Gunnison County CO Archives Biographies.....Parlin, John T. February 12, 1832 - ?
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Judy Crook jlcrook@rof.net March 24, 2006, 4:18 pm

Author: Progressive Men of Western Colorado

     John T. Parlin, the first and only postmaster at the village of Parlin,

Gunnison county, which was named in his honor and was the second postoffice

established in the county, in which he has handled the mails continuously for a

period of twenty-five years, and has become thereby the oldest postmaster in

uninterrupted service in the state, was born at Norridgewock, Maine, on February

12, 1832, and is the son of Seth and Nancy C. (Tufts) Parlin, both natives and

life-long residents of Maine, where they both died; the mother died in 1853. 

They had a family of four children, of whom their son John was the first born

and is the only one living.  After the death of his first wife the father

married again, and of the second union three daughters were born, all of whom

are living.  Mr. Parlin was frugally reared on his father’s farm and there

acquired habits of thrift and useful industry which well fitted him for the

stirring scenes and trials of his later life on the wild frontier of this and

other states, and was liberally educated in good schools at Augusta and the

Waterville Institute in his native state, passing four years at the institute. 

He studied medicine a year, and in 1856, at the end of that period, the gold

excitement took him to California by way of the isthmus of Panama, the trip

keeping him twenty-two days on the ocean before he reached San Francisco.  In

the neighborhood of that city he worked at placer mining one year without

success, after which he was employed in mines for wages in California and

Nevada.  He next passed some two years in the service of water companies

constructing reservoirs for the mining industries, and during the construction

of the Central Pacific Railroad he was employed on that great highway as foreman

from Newcastle to Truckee, California, spending two years and a half in that

capacity.  In the spring of 1867 he moved to the Sierra valley and bought a

ranch which he sold after living and working on it four years, with good

financial results.  His next venture was to return east and engage in the live

stock business in western Kansas; but after three years of unprofitable

operations in this line there, he came to Colorado in 1874 and located near

Laveta, Huerfano county.  Here he again engaged in raising stock and also kept a

hotel for three years.  In June, 1877, he moved to Gunnison county and bought a

squatter’s right to one hundred and sixty acres of land, which is a part of his

present ranch.  This now comprises three hundred and twenty acres and is well

watered from the Tomichi and Quartz creeks, which flow through it, and has been

brought to a high degree of fertility and well improved with good buildings and

other structures necessary to its proper management.  He is one of the oldest

settlers in this part of the county, and being a man of enterprise with a genius

for improvements, he has borne his full share of the labor and cost of building

up and developing the section.  Two years after his location on the ranch the

postoffice of Parin [sic] was established, the second in the county, and he was

appointed postmaster, an office which he has filled ever since.  He has also

kept a hotel from the time of his arrival on the ranch until now, having it on

the main stage roads of the region and making it one of the principal stage

stations before the railroads were built through here, and since then on those

lines of travel, both the Denver & Rio Grande and the Colorado Southern passing

through his ranch.  On the place he cuts one hundred and fifty tons of good hay

a year and feeds one hundred cattle.  He had cattle with him when he settled on

the ranch and for years conducted a profitable dairy. The early days of his

residence here were prolific in good prices for everything he raised and

handled, hay being seldom less than eighty dollars a ton and often one hundred

dollars.  The times were flush and the travel through the region was large, and

its enterprise, new and undeveloped as it was, was striking.  In political

belief Mr. Parlin is a pronounced Republican, and while he is not a hide-bound

partisan, and seeks neither honors nor the emoluments of public office, he has

taken such an interest in the welfare of his community, that he on one occasion

overbore his repugnance to official station and served as county commissioner

from 1878 to 1881.  When he was first elected to this office in the fall of 1878

there were but ninety-two voters in the county.  He also served many years as a

justice of the peace, the sparseness of the population and a public necessity

seeming to require this service of him.  He is one of the best known and most

highly respected men on the Western slope, and in all his demeanor in public and

private life he has justified the confidence and esteem which he so largely

enjoys.  In fraternal relations he is a charter member of the Masonic lodge and

the Royal Arch chapter at Gunnison.  In 1866 he was married at San Francisco to

Miss Nancy C. Gould, a native of Norridgewock, Maine.  They have five children,

Ida, Walter S., Robert H., Frank J. and Edna M.  

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

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/co/gunnison/bios/parlin389gbs.txt

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