Montrose County CO Archives Biographies.....Shinn, Edward E. February 15, 1856 - ?
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Judy Crook jlcrook@rof.net March 26, 2006, 1:10 am

Author: Progressive Men of Western Colorado

     Edward E. Shinn, of Montrose, is one of the most extensive and successful

sheep-growers in Colorado, carrying on his business on a scale of great

magnitude, and with vigor and breadth of view that challenge adversity and defy

competition.  He was born at Trenton, in Grundy county, Missouri, on February

15, 1856.  His father, Oliver Shinn, was a native of Indiana, and his mother,

whose maiden name was Louisa Clempson, was born in South Carolina.  Both died in

California. They had a family of six children, four of whom are living.  Edward,

the third in order of birth, when four years old accompanied his parents from

their Missouri home across the plains with ox teams to this state.  The

incidents of that memorable trip, through a wild, unbroken country, beset with

dangers from wild beasts and savage men and fraught with hardships and

privations of many forms, are indelibly impressed on his memory, as is the

welcome sight of Denver after the long and trying journey, although that now

imposing and beautiful city was then but a hamlet of log cabins, blacksmith

shops and the other uncanny concomitants of a frontier village, just struggling

into being.  The family remained at Golden until the spring of 1861, then

traveled with ox teams to Oregon.  The father had previously gone to California

in 1850 and remained two years.  And he still had a longing for that state. 

Accordingly, after a residence of ten years in Oregon, they moved into northern

California, where they remained until the parents died.  Edward was fifteen

years old at the time of his removal, and owing to the migratory life of the

family and the lack of school facilities in the West at that time, his education

in the schools was very scant.  After the death of his father he carried on a

flourishing meat business for a time.  In 1884 he returned to Colorado, locating

at Montrose.  Here he started and for three years conducted a wholesale and

retail meat market, then turned his attention to the stock industry, devoting

his energies mainly to the production of sheep on a large scale.  In this branch

of that great industry he has ever since been successfully engaged, running now

over winter from year to year some eight thousand to nine thousand sheep, and

having on the range in summer about sixteen thousand.  He owns two large

ranches, one of three hundred and twenty acres located ten miles east of

Montrose.  For the irrigation of this he has recently completed a ditch thirty

miles long, in company with others, which takes water from the Cimarron river

and has a capacity of one hundred and twenty feet of the fluid and ability to

properly irrigate fifteen thousand acres of land.  The ditch was constructed by

a company of which he is a leading stockholder and the president, and cost about

sixty-five thousand dollars.  Mr. Shinn’s other ranch comprises two hundred

acres and is in the mountains, affording an ideal summer range for his stock. 

In all commendable enterprises for the benefit of his section of the state he

takes an active and intelligent interest.  He was one of the original

stockholders and organizers of the Western Slope Bank of Montrose, and is now a

director in that institution.  On  February 20, 1884, he was married to Mrs.

Nettie (McKissick) Harris, a native of California and the daughter of John

McKissick, a prominent stock man of that state.  Both of her parents are

deceased.  Mr. and Mrs. Shinn have had four children.  Three are living, John,

Walter and Cecil. A daughter named Ethel died several years ago at the age of

sixteen months.  Mr. Shinn is a Republican in politics, but he is not an active

partisan.  He belongs to the order of Woodmen of the World.  

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

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/co/montrose/bios/shinn459gbs.txt

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