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Photo postcard of the Office of Eaton Express Dray and Ice Company, Eaton, CO, ca. 1910.

The small sign above the door reads “C. B. Woodward, Mgr.”  Clark B. Woodward, the owner of this business, was a New Hampshire native, and the woman standing beneath the sign is his second wife, Josephine A. (Smith), originally from Maine.  They were married in 1896 in Wilmot, New Hampshire. 

In 1880, C.B. was a lumber manufacturer in Grafton, New Hampshire, where he lived with his first wife, Lydia J. (Andrews) and their children.  C.B. and Lydia divorced in 1895.

Josephine writes on the back of the card that the horses in the picture comprise one of their teams, so the man on the wagon, or “dray,” is most likely one of their employees.  Neither the driver nor the woman standing nearby is identified. 

As you can see on the sign to the right of the window, C.B. vowed to haul “anything and everything that is movable.”  The signs on the building tell us those things included ice, feed, coal, hay, straw, pianos furniture, and possibly poultry supplies.  It appears that C.B. had expertise in ice — the 1910 Census reports that he and Josephine lived in Windsor, where he operated an ice plant.   

If you look between the right front corner of the building and the telephone pole you’ll see at the top of the fencing two small signs at right angles to one other – the one on the left says “Second St.,” and I believe the one at the right says “Daw St.”  or “Dan St.”  I consulted a current map of Eaton and found a Second Street, which runs east to west, but I couldn’t find a Daw or Dan Street.

By the time of C.B.’s death in 1923, it appears he and Josephine had moved to Denver, where C.B. may have been a grocer.   Josephine died in 1938.  They are buried at Fairmount Cemetery in Denver. 

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