Religious life and customs
Showing
1 - 20
of 29
, query time: 0.03s
Format:
Compound
Harriet “Muzz” Northrop Webster Johnson recalls growing up in Grand Junction, Colorado and discusses the schools she attended, her father’s job at the Holly Sugar Company, her jobs after high school, her marriages, and the history of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church. She also talks about starting over as a 58-year-old widower, when she lived and worked as a house mother at the Hawaii School for the Deaf and Blind. The interview was conducted...
Format:
Voice Recording
To mark the centennial celebration of the town of Grand Junction, Colorado in 1981, the Mesa County Oral History Project wrote and recorded several radio plays about local history. Beginning on September 26, 1981, local radio stations KSTR, KREX-AM, KREX-FM, and KMSA broadcast the plays. Authors of the plays used interviews recorded by the Mesa County Oral History Project as inspiration. This archival recording contains the play Our Churches.
This...
Format:
Voice Recording
To mark the centennial celebration of the town of Grand Junction, Colorado in 1981, the Mesa County Oral History Project wrote and recorded several radio plays about local history. Beginning on September 26, 1981, local radio stations KSTR, KREX-AM, KREX-FM, and KMSA broadcast the plays. Authors of the plays used interviews recorded by the Mesa County Oral History Project as inspiration. This archival recording contains the play Christmas Memories,...
Format:
Voice Recording
Marie Nowlan talks about the history of the First United Methodist Church in Grand Junction, Colorado, about her life in the church, and about members of the church, including Grand Junction News founder Edwin Price and his wife Lola. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
Format:
Voice Recording
Richard Williams talks about his family’s arrival in Grand Junction, Colorado in 1908. He speaks about his father’s purchase of the Independent Abstract Company and about his own involvement with several abstract and title companies in town. He discusses the formation of the Grand Junction Lions Club, the Grand Junction Lions Club Carnival, and the club’s fundraising for Grand Junction Junior College and other local causes. He speaks about his...
Format:
Document
A four page program showing the events of the Handy's Chapel's 100th anniversary celebration on September 27, 1992. The Handy Chapel, a longstanding African-American church in Grand Junction, Colorado, has the oldest surviving church building in the Grand Valley.
Format:
Voice Recording
Josephine Dickey talks about songs sung in Grand Junction’s Handy Chapel, the history of the Chapel, the role of the church in helping African-American people in a time of greater racial segregation and discrimination, and her family’s long history of involvement and leadership at the church. She discusses the role of law enforcement in referring Black people in need to the Handy Chapel. She details the segregation that prevented African-Americans...
Format:
Voice Recording
Merian Rosenthal talks about Jewish life in Grand Junction, Colorado during the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s. Her husband Burt Rosenthal and brother Hershel Sedalnick also chime in. They reminisce about several people from Grand Junction’s Jewish community, including those with the surnames Spector, Liff, Leff, Harris, Loeffler, Sampliner, Minowitz, Rigg, Waldoffel, and Schneider. They discuss the first established religious services for Jews in...
Format:
Voice Recording
Harold Zimmerman describes packing fruit during harvest time in the Clifton area, spraying for codling moths, the end of early apple farming in the valley, the train of wagons used to haul fruit on the Midland Trail at harvest time and about a flash flood that devastated Cross Orchards and destroyed 31 Road. He also talks about his career in bookkeeping for Mesa County Valley School District 51 and other organizations, the run on local banks during...
Format:
Voice Recording
Janielle Westermire talks about growing up in Grand Junction, Colorado, where her father ministered at the Handy Chapel. She speaks about feeling she lived in a safe, close knit community, but also about racism she experienced as a child. She describes the inspiring life of her father, Harry Butler, who worked in hydrology with the Bureau of Reclamation before becoming the first African-American school board member in Mesa County and the first African-American...
Format:
Voice Recording
James Earl Shaw and Creston Ralph Bailey talk about the history of their families in Mesa County, and discuss their families’ roles in the automobile and grocery businesses respectively. They mention people and places important to Grand Junction. They also reminisce about their experiences at the Presbyterian church camp on the Grand Mesa, and all the antics they pulled while growing up. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History...
Format:
Voice Recording
Josephine Dickey, an early African-American resident of Grand Junction, talks about her mother’s illness and stepping in to care for her siblings after her mother’s death. She remembers her mother’s doctor and other doctors that cared for the family. She recalls her father William Wesley Taylor III and how he worked to put his brother and sister through college. She talks about African-Americans as portrayed in television programs, especially...
Format:
Voice Recording
Local historian David Sundal talks about the history of Grand Junction, Colorado’s First Church of the Nazarene and about his father Olaf Sundal, a clergyman who presided over the church for many years, beginning in 1930. He talks about the role of local churches in providing food relief to local people and to Dust Bowl migrants during the Great Depression. He also speaks about the row of churches on White Avenue and about the history of churches...
Format:
Compound
Ann Stokes talks about her father-in-law Walter Stokes and his involvement in Nineteenth century labor strife as a union coal miner in Colorado. She describes his establishment of the Stokes Mine after he moved to Mesa County and describes the mine’s operations. She speaks about early phone service in Palisade. She discusses her mom’s job as a nurse in rural areas, which included tasks like housecleaning, cooking, and sewing baby clothes for new...
Format:
Voice Recording
Gilbert Gordon talks about growing up in Trinidad, Colorado in the early Twentieth century and at length about the different ethnicities present in Trinidad at that time, with an emphasis on the Jewish population. He discusses some of the activities of the Ku Klux Klan around 1923, and how prejudice from the organization affected him. He also talks about operating Gordon department stores, a family owned chain. Both Gilbert and Mary go into life and...
Format:
Compound
In this recording, Alta Nolan reads the memoirs of Cordelia Files. Files talks about the history of her parents and maternal grandparents who homesteaded in the Fruita, Colorado area in the 1890’s. She describes the fruit growing operation on the homestead. She recounts seeing the Ute people and Chipeta when they came in the fall to dry fruit from the orchard. She remembers early Fruita, with its dirt streets and plank sidewalks. She speaks about...
Format:
Voice Recording
Fannie Susman talks about her life managing department stores with her husband Rudy Susman, and about the fledgling Jewish communities they encountered in Durango and Grand Junction, Colorado. Rudy Susman then talks about his many community involvements in Grand Junction, including his role in organizing the Eagles Baseball Club. He also talks about establishing a Jewish congregation for worship with other Jewish families in town. The interview was...
Format:
Voice Recording
John Sylvester Long discusses the religious life and customs in the Church of the Brethren, and the early Twentieth century history of Fruita and Loma, Colorado. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
Format:
Voice Recording
Anna Foster talks about teaching at the Mesa School, beginning in 1908. She remembers some of the teachers and students at the school, and going sledding with them for fun. She speaks about the role of the Mesa’s Methodist church in providing community for people of all Christian faiths. She describes stagecoaches that delivered between towns, traveling the old Hogback Road from Palisade, and the building of the Plateau Canyon Road. She recalls...
Format:
Voice Recording
Gertrude Rader discusses her time spent teaching in Loma, Colorado in the early 1900s. She talks about the role of the sugar beet company as landowner and employer in the area. She includes details about the schools, businesses, and churches that existed in Loma, her involvement starting Mesa County’s first hot school lunch program, and her experiences attending an annual fish fry in Horsethief Canyon. Gertrude also shares memories about the many...
