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owned and maintained by Pauli Driver Smith (Hollyhockfarms.com). Please report
any broken links or problems with this page to This site was last updated on: August 26, 2008 |
Greeley, (Union Colony) Weld County, ColoradoThis City is up for Adoption! Please contact me if you are interested. pauli1028@msn.com
Phyl Schiwal has generously agreed to provide transcriptions and excerpts from the Bulldog High School Annual from College High School in Greeley. Her father attended this school in the mid to late 1930's. Thank you Phyl! Bulldog High School Annual 1937 Lee Zion has generously donated the transcripts of his William B. Coston General Ledger 1895 - 1916 Thanks Lee!
In 1869 Nathan C. Meeker was employed as an agricultural editor on Horace Greeley's New York Tribune newspaper. He was assigned to make a trip to Colorado and assess the possibilities of agriculture. After the trip Meeker was convinced that industrious people could do well in the new land. Horace Greeley with his motto of "Go west young man" encouraged Meeker and an enticement to prospective colonists appeared on page one of the Daily Tribune on December 14, 1869. A meeting of prospective colonists was held in New York on December 23, 1869 with 800 people in attendance. Interested colonists were assessed $5.00 to be used by a locating committee. Fifty-nine persons paid into the fund at the first meeting. Membership to the colony was strictly limited to people of "good character." The name Union Colony was adopted and Meeker was elected president. Meeker, Robert A. Cameron, and Henry T. West were chosen to go to Colorado to select a site. The selection committee traveled to the Pikes Peak region, but did not find suitable land. On March 15, 1870, the executive committee voted to name the town Greeley. The locating committee returned to Evans, Colorado, and met with Benjamin H. Eaton and William N. Byers, a land agent. Eaton, who had settled in the region in 1862, took the committee to his farm near the present-day town of Windsor and suggested that the land from there to the junction of the Poudre and Platte rivers would be ideal for the colony. The first settlers arrived in Greeley on April 18, 1870. On May 9 sixty-eight more settlers arrived, and eighty-three came four days later. The streets were marked off with a plow on April 25 and settlers were allowed to select a town lot for a home plus a close in garden plot, or an acreage farther away for a farm. Settlers lived in tents and other crude shelters until they could build more permanent housing. Work began on the irrigation system at once. Water was turned into No. 3 Ditch and it reached the new town in the first week in June 1870. With the expansion of the irrigation system, farming opportunities increased in the area. Many of the first settlers became successful and the town flourished; however, Nathan Meeker's fate was not to be so kind. Meeker was heavily in debt to Horace Greeley for money he had borrowed to help found the Union Colony. Upon Horace Greeley's death, Greeley's heirs demanded repayment of the money. Meeker, in desperation, lobbied and received an appointment as agent of the White River Ute Indian Reservation. Meeker was enthused with the prospect of turning the Ute way of life from hunter gatherers to agriculture. He hired and enticed men from Greeley to work with him at the agency to teach the Indians agriculture. In trying to make these changes, Meeker came into direct conflict with the Ute way of life. Tensions and distrust arose which culminated in the Utes killing all the white male members at the agency and kidnapping the females. The females were eventually rescued and a new treaty was signed with the Utes which banished them from Colorado. Greeley, (Union Colony), is one of only 3 colonies established in the 19th Century in Colorado that is still in existence today. The other two are Longmont, Boulder County (The Chicago Colorado Colony) and Colorado Springs, El Paso County (founded as a colony by a British company). |
