Hi, I am
Betty Baker, Your new Webmistress and Coordinator for Lake County, Coorado - COGenWeb. I hope you enjoy your visit.
Please feel free to email me if you have any suggestions
or contributions you would like to make.
In 1878 the name "Leadville" became synonymous with one of the world's greatest silver-producing regions. During the 1880s, when Leadville's economy was at its peak, the town was the second largest in Colorado, a mecca for prospectors, gamblers, retailers, performing artists, and entrepreneurs. In many respects, its history epitomizes the volatile character of Colorado's mining industry—from the rush to establish businesses, schools, churches, and newspapers in a booming mining camp to the conflict and violence of the miner's strike of 1896.
Lake County is an original county dating back to the creation of the Colorado Territory in 1861. The discovery of gold near what is currently Leadville led to a rush of people heading up the mountain. Gold wasn't the only metal to be found in the area. Lead, silver, and iron were also found in large supply. During WWI, molybdenum mining took over the area. It was the United States' largest molybdenum mining operation.
Famous people of the area include HAW Tabor (Colorado's first multimillionaire), James Brown "Leadville Johnny" and his wife the "Unsinkable" Molly Brown, and the Guggenheims (philanthropists and mining technologists).
Make sure you check the "Research Resources" section! There are helpful links, look up volunteers and local researchers to help you out.
Our Military Section is being completely modifed and updated.
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Lake Counties Towns
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We are the chosen. In each family there is one who seems called to find the ancestors. To put flesh on their bones and make them live again. To tell the family story and to feel that somehow they know and approve. Doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but, instead, breathing life into all who have gone before. We are the story tellers of the tribe. All tribes have one. We have been called, as it were, by our genes. Those who have gone before cry out to us: Tell our story. So, we do. In finding them, we somehow find ourselves. How many graves have I stood before now and cried? I have lost count. How many times have I told the ancestors, "You have a wonderful family; you would be proud of us.". How many times have I walked up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me? I cannot say. It goes beyond just documenting facts. It goes to who I am, and why I do the things I do. It goes to seeing a cemetery about to be lost forever to weeds and indifference and saying - I can't let this happen. The bones here are bones of my bone and flesh of my flesh. It goes to doing something about it. It goes to pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish. How they contributed to what we are today. It goes to respecting their hardships and losses, their never giving in or giving up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family. It goes to deep pride that the fathers fought and some died to make and keep us a nation. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us. It is of equal pride and love that our mothers struggled to give us birth, without them we could not exist, and so we love each one, as far back as we can reach. That we might be born who we are. That we might remember them. So we do. With love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence, because we are they and they are the sum of who we are. So, as a scribe called, I tell the story of my family. It is up to that one called in the next generation to answer the call and take my place in the long line of family storytellers. That is why I do my family genealogy, and that is what calls those young and old to step up and restore the memory or greet those who we had never known before."
by Della M. Cummings Wright; Rewritten by her granddaughter Dell Jo Ann McGinnis Johnson; Edited and Reworded by Tom Dunn, 1943."
Ed Brady
Fremont Pass
State Flower
Columbine
Augusta Tabor
This page was last updated
Coordinator - Betty Baker
Asst. State Coordinators:
-- Rebecca Maloney
-- Betty Baker
-- M.D. Monk
Please to not ask for specfic research on your family. I am unable to do your personal research.
Some information on these pages bear the personal copyright of individuals. Please respect their copyright.
No copyrighted information found on any page within this website may be used for commercial purposes without
the express permission of the copyright owner. This website also contains some public domain data and data
that is common property and containing no original authorship (i.e. old time lists and tombstone information, etc)
and is not copyrighted. Links to external web sites are being provided as a convenience and for informational
purposes only; they do not constitute an endorsement or approval of any of the products,services or
opinions contained in any external web site
Many thanks to the previous Lake County Coordinators, Gail Meyer Kilgore
and Michael P. Irwin who put so much hard work into this site over thae last few decades.
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