Thoughts of a "Network"
A project detailing the residents of Dolores, Colorado
This sat in my draft post folder for WAAAYYYY too long… This was the
Genealogy Matters Storyteller Tuesday Challenge: LOCAL LORE: Dolores, Colorado post that I never finished, because I had a “GeneaJeep” breakdown in north Texas for a few weeks! Sorry for the long delay!!!
My maternal great-grandparents, Alfred and Martha Jane Covington Granath, arrived in Dolores, a small mining town in the southwest corner of Colorado, in late 1884. I don’t know what brought them from Missouri, but I suspect it might have been the boom in nearby silver mining, because they started out near Rosita. Between 1900 and 1930, the town of Dolores grew from 108 to 557 people. In a gorgeous river valley, the paper details cattle ranching, truck farming and other trades, but also contains an abundance of “Mining Notes”, detailing both gold and silver, as well as other types of ore, notably uranium, from all over that corner of the state.
Doing research in the western frontier states, especially this area, has been… fun… challenging… I *love* small town frontier historical newspapers. These tiny newspaper articles add such color and depth!
The articles below came from the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection. I am VERY thankful they have digitized all these wonderful papers, which includes ‘“The Silver Star”, “The Dolores Star”, and the “Dolores News”, a full run from 1879-1924 that can now be read online, although it is not yet complete. It has taken YEARS and many grants to accomplish. So long that I got tired of waiting, and purchased my own set of the microfilm, because my Granaths did not leave the area until 1930.
Back to the early history. Alfred (and Martha) proved a homestead on November 10, 1890 just upriver from town. Their youngest, my grandfather Walter Edward Granath, was born in 1891, likely on this land.
Here is a photo found Pappy Walter’s trunk. He wrote, “My Birthplace” on it. I have no other details…
There are some truly fun things in the newspaper. This the first one I ever found, reading the giant bound volumes at the Dolores Star newspaper office in 1983. I have often wondered if Alfred wrote this himself:
Another article that caused me a giggle, as he judged the entire Oregon country due to train robbers???:
Between 1897 and 1933, there are almost 300 articles mentioning Granaths, including report of their divorce in 1898, Alfred’s 1902 land sale, Martha’s second marriage in 1905 and divorce (again!) in 1910, his damage lawsuit against the water district in 1909 that went to the Colorado Supreme court, her third marriage in 1910 (to the local sheriff!), and her death in 1933. And ‘insignificant’ events, like my great-grandmother knitting socks for the troops during World War 1, my great-grandpa attending the Durango fair, and my grandpa reciting “Jack Frost” in a school recital in third grade.
I love just reading the entire newspapers to get a feel for what day-to-day was like, imagining both sides of my mom’s family, working, living and connecting in this beautiful, small community. What did her Goodwin side think about the Granath divorce drama? I’m sure the entire town was tight and gossipy. I enjoy using that historical context imagining to fill in the gaps from scarce records and tiny articles. And what fun advertisements! Even today, the population of the town of Dolores hovers around 1000 people. I wonder how much has really changed, besides technology? People are still people, I would think!
I have an idea to take the newspaper microfilm I have and use the new Ancestry networks tool to connect everyone in the town ‘social’ columns and see what discoveries I make. It would also be pretty easy for me to create a ‘town tree’ that contains everyone in the 1900, 1910 and 1920 censuses, its not very many pages at all.
Soon, I plan a research trip to walk the streets of Dolores myself, to see what I find and what I’m led to discover at the library and other historic buildings, while I enjoy the Colorado beauty and (hopefully) escape the Texas heat and humidity. I wonder if I can get my Dolores town network created by then? Have any of you attempted such a thing? I guess its somewhat of a “One Place Study” except its more people than place details.
And what about your historical newspaper articles? What have you found to put ‘meat on the bones’ of your family history storywriting? Please comment!
One-Place Studies can be very much about people and the interconnections between them. Mine is. Yours sounds like an interesting project.
I love old newspapers too. And your project to connect all the society folks in town sounds like a hoot!!