MEEKER | There has been much written about Mrs. S. C. Wright. She was born Sarah Caroline Ball in Pleasant Mound, South Carolina. She preferred the name Susan, and it was by that name Meeker knew her. She was formally referred to as Mrs. S. C. Wright.
As the only woman stock shareholder in the Meeker Town Company, she commands respect. In 1883, she and Charles Dunbar arrived in the Camp on the White River just as the military was wrapping things up.
With the lack of outright hostile action in the Northwest, the army was closing or consolidating their small forts in the West. With people using trains more to immigrate, the old trails didn’t need constant protection of the Army. The Army had already reassigned most of the remaining infantry. Many were sent to fight the Native Americans in the New Mexico Territory and Arizona Territory. The last unit to have garrison duty at the Camp on the White River was the U.S. 14th Infantry. They were transferred to Fort Sidney, Nebraska as part of the Department of the South Platte.
Nineteen people stepped into that void and formed an instant town. Most Western towns started with a cluster of people and tents, often where a railroad planned a stop, and the buildings came later. The Camp on the White River left us empty buildings and the town came into existence to fill the buildings. No railroad, no rich mining, farming unpractical without irrigation, and the land under the town had no owners. The closest sheriff was two days away.
I am trying to paint a picture of a 36-year-old widow setting up lodgings in an adobe enlisted men’s barracks next to a saloon run by her partner. Saloons and whiskey attract cowboys with monthly wages in their pockets. Thirsty patrons who like to gamble. The closest visual I can give you is Gunsmoke, and Miss Kitty without Matt Dillon to keep the peace.
Just a few months had passed when Mrs. Wright lost her bartending business partner, shot with a .44. She didn’t give up and move on. The first winter was lean. The big herds of cattle wouldn’t arrive until 1884. Until then money and supplies were short.
The tale goes that the new town of Meeker ran out of wheat flour to make bread. Mrs. Wright, as a cook from the south, had experience making Johnnie Cakes, a sort of corn pancake, and proceeded to show others in town how to make them. Mrs. Wright had the reputation of being kind-hearted and generous. No one was turned away just because they couldn’t pay.
Susan was also known to indulge in smoking a cigar. Which would have been shocking in high society then. But then, Meeker didn’t have any high society.
She could also be stern when the occasion called for it. Joe Rooney was attributed to saying, “She was a very good woman but she ran a saloon and a bar and she was a gambler. When a man got out of line, she kept a sawed-off pool cue there and she would take it out and beat him over the head until he got to be good. She was probably the most colorful pioneer of all of them here.”
The hotel and bar flourished. A wooden false front, just like you see on movie sets was added to the front of the adobe building. Ed Wilbur, who had been bartending for Mrs. Wright, played the role of matchmaker between Widow Wright and William H. Burke. They were married by another Meeker founding father, Judge George Hazen, on June 16, 1884.
Ed Wilber stepped aside as bartender and Burke took over the saloon. Burke began drinking up a good portion of the profits and Mrs. S.C. Burke wrote to Ed Wilber and asked him to come back to Meeker and resume his old position as bartender. The partnership was dissolved in more ways than one. The recent Mrs. S.C. Burke reverted to writing her name as Mrs. S. C. Wright once more.
By 1886, Simp Harp became Susan’s new business partner. They prospered. Harp & Wright become agents for the Studebaker line of wagons, plows and buggies. They were also agents for J. I. Case and Co. plows. This partnership was dissolved in January of 1890 when Susan bought out Mr. Harp’s interest in the business, a bar, liquor, 2 horses, and 20 head of cattle. In 1892, Susan’s health began to fail. She had been in communication with her Ball family back in Laurens County, South Carolina for some time and her half-brother had visited her in Meeker before seeking his fortune in the mining town of Creede, Colorado.
His fortune turned bad when there was a fire. Rueben and his partner lost their saloon to the fire. In Feb. 23, 1893, Susan, too sick to write a letter herself, dictated a farewell letter to her half-brother, Rueben Ball and asked him to take over the business as he would be inheriting it soon. At the age of 45, Susan died on Tuesday morning, March 21, 1893. In her will, she stipulated that Rueben take her body back to be buried in South Carolina. Susan made it known that she didn’t want her grave covered by snow.
The problem with dying in 1893 Northwest Colorado is that in March, travel is always inconvenient. Traveling with a coffin in a wagon doubly so. Reuben Ball honored her wish with a rather unique solution: He had Mrs. Wright’s body buried temporarily in the new Highland Cemetery. He had a shed built to cover her grave to keep the winter snow off. Later he took the coffin back to South Carolina for reburial. A unique ending for a unique lady.
My thanks to the Rio Blanco Historical Society; and their This is What I Remember Series; Ellen Reichert; Ancestry.com; NARA
By ED PECK | Special to the HT