Montrose County CO Archives Biographies.....Loper, E.A. 1852 - ?
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Judy Crook jlcrook@rof.net March 26, 2006, 12:35 am

Author: Progressive Men of Western Colorado

     For more than twenty years E.A. Loper, of Montrose county, has been a

resident of Colorado, having come to the state to live in 1883.  He then settled

on the place where he now resides, securing it as a pre-emption claim of wild

sage brush land, and devoting the time since he took possession of it in

redeeming it from the waste and making it fertile and productive.  He is a

native of Fulton county, Illinois, born in 1852, and is the son of Isaiah and

Mary (Stone) Loper, Eastern people who were among the early settlers of the

great Prairie state.  The father was born in New Jersey, of German parents, and

as a young man came west to Ohio, where he lived a number of years and was

married.  In 1850 he moved his family to Fulton county, Illinois, and after ten

years of faithful work as a farmer in that state, died there in 1860.  His wife

was a native of Vermont, and accompanied her parents to Ohio while she was

young. After the death of her husband, she continued to live in Illinois until

1869, when she came with her son, the subject of this brief review, to the

neighborhood of Atchison, Kansas, and lived with him there on a farm until 1883.

 The trip from their Illinois home was made by team overland, but while tedious

and long drawn out in the age of steam in which it was made, it lacked the

elements of danger and privation of such journeys in earlier times, the greatest

part of the country through which they traveled being well settled and supplied

with the conveniences of life.  In 1883 the son sold his property in Kansas and

together they came to Colorado, settling in Montrose county, where she died in

the summer of 1903, aged eighty-nine years.  Her remains were buried at Olathe.

 Her offspring numbered twelve, E.A. being the ninth.  He remained at home

assisting in the farm work in Illinois until he reached his eighteenth year, and

then with his mother moved to Kansas, as has been stated, remaining in that

state farming in the vicinity of Atchison until the autumn of 1883.  He then

determined to come farther west, and disposing of his farm in Kansas, he came to

Colorado, and going at once to Montrose county, located on a pre-emption claim

of one hundred sixty acres, about six miles west of the town of Montrose.  This

was wild sage brush land and altogether unimproved and uncultivated when he

moved on it.  By assiduous and systematic industry since then, continued in

spite of many discouragements and difficulties, he has brought it to a high

state of productiveness, improved it with good buildings, and adorned it with

trees and shrubbery which make it attractive as a rural home and valuable as a

piece of well developed property.  Soon after settling on it he planted an

orchard of apple, peach, plum and cherry trees, which he has carefully nurtured,

and which is now repaying his care with abundant yields of excellent fruit for

which he finds a ready market either near or far, and out of which he realizes a

handsome income.  He is also engaged actively in general farming and

stock-growing, and is making both lines of industry pay well.  He was married in

1902 to Mrs. Myron (White) Gravestock, widow of the late John Gravestock, an old

settler of the section who died about ten years ago.  They have one son, Eugene

Wesley.  A farmer in three of the great states of the Union, Mr. Loper has a

comprehensive knowledge of the agricultural industry in this country, and his

varied and extensive experience has given him capacity of a high order for

conducting it successfully.  He is regarded as one of the wide-awake and

progressive ranchers of the county, and one of its most estimable citizens.  

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

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/co/montrose/bios/loper454gbs.txt

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