Photo of the early days of the Meeker Hotel from www.historymeeker.com
Once more, the Dunbar family in this edition are NOT related to any Dunbar family in Meeker today. We covered the dramatic death of Charles Dunbar last week. What I didn’t know when I started my research, is where Charley came from. Meeker acquaintances only knew that he arrived at the Camp on the White River with Mrs. S.C. Wright and all assumed that the both had come from Rawlins, Wyoming. But what about before that?
I began searching early newspapers in Colorado and Wyoming. Remember, Charley died here two years before our historic 1885 Meeker Herald began printing. My break was in the Nov. 22, 1883, issue of the Laramie [Wyoming] Weekly Boomerang newspaper outlining Charley’s untimely exit from this world. I halt my narrative long enough to pose a question to our readers. Whatever drove this editor/printer in the windy town of Laramie to name his paper after a silly-shaped stick from Australia? Anyway, back to the subject. The article reads: “The Widow Dunbar and her three sons, who made Laramie their home for several years, but who, some time ago, moved into North Park, will be remembered by many of our readers. One of her boys, while the family lived here, was tried for horse-stealing, found guilty and spent a year in the penitentiary, while the reputation borne by the mother and the other two sons was none of the best. It seems that Charley Dunbar, after going to the park, went on to Carbonate when the boom began at that place, and then drifted on to Meeker near the old White River agency, where he opened a saloon and restaurant.” The information was provided to the editor by none other than Mr. D.M. Richards, “a Denver gentleman who has stock and real-estate interest at Meeker.” Richards was the very same promoter who set up the Meeker Town Company. Granted, this statement with no names is a vague clue, but one that I could mine for family information.
I again turned to the Laramie newspapers for other references to “Widow Dunbar.” What I found were two widows of two Dunbars. I quickly eliminated one of them. She was living in Laramie after 1883 and she and her husband left no children. This couldn’t be Charley’s mother. She had left town by 1883 with her sons. She disappears into North Park, which had only a few hundred settlers at that point in time. She left no trace there.
With that dead end, I turned to the “convicted horse thief” Dunbar. Bingo! The Jan. 24, 1879, Laramie Sentinel newspaper carried stories of Benjamin Dunbar and John H. Parton stealing horses belonging to H. G. Welch and Walter Gussenhoven. The stock was recovered and “the boys own up the crime.” Later, in the Jan. 31, 1879, edition, Ben Dunbar and two fellow prisoners attempted a jailbreak. “The prisoners actively engaged in this enterprise were, Griffin, who murdered a fellow prisoner with a pair of shears; Erwin and ‘The Kid,’ of the northern mail robbers, and Ben Dunbar, the Horsethief.”
Ben was rubbing shoulders with the wrong people. Charles Condon, alias “The Kid” became a violent stage robber and earned a life sentence in prison. The article continues: “They took up a flagstone in the bottom of a cell, and tunneled down three feet deep, out under the main wall of the jail, and up to the surface, thus driving a tunneled some 15 or 18 feet in length. When approaching the surface there stood Captain Butler at the mouth good-naturedly pointing a six-shooter down into the hole, and inviting them to back down, which they did without stopping to argue the case. The near approach of Court makes these desperadoes very uneasy….” The Feb. 14, 1879, Laramie Sentinel has a brief paragraph: “Territory vs Benjamin Dunbar: grand larceny; convicted; sentenced to two years and one month in the Nebraska Penitentiary. John Parton; grand larceny; acquitted. “ I confess, I’m a bit puzzled why Ben was sent to Nebraska instead of the Wyoming territorial prison in Laramie. I know this all reads like a Wild West dime novel. Charley Dunbar certainly had some memorable brothers. MORE NEXT WEEK: THE ROBBERS ROOST GANG!
By ED PECK | Special to the HT