of General William J. Palmer and Colo- nel W. W. Wright.


In 1868, returning from California by


way of Panama, he was engaged by the Union Pacific Railway Company as superin- tendent of bridge building and remained with that road until it made its connection with the Central Pacific Railroad at Promon- tory, Utah, May 10, 1869.


He was then made chief engineer and superintendent of construction of the Denver Pacific Railroad Company, and built that road from Cheyenne to Denver, and on June 22, 1870, he brought the first railroad train into Denver. At the same time he was build- ing the Kansas, Pacific railroad westward, and a few months later brought that road into Denver.


In 1872, he was one of the incorporators of the Denver and South Park railroad- now part of the Colorado and Southern Rail- road Company-and was made chief engi- neer. During the construction of a branch line to Morrison, work on the main line was suspended until 1876, when the work was pushed forward again as rapidly as the great difficulties would permit, the road having to be constructed for thirty miles through the narrow, rock gorges of the Platte Canon.


Under his direction the South Park road was built to Buena Vista, on the Arkansas river, and then over the Alpine Pass to Gunnison.


By this time Colonel Eicholtz's personal affairs had become so large that he resolved to give up his railroad work and devote his time to the management of his large real estate interests and other business, though for several years longer he acted as con- sulting engineer for the Colorado and South- ern railroad and at times for the Denver and Rio Grande railroad.


In 1878, he was elected a director of the First National Bank, which position he held to the time of his death. At one time he held the position of vice-president of the In- ternational Trust Company. He also was a member of the Denver Club and of the Loyal Legion.


Mr. Eicholtz married Nellie Inslee Smith at St. Joseph, Missouri, December 12, 1872.


The latter part of his life was quietly spent in Denver, surrounded by his family and his friends. He died January 3, 1911, in his eighty-fourth year, beloved and re- spected by all who knew him. He left a widow and five children.


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CHARLES ALFRED JOHNSON


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CHARLES ALFRED JOHNSON.


JOHNSON, CHARLES ALFRED, real estate broker, member of the firm of Lyons & Johnson, president of the Denver Chamber of Commerce, was born in Salem, Massachusetts, July 13, 1868. His earliest American ancestor was Lientenant James Johnson of the famous Ancient and Honor- able Artillery Company, an honorary organ- ization that survives to the present day. Lieutenant Johnson settled in Boston in 1658.


Charles Alfred Johnson was the son of Doctor Amos Howe Johnson, who was born in Boston, son of Samuel Johnson, of the firm of J. C. Ilowe & Company. Amos Howe Johnson graduated, Harvard, 1853, and from Andover Theological Seminary in 1856. In the spring of 1862, he entered the Harvard Medical School, receiving degree of M. D. in 1865, and in the following year settled in Salem, Massachusetts, as a practitioner of medicine and so continued up to the time of his death in 1896. He was president of Mas- sachusetts Medical Society for two years from June, 1890. Served in the State Leg- islature in 1862. Married in 1857, Miss Fran- cis Seymour Benjamin, daughter of Nathan Benjamin of Williamstown, Massachusetts, and Mary A. (Wheeler) Benjamin of New York, missionaries to Athens, Greece, and Constantinople.


The subject of this sketch as a boy had the advantages of ideal home training, being raised in an atmosphere of culture and erudi- tion that have made Massachusetts justly famous.


After finishing his education, which was received in the public and private schools of Salem, Mr. Johnson entered the employ of James Means & Company, shoe manufac- turers of Boston and Brockton, staying with them six years.


In February, 1891, when in his twenty- third year, he came to Colorado, settling in Denver, where he has since lived, except for six months in 1892, when he was at Creede, Colorado.


In the years he has been engaged in the


real estate business in Denver, Mr. Johnson has established a reputation for integrity and for close application to the interests of his clients that have become the best assets of his firm. As the city has grown, the firm of Lyons & Johnson has grown with it until they are now, in 1911, in the very front rank of the business organizations of the city.


His genius for organization and his capa- city for hard work are recognized by the business interests of the city and state and Mr. Johnson has been called frequently to positions of honor and responsibility. When confronted with adverse criticism from with- in and without, the directors of the Cham- ber of Commerce, at the beginning of 1911, unanimously called upon Mr. Johnson to head their organization and bring it to the degree of effectiveness which the community demands of the representative commercial body of the state.


Mr. Johnson entered upon his work with characteristic energy and the results of his administration soon began to appear.


He is also president of the Rocky Moun- tain Highway Association and president of the Colorado Good Roads Conference Asso- ciation, and was president of the Denver Real Estate Exchange in 1898 and 1899. Mr. Johnson served in the National Guard of Colorado seven years and for five years was captain and A. D. C. on the brigade staff.


He is a member of the Denver Club, Union Club of Boston, Denver Country Club and Society of Colonial Wars.


Mr. Johnson was married at Boston April 15, 1896, to Lney C. Braman, a daughter of Jarvis Dwight Braman of that city. She died March 25, 1899, leaving two children, Barbara Braman Johnson, born November 21, 1897, and Jarvis Johnson, born March 5, 1899. He was married a second time at Kan- sas City, Missouri, on May 26, 1902, to Anne V. Burnett of Fort Worth, Texas, daughter of Samuel B. Burnett and granddaughter of Captain M. B. Loyd, president of the First National Bank of Fort Worth.


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ROSWELL EATON GOODELL


ROSWELL EATON GOODELL.


G OODELL, ROSWELL EATON, finanee and mining, born in Abington, Windham county, Connectieut, October 21, 1825, died October 19, 1903, was the son of Roswell and Olive Goodell. His father, a farmer, moved


to La Salle county, Illinois, in 1834, where he died on a farm near Ottawa, in 1838. Ros- well, the son, was early thrown npon his own resources, working on the farm in sum- mer, and attending school in the winter. At


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the age of fifteen, he was deputy postmaster at Ottawa. He then became a clerk in the general merchandise store of J. Y. Sanger & Company in Chieago, but later returning to Ottawa, he was appointed deputy county recorder. In 1846, he enlisted in Judge T. Lyle Dickey's company in the Mexican War, and later was appointed by Colonel John J. Hardin, secretary, First Regiment, Illinois Volunteers. At Buena Vista he was ap- pointed postmaster of the Northern Division of the United States army, commanded by General Wool, a position he held until mus- tered out of the serviee. When the bloody battle of Buena Vista was being fought, he elosed his office and joined his regiment in the field. Returning to Ottawa, Illinois, after a year's service in the war, he was later, when twenty-five years of age, elected sheriff. He then was secretary of a com- mission, of which Abraham Lincoln was chairman, to take testimony on canal claims against the state. Although of different political faith, there was then developed be- tween him and Mr. Lincoln a firm and last- ing friendship.


He was secretary of the Illinois State Senate, 1852-1853, the beginning of a promi- nent public career. The governor appointed him secretary of the canal commission, after which he was eashier of the Merehants and Drovers' Bank of Joliet, and treasurer of the Chicago and Alton Railroad, of which he was director, 1856-1859, and later its superintendent. George M. Pullman gave his first order to him for Pullman coaches on that road. In 1858, he was one of the board of visitors from Illinois to West Point.


In 1861, Mr. Goodell organized the Twen- tieth Illinois Infantry, which was mustered in at Camp Goodell, in June. After the close of the Civil War, during which he was interested in government contraets for army supplies, he went to Europe to give his daughters a finishing education in France and Germany. In 1874-1875, Mr. Goodell was president, Fourth National Bank, Chi- eago, and later city marshal of that city. He was acting chairman, Illinois state demo- cratic committee in the Tilden eampaign, and, in 1877, chairman of city and county committee, Chieago. He became wealthy in real estate business, but lost heavily in the financial crash which eame to Chicago fol-


lowing the Chicago fire, 1871, and thus it was that Colonel Goodell followed, in 1878, the mining rush to Leadville, where his fam- ily joined him in 1879. Through him, the United States fish hatchery was established there. He was the Leadville postmaster, 1886-1890. He became interested in mining and other investments : was the moving spirit in needed local improvements, and soon be- came one of the eminent men of Colorado, as he had always been a leader and man of affairs. He was one of the board of man- agers from Colorado for the World's Colum- bian Exposition in Chicago, and also a mem- ber of the national commission. After the World's Fair he made Denver his home, was elected president of the Denver Stock Ex- change, and became prominently identified with the business interests of the city.


Colonel Goodell married, November 1, 1853, Miss Mary Jane, daughter of Governor Joel A. Matteson, in Springfield, Illinois. They were the parents of siz children, Annie Goodell, now Mrs. James Day Whitmore of Denver; Mary Matteson, widow of former Governor James Benton Grant of Colorado, and now of Denver; Jennie Goodell, wife of Albert Allmand Blow, mining, now of London and New York ; Clara Goodell, wife of John Clark Mitchell, eashier of the Denver Na- tional Bank ; Olive Goodell (died in Denver, 1891), wife of Major Zeph. Turner Hill, and Roswell Eaton Goodell, Jr., who married Mabel Atkinson.


In the social, club, philanthropie and po- litical life of Colorado, Colonel and Mrs. Goodell and their family have been pre- eminent and gracious. The exalted type of manhood and womanhood, sterling integrity and charm of manners of the parents are the proud heritage of their children. Of a colo- nial lineage, their aneestors were among the founders and builders of the republic, and their daughters have been active in patriotie work. As members of the Mayflower So- eiety, Colonial Governors, Colonial Dames, Daughters of the American Revolution, United States Daughters of 1812, they have done much to encourage and foster American patriotism. When in London, during the recent South African war, Mrs. A. A. Blow originated the idea and assisted in putting it into praetieal execution, the sending of the good hospital ship "Maine" for the relief of the English soldiers in the Boer war.


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JOSEPH WILLIAM GILLULY


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JOSEPH WILLIAM GILLULY.


G ILLULY, JOSEPH WILLIAM, treasurer of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad Company, born in Shrewsbury, New Jersey, February 13, 1851, was the son of Francis and Eliza (Swannell) Gilluly. Francis Gil- luly, born November, 1825, died November, 1889, was a manufacturer. His wife was the daughter of Joseph and Lucy Swannell.


Joseph W. Gilluly was educated in the public schools of Brooklyn, New York, and then entered the wholesale mercantile dry- goods house of W. H. and L. C. Thorne, New York City, in 1865, remaining in the employ of that firm until July, 1872. In August that year, he came to Colorado. Locating in Colorado Springs, he was first employed as a clerk in the auditor's office of the Den- ver and Rio Grande Railway, and in 1878, was promoted to chief clerk. Then came the litigation and contest between the Den- ver and Rio Grande and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroads, in which the former was placed in the hands of H. A. Risley as receiver. Mr. Gilluly was ap- pointed auditor, continuing in that position until the discharge of the receiver, and then afterward, until November, 1880. He was then made the cashier and paymaster of the company, and also of the Rio Grande Ex- tension Company, which was then building lines from Alamosa south and west, and also from Canon City west.


Mr. Gilluly was appointed cashier of the Rio Grande Western Railroad Company in 1881, and also of its construction company, in which position he was continued by Re- ceiver Bancroft, and until the removal of the offices of the company to Salt Lake City in 1889, but Mr. Gilluly still remained and con- tinued with the Colorado lines, in similar duties.


The splendid executive and administra- tive ability that Mr. Gilluly had shown added new responsibilities, along with those in direct connection with the Denver and Rio Grande. During this time General W. J. Palmer and associates were building the Mexican National Railroad in Old Mexico, and Mr. Gilluly was appointed secretary of the Mexican National Construction Com- pany. From July, 1884, and continuing two years, he was also cashier when W. S. Jack- son was the receiver of the Denver and Rio Grande Railway. Mr. Gilluly was one of the


organizers, in 1886, of the Grand River Rail- road Company, formed to construct a branch of the Denver and Rio Grande from Red Cliff to Glenwood Springs. In July of that year, when the Denver and Rio Grande was reorganized under foreclosure and sale, he was elected treasurer when Mr. Moffat be- came president.


Mr. Gilluly is still the treasurer of this company, having been officially connected with the Denver and Rio Grande for almost forty years, having seen it grow from a small system to one of the great railway lines of the United States. For many years, he has also been the treasurer of the Rio Grande Junction Railway Company, and also of the Rio Grande Southern Railroad Com- pany. He has made Denver his home since 1883.


In addition to his railway duties and con- nections, Mr. Gilluly is interested in other enterprises and lines of business. He be- came one of th estockholders and directors of the Western National Bank of Pueblo and the Denver Savings Bank. In addition to being treasurer, he was also a stockholder in the Rio Grande Southern Railroad, and in the construction company.


Mr. Gilluly has also been a prominent leader and factor in educational and church work. He has served as trustee and also vice-president of the University of Denver and Colorado Seminary for a number of years. He has been an active worker, patron and official in Y. M. C. A. circles and in the Methodist Episcopal Church. As a lay dele- gate, he has represented that church at sev- eral of its general conferences. He is a mem- ber of the Denver Club.


Mr. Gilluly married, June 24, 1874, in Colorado Springs. Miss Euphemia M .. daugh- ter of John Lawson. She was born in Prince Edward Island, 1851, and died in Denver, July, 1908. Her early life was spent in Mas- sachusetts, where she was educated. She was possessed of those accomplishments, cul- tured tastes and high ideals, that made her home life and her associations with others, a precious memory.


They have one child, Mabel, now the wife of William V. Hodges, attorney-at-law, Den- ver, Colorado. She was educated in the University of Denver and at Mrs. Hayes' finishing school, in Boston.


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DAVID CRICHTON BEAMAN


DAVID CRICHTON BEAMAN.


B EAMAN. DAVID CRICHTON, lawyer, born in Burlington, Lawrence county, Ohio, November 22, 1838, was the son of Gamaliel Carter (horn March 20, 1799, died October 26. 1875) and Emelia (Crichton )


Beaman, who was born in Perthshire, Scot- land, 1814, and was a descendant of the fam- ily of which the so-called "Admirable" Crichton was a member. Mr Beaman's father, a Presbyterian minister, was gradn-


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ated from Union College, Schenectady, New York, and Andover Theological Seminary, Massachusetts, and, moving to Burlington, Ohio, 1832, opened an academy and organ- ized a Presbyterian church of thirty-four members, of whom seventeen were slave owners and residents of Kentucky and Vir- ginia, across the Ohio River. Abolitionism was then spreading rapidly, and being one of its ardent advocates, the Reverend Mr. Beaman had the slaveholding members dis- missed from the church. A former mem- ber of his church, Solomon Beckley, having moved to Iowa, wrote him of the great op- portunities for religious and educational work in that region of the then Far West, and April 6, 1846, he, with his family, re- moved to Iowa, going by steamboat down the Ohio to Cairo, thenee up the Mississippi to Montrose, Lee county, directly across that river and opposite Nauvoo, Illinois. The latter was the great city founded by Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, and in which was the magnificent temple of the "Latter Day Saints." The Mormons, owing to the war waged against them by the militia and citizens of Illinois that was being brought to an end, began their immigration to Salt Lake in September, 1846. Their temple was burned in 1848. There being no church building at Montrose, the Reverend Mr. Bea- man first preached in the government bar- racks, but afterward organized a church and erected a house of worship.


In the meantime, the Reverend Mr. Bea- man had organized several churches in the country. In 1852, he gave up the Montrose church to another minister, and removed to Croton, on the Des Moines River, in Lee county, Iowa. That region had been settled by a colony of pantheists from Massachu- setts, organized under Abner Kneeland, who, after having been imprisoned in Boston, 1838, for blasphemy, had removed to this part of Iowa. He had written to his Boston friends that he had found a country to his liking, in which there was "neither a bible, a priest, a sabbath, a heaven, a hell, a God, nor a devil."


The Rev. Mr. Beaman organized small churches in that region, after which, Knee- land having died in 1844, the society of the latter was disbanded.


David C. Beaman, son of this distin- guished Presbyterian minister, attended school at Denmark, Iowa, and was later a student in the academy and preparatory de- partment of Oberlin College, Ohio. Then,


engaging in farming in Jowa until 1859, he became station agent on the Des Moines Val- ley Railroad (now the Keokuk and Des Moines branch of the Rock Island), at Cro- ton, Iowa, one of the first railroads west of the Mississippi.


He was in the battle of Athens, Missouri, August 5, 1861, his only active part in the Civil War, where he was orderly sergeant of an Iowa company which formed part of the Union forces. Soon after, and before his company was regularly mustered in and assigned a place in a regiment, he entered the federal revenue service, as captain of a company of mounted revenue seouts, in which he remained until near the close of the war. He then returned to railroading, at Selma, Iowa, at the same time conduct- ing a general store at that place. He studied law, and in 1869 was admitted to the bar in Van Buren county, that state, and in 1876 for a short time was the acting judge of the district court of that county.




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