GEORGE Summer WILKINSON
Marriages
Minnie McKenzie Wilkinson - May 9, 1889
Burial Details
Obituaries
Eagle Valley Enterprise page 1 - July 5, 1929
George S. WILKINSON, Forty-Nine Years a Resident of
Eagle County Called By Death.
No death has been taken with greater sorrow and regret in this community than of
George S. WILKINSON, who passed away at a Glenwood Springs hospital
Wednesday afternoon, July 3, 1929. Almost the first settler in the Brush creek valley, Geo. WILKINSON through forty nine years of the ups and downs incident to the growth of a new country, had made
for himself a place in the hearts of his neighbors that was most enviable. Enemies he
may have made, but no man or woman could or would say ought against the honest
manhood of George WILKINSON. A neighbor beyond compare, always willing to
do good where the doing was called for, unassuming, taking his own good deeds as
matters of fact and of no moment, he had left behind scores of beneficiaries who will
always regret his passing.
The old, old story of a youth leaving his parental roof tree and starting out in life for
himself, armed with nothing but his determined spirit, native ability, and what little
education he had been able to snatch from a few brief terms of attendance at one of
our early day country schools, and seeking his fortune in the wilderness of our vast
unsettled domain, braving the dangers and enduring the hardships of an overland
journey in the wake of a setting sun into the wilderness, then bravely entering upon
the work of clearing that for his purposes, and while drawing out its venom,
extorting benefit from the vanquished enemy, making its mischievous torrents
drudge for him, its wild beasts useful for food or dress, or labor, its stubborn forces
and rocks into habitation, and then from a small beginning building up a
comfortable estate and bringing the unproved and hitherto unoccupied landscape
into attractiveness and fruitfulness as a comfortable home, is repeated and well
illustrated in the memoir of George Summer WILKINSON, who started to make his
own living at the age of nine years, and had ever since done so.
He was born near Hiawatha, Brown county, Kan., on August 24 1863, the son of
Balsaam and Mary COIL WILKINSON, natives of Indiana, who were among the
early settlers of eastern Kansas where they farmed and raised stock to the end of
their lives, the father dying there in 1864, and the mother in 1873.
George left home in 1877, when he was but fourteen years old, and came to
Colorado, finding employment for that summer on the ranch of William BROWN at
Florissant, Teller county. His journey to this state was made overland with horses
and wagons through Ellsworth, Kan., to Colorado Springs then through Ute Pass to
Breckinridge, where the teams and wagons were disposed of. The trip lasted twenty seven days, but the train encountered no hostile Indians and the jaunt was
uneventful. In the summer of 1878 Mr. WILKINSON worked for wages in the
placer mines, and in the fall moved to park county. Afterwards he spent three
months in the employ of the Borden Brothers who conducted a feed stable on the
road between Weston and Leadville, his duty being to sell feed.
He next returned to Park county and devoted the summer of 1880 to logging and
sawmilling, where he became acquainted with John LOVE, a stockman of Park
county, and another young man, Webb FROST. In the fall he and FROST engaged
with John LOVE, who had been scouting the western slope for a location for his
livestock business and selected the Brush creek valley, to drive the latter's herd of
cattle across the range to Brush creek and care for them that winter. The two young men arrived at their destination in November in the midst of a big snow storm. They
took shelter in a cabin on the original LOVE holdings in the valley, and turned the
cattle loose to shift for themselves. As a commentary on the changed conditions in 49
years, it is well to note that, while they never saw the cattle again until the next
spring, when they gathered them from the Brush creek along the Eagle river,
scattered from the mouth of Brush creek to Dotsero, with the loss of only one head
which and been drowned in the river.
Mr. WILKINSON soon afterward took up his homestead, now the James E.
ULLMANN home, which he afterward sold to R. P. WOOD, and later bought the
land where his present fine ranch home is located.
He had been a cow man all his life to the end, and until this summer rode the range
with the youngest and best riders and gave his fine herd of well bred range cattle his
careful and personal attention. He loved cows and the range life. Wherever cow men
met in Western Colorado, George WILKINSON was known, and his calm sure
advice sought on all matters respecting the range. He has been president of the
Eagle Valley Stockgrowers association for the past seven years, was a member of
the Western Slope Cattle Growers, and the Colorado Stockgrowers associations.
On May 9, 1889, he was married to Miss Minnie McKENZIE, a native of New York
state. To this union were born two children, Clarence Edmund and Edna Lillian.
The son passed on several years ago, while the widow and daughter, now Mrs.
Moulton CHAMBERS, and a half brother, Henry BEMIS are the only surviving
relatives of close kin.
Funeral services were held Friday afternoon from the home of the daughter, Mrs.
CHAMBERS, in Eagle, Reverend Mr. YOUNG, pastor of the Glenwood Springs
Presbyterian church delivered a short but eloquent eulogy to the deceased, while,
the burial services were in charge of the local Masonic lodge, of which Mr.
WILKINSON had long been a member. The body was followed to the cemetery by
great concourse of friends from all parts of the county, where it was sorrowfully laid
to rest beside that of his beloved son.
Grand Junction Daily Sentinel page 1 - July 4, 1929
