Time Machine Tuesday: Colorado’s First Ladies

March is Women’s History Month, an appropriate time to recognize the First Ladies of our state.  Whether they came to Colorado as pioneers or worked to leave the state a better place, these ladies led very interesting lives. In the 1960s and ’70s Helen Cannon of the Colorado Historical Society profiled a number of the state’s earliest first ladies in Colorado Magazine, which is now available online.  The following ladies were profiled.

• Julia Pratte Gilpin was Colorado’s first first lady.

  

• Margaret Gray Evans was a direct descendant of Pilgrims on the Mayflower.

  

• Ellen Kellogg Hunt came to Colorado in a covered wagon in 1859.

  

• Mary Thompson McCook “was renowned for her beauty, charm, and wit.”

  

• Josephine Evans Elbert has the distinction of being both a first lady and a first daughter.  Both her father, John Evans, and husband, Samuel Elbert, served as territorial governors. Margaret Gray Evans was Josephine’s stepmother.

  

• Eliza Pickrell Routt was active in women’s suffrage.

  

• Fidelia James Pitkin was an accomplished pianist.

  

• Mary Goodell Grant lived in Colorado’s famous Grant-Humphreys Mansion.

  

• Rebecca Hill Eaton joined the temperance movement.

  

• Ella Nye Adams traveled around the world.

  

• Jane Barnes Cooper helped found the Craig Colony, which became Craig Hospital.

  

• Celia Crane Waite was married to Colorado’s only third-party governor.

  

• Emma Fletcher Thomas was originally from Canada.

  

• Nellie Martin Orman threw lavish parties.

  

• Frances Clelland Peabody described herself as “a typical American matron.”

  

Finally, for a look at some of the more recent First Ladies, see the Colorado Historical Society’s book Queen of the Hill: The Private Life of the Colorado Governor’s Mansion, available for checkout from our library.