People
Collection for person entities.
Pages
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- Mary Balbina Farrell
- Sister Mary Balbina Farrell, a member of the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kansas, came to Grand Junction, Colorado in 1895 to establish a hospital. She had served previously at a Leadville elementary school operated by the sisters. She was 36 years old when she arrived in Grand Junction. She was the primarily person responsible for the planning of the project. Today she is honored with a statue in Grand Junction's Legends of Grand Junction's sculpture series downtown.
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- Mary Belle (Powers) Plaisted
- Mary was born in Phillips County, Kansas to Michael Henry Powers and Mary Louisa (Hoover) Powers. Her father was a farmer and a “proud Irishman.” She was one of nine children. She recalled her childhood in Kansas as a warm, safe one in which she never lacked for anything. Sometime after her father's death in 1902, when Mary was six, the family moved to Colorado. The family relocated to the Milldale area around Grand Junction's sugar beet factory and also lived for a time in Delta County after the marriage of Maria Powers to Theophilus “Cap” Head. Mary Belle married Charles Kessinger in Delta County at age fifteen. She had four sons with Charles before their divorce in 1921. According to Mary, he was not a good provider. The family lived in poverty. At the age of 18 she found herself begging for food and relying on the kindness of others to survive. She also took whatever odd jobs she could find. She did housework for others and the family ate “broken meats” (leftovers). She was allowed by the guard along the railroad tracks to pick up coal that had fallen from trains. She moved frequently. For awhile, she and her children lived in an enclave of Italian Americans on Chuluota Avenue in the Riverside Neighborhood. There, she found her neighbors very supportive and helpful. She married Thomas C. Pierce, a Loma rancher, in 1928, when she was 32. They moved to the Loma in 1929. US Census records show she and her children living with him in 1930. They evidently divorced, and she then married Neal Plaisted in 1940. Their marriage lasted seven years. In the 1980's, she became involved in the Partners Restitution Project, in which young people who have gotten in trouble are partnered with elderly people.
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- Mary Berg
- She was a Swedish immigrant who moved with her husband Frank Berg and their children to a Highpoint area homestead just north of Fruita in 1894. She was a busy homemaker, raising children, making butter, and canning and preserving all of the food that her husband grew. She also ran a home-butter business, selling butter to customers until the establishment of a creamery ended her enterprise.
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- Mary Borstnick
- Mary Borstnick was a resident of Lafayette, CO. She was married to Joseph Borstnick, a foreman in the coal mines, and they had three children.