Mesa County CO Archives Biographies.....

Spencer, William D. December 7, 1833 - ?
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Author: Progressive Men of Western Colorado

     After a residence in several states and varying fortunes in a number of

different pursuits, William D. Spencer, of Mesa county, one of the progressive

and successful ranchmen and fruit-growers of the Western slope, finds himself

comfortably settled on a fine ranch of ninety-three acres four miles northeast

of Fruita, and pleasantly occupied in a general ranching business and the

cultivation of fruit, bees and other products incident to an agricultural life.

 He was born on December 7, 1833, in Richland county, Illinois, and is the son

of William and Miriam (Dee) Spencer, the former a native of Kentucky and reared

in Indiana, and the latter a native of Vermont from where she moved to Ohio with

her parents when she was twelve years old.  The father was a farmer and one of

the pioneers of Richland county, Illinois. In the spring of 1835 he moved to

Grant county, Wisconsin, and there also he was a pioneer.  Twelve years later he

moved to Vernon county in the same state, then known as “Bad Acts,” a name given

to it by the Indians.  There the father died at the age of eighty-three.  His

life had been a useful one wherever he lived, and in all places where he was

known he was highly respected.  In his young manhood he was a soldier in the war

of 1812, and throughout his life he took an active and earnest interest in the

affairs of the locality of his home.  The mother died at the home of her son

William in Saguache in this state in 1884, aged seventy-nine. They were the

parents of five daughters and three sons, all of whom grew to maturity.  William

was the third in the order of birth and is the oldest of the four now living. 

He was but little more than a year old when his parents moved to Wisconsin, and

reached manhood in that state.  The country in which the family lived was new

and undeveloped, and while the demands for the labor of every able hand were

exacting and unceasing, the opportunities for schooling were correspondingly

limited and the school methods and appliances were primitive.  He remained at

home until he was twenty-two, then went to Minnesota and took up a tract of land

which he afterward sold.  In June, 1857, he started with ox teams overland for

Kansas, reaching Beatrice, Nebraska, in July, just after the town was started by

colonists.  He concluded to remain there and in the fall took up an abandoned

claim of one hundred and sixty acres adjoining the townsite. Of this he fenced

forty acres and broke and cultivated twenty.  The Pike’s Peak gold excitement in

the spring of 1860 induced him to abandon his claim at Beatrice and come to

Colorado.  The Nebraska town has since grown over the greater part of his land,

and so he lost an opportunity for fortune there.  On his arrival in the vicinity

of Pike’s Peak he spent two years mining and prospecting without success. 

During the next six years he was employed on a ranch near Denver.  In 1868 he

moved to Saguache county, and there he again took up land which he improve with

a good dwelling and other buildings, living there until 1890.  He then sold out

in that section and took up his residence in Mesa county on a tract of one

hundred and sixty acres which he bought.  Of this he has since sold forty-seven

acres, and has greatly improved and developed the rest.  He does a general

ranching business with good results, and makes specialties of fruit and bees. 

Seven acres of his land are in choice fruit trees which are yielding good

returns for his labor.  And the portions of the ranch under cultivation are

responding liberally to his faith and persuasive husbandry.  It was all new and

undeveloped land when he bought it, and whatever it now shows in the way of

development and cultivation is the result of his well-applied industry and

skill.  On May 3, 1870, he was married to Miss Mary A. Ashley, a native of

Kentucky.  They had one child, their daughter Grace.  Mrs. Spencer died on

December 29, 1901.  In politics Mr. Spencer is a pronounced Prohibitionist.  He

is a member of the Baptist church in which he was ordained deacon more than

twenty years ago.

     In concluding this brief mention, it may be stated that from boyhood Mr.

Spencer has enjoyed a reputation as a hunter, being an unusually good rifle

shot. At the age of fourteen years he killed his first deer at the first shot.

The following year his father presented him with a gun and from that time on

while he remained at home he saw to it that the table was well supplied with

meat.  Since that time he has invariably carried off the honors in every hunting

party with which he has been connected.  During the winter of his seventeenth

year he accompanied a party of men on a hunting trip to the west branch of the

Kickapoo river, in Vernon county, Wisconsin.  The only boy in the party, he was

also the hero of the crowd.  During its first seven days they killed fourteen

black bear, six of which were trapped by one man in a cave in the high bluffs

along the stream. Of the remaining animals the subject killed three, being so

close that their fur was power-burnt.  He also killed more deer and other game

than any other man in the party. Several times well-known hunters have come to

the San Luis valley with the avowed intent of “doing him up” on the hunt, but he

has always maintained his well-won reputation as a crack-shot and successful

hunter.   

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

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