COBURN, W. S., b 1838; 1905 Bio, Mesa County, Colorado http://files.usgwarchives.net/co/delta/bios/coburnws.txt --------------------------------------- Donated September 4, 2001 Transcribed by Judy Crook from the book: Progressive Men of Western Colorado Published 1905, A.W. Bowen & Co., Chicago, Ill. --------------------------------------- W.S. Coburn The subject of this memoir, who was the pioneer nurseryman and fruit-grower on the Western slope in this state, and who sowed the first field of alfalfa in that section, has had an interesting and eventful career, meeting many calls to trying duty in a number of different sections of the country, and having many adventures of imminent danger under a great variety of circumstances. He was born on June 4, 1838, near Lowell, Massachusetts, the son of Amon and Nancy (Davis) Coburn. The father was a blacksmith and died in 1844, when the son was but six years old, although the families on both sides of the house have ordinarily been long-lived, the paternal grandfather dying at the age of ninety-six, and the mother's father at that of eighty-seven. At the age of ten Mr. Coburn was taken to raise by a family named Davis, with whom he remained until he reached his legal majority. He then, in 1859, came west to Wisconsin and soon after went to Chicago. Six months later he moved to Springfield, Illinois, where he had an uncle who is still living aged ninety. In the spring of 1860 the young man changed his residence to Iowa, where he passed a year buying furs for a Chicago house. He then returned to Illinois and tried to get into the Union army as a volunteer, but was rejected, the quota for Illinois being full. He was, however, commissioned a sutler in the spring of 1862, and was with the Tenth Ohio Battery and the Thirtieth Illinois Infantry until after the surrender of Vicksburg, attending them all through the siege of the city. After its fall he conducted a commission business in Vicksburg for eighteen months, then sold out and returned to Springfield, Illinois. A short time afterward he moved to Omaha, Nebraska, and started a grocery and shoe business which he conducted a few months, when he sold all his interests there and came overland to Colorado, arriving at Denver in July, 1865. Going out some distance east of the city, he opened a road house and trading post for travelers, who were numerous in that section at the time, and this he carried on until the fall of 1867. From there at that period he moved to Julesburg, and from there a little while later to where Cheyenne now stands, arriving at the latter place before the townsite was surveyed and laid out. Here he went into the real-estate business with profit and remained a year or so occupied. At the end of this period he turned his attention to supplying the men who were building the Union Pacific Railroad, continuing in this business until the road was completed on May 10, 1869, when he sold his interests there and went to Kansas to start a cattle industry to handle Texas cattle, which he did for four years. Returning to Colorado in the spring of 1876, he located at Pueblo and, with headquarters at that place, passed a year in freighting, hauling supplies to the mines and ore back to the city. In the summer of 1877 he passed into Gunnison county, putting up hay which he sold at Lake City, in the fall making that promising camp his home and turning his attention to prospecting and mining. In 1878 he went to Pitkin among the first arrivals there, and the next year changed his residence to that place, remaining three years. In the fall of 1882, as soon as the reservation was opened to settlement, he became a resident of the North Fork valley, locating on the place on which he now lives and which has since been his home. He made rapid improvement of the place, setting out a number of fruit trees, which were among the first in this neighborhood. In 1884 he started a nursery, the first on the Western slope of Colorado, and soon found the demand beyond the capacity of his grounds to supply, and so in 1889 he started a branch nursery near Montrose. He has the satisfaction of knowing that all the older orchards in Montrose and Delta counties were supplied in part at least from his nurseries, and that he has by this means contributed handsomely to inaugurate and build up the great fruit industry of the section. In 1896, finding the cares of his multiform business greater than he wished to carry, he sold his nurseries, and since then he has devoted himself wholly to fruit culture with abundant profits, selling his annual crop of Alberta peaches from an acre and a half of ground at an average sum of one thousand and sixty-two dollars an acre net, his four hundred to five hundred boxes of apples at five hundred dollars to seven hundred dollars per acre, and his pears at three hundred to five hundred dollars per acre. He has fifty acres of fruit in bearing order on his home ranch, ten acres in another part of Delta county and ten in Montrose county. He has also taken a great interest in the fruit industry in official capacities, serving as horticultural commissioner on the board of world's fair managers in 1893, and collecting and arranging the fruit exhibit at the fair, for which he received a medal, and as president of the state horticultural board of Colorado. He was appointed to do the same for the state at the St. Louis fair as he did for the one at Chicago, but was obliged to decline the appointment on account of the demands of his private business. Mr. Coburn was married on March 11, 1869, to Miss Hattie Acker, a native of Naperville, Illinois. She died in 1882, leaving a son and a daughter, both of whom are living, the daughter being a resident of California and the son of Lake City, this state. On February 26, 1884, the father married a second wife, Mrs. Sarah Childers, a widow with four children, and a native of Missouri born near St. Louis. Her children are all living and are all married and settled in Colorado. She came with her four children alone to Colorado in May, 1882, and first located at Pitkin, where she lived until the fall of 1883, when she moved to the North Fork valley, where she met Mr. Coburn and was married to him. He arrived in this section with almost nothing, and now owns two hundred and twenty acres of land, worth about fifty-five thousand dollars, and has money besides. His wife owns one hundred and twenty acres within a mile of their home that is worth five thousand dollars. Mr. Coburn is a Mason, and politically a Democrat. =================================================== Contributed for use by the USGenWeb Archive Project (http://www.usgenweb.org) and by the COGenWeb Archive Project USGENWEB NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access.