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Although he put in a year at Harvard, Charles Steele could not resist
the lure of the West. Turning down his father's offer to finance his degree,
he preferred to punch cows for the Slaughter outfit, among other pioneer
ranchers. In moving cattle around the West, he once rode through the San Juan
Mountains of
Colorado and fell in love with them. Eventually, he bought a small ranch
and homesteaded additional acreage about eight miles north of Lake City
around 1890. Cynthia Weed grew up in Gallia County, Ohio. On the death of her mother, she was forced to take over running the household until her father eventually remarried, so at the age of ten, she could do all the things required of a country housewife in her day: cook, bake, wash, iron, mend and make clothes, raise a vegetable garden, preserve fruits and veggies, raise chickens and geese and tend her younger siblings. On her father's remarriage, her skills were put to work as a neighbor's 'hired girl' - that is, she got room and board in exchange for working 12-16 hours a day six-and-a-half days a week. Small wonder then, that when her sisters in Colorado suggested she come West, she wasted no time. She met Charles Steele while he was visiting her sisters' home, a wide spot in the road near Salida, Colorado. There were several of the Weed family in Western New York, in the same general area where the Steele family was considered to be. It is quite possible that the families were acquainted before Charles and Cynthia met in Colorado. I never heard why Charles was visiting Cynthia's sisters in the first place, since they lived several days ride from where Charles lived. However, the West was rather sparsely populated in those days, and it was quite common for people to look up others who came from the same part of the country, if only to get news from home and to lend a helping hand to newcomers. I'm sure that if the Weeds and Steeles were even minimally acquainted, Charles would have been told that there were Weeds in Colorado and would have paid his respects. In any case, he and Cynthia met and duly impressed each other (He was an up-and-coming rancher and politican, she was a tiny beauty). They were married on New Years Day, January 1st, 1892. Cynthia was 19, Charles 41. 'Lake Fork Charlie' set to work raising horses and being a County Commisioner. He and Cynthia had eight children, with the two eldest succumbing to Scarlet Fever at a tender age. Charles himself suffered a stroke which left him bedridden in his later years. Cynthia had to shut down the horse-raising operation (it requires an expertise which Charles could no longer exercise and the children lacked). She got into the cattle business, which requires mostly an appalling amount of patience and mind-numbing optimism. Since cattle ranching is once-a-year income (and lucky to get that), she had to do a lot of truck farming to make ends meet, preserving her garden produce against the winter and selling chickens, eggs, and vegetables to the booming mining town of Lake City. All the clothes were homemade and one of Grandmother's fondest memories is of the day Grandpa brought home a second-hand sewing machine, which looked to be the original demonstration model. From then on, she didn't have to make denim overalls by hand. And you think you've got it tough? The income from the garden was so vital that on one occasion when the regular bridge was washed out by Spring floods, she took the wagon over the High Bridge, an amazing wooden trestle structure 125 feet above the river, bumping from tie to tie, with the horses walking planks laid between the rails, her son holding a coat over the horse's head so it could not see the raging floodwater below!. All this work while tending a paralyzed invalid husband. With the help of the two boys, she kept the ranch going until 1925, then sold out and moved to Gunnison, where she kept busy for another forty years, taking care of homes and grandchildren, crochetting Afghans (her only hobby), raising and canning fruits and vegetables from a WWII Victory Garden, and tending chickens through winters that ran as cold as 60 below zero. I have always been amazed at the household skills she took for granted and which are now becoming totally forgotten. But more amazing is that while nothing in her life had ever been easy, I do not recall ever hearing a negative word from her or a judgemental remark about others. She had great inner strength, a rather dry sense of humor and an understanding heart. She died at 93 and I miss her greatly. I deeply regret that my wife and children never got the chance to know her. Aunt Mabel left home to teach school at Hermit Lakes when she was 16. She eventually married Raymond Wright and settled at the Wright Ranch in the upper Rio Grande Valley. In addition to running cattle, Ray and his brothers, Wallace and Warren, build a bunch of cabins for the dudes, mostly fishermen escaping the heat of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Georgia. Some families have seen three or four generations coming to the ranch, even though the cabins are bare-bones facilities, with a pump in the front yard and an outhouse in back (of course, many of the guests lived that way at home too, 70-90 years ago). Some of my fondest memories are of the summers I spent at the ranch, fishing the Rio Grande or Clear Creek, working the cattle and putting up hay. (Imagine an eleven-year-old at the wheel of a tractor - Yippee!). Tending to the cabins and dudes and running that business became Mabel's job and she was still cleaning cabins in preparation for the tourist season when age finally caught up with her at 94, although when she finally died, we had to beat her with a stick to make her lie down. Uncle Herbert and Hope started raising Larry, Nelly, Peggy and Joyce in Gunnison, then moved to the Pacific Northwest and eventually Alaska. Aunt Mary and Hugh Monson lived near Gunnison, with Ruby, Joe and Clyde, then retired to Montrose. Uncle Charles worked in Gunnison til he retired, then went to Creede to become a County Commissioner, among other things, and to help Mabel with the ranch after Ray died. He has one son, Lee. Charles lived at the ranch with Dorothy until his death in 2002. Betty married at 19, had three boys and supported them through the depression as Clerk of the County Court and as a newspaper reporter. She remarried during WWII and had a daughter, then finished her college degree and taught English in the local High School, finding time to edit the local paper for a couple of years while the new owner learned his way around the county. She also wrote a newspaper history column and a couple of books, histories of the area and of early editors. Norman pursued his doctorate in Physics to the point of exhaustion, eventually settling into a government job at White Sands. He retired in 1997 and lives among the pecan trees in Las Cruces NM with Lee and their pets. Kraig became a jack-of-all-trades in pursuit of a unique lifestyle which would allow him and Lorna to write the Great American Novel. They definitely produced the unique lifestyle, along with some truely great stained glass work and a fantasy novel. Lorna died in December 2006 and Kraig in January 2007.. Lynn spent four years in the USAF, part of that time in Japan, got an interesting but useless degree in Linguistics at Ohio State, then moved to NYC, where he enjoyed the Sixties in Greenwich Village. While working at IBM, he married Cindi in 1969, moved about 75 miles north of NYC and has been there ever since, with 5 children, 7 grandchildren, several (it varies) dogs and a pig. Sue and Bill Knowles continue to live in Gunnison, with whatever pets are current. Bill is managing partner in Rocky Mountain Real Estate. They have two girls; Julie, who is a school administrator near Rifle CO (at least for now); and Beth. Beth and husband Bill own and operate Lake City Millworks with the help of their two little girls, who have no idea how lucky they are in their choice of parents and grandparents. |