Mesa County

William Ditman William Ditman, of near Mesa, Mesa county, one of the commissioners of the county who is rendering to the people valuable and appreciated service in the office to which they chose him, and whose past life has been a succession of trials and triumphs in which he has made his way by his own pluck and capacity, is a native of Erie county, Pennsylvania, born April 29, 1849. He is the son of August and Rose (Forest) Ditman, the former a native of Germany and the latter of Pennsylvania. The father came to the United States in 1846 … Read more

Our discreet and discriminating philosopher-poet, Oliver Wendell Holmes, has said that the most important act of a man’s life is the selection of his grandfather. In this respect Hon. Horace Tool DeLong, state senator for the sixteenth district of this state, seems to have been unusually wise before his day and generation, for he chose as judiciously in his maternal as in his paternal ancestry, being a scion of distinguished and forceful families on both sides of his house. He is the grandson, on his mother’s side, of the Adam Tool who founded Tool’s Point, now Monroe, in Jasper county, … Read more

The offspring of Quaker parents, and bred in the lessons impressively inculcated by the members of that faith, Rev. Harvey D. Crumly, of Mesa county, living on a good ranch six miles northwest of Grand Junction, has exemplified in his life the principles of peaceful industry, fair dealing and considerate interest in the welfare of mankind which distinguish the sect. He was born in Jefferson county, Iowa, near the village of Pleasant Plain, on February 2, 1868, and is the son of Isaac H. and Rachel (Beals) Crumly, natives of eastern Tennessee, where they were reared and educated. From there … Read more

The strong, true men of a people are ever its most priceless possession. They are potent for good not only in what they accomplish by their own immediate work, but by the forces they inspire and vitalize in others through their influence, and by the example they give, which acts as a stimulus while they live and after they are gone. To this class belonged the late Hon. George A. Crawford, of Grand Junction, whose record is written in pleasing and enduring phrase in the city he built and the spirit of enterprise and progressiveness he implanted in its citizens. … Read more

James W. Cox, who after a long and eventful career wherein the element of danger was almost ever present and the condition of contest was the regular order, is now, in the evening of his life, making his home with George W. Masters, a prosperous ranchman with a fine farm near Snipes, Mesa county, a sketch of whom appears at another place in this work. Mr. Cox is a native of Morgan county, born on September 7, 1832, and the son of Armstadt and Isabel (Caldwell) Cox, the former a native of Tennessee and the latter of Virginia. After their … Read more

Dr. Cowell was born in Bradford county, Pennsylvania, on April 27, 1843. He was educated in the public schools of that county, and in 1862, when he was nineteen years old, he enlisted in defense of the Union in the One Hundred and Forty-first Pennsylvania Infantry. In that command he served eighteen months. At the battle of Chancellorsville he received five wounds and, being incapacitated for further service, returned home. In 1865 he moved to Grundy county, Illinois, and began to read medicine at Minooka in that county, afterward entering the Hahnemann Medical College in Chicago, where he was graduated … Read more

Charles H. Covey, a prominent extractor and builder of Grand Junction, who has been largely engaged in that business at various places and has erected a number of imposing and costly buildings, was born at Ottawa, Lesueur county, Minnesota, on July 5, 1857, and is the son of John H. and Anna E. (Wilson) Covey, the former a native of Indiana and the latter of Ohio. They were among the pioneers of Lesueur county, Minnesota, where they married in 1855. The father built and for a number of years conducted a hotel at Ottawa in the early days, and later … Read more

Coming to Colorado when he was thirteen or fourteen years of age, and during the first four years of his residence in the state occupied in herding cattle on the range, thus learning the stock industry by beginning at the bottom of it, George Corcoran, of Mesa county, pleasantly located on an excellent ranch four miles northeast of Grand Junction, is well qualified for his business and is making a gratifying success of it. He was born in Sullivan county, Pennsylvania, in 1870, and is the son of Michael and Katie (Beregan) Corcoran, the former a native of Lockhaven, Pennsylvania, … Read more

The childhood of William S. Cook, a prosperous ranch-man of the Plateau valley, Mesa county, this state, living about two miles north of the village of Collbran, was darkened by the shadow of bereavement in the death of his mother when he was but nine years old; and portions of his later life were oppressed by poverty and apparently unremunerative toil, with their incident hardships and privations. But now, through his unconquerable energy and his unvarying frugality and thrift, he is well fixed in a worldly way, and can look back with composure over the storms and trials through which … Read more

For nearly a quarter of a century Frank A. Collins, of Mesa county, one of the progressive and substantial fruit-growers and ranch-men of western Colorado, living two miles east of Fruita, has been a resident of this state and an important contributor to its development and improvement. He was born in Burke county, North Carolina, on December 1, 1859, the son of Brice M. and Margaret E. (Warwick) Collins, also natives of North Carolina, the father of Scotch-Irish and the mother of Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. They are farmers, and in 1874 moved to Kansas, locating near Junction City, where they … Read more