Gunnison County CO Archives Biographies.....Gillaspey, William A. August 24, 1850 - ?
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Judy Crook jlcrook@rof.net February 20, 2006, 3:57 pm

Author: Progressive Men of Western Colorado

      Invested with the charge and management of a large farm, and conducting

its affairs successfully for six years owing to the continued illness of his

father, he being the oldest child in the family, cheated out of all his earnings

by a shrewd and dishonest partner in business a year later, working as a

salesman for farming machinery in a hotly contested field, then coming to this

state and working in the mines and at carpentering and hauling ore through the

deep snows of a severe winter, starting a dairy later from his earnings and

having the cows, which he had leased, offered at sheriff’s sale, and thereupon

being obliged to borrow one thousand eight hundred dollars at eighteen per cent

to buy them, William A. Gillaspey, of Gunnison county, one of the most widely

and favorably known live-stock men on the Western slope, has had plenty of

trouble and care in his struggle for advancement among men, but he has triumphed

over all difficulties and worked himself to a comfortable estate and a place of

high esteem among his fellow citizens of the county.  His experience has been

the greater and the best part of his education, and while that has been bitter

it has been thorough and lasting, as well as eminently practical.  His ranch of

three hundred and twenty acres on Ohio creek, seven and a half miles north of

Gunnison, is one of the best and most productive in the valley and yields an

average of three hundred and fifty tons of hay a year, besides some grain and

other products.  Mr. Gillaspey was born near Steubenville, Jefferson county,

Ohio, on August 24, 1850, and is the son of John and Rachel A. (Maxwell)

Gillaspey, the former a native of Pennsylvania and the latter of Ohio.  The

father was a farmer and in 1855 moved his family to Henry county, Iowa, where

they were pioneers.  There the farming operations were enlarged and became

extensive and profitable, and there the parents died, the father in August,

1893, and the mother in March, 1894, the former being seventy-four and the

latter sixty-four years of age at the time of death.  They had five sons and one

daughter, all of whom are living but the daughter, William being the oldest.  He

was about five years of age when the move to Iowa was made, and obtained his

education in the common schools of that state.  When the son reached the age of

sixteen the father was taken ill and the former was forced to take charge of the

farm and manage its operations.  This he did until he was twenty-two, farming

the place on shares after he was twenty-one.  Then having saved about twelve

hundred dollars, he bought an interest in a grocery store, but at the end of a

year his shrewd partner had it all.  This experience was a hard one for him at

the time, but it was valuable all 

through his subsequent life.  For nearly two years after that he was a salesman

of the Lowden hay machine, installing it in barns for the farmers who bought it.

 In April, 1880, having again accumulated a little money, he came to Colorado,

reaching Gunnison on April 23d.  He soon afterward went to Irwin and there

worked in the mines and at his trade as a carpenter until the winter of 1881-2,

during which he hauled ore from the mines to Crested Butte, the snow being so

deep in places that he drove over telegraph poles sixteen feet high.  In 1884 he

leased the ranch known as the Mowbery ranch at Gunnison, together with some

cows, and started a dairy.  Two years later the cows were sold at sheriff’s

sale, their owner having mortgaged them and failed to pay off the mortgage, and

he was obliged to borrow eighteen hundred dollars at eighteen per cent interest

to buy them.  He kept his dairy going in this way and prospered at it by

extraordinarily hard work.  In 1889 he sold the dairy, and after paying his

indebtedness had over one hundred cattle.  He then began to give his attention

wholly to the cattle industry, shipping in the first registered Shorthorn bull

that was brought to Gunnison county and also the first grain binder.  In

addition, with characteristic enterprise, he was the first man in the county to

sow oats.  In 1893 he leased the ranch on which he lives and one year later he

bought it.  He has cleared of sage brush and redeemed by irrigation one hundred

acres of his land since he bought it, and now has very profitable returns from

his labor in cultivating it.  The first year he cut one hundred and fifty tons

of hay, but the annual yield is now three hundred and fifty tons.  He also has

three hundred graded Shorthorn cattle and has some other excellent registered

stock.  In 1900 he bought the imported Percheron stallion Pasha, one of the

finest breeders ever brought to the county.  This valuable animal had the

misfortune to break a leg in 1904 and had to be killed.  That animal was

recently replaced by one equally as good, Keota Brilliant, bred from imported

stock both sire and dam.  Mr. Gillaspey was one of the organizers of the

Gunnison County Stock-growers Association, and is now (1905) serving his fourth

term as its president.  When he came to this county he had but one dollar in

money.  His success is due to his own efforts and native ability.  In politics

he is a Republican and in fraternal life a Knight of Pythias and an Elk,

belonging to the lodge of the order last named at Ouray.  On July 26, 1898, he

united in marriage with Miss Ada Sales, a native of Kansas, whose father, James

Sales, is now a prosperous farmer in Missouri.  Mr. and Mrs. Gillaspey have two

sons, Willis Alvin and John J. Clarence.  For seven years the father was

president of the now defunct Gunnison County Fair Association, which he helped

to organize and in which he was a leading stockholder.  

Additional Comments:
From Progressive Men of Western Colorado.  Chicago:  A.W. Bowen & Co., 1905

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/co/gunnison/bios/gillaspe159gbs.txt

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