LAFAYETTE, Colo., Aug. 16 — Mrs. Elizabeth George was killed, Pasco Ellart, a volunteer fireman was seriously injured, and a house, owned by Thomas Faull was burned to the ground here today in one of the the severest electrical storms that ever visited this section of the state. During its progress the whole town was in terror.
Continue reading “Reprints: 1913 – Citizens of Lafayette, Colo., in Short Reign of Terror; Mayor’s House Burned”Reprints: 1887 — New Eldorado takes shape
Lafayette, the new town on the Miller Farm, was platted last Monday. Simpson & Son have the engine set up at the new mine, and are pushing the development of the same and other matters concerning the welfare of the new camp at the best of their ability. We are looking every day for the Union Pacific company to start work on a branch track from here to that new Eldorado.
Continue reading “Reprints: 1887 — New Eldorado takes shape”Reprints: 1900 – Mary Miller’s reading room hosts traveling library
The second box in the State Traveling Library will leave tomorrow for Lafayette to remain for three months. It will go in charge of Mrs. Mary E. Miller, an old and well-known resident of that locality, who will be responsible for its contents, and will arrange a reading room to be used during its stay. This is the box given by the Young Ladies’ Club [of the Congregational Church in Denver].
As the books presented by the club are almost entirely fiction, some of them have been laid aside for other boxes, and some juveniles and solid reading substituted. The contents of the box are now as follows: “Quo Vadis,” “Shirley,” “Pendennis,” “Dred,” “In His Steps,” Sheldon; “Plain Tales from the Hills,” “The Face and the Mask,” Barr; “Mosses From an Old Manse,” “What Might Have Been Expected,” Stockton; “Imperial Democracy,” Jordan; “Social Evolution,” Kidd; “Last of the Mohicans,” “Robinson Crusoe,” “Bessie and Raymond,” “Leslie Goldthwaite,” Whitney; “Deerslayer,” “Scottish Chiefs,” “Alice in Wonderland,” “Swiss Family Robinson,” “Bondman,” Caine; “Miss Gilbert’s Career,” Hollaway; “Vicar of Wakefield,” “Adam Bede,” “Mill on the Floss,” “Romance of Two Worlds,” “Three Men in a Boat,” Jerome; “Last of the Barons,” Butwer; “Window in Thurms,” Barrie; “Trilby,” “David Copperfield,” “Dickens’ Poems,” “Life of General Marion,” “Emerson’s Essays,” “Life of David Crockett,” “Biographies of Great Men,” “Temple Talks,” Myron Reed; “Queen of the Air,” Ruskin; “Count Silvius,” Horn; “Europe in the 19th Century,” Hudson; “David Harum,” “Women and Economies,” “Oom Paul and His People,” “The Workers,” (West) Wyckoff; “Equality,” Bellamy; “Social Spirit in America,” Henderson; “Story of Electricity,” Munroe; “Co-Operative Commonwealths,” Gronlund; “A Blockaded Family.” A list of those donating books was published in last Sunday’s [Rocky Mountain] News.
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Reprints: 1897 – Killed by Poisonous Roots
June 14, 1897. LeRoy Kail, the 10-year-old son of the Editor Kail of the Lafayette Sun, and Martin Cornelius, 8 years of age, son of C. Cornelius, a coal miner working at the Simpson Mine, were both found dead this evening, probably as a result of eating poisonous roots which they had dug up. The body of the young Kail was found in a ditch on the Ranch of Frank Prince [at Nine Mile Corner] about two miles north of town this evening. It is supposed that he had been in the water all afternoon. He was found lodged in a barbed wire fence that crosses the ditch. The body was brought to town. The Kail boy is supposed to have fallen off the bank of the ditch, a distance of about 10 feet, and was carried down the stream about 100 feet, when he caught the fence. The body of Kail was located by the parties seeing his dog, which was standing on the bank nearby. The body was found by Sam Abernethy, one of the several parties who were searching for the boys.
The body of Martin Cornelius was found about 8:30 o’clock this evening about a quarter mile from where the body of young Kail was found. He had his clothing on and was not wet. He had not been in the water at all. He was lying flat on his back in a dry irrigation ditch on the ranch of the Wallace Brothers. It is supposed that they both died from eating some poisonous roots which they dug up, perhaps wild parsnips. They left town about 8 o’clock this morning to hunt prairie dogs. The Cornelius boy was found by Duncan Stobs, a boy about 12 years old.
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Reprints: The Simpsons and the Cannons
The early history of Lafayette is a history of coal mining. The earliest miners were the Simpson and the Cannon Families.
John H. Simpson was born on the 13th of May 1843 in Parton, Cumberland Co., England. He married Isabella Twentyman of Allenby, England in 1865.