Yuma County, Colorado Photographs

Yuma County Pioneer Photographs:

Alonzo Moore and Ursula (Farris) Coston, Wray/Vernon.
Photographs and family information from Lee Zion.

   Alonzo M. Coston was born in Yorkshire township, New York in 1827. He married Ann Mariah Hays in 1854 in Blandinsville, Illinois. Ann died almost exactly a year later shortly after the birth of their only child, Ann Marie Coston.

   Alonzo and daughter, Ann, moved to Nodaway County, Missouri where he married his wife's cousin, Ursula Farris in 1865. Ursurla was born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1837. Alonzo and Ursula had three children, Viola B, William B and Semer A., all born near Maryville, Missouri. Alonzo was a blacksmith, a tinker and an inventor.

   Alonzo and Ursula, with their three children, moved to Yuma County in March 1886 (Ann Coston had married Alfred Barber in Marysville in 1876.) They settled in Wray where Alonzo set up a blacksmith shop and homesteaded a quarter section in Sec 10, T2S, R44W, on what would be later known as the "Vernon flats". His homestead was very near that of fellow Maryville resident Byron Condon.

   Alonzo was followed to Colorado by his brothers, Henry H. and Volney G. Coston, a nephew, James P. Coston, his brother-in-law, William R. Hays, and some of the Barber family who homesteaded on the Black Wolf near Beecher. Alonzo and his wife left Yuma County and settled in the Orchard/Fort Morgan area where Alonzo died in 1914 and Ursula died in 1909. They are buried in the Fort Morgan Cemetery.

Alonzo Coston Family circa 1890. (W.B. Coston labeled it Wray, June 8, 1890 but I think it might have been earlier.)
Front: Alonzo and Ursula
Back: William Buford (born 1870), Viola Belle (born 1868) and Semer Alonzo (born 1875).

Alonzo and Ursula's children -
Viola Belle married Frederick R Girardot in 1899.
William B. married Emma 'Grace" Mason in 1894.
Semer A. married Agnes Newell in 1903.

   Ursula feeding her chickens on the homestead about 1890. This photograph was published in "A Souvenir of Wray and Vernon" in 1907.

Go to William B and Grace (Mason) Coston page.
Back to Pioneer Photographs.

Images donated by Lee Zion. This page is maintained and copyrighted by Lee Zion.