People
Collection for person entities.
Pages
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- William Innis
- According to author Ruth Moss, Innis was one of the first sheriffs of Mesa County (after the county split from Gunnison County). In 1885, he captured two fugitives who had attacked jailer Harvey Calvin Bucklin and escaped from the Grand Junction Jail. Innis and two deputies tracked the fugitives to Pinon Mesa and captured them there (Mesa County Historical Society newsletter, May-June 1983).
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- William J. "Bill" Callahan
- A mortician and a volunteer with the Mesa County Oral History Project. He was born in Colorado to Thomas F. Callahan and Josephine “Josie” (Hurley) Callahan, the children of Irish immigrants. The 1910 US Census shows the family living in Teller County when Bill was two years old. His father was working as a plumber with his own business and his mother was a homemaker. The family moved to Grand Junction later that year, where Thomas and a partner took over the Griffins and Stowe Mortuary and renamed it the Younker-Callahan Funeral Home (now known as Callahan-Edfast). The 1920 Census shows the family living at 620 Chipeta Avenue. Bill attended Grand Junction High School, where he was a member of the Rhetorical Club and the Science Club. He then went to Mesa College from 1927-28 and was a member of the Owl Club. He married Genevieve Gamble in Montana on October 21, 1936. The 1940 Census shows them living with their daughter in Grand Junction, where Bill worked in the Callahan funeral business as a mortician. By 1950, he was the funeral home’s director. According to Pat LeMaster in her lecture about the history of St. Mary's Hospital, he was also associated with the ambulance service there. He died and is buried in Grand Junction. *Photo from 1926 Grand Junction High School yearbook
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- William J. "W.J." Pray
- He was born in Iowa. According to his interview, he came to Collbran as a cattle farmer in 1916, running two-three hundred cattle on the Grand Mesa with the Triangle-Slash brand. U.S. Census records show him living in Wyoming in 1920.
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- William J. Goss
- He was from Jefferson, North Carolina. He ran away from home at sixteen and joined the Confederate Army during the Civil War. According to his son, Morgan Goss, William was captured by Northern forces in 1860 (other sources indicate that his capture date was 1864) and given the choice of fighting for the Northern side against the South, or fighting Indians on the Minnesota frontier. He chose the latter. After an absence of nine years he returned home, married, and came to Pueblo, Colorado in 1885. There he homesteaded and grew oats, but the crop was destroyed by hail. He moved to Fruita by covered wagon in 1886 or 1887.
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- William J. Landsdown
- He was a Swedish American born in Missouri, who moved to Pacific Northwest before coming to Grand Junction, Colorado. He owned an apple orchard at the intersection of 12th Street and North Avenue. Around the time of World War I, the coddling moth destroyed most of the apple orchards in the area, and he went about developing homes on his land, first going about the expensive process of running water pipes under Lincoln Park.
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- William J. Moyer
- William J. Moyer was the Vice President of Grand Valley National Bank and the owner, along with Elmer Craven until his death, of the Fair Store in Grand Junction, Colorado. According to David Sundal, Moyer first settled in the town of Socorro, New Mexico and opened a Fair Store there before abandoning the store and town for Grand Junction. There, his store went from a small hole in the wall to a large enterprise. He walked to the Fair Store from his home at 614 Ouray Avenue every day. He was a community philanthropist who provided the money needed to build the Moyer Natatorium, now known as the Lincoln Park-Moyer Pool. Moyer was also part owner of COPECO, a large fruit growing operation run by Elmer Craven. With Walter Walker and Clyde Biggs, he served on the board that established the Avalon Theater in 1923. In 1933, a run on the Grand Valley National Bank, bank fueled by speculation and anxiety, caused it to lose $100,000 in one day. The bank was closed by the Federal Government in 1934. Though it reopened eventually under the name First National Bank, the bank's dissolution caused Moyer's financial ruin. For years after, he lived in the St. Regis Hotel on the dime of the owner, Mr. Burnett. He then lived as a boarder in a house on Orchard Mesa at the top of the 5th Street hill. According to oral history interviewee Elberta Francis, he could often be seen as an old man sitting in a chair on his lawn. Dalton Trumbo's protagonist John Abbott was a thinly veiled novelization of Moyer in the novel Eclipse. According to oral history interviewee Jennie Dixon, Billy Weiser and others helped keep Dalton Trumbo's book away from the knowledge and sight of Moyer, due to Abbott's tragic portrayal. David Sundal, however, says that Moyer know about the book and his portrayal in it.
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- William J. Peacock
- He was born in Fort Scott, Kansas and came to Salida, Colorado. He was in Mesa County, Colorado by 1907, when he married Luella (Peart) Peacock in Grand Junction. The 1910 U.S. Census shows him working as a freight conductor, and his daughter Gwendolyn (Peacock) McKee confirmed that he worked for the railroad.