Mesa County CO Archives Biographies.....Wood, Rufus A. 1859 - ?
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Judy Crook jlcrook@rof.net March 23, 2006, 3:03 pm

Author: Progressive Men of Western Colorado

     After spending several years of his mature life in a variety of occupations

at different places in the middle and farther West, Rufus A. Wood joined the

great host of industrial workers engaged in the peaceful and independent

avocation of tilling the soil, thereby returning to the pursuit of his youth,

and for which he had been trained by practical experience on his father’s farm.

 He was born in Missouri in 1859, and is the son of James A. and Antoinette

(Dayton) Wood, the father a native of Kentucky and the mother of Illinois.  Both

left their native states when they were young and became residents of Missouri

where they formed an acquaintance and later were married.  They were farmers by

occupation, and two years after the birth of her son Rufus, and while she was

yet a young woman, the mother died, passing away in 1861.  Her husband survived

her thirty years, dying in 1891, aged sixty-one years.  At the age of thirteen

Rufus began the work of making his own way in the world, first working on farms

in Missouri where he remained until 1879.  He then came to Colorado and located

at Denver.  Here he was employed in general work of various kinds for a year, at

the end of which he moved to Pueblo, and in that city was employed four years in

a freight house.  From there he went to Trinidad where he was engaged in

lumbering three years, then located at Montrose, and during the next four years

conducted a feed store at that place.  Then determining to locate permanently

and engage in a business of continuing employment and promise, he settled on the

ranch which is now his home on the Mormon mesa, in Plateau valley, Mesa county.

 Here he has since resided and carried on a vigorous and profitable farming and

stock industry.  He was married first in 1875 to Miss Anna M. Smith, a native of

Utah.  She died in 1900, aged forty-four, and on January 27, 1903, he was

married a second time, his choice on this occasion being Miss Emma Whiteside, a

native of England, and living at Chillicothe, Missouri, at the time of her

marriage.  Mr. Wood is active in the public affairs of his county, and is highly

respected by its people on every hand. 

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

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/co/mesa/bios/wood364gbs.txt

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