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HUERFANO COUNTY HISTORY PROJECT ORAL HISTORY DATA SHEET INTERVIEWEE: Martha Todd DATE OF INTERVIEW 4/16/80 LOCATION OF INTERVIEW: 341 E. 5th LENGTH OF INTERVIEW 1 hr. PHOTOS AND ARTIFACTS: Mrs. Todd has at her home an interesting family album and many photographs. PERSONAL DATA
NAME: Martha Todd DATE OF BIRTH July 21, 1904 NAME OF PARENTS: Janet Patterson / Alexander Marshall GRANDPARENTS: Maternal Archibald Patterson & Martha Topping, PaternalRobert Marshall & Catherine Allison ETHNIC GROUP OR GROUPS: Scotland FAMILY ORIGIN: Scottish DATE OF FAMILY ARRIVAL IN COUNTY Fathers: 1886 Mothers: 1883 LOCATION OF FIRST FAMILY SETTLEMENT: Walsen Camp KINSHIP TIES: Hilda Allison
Martha Todd: I belong to the Order of Eastern Star and I have been writing a history of that here and there are there are some things that are totally concerned with them and I bought this scrap book and put it together in sections and I have tried to write, but I don't know what happens to me… I start to cry.
But that's my high school manual. No, not my annual, that the year they started in the school that's the middle school now and that's the year we moved into that school. And there's some very interesting pictures in there and some of the people. Sam Taylor that was our state senator for so many years graduated with that class. And, Dr. Merit, who was a very fine doctor. He was a junior that year. There's only on mistake been made in that book and that is the fact that there's no names identifying anyone except the senior class.
SC: This is a beautiful book.
MT: I paid a dollar and a half for it.
SC: That was a lot of money then.
MT: In 1920 and '21' you bet that was a lot of money. There's a class prophecy in that that to me is just cute. When the man came back 500 years afterwards and say some of the things that had happened… but I have tried and you'll see I have marked in there. The places that are stars are people that have passed away.
I think the next annual there was printed in 1926. I was in Pueblo last night and I met a lady and she said she graduated with that class in 1926. I said "Well, I graduated in 1923" and there were 28 in our class, fifteen boys and thirteen girls, the first class that had more boys than girls. And I think that tells you a little bit about the times. The boys went to work. The child labor laws hadn't been in too long. And the school, the requirement that children stay in school till a certain age. I think it was fourteen. The children had to stay in school till they were fourteen or graduated, which would be unlikely. I remember when the law came in, but I don't remember the year. And the law passed that the boys could not go into the coalmines before they were sixteen. They had to prove they were over sixteen. I remember when that law was passed. But, my family weren't living in Huerfano County at that time. They were in Denison County. But, all of my schooling was in Huerfano County except for two years. I stated high school in Pictou and I finished… I mean I started grade school in Pictou and I finished grade school in Pictou. But, it was the years in between…
But, I tell you, the people I went to school with…
As I said, I have some of these things all mixed up here.
And I have something that my father wrote in 1921. And I had a terrible time trying to read it. He wrote it with a pencil and you know how pencil will rub. That's the problem I had.
I wrote something here recently. Here is something I wrote in 1973. I didn't realize it was that ago. I called it Among My Souvenirs. I'll read it to you then… I never did edit it myself, but I tried to write it ever since and when I started to cry I quit.
My souvenirs are not to be held in my hand, but are in my mind, in my memories. I feel the time had come to share these things with my children's grandchildren. I hope they will add to them.
My grandparents, Archibald and Martha Topping Patterson, left Scotland and came to the United States with one child, a little girl named Lily. The child died in what they called a black diphtheria in Pennsylvania. I don't know exactly why they would call it black diphtheria unless the ones that had it choked to death and turned black. My mother was born in 1883 and the family were still in Pennsylvania. I don't know the name of the town, but by the end of 1883 my mother's family were in Walsenberg. My grandmother came in on the D and RG depot later that was on Hendren Street, but this was away up. And I think they came to Walsen Camp but I cannot be sure about that area, the Walsen Camp area. I have wondered why they came to Walsenburg. That is always a question. It had to be the coal mining that brought them in here. Because the area they left from in Scotland was a coal mining area. My great grandmother was disowned by her family. She came from a wealthy family but she was disowned because she married a working man. You know this strata… how society set up the strata in those times. I don't know if they still do it or not. I think a lot of people do. I didn't learn about that for quite awhile.
Is this thing recording?
SC: Uh-huh.
MT: My grandmother was grieving for the child she had lost in Pennsylvania, but she had seven children after my mother. There were ten children all together. And my grandmother spoke of the hard times they had and the one thing she spoke of quite a bit was the last time I visited with her, she spoke of the panic of '93'. I forget… that panic was given the name of a certain president. It seems to me it was Cleveland. And there was no money. People traded. They had script at the mine and a man could work and he could draw the script. When he put in a day's work he could draw the script to take care of his family. That script usually had to be spent in the company store. The song that Ernie Ford has: "I can't go because I owe my soul to the company store". How true. And my grandmother talked about having two dresses. One to wear to church, because being a very religious family, that was a very important thing. Had to have the good dress to wear to church on Sunday. And then she dad on other dress and then of course she had aprons. And Saturday she would carry the water from the well, heat it, and take a bath. They were living in a double house and the lady on the other side would hang my grandmother's dress out to dry. Any my grandmother… I don't know what she wore while her dress dried. Then could bring it in. It would be dried and she would iron it and put it on. And then she did the same thing for the lady in the other half of the house. I said, "That's sharing. That's really truly sharing". And my grandmother talked of this lady and herself buying some bacon and a little bit of lard and they would have their flour. They could make up some biscuits. Now if you don't know what Scottish scones are… now I think of it's kind of funny. I know how to make them and I do like them. There are so many memories with those. It is a Scottish bread. It is made with flour, baking soda and salt and the sourest milk you can get. It was probably unpastuerized milk. That hadn't been discovered. But the milk would be so sour and my grandmother always called it clabber. And then that would be cooked on a dry griddle. I would just love to have some today. But that was some of the hard times, and I have always thought, if it hadn't been for the women our pioneers would have turned back. Our country would have never been settled. And that would, I would say, was right true here. My grandmother left Huerfano County in 1903 because of the coal strike. The coal strike was in Colorado, as I understand it. It was not in the other states. But they moved to New Mexico and they never came back to Huerfano County. But my mother was married and stayed and lived here all her life. In that same time, 1904, in January of 1904, my parents moved to Toltec from Walsen Camp because it wasn't a union mine or there was some reason they moved there. And my family were living there when I was born but I wasn't born there. I was born in my grandmother's home in New Mexico. Because in those days mamas didn't go to the hospital, they went to grandma's when babies were born. And… but my father was a mine foreman at Toltec mine and I have my father's certificate as a coal mining engineer. I found it among my mother's things after she passes away and it is dated in 1897. It was a correspondence course and he really knew the coal mining industry. His specialty was mine gases. We all know that's what causes the explosions in the mines. And her had a letter. I remember when he received the letter, although I don't have it. When he received a letter asking him to go into the eastern coalfields, he said no. He knew the gas conditions in the eastern coalfield and he said he wouldn't go back. He told my mother at the time, he said, "You would be a widow in a short time, because the gases in the eastern coal field will kill the men before very long". Well, I suppose it's true, because this black lung that we hear of, it first was found in the eastern coalfield. And I for many years would meet men on the street and say, "That's a coal miner". They would say, "How do you know?" and I'd say, "I don't know…", but now I realize it was black lung. And, well, now…
People segregated themselves, nationally, from all I could ever hear and there was no crossing over. Now people from the British Isles did cross over. But people from continental Europe didn't. The Germans stayed with the Germans. The Italians stayed with the Italians. The different Slavic people, they stayed with their own. So, I would say they segregated themselves. But as the children went to school they integrated, more or less. But then when they would get through school this thing seemed to come back into practice a little bit. But I went to school right here in Huerfano County. I think with every nationality of child except oriental. I don't remember ever seeing an oriental child. And in Walsen Camp school… this is kind of funny… there was a boy in the class with me… I only went to Walsen Camp School about a month… or six weeks, and he was just as black as he could be. His name was A.C. Marshall and my name was Marshall, too. You know how children tease. A boy said to me "It is sure funny that you're so white and your brother's so black". I said, "It just so happens we are not brother and sister". But, oh, we had in my time here, I said, I just love this country and my mother's sisters came here and went to school. They went to school with Mr. George Dick for one year, but they went back to New Mexico and then stayed. So they were approximately George Dick's age. And all my mother's family but one sister are gone. And she is 82 years old. She was born in what we used to call Red Camp in 1887. But she is the baby of the family, living in Ventura, California. And the people have come and gone. Changes have taken place on Main Street. I am rambling now. I can see that.
My family left Toltec just before the 1913 strike started. The 1913 Strike started in September of 1913. I remember it well. We lived in Cameron at the time. And that was… I remember the fence around the camp and the guard at the gate. I remember the train stopping as it went around the curve. We knew when the train was coming if it was going to stop and let people off. They stopped right in the camp. Then they were taken to the different camps. And there are some families still here, I am sure, whose families came in on those trains. They came down here from Denver. Some of them came in from Kentucky from the coalfields back east. And I also remember the shooting. The cannon that was built in the workshop at Walsen Camp… no, it was brought to Walsen Camp. They fired it. They fired one shot. The thing exploded. I don't know what they used, but they said it was full of nuts and bolts and all that kind of stuff. That was the interesting thing about that. But, we moved during the strike, we moved from Cameron to Mutual. When the strike started, somebody pulled the switch on the pump and the mine filled with water.
SC: Was that at Cameron?
MT: Mutual. You know Mutual was straight up the canyon here. And we went and lived there for a year and my father's project at that time was to get the water out of the mine and get it back in working order, and he did. He got the water out of the mine and got it dried out and they went to operating.
My father was the superintendent at that time, but he didn't have… what would we call it? He didn't have polish enough to suit the owner of the mine. And he sent another man in and my father wouldn't have that, so we went back to Cameron. But, we were just in Cameron a very short time and the company, CF & I, transferred my father to 12 miles from Crested Butte in Gunnison County. We were as a family up there for two years. My father was transferred there to Pictou. But, when I started school we walked from Toltec to Pictou to school and then when we lived in Pictou when we finished the 6th grade. There was six of us in that class and I was the only one that finished high school. Then we came into town. They didn't have a bus when I started, but the new school, the children… was opened in 1920. We started our first classes in there in November of 1920. That year we had the annual and we also had a paper and we called it the messenger. And… but we started school in the old armory. That armory was across from the present depot where that little apartment house is. You know those apartments. And that's where I started high school. Oh, it was such an improvement to get into the new building. How we loved it. And how we took care of it! But there was no gym. And the boys played basketball in the Chapman Hall. I've had people say, well where was the Chapman Hall? It was torn down last year. It's where they used to keep the fire trucks, on 6th Street, the upstairs. That was the Chapman Hall. We still had our activities. And they played the first football game in Walsenburg in 1922. The year I was a senior. And that's the reason I remember that. And I've got something in here about my mother's experience when she was in Scotland. In 1898 my grandparents left Walsenburg and went back to Scotland. Well, you now, we always want to go back to where we started, or where our families started. And they went back for two years. But the children, having been in America, they would have no part of Scotland. So they stayed there two years. They came back in 1900. And my mother was married in 1901. April 5, 1901. I have her marriage certificate. And she was married at home by a Presbyterian minister. And my father's family came in here in 1886. And my father said he fell in love with my mother first time he saw her and she was three years old. He was twelve. But he went to work in the coalmines right away. And he said in this article he wrote, he said there was only two coalmines open. They were in Salsin and they called them Walsen and the Cameron. Now we hear of Cameron and everyone thinks of the one that was over the hill, but he spoke of that. I wrote something here the other day, if I can find it. About the schools I attended. I think they are going to have what do they call it, Edu-School Week or something like that, this month and I guess…
I have a copy made of the thing my father wrote. I had to get a magnifying glass to look at it. It was a terrible thing.
I started in school in Pictou. It was a four-room building, two rooms upstairs and two rooms down. The first through fourth were upstairs. The upper rooms were separated by folding doors. They were opened for programs and other kinds of meetings and Dr. Bear came out about once a month and he would lecture. I don't know just what he lectured on. I remember going, but I don't remember what the lectures were all about.
There's one thing I will never forget about the school. I was a well-behaved child because I was frightened because there was a skeleton in the closet. A real skeleton. And you know you can frighten children. You say, you know, "That'll get you". Well, I was afraid that skeleton would get me if I misbehaved. And I asked a doctor in town if he remembered it, but he said no he didn't remember it before he moved out there before. He never did go to school. But he said that he understood that one of the old doctors that are long gone got that skeleton, but I don't know. But I tell you, I was afraid.
And at that time they didn't get baby sitters to stay with children. If you didn't have a member of the family that didn't want to go someplace to take care of the children, you took them with you. And I went to the dances and my mother was quite a… oh, she could promote things. I am like my father, a stick in the mud. But my mother had this ability to organize things, and as I said, I went to all the dances. Everything she arranged, I was there. My brother and I. I am about eight years older than my sister and all these things happened before my sister was born but we listened to Dr. Baird give lectures. I remember him well. And he gave us… my sister-in-law had a picture. I wish I had it. When she passed away the family destroyed a lot of her old pictures, which families do. We used to get together and talk about those things. I was just a little girl at the time, but she was a young woman. My throat is fogging up.
SC: I have to turn this over anyway.
Side 2
MT: … Collect a lot of these things together for myself. Because I know it is of interest as to how the people lived at that time and … well, and my mother told me, she said, "I want you to remember these things and tell it to your children, because", she said, "these things are going to be lost if someone doesn't remember it and don't tell it". And I have heard people say, "Well, I know it and nobody else need to". Well, really that's not the way to do it.
SC: Where were these dances held?
MT: Upstairs in the Pictou school. And there was a man came up from Trinidad and I think they called him Sonny Williams. He never had a music lesson in his life, but could play the piano for dancing. And I remember seeing his hands. He had huge hands. But, now that man could play the piano. And I used to have the privilege of sitting back in a corner where I could hear Sonny Williams play. But, at that time, also, people took their babies and the desks where on boards and they would stack them up against the wall and if you've ever been in the inside of a post office and seen how they have the little boxes, well this, in my memory, I remember these babies in their seats, stuffed in there. And mama and daddy enjoying themselves. And the little children, if they got tired and got sleepy, they crawled up. We all learned.
But I guess I was always curious about things. Because I was the little girl that sat behind the couch and listened to adult conversation that I didn't understand. The thing is, I remember it. When they talked about the lady that was not being faithful to her husband or the girl that was just a little bit wild, you know how gossiping gets done. But I was a little girl. I could sit back of the couch and listen and remember and some of the things, I would never begin to tell some of the things that I have remembered. And as I grew up they had a whole different meaning than it had to me as a child. And but I got the subject again.
I started school in Pictou and we went to Cameron. That school had been used for a boarding house, but they took the walls out and just made on big room. And all of these schools, they'd heat the schoolroom with an old pot bellied stove that the teacher had to keep the fire burning or some of the older boys. And now Pictou had the school, there was two grades in each room. As I said, the little children were upstairs. But when I … then, but in Cameron it was all on one floor. That was the first year they had school in Cameron. And we didn't get started right away at the beginning in September because they didn't have the little house ready. But then before I finished that way we moved to Mutual and that's when I went to Walsen Camp School. I didn't go very long. Well, then it was the end of schooland that summer we were in Mutual and that fall I didn't go back to Walsen Camp School, but I went to school at Niggerhead. Now people… Niggerhead is just over the hill from the Marlborough. That mine was drowned. It was full of water. But the Solar Mine was working. And my brother and I walked from Mutual and we would stop in Solar and meet our friends and then all of us would go to Niggerhead to go to school. And classes were in the dining room and they had had a parlor and part of the upper grades… and there were very few of us… from the fourth grade up… I can only remember having three grades at that time. I was in the 5th grade, my brother and I, and there were just four of us in the 5th grade. So you know the classes were small, but with all the grades in the room. And there were two teachers. I remember their names. There was Catherine Copeland and Mildred MacNaught. I don't know why I remember those two teachers. But, before school that year was out we moved back to Cameron. In 1915 we moved back to Cameron. But in October of that year, my father was transferred to Florista, which was in Gunnison County and we were up there for two years. And we came back to Pictou. And that was the year prohibition started. 1916. January 1916 prohibition started. We were going to be snowed in Florista. I remember that. So we had to have our groceries in for the winter. And the way we took care of those groceries, to me was interesting. We had a little cellar under the house and we had eggs. Now that was the thing that was hard to take care of, was the eggs. So my brother and I had to go down to the cellar every week and turn the eggs over and that way they didn't spoil. Just to eat an egg, they were not that good. But they were all right to bake with but it was our job to turn them over. The idea being that the yoke in the eggs being heavy would drop, would stick to the shell and the egg would spoil. But there are so many things… that is a whole different story, those two years up in that snowed in, up in that country. And we skied from necessity up there, not for sport. It was transportation. The doctor left Florista once a month went to Crested Butte; he skied and carried the mail and that's how we got mail once a month. And it was… we had to have our oil in for our lamps. But of course there was no school either. We had to go to school in the summer time. But the second year my family was there my mother let us go with our grandmother for that year. Then we went back to there for just a short time and then we moved back to Pictou and that's where I finished elementary school and then to high school and it was walk to high school. There was no buses. But the first school bus as I remember it, was from Walsen Camp to the new… I will refer it to the new high school cause that's what it will always be to me. John Mall is not my high school. But had so much room in the school and the school was crowded so the junior high was put into the high school and they were on the second floor. We had to walk over the Hog Back to town, to this high school and as I said there was no buses until Pictou arranged to send their junior high into town. Then they had a bus but they wouldn't let the high school students ride on it. And they didn't let us ride for awhile. Then they let us ride. Depended on the number of students that were coming into school. There was quite a population here at that time but it dwindled away.
I started high school. I started, the other two girls, there were three boys and three girls in our class and one of the boys started, but as I said, I was the only one that finished. But at that time a good many of our girls were getting married very young. She married when she was 16. She didn't finish school and she was the star student. I wasn't but she was. And, but it was just a matter of walking regardless of the weather. In my class there was 28. And I have tried to keep track, but I can't keep track of that class. And there's just very few of us left now. But time does that.
And then I went to Greeley for two years. And in that time they had… I took the state board examination. Now this is something they don't have anymore. The law was passed that you had to have college in order to get a certificate. But before that you could finish high school. If you were eighteen you could finish and could take a state board examination. The first time you took it and made a good grade, you couldn't get but what was called a second class… there was first, second, and third class certificates. But they wouldn't let you have a first class if it was the first time you took the test. You had to accept the second class. Well, a lot of the girls went to, they got past that examination and they got schools. And they saved their money and went to school in the summer time and they got… I know a number of teachers that that was the way they got their teaching certificates and went to college to get them.
I went to, at that time it was called Colorado Teacher's College. Today it's the University of Northern Colorado. And I want to go back to Greeley, just to see the town, to see the changes. And course there was no drinking, no nightclubs or anything like that at that time because prohibition was still on. And that prohibition history of Huerfano County is quite interesting. I think I've got most of that. And I am going to how you a newspaper. I told Jeanette Thach I had it. It's in a deplorable condition. My daughter told me to roll it up. So we rolled it up. Do you want to come over here and look at this? We've all heard the story of the 1913 strike and the terrible things the strikers were put through. This is the story about what the mine operators were put through. And it's a whole different story. My mother saved newspapers. Have the early histories, have you ever heard anything about the Klu Klux Klan?
SC: No, we haven't and we are interested in that too.
MT: I wasn't here. That's the years I was in Greeley going to school.
SC: But there was a Klan here wasn't there, and parades and so on?
MT: They had a parade. I wasn't here but they said it was one of the prettiest parades that ever went down the street. Said all the men all dressed in the white and the snow falling, said it was a beautiful thing. But as I say, I wasn't here, so I don't know as I can say anything about that. But I heard about it.
My daughter fixed this up pretty good. She said, "Don't you dare give that paper to anybody, Mama". But as I say, we rolled it because… When she was down, she took a course in college in Colorado History and she took as her subject, she choose the development of Huerfano, uh, of Cucharas. And see, this mine blown up, people dead and all this. This is a store that was blown up, the Sunnyside store. Sunnyside was up North.
SC: When was this put out, this paper?
MT: Now you see, that's the thing. There is no date on this. No exact date, but this was an editor from Boulder and this editor says he's heard all these things and he just felt it was time to put the other side of the story out. And of course these are things I have heard about. There was a woman out here called MacAnaully. There is a picture here of MacAnaully here someplace if I can find it. I remember that. Now that is from… you know where Loma Park is. There was a woman shot there. She had a gold watch. You know the women wore the gold watch pinned on their dresses. That bullet hit that watch and then ricocheted in through her arm. She died here a couple of year's back. But this… I don't know where that is. But this house, you can see it was shot up. And this write up about this car is interesting. There was some young men killed in that car. And the militia came in. And a woman told me, oh, she said, her mother told her the militia was all burley men with great big moustaches curled up this way, that was the men from the Balkan War that was brought in here by the strikers. That's that article right there. And this is one of the militia. My aunt married one of them. My mother's sister.
SC: So I just want to read… what this is. This is called "Supplement to the Walsenburg World, Walsenburg, Colorado". And it is a four-page newsprint piece, newspaper size, and it is called "Insurrection in Colorado during the years 1913-1914 by L.C. Paddock, Editor of the Daily Camera and Boulder Tribune" and it is an accounting of the strike years in this area.
MT: From a different point of view. Instead of being from that the colony in Ludlow was attached so horribly, this is what instigated. And you know when I heard of that Kent College; I thought the similarities to that. Those boys were attacked and they were boys, they weren't men. The militia was boys. And what is the reaction of youth? To fight back.
SC: So, this is in very good condition. And this is something that people should know you have in case there is need…
MT: I told Jeanette that I had it.
SC: Yes that's good to know.
MT: My daughter did a pretty good job of mending it. But she told me, "Mama, I want that paper", and she collects all the history she can get. We hunted around to find something to roll it on, because when papers are folded they have a tendency…
SC: They crack.
MT: Yes, to crack.
(Looking at Mrs. Todd's photography collection)
MT: That is mules out at Toltec mine. The man that lives across the street from me is in that picture. Now when Mr. Hicks made that display last summer for the state fair, I don't remember the picture, but I think this is one that he had. That's my father. And this is, was in the blacksmith shop. You can see the kind of equipment that they had, the anvil and the forges and all the different things and the drills. This was one of the pictures they had reproduced. That is my grandfather. And there is a man in there by the name of Joe Baldwin, but I don't know which one he is. Now this is down inside the coal mine. That's my father and these are, these are two brothers and a half brother, the Murray Brothers and their half brother, Tom Wilson. He was city clerk here for a bit, a long time. Now I have estimated this picture was taken about 1909. I am going by that calendar. And this is the Toltec Tipple. That burned down. These two pictures more or less go together. This picture was taken from that door. I remember… I was around the mine a lot when I was little. And that's me right there. And this is Mr. Turner. That's the Turner's up on the hill. That's, let me see his grandfather. And that's the outside by the blacksmith shop. That's another picture. And that man was named and that's John Strauss. That's Wiletta Marshall's grandfather. That was in the mine office. That's the Pictou School. I don't… there was a girl. She's in this picture somewhere and she rolled down that stairway and the thing that impressed it in my mind was that a teacher took the keys out of her picket and put them on the back on Francis's neck. See it says October 1910. Let me see. I can find myself in there. That's my father and mother's wedding picture.
SC: Oh, they certainly were nice looking people. Your mother is beautiful.
MT: There was a man called my mother Gaby and people thought he called her that because she talked a lot, but it wasn't, it was because when my mother was a girl there was a woman called Gaby Basil. She was considered the most beautiful woman and they always said mother was. And that's…
SC: Is that you?
MT: I was about four years old.
SC: Is that your house?
MT: That was the house we lived in, a three-room house. My brother and I and my mother. Before my sister was born. But, my folks put another room onto that house and they built a porch and my mother had a garden right in this corner and that was… But, that was a baseball team. And that's Alex Shopley. This man lives right straight across the street and the only place he goes is to the doctor.
SC: That's a nice collection.
MT: These were my mother's. And I was going to give them to the museum, but my brother asked me, said, "Let your children have them. Don't you give them". But, my brother passed away so I told my children they should be kept and they should not be destroyed, because so often people are inclined to do that. Now I'll show you some other pictures.
I said, when you get tired, pass them around or give them to a historical society. Don't destroy them. And I have this old album that my mother put together. Someday I am going to be able to…
Most of these pictures were taken in 1915. When we went up to the snow country, she brought a camera.
SC: She was an early photographer.
MT: I was in Pueblo last night and I had a man asking me if I remembered this far, and these pictures were taken up in that country. I had some pictures the other day… now this is the 4th of July. That was in…
SC: Do you want to sit down, Mrs. Todd? I can just get a chair.
MT: These are all in Colorado that's one of the things about it. You can see the beautiful country. I'd love to go back there, but I don't think my blood pressure could take it.
SC: That's where you were snowed in up in there, huh?
MT: We were snowed in and I used to have what you called a phalanger, and it was just to push the snow off the tracks, but they came around a curve and they hit a rock with the phalanger. Some people called this place
But we called it . This is where they turned the engine. They could get up there and…
(tape ends. The rest of the interview concerned Mrs. Todd's mother's photographs).
Outline Mrs. Todd's high school annual and memories of her class
Her family history Grandparents come to Pennsylvania and then to Walsenburg in 1883 Her grandmother's stories Panic of 1893 Her two dresses Scottish scones Women's role in the West Her grandparents leave in 1903 for New Mexico Mrs. Todd's birth in New Mexico 1903 School at Walsen Camp
Coal Strike 1913 Walsen Camp Mutual
Family History Grandparents trip to Scotland Her mother's marriage Father's parents arrive 1886 Schools: Pictou. Dances at Pictou, Cameron They move to Florista and being snowed in High school in Walsenburg College at Greeley Klan parade Review of Boulder newspaper special edition giving owner's view of strike of 1913 Review of Mrs. Todd's photography collection
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