Occasionally, I run across a person who simply disappears in records. This doesn’t make for a riveting newspaper article. It kind of falls into the category of a personal quest. I took it as a challenge to my research ego. If you are easily bored, skip to the last paragraph. This article will be more about family history hunting skills than a True West larger-than-life character.
A gentleman named H. I. Sutton owned ranch land on Flag Creek outside Meeker for almost 30 years without much of a trail. Most of the people I questioned didn’t remember him at all. Didn’t even know what the initials stood for. They did know where the Sutton Ranch was up Flag Creek, but that is about all. H. I. didn’t appear in any of the Rio Blanco Federal Censuses until 1950. No birth information, no family living in Colorado, no newspaper articles in Meeker, no mentions of club memberships, stockman associations, nothing, including the lack of an obituary here. No grave. He was almost a ghost. In most urban places this is not unusual, but it is unusual in Northwest Colorado. In Meeker, old families are not just related, but are often connected by blood and marriage in seven different ways.
H. I. didn’t have any connections. What he did have is land. Thanks to the staff at the RBC County Clerk, I found that Sutton started accumulating land in 1929, the Depression years when many families couldn’t hang on to their ranches and farms in America. It was a sad time when whole families loaded a truck or a wagon and just moved out. In the early deeds, I found H. I.’s full name: Harold Isaac Sutton. I also found a clue: he was from Cook County, Illinois. Most of Cook County is known as Chicago. He also took out no mortgages to pay for the land. If you use a little imagination, one could guess a few sources of hard cash during prohibition. Or he could have just inherited old money. I really don’t know. Harold did appear in my search of the 1950 census here on Flag Creek. He was listed as age 60, married, but no wife listed in the household, only a housekeeper and ranch hand. His neighbors were Steve Pappas and Bruce Baker. Not a lot of clues there. So, I checked to see if Harold had sold his ranch sometime after 1950. In 1957 I found a document stating that Mr. Charles M. Nelson was the Cook County executor for the late H. I. Sutton who died Feb 4, 1957.
Now I had three key pieces of the puzzle. His birth year, death date and connection to Cook County, Illinois. Now I could use the magic of Ancestry.com. He had a house and a wife in Oak Park, Illinois. He was listed there in the census as married with no children. He listed his occupation as owner of a plastering company. I had no idea Chicago plastering could be that lucrative an enterprise! Sutton had left a will with Northern Trust Co. in Cook County, Illinois. The will gave $865 worth of personal property to Leda Woodward Westfall, the housekeeper I found in the 1950 census. Leda’s daughter, Nellie, age 90, is still alive in California. Harold’s wife, Bess, died before him in 1951. I wonder if she ever accompanied him out to the Wild West, Meeker.
Everything else was put into a trust fund, including 7,500 acres of ranch land with no mortgages. I was unable to figure out who the beneficiaries were. The trust later sold the land to Benjamin Porter Franklin Jr.
Mike Grady told me about finding H. I. Sutton on a list of donors at the Glenwood Springs hospital. This dovetails nicely with a death notice I found in Glenwood Springs. He was buried back in Illinois. I really don’t have a big ending to this story. I find it a bit sad to find someone who lived 67 years and left nothing but a pile of money behind. A man who leaves a legacy of family, friends and gave back to his community is the one who truly dies rich.
By ED PECK
