EDITOR’S NOTE: This fall will mark the 140th anniversary of the official founding of the Town of Meeker (and this newspaper). Mr. Allsebrook is the first name listed on the founder’s plaque on the boulder in front of the courthouse.
Many immigrants have shaped Meeker and Northwest Colorado. George Samuel Allsebrook was born in Yoxhall, Staffordshire, England March 10, 1838. He immigrated to America in 1868 on the ship Cuba with John Allsebrook, George’s younger brother. Eleven years prior, at the age of 19, George traveled to Australia where he worked six years raising sheep. He returned to England before traveling to America, winding up in St. Louis, Fort Lupton, and Boulder County. George arrived in the Camp on the River in 1883 accompanied by Thomas Baker, another founding father of Meeker. They arrived just in time to participate in the forming of the Meeker Townsite Company. The next year, Allsebrook went back to Boulder County and returned with a bride. He married Cecelia Mary Smith in the mining camp of Salina, Boulder County, on March 4, 1884. Cecelia was born in Kennoway, Scotland. The couple met while Cecelia was living in Salina, Colorado, with her sister, Annie, and Annie’s husband George C. Phillip. The two Georges had met previously in Denver and became lifelong friends and later in-laws.
The Allsebrook’s first daughter, Anna, may have the first white child born in the town of Meeker on Jan. 26, 1885. Allsebrook was the first superintendent of schools when Rio Blanco County was formed in 1889. He was involved in petitioning the State Legislature to split off the new county from Garfield. Allsebrook also had shares in the Meeker Flour Mill.
In July of 1894, Allsebrook was a victim of the sheepmen v. cattlemen war. As various cattle herds and sheep began to crowd the public range, it became overgrazed and competition aroused cattlemen to threats and violence. 250 sheep owned by Mr. Allsebrook and a Mr. Black were killed. The masked cowboys told Allsebrook to move the remainder of his sheep within five days or they, too, would be attacked. George moved his sheep to Wyoming and soon afterward moved his whole family to Ft. Lupton, Colorado. Meeker had lost an honorable man. Allsebrook and his family are listed in the 1900 Federal Census as farming in Fort Lupton. Allsebrook died Jan. 12, 1926, in San Diego, California, where he and Cecelia and daughter Anna had been living for at least six years.
Sources: 1880 Census; 1900 Census; NARA immigration records; Obituary Meeker Herald; This Is What I Remember books, bio written by his daughter Anna Allsebrook; Rio Blanco Historical Society; Coloradohistoricnewspapers.org;
