Category: Reprints

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.

Continue reading “Reprints: 1897 – Killed by Poisonous Roots”

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.

Continue reading “Reprints: The Simpsons and the Cannons”

Boulder Jury Scores Drach

Bank Commissioner is Blamed for Permitting Two Insolvent Banks to Continue

Public attention which was centered last night upon the fact that T. A. McHarg and O. A. Johnson has been indicted in the Oles case as well as Mrs. May Oles, became focused today on the report of the grand jury which scores State Bank Commissioner E. E. Drach for “insufficiency and neglect of duty” for failing to close the Louisville bank sooner than he did.

Continue reading “Reprints: 1915 – Grand jury returns indictment against town founder Mary Miller”

The citizens of Irvington [a town east of Lafayette along Coal Creek] are to be congratulated. Their petitions against the establishment of a saloon in their territory last spring went unheeded by the [Boulder] county commissioners, and their desire for a clean moral atmosphere about their residences near the coal mines were set at naught. They were derided as puritanical for their efforts to shield their children from contamination so far as lay in their power.

The saloon was established. All the evils they had predicted came true, as a matter of course. The wages that should have gone into many homes were wasted in drink. Carousals that made nights hideous and out of door life insecure followed each pay-time. Complaints were apparently ignored, and matters went from bad to worse. Not content with the patronage from the regular drinking element of the floating population about the mines, the saloonists, as is the usual custom in that business, cast about for bait to entrap the unwary youth of both sexes. Women from Denver, of the class whose “footsteps take hold in hell,” were imported to entice and fleece the patrons. Being unmolested, the orgies became open and unprintable.

Continue reading “Reprints: 1908 — We Congratulate Irvington”

The Charter of the Lodge was issued on April 25th, 1890, to the following: William Yates, William D. Jenkins, Sep Wood, Charles Neal, John T. Jenkins, Robert Young, William Beamand, George M. Bauers and William Ellsworth.

The first meeting place was the on the second floor of the old brick schoolhouse.

Continue reading “Reprints: 1951 — Historical Review of Lafayette Odd Fellows Lodge No. 91”