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Photo of Ulysses G. Bleasdale family home, about half a mile southeast of Brush, CO, ca. 1901 – 1903.

Ulysses Grant Bleasdale was born October 16, 1865, in Orange Township, Ohio, one of seven children of British immigrant Thomas Calvert Bleasdale and Ohio native Mary Adeline Thorp.   They farmed. 

Ulysses, better known as Grant, came to Colorado in the autumn of 1884, spending a few months in Greeley.  From there he moved on to California, but was back in Ohio by March 1885.  After a short stay in Ohio he returned to Greeley. One very likely  incentive for him to come to Greeley was 21-year old Matilda “Tillie” R. Plowhead. 

Tillie, one of thirteen children (at least two of whom did not survive), was born April 20, 1863, at the Colorado settlement of Latham, which had been established the year before as an Overland stage station and which also became the site of Weld County Court business.  Latham was named for Senator Milton Latham of California, an early advocate for mail service to California, but it went by many other names as well. i.e., McIlvaines, Westlake Ranch, Bailey’s, Fort Latham, Latham  Station and Latham Junction.  Sitting east of what is current-day Greeley, Latham sat at the junction of the Platte River and Cherokee Trails, overlooking the junction of the South Platte and Cache La  Poudre Rivers.   

Tillie’s Swiss immigrant parents, farmers John Henry and Emilie (Simone) Plowhead, would have known Daniel and Ella Bailey, Latham’s owner/operators.  By 1869, the Bailey’s oversaw Latham’s “two-story log house/inn, barns, corrals, and enough supplies to  support constant traffic from stagecoaches, settlers, miners, cattle drives, county court business, and postal riders.”  In spite of all the business,  an entry in Ella’s diary indicated the place was no Xanadu.  She wrote  in 1869, “Seven men for breakfast, if men was company to me like friends at home, I would never get lonesome…[Latham] is lonesome and desolate…”   Soon after, the completion of the transcontinental railroad, which connected Cheyenne and Denver, would draw away the bulk of Latham’s transportation and mail business.   Accordingly, the Bailey’s took what business they had left, along with the seat of Weld County, to Evans.   And the Plowheads would later call Greeley their home. 

On June 19, 1887, Tillie Plowhead and Grant Bleasdale would be wed in Greeley by the Reverend Napoleon Hogeland.  According to Census and other information, they would go into farming and cattle ranching, largely in the Brush area.  Their union would produce three daughters, Lily, Alice and Nellie.

Tillie and Grant developed early irrigation systems in the area and had a hand in establishing the Rankin Presbyterian church in Brush.   Grant, who was a member of the Knights of Pythias fraternal organization, may have had a hand in establishing the Brush lodge for that organization. Grant would eventually be considered  one of the largest owners of cattle and ranches in Morgan county. 

The Knights of Pythias

In 1864, with our country in the midst of the Civil War, a clerk in the U.S. Treasury Department by the name of Justus H. Rathbone founded the Knights of Pythias.  He did so with the hope that the spirit of brotherhood engendered by the organization could heal a nation being torn apart by violence and hate.  Taking the name from the Greek legend of the noble friendship of Damian and Pythias, this was the first fraternal organization in the United States to be chartered by the U.S. Congress.  Its emblem contains a triangle of the letters “F,” “C” and “B,” which stand for  the Pythian principles of Friendship, Charity and Benevolence. 

Grant Bleasdale Stricken Ill

It became known to the Brush community, probably toward the latter part of 1900, that Grant was quite ill.  

The Fort Morgan Times reported on February 22, 1901,  that Grant had made a visit to town on the 19th of that month, this being his first town visit since Christmas.  It was understood from those he talked to that stomach trouble was at the root of his long siege of sickness and that he was considering taking a trip to the family home in Ohio via the wagon route, believing that an extended trip of that sort would be beneficial to his health.   In the same issue, the Fort Morgan Times reported that the Bleasdale’s had rented their home farm to Fred Fulliam. 

Grant would die at the Bleasdale home on April 16, 1901, and the Brush Tribune would later report his cause of death to be tuberculosis.  He was 35.  Tuberculosis was a much-dreaded disease at the time, known to kill 450 Americans per day, most between the ages of 15 and 44. 

Grant’s remains would be buried under the auspices of Brush Lodge No. 69 of the Knights of Pythias at Brush Memorial Cemetery.  His gravestone contains the emblem of the Knights.   

About the Photo

Going from left to right in the photo, you’ll see Tillie with daughters Nellie, Alice and Lily standing in front of the Bleasdale home, which Grant built in the mid 1890’s. Alice is holding a doll and Lily has a weed sprayer in hand.  A possible gauge as to whether Ulysses was still living or had passed away by the time this photo was taken, would be the size of their youngest daughter, Nellie, who was but two years and eight months old when her father died.  In the photo she looks to be at least three years of age, but I could be wrong. In any event, I cannot imagine what weight must have been resting on Tillie’s shoulders when this photo was taken, whether Grant had passed or was still alive but in the throes of a serious wasting illness.   

As of 1910, Tillie was still farming.  (I read a most interesting sentence in the obituary for Tillie’s mother, Emilie  Simone Plowhead, who died in Brush on July 3, 1910.  You’ll recall that she and her husband, John, and family made Greeley their home after the demise of the Latham settlement.  John would pass away in 1892, with his remains (as well as those of one of their daughters), interred at Greeley’s Linn Grove Cemetery.  Sometime after 1900, Emilie would move to a residence  on Clifton Street in Brush, where she was listed in the 1910 Census as head of the household.  Under her roof lived daughters Lillie and Violet and son Charles.  Tillie’s obituary stated “… it is believed that  Mrs. Plowhead’s dread of carrying corpses any great distance induced her to make the request to be buried at Brush.”  Her wish was fulfilled, and her remains lie in the Brush Memorial Cemetery.) 

By 1920, Tillie had moved into Brush proper, and daughter Alice was living with her.  At that time, Alice was working as a carpenter at the sugar factory.  That same year found daughters Nellie and Lily living in Denver, where Lily worked as a railroad telegraph operator and Nellie as a teacher.  (Nellie, like her sisters, may have received a teaching degree at the Colorado Normal School in Greeley, but I was unable to track that down.)  

Lily was a widow by this point in time.  Lily had married Kansas native and fellow radio telegraph operator Cecil Gibbs in 1915, when he was serving as the station agent and telegraph operator for the Union Pacific Railroad in the town of Hardin (which sits about nineteen miles east-southeast of Greeley).  He lost his life to the Spanish Flu in 1918, and his remains are interred at the Linn Grove cemetery in Greeley.    

In June of 1920, Nellie would marry World War I veteran Miller Pyle, a native of Missouri, and they would settle in Sterling, where Miller worked as a telegraph company lineman.  They would go on to have three children. 

Alice would marry ranchman Frank Colwell in July of 1921.  They would eventually reside outside of Brush, where Alice taught school. Their marriage would produce six children. 

In the same year as Alice’s marriage, Tillie,  now retired, would sell the home place and move to Sterling to live. 

Lily (Bleasdale) Gibbs, Manager. Postal Telegraph Office, Sterling

By 1923, Lily was living and working in Sterling, having been named  manager of the Postal Telegraph Office there.  The Office was state of the art – it boasted “eight wires connecting with all U.S. cities and with all American cables.”   In addition, the office accepted radio messages to be sent to ships as far out to sea as 500 miles.   It’s likely that one of Lily’s co-workers was her brother-in-law, Miller Pyle, who, as noted above, worked in Sterling as a telegraph company lineman.  As far as I know, the Postal Telegraph Office was the only such business  in Sterling.

My blog features a marvelous photo of Lily in her role as manager of the Sterling Postal Telegraph Office (see https://jacksoldphotosofcolorado.com/1358-2/ ).  She is seated at a table set in the bed of a pickup truck bedecked with U.S. flags for a parade (perhaps for July 4th). Note the miniature telegraph poles at each end of the truck with telegraph wires strung between them. Lily appears to have her right index finger poised on a telegraph key. Note the coiled wire connecting the telegraph unit to one of the lines above and what appears to be a helix antenna angling up from the telegraph unit.   The truck is positioned in front of Sterling’s Hotel Graham, which was the company’s location.   

Lily would die at age 54 on Christmas day of 1944 in a Sterling hospital following a short illness.   A tribute to Lily in the Sterling Advocate newspapers stated, “If those who have known Sterling well during the past quarter century were to list the truly gracious persons in the community, few would fail to mention Mrs. Gibbs. She was a lover of beauty in many forms. And from her person radiated a cheerfulness that immediately lifted others in spirit.”       Lily’s remains are interred at Sterling’s Riverside Cemetery.

More Passages

Tillie would pass away at age 86 on June 19, 1949.  Like her daughter, Lily, Tillie’s remains are interred at the Riverside Cemetery in Sterling.   

Nellie’s husband, Milller Pyle, would precede Nellie in death, dying in 1941 at age 56.  He had lived most of his life with the deleterious effects of a gas attack he suffered in  World War I.  Nellie would live 67 years, dying in Sterling in 1965.  Her remains, like Miller’s, lie in the Brush Memorial  Cemetery.

Alice and her husband, Frank, lived long lives.  Frank was 86 when he died in 1977, and Alice died at age 94 in 1986.  Their remains are interred at the Brush Memorial Cemetery.

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