Mesa County

John C. Charlesworth, of Mesa county, residing on the Mormon mesa in Plateau valley, is a native and a product of the West, born, reared, educated, married and engaged in business in various parts of the country in this section. He first saw the light of this world in Millard county, Utah, in 1852. He is the son of Thomas and Alice (Barrows) Charlesworth, both natives of England, the father born in London and the mother in Sheffield. At the age of eight years the father went to sea as a cabin boy and the hazardous but infatuating life upon … Read more

The subject of this brief review, who is one of the enterprising and progressive farmers and representative citizens of Mesa county, and whose attractive home, located five miles northwest of Grand Junction, is wholly a product of Colorado. He was born and reared on her soil, he was educated in her schools, he began the battle of life in her productive activities, and he has conducted his business operations wholly amid her people. He is therefore fully in sympathy with her aspirations, identified with her interests and filled with the spirit of her citizenship. Mr. Chapman’s life began at Canon … Read more

George T. Chapman is a native of Jefferson county, Iowa, where he was born on October 12, 1864, and is the son of Benjamin F. and Mary E. (Cooley) Chapman, the former of the same nativity as himself and the latter born in Indiana. The father was a farmer in his native state, but believing in the possibilities of the farther west, in 1868, he brought his family to Colorado and settled them near Canon City. For a number of years thereafter he was occupied in freighting out of that city to Fairplay and other points, working hard at his … Read more

Now wedded to his profession of the law and very successful in the practice of it, but at one time disposed to ride his led horse as a miner, Charles F. Caswell, one of the leading attorneys of western Colorado, illustrates in his experience the common lot of mankind, but has shown superiority to vast numbers of his fellow men by realizing practically that the favors of fortune are generally to be won only by systematic application to a chosen pursuit and steadfast resistance to all the dreams of life. He was born at Strafford, New Hampshire, on May 10, … Read more

Notwithstanding the enormous output of the mines of Colorado and the great amount of capital and number of persons interested in the mining operations of the state, the stock business continues to be one of the leading industries in these parts, and the men who are engaged in it are important contributors to the general weal in a number and variety of ways. One of these is W.O. Cartmel, of Mesa county, whose ranch is located seven miles northwest of Grand Junction, and is the seat of a thriving and profitable cattle business which he has built up from a … Read more

The legal profession, which draws to its inspiring and highly intellectual fields of labor many of the best minds among our people, has a fine representative in Hon. James S. Carnahan, senior member of the law firm of Carnahan & Van Hoorebeke, of Grand Junction, who has exhibited marked ability both in the active practice of his profession and in offices of trust and importance incident thereto. He was born in Pennsylvania on March 28, 1859, and is the son of Thomas and Sarah (Moore) Carnahan, also natives of Pennsylvania, as were their parents. The father is a farmer, and, … Read more

Harry M. Cannon, one of the most extensive and successful fruit-growers of western Colorado, whose fine farm of forty-five acres, with about thirty-six in choice fruit trees, is a model of thrift, good management and skillful culture, was born at Madison, Jefferson county, Indiana, on March 20, 1865, and is the son of Thomas L. and Martha (Nichols) Cannon, the former a native of Aurora, Indiana, and the latter of Milton, Kentucky. The father is still living in his native state, and has been foreman of a planing mill there throughout his mature life. His wife died in 1865, when … Read more

It will stand forever to the credit of Isaac Canfield, of the Plateau valley, Mesa county, that he opened the first oil well in the state and brought to the knowledge of mankind that there were stores of the unctuous fluid that had already made thousands wealthy and millions comfortable in the older sections of our country, beneath the soil of Colorado, to whose people he thereby gave a new industry of incalculable value ready for their enterprise in development. Mr. Canfield was born in Livingston county, New York, on October 11, 1839, and is the son of Ira and … Read more

The most extensive grower of potatoes in Mesa county, this state, and a pioneer in bee culture in this section, Charles W. Cain, living two miles and a half northeast of Fruita, has added two new industries to the extensive and almost universal productiveness of that section of the state, and thereby greatly increased the commercial wealth and activity thereof. And it should be said that his present comfort, prosperity and success are all the more gratifying because of the hardships and privations of his childhood, youth and earlier manhood, the shadows of adverse fortune having hung over him from … Read more

Frank M. Burger, of Mesa county, a prosperous and enterprising ranchman and stock grower living twelve miles east of Grand Junction, is one of the leading citizens of his portion of the county, and has been a great force for good in the development and growth of the section, giving his aid to every promising undertaking for the benefit of its farms and its people and originating and constructing some works of great public utility himself. Although somewhat engaged in general farming and raising stock, his principal industry on his home farm is the production of large quantities of superior … Read more