Samuel A. McEvers was born in Canada in 1865.  The year 1891 found him in Colorado Springs, where he married Nellie Richards, who was originally from Michigan.  Nellie bore them a son, George, and a daughter, Edith.  By 1895, Nellie and Samuel and family lived in Denver, where Samuel worked as a brakeman for the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad.  Nellie died in January of 1897 at the age of 24 and was buried at Fairmount Cemetery in Denver.    In December of that year, Samuel wed Nebraskan Laura T. Miller in Denver, and she later gave birth to a son, Harold. 

In 1907, the McEvers moved to the Fort Lupton area, where they purchased a farm north of town.  (Laura’s November 7, 1963, obituary in the Greeley Tribune identifies that farm as the Fort Lupton Canning Company Farm.)  Then, sometime during the period 1912 to 1914 they opened the McEvers Hotel at 235 Denver Avenue in Lupton.  Soon after they opened, the Union Pacific Railroad contracted with them to lodge its work crews at their hotel during layovers.  One role filled by Laura was that of hotel manager, as indicated on a McEvers Hotel matchbook I came across.  The McEvers shared the building with Adamson Furniture and Hardware. (Note the wagon with milk cans on it just to the right of Adamson’s store.) 

As you can see, the hotel’s dining room looked out onto Denver Avenue through a large picture window.  The most recent photo I’ve come across showing that window intact dates to the 1960’s and is part of the Greeley Museum’s Weld County Images Collection  (see https://cdm16720.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16720coll1/id/3643).  That photo reveals that the hotel was still there (at the time it was owned by Bill and Nelle Deason), but the hotel dining room has become a farm labor employment office, which probably had a connection with Fort Lupton’s labor camp. 

In later years, the Adamson Furniture and Hardware store space would be occupied by the Deason drug store, Easterday drug store and, until recently, Dale’s Pharmacy.   

Per the U.S. Census, by 1930 Laura and Samuel were living in Los Angeles, and their son Harold, a bank teller, and his wife, Helen, a bookkeeper in a legal office, were living with them.  It’s possible Samuel and Laura moved there because of Samuel’s health problems.  Though Samuel is listed in that census as being retired, it’s possible he and Laura still owned the hotel, for there is a Greeley Tribune report of Laura hosting a gathering of the Thursday Afternoon Bridge Club at the hotel in July of 1934. 

Samuel died in Los Angeles in 1933 at age 67 or 68 and is buried at Fairmount Cemetery in Denver.   Laura died in October, 1963, at age 84 in San Marino, California, and is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. 

REFERENCES:

• California Death Index, 1905 – 1939 (www.ancestry.com)

• Colorado, County Marriage and State Index, 1862 – 2006 (www.ancestry.com)

• “Crossroads in Eden, The Development of Fort Lupton, 1835-2000,” prepared by Adam Thomas, October 2003, https://www.fortlupton.org/DocumentCenter/View/398/Crossroads-to-Eden?bidId=

• Fairmount Cemetery Records, 1890 – 1906, Denver County, COGenweb at https://sites.google.com/site/denvercountycogenweb/cemeteries/fairmount-cemetery-records-1890—1906/mcfarland—mcwilliams

• Find a Grave at https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/35359333                            www.findagrave.com/memorial/85464161/laura-mcevers and https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/13468159/nellie-mcevers

• Greeley Tribune, Nov 7, 1963, July 25, 1934, and July 7, 1930, at  (www.newspapers.com  )

• Highplains Library District at https://cdm16720.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16720coll1/id/3643

• U.S. City Directories, 1822 – 1995  (www.ancestry.com)