People
Collection for person entities.
Pages
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- George Watts
- He was born in Hayden, Colorado to Oliver Ellsworth Watts and Lena Mae (Squire) Watts. His grandfather had homesteaded near the town in 1884. His father was a farmer and jockey who helped to build the reservoir south of Hayden. He died of an abcess in 1920, when George was less than a year old. His mother was a homemaker and farmer who learned how to shoot a pistol. She passed many stories onto her son. The family sang hymns together as a family and Watts wrote songs. They also sang in the Hayden Congregational Church of Christ. The 1930 US Census shows him living with his four older siblings and his mother in Hayden, with his mother and oldest brother Albert working on the farm, and his brother Oliver working as a teacher. He attended a country school near Hayden (possibly the Elkhead School) from 1923 to 1933. He won first place in the school talent show for his singing. He quit high school at the age of fourteen to work in the hay fields on the family’s 200 acre farm. The 1940 census shows him still living with his mother in Hayden and working on the family farm at the age of twenty. He married Enid Elaine Reynolds on June 29, 1947 in Steamboat Springs. They had three children. The family enjoyed singing songs together. In 1962, after selling their land in Hayden to a steam plant developer, he and Enid moved to Steamboat Springs. They moved to Hotchkiss in January 1972. During his life he worked as a farmer, trucker, coal miner, oil driller, carpenter, rancher and school custodian. He attended the Church of Christ. He and his family knew many traditional songs, tall tales, poems, and made up others. They were interviewed by the Mesa County Oral History Project in connection with local folklore. He died at the age of 83 and is buried in Hayden.
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- George Williamson
- Early resident of Crested Butte, Colorado. Died in the Jokerville Mine Explosion on January 24, 1884.
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- George the Greek
- A shoe shiner at the Grand Junction train station in the early 1900s. According to Frank Simonetti Sr., who worked for the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, George intervened on behalf of striking workers during the shop strike of 1922, and beat up a fellow Greek-American who was working as a scab.