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Showing 21 - 29 of 29 , query time: 0.03s
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Vesta Fitzpatrick talks about her mother’s skill as a seemstress and how she made the family’s clothes. She remembers family life and entertainment during her youth, her parents reciting poems, and her father’s storytelling abilities. She recalls taking care of the family from a young age after her mother became ill. She speaks about seeing Buffalo Bill’s wild West show in Lincoln Park and going to chautauquas in Collbran. She remembers the...
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Marjorie Thomas describes her childhood on a homestead in the New Liberty area of Mesa County, Colorado. She talks about the difficulty of getting across the Big Salt Wash near Fruita when it flooded. She discusses Sunday school and religious services that existed in the community for twenty-one years, until the lack of leadership caused people to drive to Loma for church. She speaks about the history of the New Liberty School and about social clubs...
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Andrew E. Riddle describes life in the Paradox Valley area of Montrose County, Colorado. He focuses on the violent history of the valley, and describes several murders that occurred there. In the second recording, Riddle talks about religion in Paradox, Colorado, including the building of the non-denominational Red Church in the 1940’s, which once had a shooting range in the basement. Riddle also touches on bootlegging days, burial procedures of...
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Kate Elizabeth (Phillips) Wills talks about her childhood living in What Cheer, Iowa, and her family’s move to Colorado in 1909. She talks about her family’s orchard, her education, the activities she took part in as a young person, and how she met her husband. She describes her career as a farm wife and homemaker working on peach orchards and cleaning homes in the Grand Valley, the history of churches in Palisade, and migrant workers that worked...
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Grace and Ralph Inskeep talk about coming to Mack, Colorado with Grace’s family in 1920. They speak about Ralph’s job working for the Bureau of Reclamation at Camp 7 and his subsequent job as a trackman for the Uintah Railway. They discuss the people and businesses of Loma and Mack, and living in the old Sunset School building. Ralph talks about working at Mesa College as a maintenance man. They speak about attending the Church of the Brethren...
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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...
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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...
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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.
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Helen Johnson talks about gardening, methods of preserving food, and other aspects of rural life in Hotchkiss, Colorado in the early Twentieth century. She talks about her mother, Emily (Scatliff) Young, and the jobs she took to support the family after the loss of their life savings due to her father’s bad investment. She discusses the family’s religious observances and the history of churches in Hotchkiss. She talks about her abusive father-in-law...