Make your own story

Sometimes, I think that’s just what other people have done.  Just write anything!  Fill in the blanks however you want….and someone, somewhere is going to believe you!

Not me!!!  I either want facts….or I will leave it blank and let you write your own story!

Family history books are just that…..books that someone writes about their family history.  It is their story.  And I use them as hints and leads….but not as facts.

Moshe Shaltiel-Gracian published such a book in 2005 about the Shaltiel/Saltiel family.  It’s not a bad book, in fact - quite interesting.  He wrote this about Emanuel Saltiel’s wife:

Soon after her arrival in Cotopaxi, Elizabeth, 36-years-old and the mother of three small children aged two, four, and six, fell in love with Frank W. Woods, an employee, in his early twenties, at the Cotopaxi Post Office, which Emanuel owned.

Let’s stop there for a moment.  Census records and other documents, including birth certificates show us that the children were:

John Tammany Saltiel, born 1871, age 9 in 1880 (I have his actual birth certificate)

Henry Clarence Saltiel, born 1873, age 7 in 1880

Adelaide Rachel (Lucy) Saltiel, born 1877, age 3 in 1880

Elizabeth Wolfe Saltiel, born 1845, age 35 in 1880

Continuing on with Moshe’s writing:

While Emanuel was crisscrossing the country, negotiating deals to build expensive furnaces and a new railroad depot, the two began an affair, and exchanged rather simple-minded letters……The lovers did not consider that, since Emanuel owned the post office, it was inevitable that one of these letters would find its way to him. 
Elizabeth was quickly shipped back east; the children remained with Emanuel…..on the same day that she wrote her aunt (5/1/1881), she was hand-delivered, at her residence at 40 East 126th Street in New York City, a summons to divorce court.  The divorce did not take effect, for legal reasons, for a year…..Elizabeth remained in New York and made her living teaching music.

Later on in the book, Moshe writes:

A year after his divorce, on Valentine’s Day, 1883, in Pueblo, Colorado, he married a second time, to Fannie Shelveson, who managed his real estate……unfortunately, seven years later, in December 1890, Fannie followed in Elizabeth’s footsteps, and began an affair with Jerry B. McLene, who lived in the Broadway, a Denver hotel owned by Emanuel.  Once more, Emanuel filed for divorce and, like Elizabeth, Fannie did not appear in court.  Unlike Elizabeth, however, Fannie married her lover on 14 July 1891, three weeks after the divorce was granted.

We find Emanuel and Fannie living on Watsoon St in Denver in the 1885 census.  No children in the household.

Let’s look at this marriage/divorce timeline in relationship to the children’s ages.  

	1880 moved to Cotopaxi	1882 parents divorce	1883 father remarries Fannie Shelveson	1885 father moves to Denver	1891 father divorces Fannie
John	9	11	12	14	20
Henry	7	9	10	12	18
Adelaide	3	5	6	8	14

So even if Elizabeth left the children with Emanuel in 1881 when she left, they were not living with him in Denver in 1885.  I have not been able to locate Elizabeth in the 1885 census in NYC.

There is an Elizabeth M.  Saltiel living at 343 E 117th St in the 1886 New York City directory - doing “washing”.  She was not in the 1885 directory.  Directories do not list children.

Elizabeth and her son, Henry, were in the 1895 New Jersey Census.  Newark NJ.  This makes sense as her daughter, Adelaide, married Francis Henry Lovekin in 1895 in Newark NJ.

Did the court give custody to Emanuel in the divorce?  I don’t know as I haven’t located the divorce records.  But it is obvious that 3 short years later, they are not living with him.

I cannot locate Fannie in any city directory in Pueblo.  What brought her there?  

So why not put this perspective into a timeline looking at Saltiel and the arrival of the Colonists at Cotopaxi…..makes it even more interesting!

• 1879 - the earliest I can find Saltiel in Fremont County
• 1880 - his family arrives, a house has already been built
• 1881 - his wife has an affair and he sends her off to NYC.  One writer says the children (I believe they were ages 4, 8, & 10) stay in Cotopaxi
• 1881 - I have a document that shows Saltiel sold his house to Hart.  Where did he (and the children - if they were there) reside?
• 1882 - February, Saltiel gets a divorce
• 1882 - May, the Jewish colonists arrive
• 1883 - February, Saltiel remarries (when did he have time to court this woman?)
• 1883 - some of the colonists relocate away from Cotopaxi
• 1883 - lawsuits against Saltiel for not paying miners who worked for him
• 1884 - May, the colony disbands 
• 1884 - 1887 Saltiel involved in multiple lawsuits against his mining claims.  He lost all of his property in Fremount county as a result of these lawsuits
• 1884 - May 31, Gold Tom shot and killed
• 1885 - June, Saltiel and wife are in Denver in the 1885 census, children are not with them

Questions - 

1. did Fannie ever live in Cotopaxi?  I can find no evidence of that.
2. when did Emanuel move to Denver?  If he sold his residence in 1881, where did he stay when he was in Cotopaxi?
3. where were the 3 children after their mother was sent to NYC?
4. if the children were in Cotopaxi, where did they live and who cared for them?

Saltiel was a very busy man!  One of these days I will create a month-by-month timeline of Saltiel’s activities…..but in the meantime, I can tell you, he was so tied up in Arapahoe County courts, in Denver, in NYC, and now we find out how busy he was with his own personal life….I do not see him as a custodial parent and it would explain his often lengthy absences from the Colonists at Cotopaxi.  

No wonder it has been written that the colonists said they got no answers or support from him and they turned to the Denver Jewish community.

I do understand why many writers “fill in the blanks” with what they think happened.  I think my “job” is to ask the questions about the blanks.  As more and more records become digitized and/or available for public research, hopefully we may find more answers.  

In the meantime, be careful what you read about Cotopaxi.  Is it just someone’s conjecture?  Is it even probable?  Is it just a “story” that someone made up?  Makes you wonder!!!

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Finding new evidence of hard times at Cotopaxi

A few years back, I found the miner's lien that proves the Colonists worked in the mines unpaid.

But someone alleged that they were paid in script and could use that at the Cotopaxi store.

I wonder.

In the past few weeks, I've unearthed some rather interesting documents that tell this story (note, much more research to do in order to validate this).


1.  Saltiel incorporated all of his property into a business called the Cotopaxi Placer Mining Company

2.  The Cotopaxi Placer Mining Company then sold part of this to E. S. Hart (a cousin of Saltiel)  for $5600.00 in Oct, 1881, and included in that property was a 10 roomed building known as the Cotopaxi Hotel.  I am not sure if the Cotopaxi store was included in this property description or not -  part of future research.)

I'm pretty sure that in 1881, $5600 was quite a lot of money!

3.  In November, 1882, the Cotopaxi Placer Mining Company filed a lawsuit against Hart and demanded that he vacate the property.

I will search the local court records for more on this suit.  But Hart must have won.  And to what expense?

4.  A few months after this, in May, 1883, Hart borrowed money from D. G. Peabody and placed a lien against the store, it's contents and the hotel.

5.  In Sept, 1884, Hart sold the hotel to L. J. Hylton.  He must have split the store off because it is not listed in this sale.

The miner's lien was for unpaid work performed between 2/1/1883 and 4/14/1883.  After the lawsuit against Hart.

We first read of Hart's financial problems in May 1883.....just after the miner's had worked for free and when Hart supposedly provided them with product for their script.  But nothing showing that Saltiel ever paid Hart.  That would be more than enough to bankrupt Hart!

This study has taught me that dates are extremely important.  Until now, we did not know that Saltiel had sued Hart (his own cousin!) via the Company that he (Saltiel) had incorporated  himself into.

We did not know that Hart had paid him $5600 for the property.

My personal opinion is that the Colonists who were part of the lien against the mine for unpaid wages would not have used script in the store....but that other miners surely did.  And this is what lead to Hart's financial difficulties.  The timing is perfect.

Can you imagine going as much as 62 days without pay?  One of the miner's did!!  Here's a list of the claims from that document.

Again  - there is absolutely no evidence that Saltiel ever reimbursed Hart, in fact, we now know that Hart had to borrow money in May 1883, he sold the store for only $150.00 in Sept, 1884.

These documents probably bring up more questions than they answer!  Proving oral histories may turn out to be a bigger puzzle than just finding names to put in a family tree!  Right now, I'm pretty much loving the "hardship" stories of the colony.  The known colonists on the list are Warsitzer, Lauterstein, Neuman, Schaums, Minkovsky, Dublitzky, and Charvsky.  But I do see a few more names that might well be Jewish!  At what point do I end the research and just start writing the story?

Good question!!!

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Genealogy - research snafus

I decided to start this blog to help my fellow researchers.  More on that in future posts.  But today....let's talk about your local clerk and recorder's office.  No better way to start something than to dive right into the heart of it!!!

The Canon City, Colorado, Clerk and Recorder's Office has lost a book!

Well, maybe that's too deep of a dive!  LOL!!!  Years ago, I started researching the Cotopaxi Jewish Colony.  I visited the Clerk & Recorder's Office and went through the Grantor/Grantee index and started writing down books I needed to look at.  This was long before they digitized their records.

There was a book simply titled AL or "A of L" in the index.  I asked one of the gals for it and she came back and said she couldn't find it, it must have been an error in the index.  When I showed her 5 different pages that referenced this book, she decided to go look again.

I remember that day well.  She would come back up from the basement every half hour and report to me that she was still looking.  I was busy doing other research so I didn't mind.  At 4:30 pm, she found it!  It was a tiny narrow journal and had been stuck between 2 large journals.  She said that she had worked there 33 years and no one had asked to see this journal.

For me, it was a land mine - an explosion filled with everything I needed to prove oral histories!  As I sat and thumbed through the journal...all legal jargon about mine liens, lawsuits and more, I decided to pay to have almost the entire journal copied.

I missed a page or 2.  So about a year later, I went back and asked to see the journal again.  This time, the news was rather devastating.  I was told that the journal had been sent to the National Archives to be digitized and it had been lost.  They were hoping it would be found.

Oh my gosh!  How lucky am I that I made copies of it!

Yesterday, I was back doing a bit more research.  Everything has been digitized and computerized.  I love it!  I happened to run across an entry for the miner's lien out of that journal, so I popped over to the desk and asked if they had ever recovered the AL journal.  No.....it is gone forever.

So I told them the story and that I had copies of the journal and offered the copies to them.  They said that they couldn't accept them.  That they could only use documents in their possession.

Sort of weird as I really did get my copies from them and have the receipt to prove it.

One of these days, I will make a copy of my copies and donate them to the local History Center.  But how sad....someone going to the clerk and recorder's office will never know where to go to find them. There is no link between the 2 offices.  Someone will go in, look at the grantee/grantor book, see the names, request the AL journal, and be told that it doesn't exist.

Be still my heart!  As a researcher, this devastates me.  As a genealogist, it slightly infuriates me.  I am offering them copies of something I got from them in order to help future genealogists and they are declining my offer.

I am writing this so that you will know.....if you run into a dead end, look around the corner.  Here in Canon City, go to the History Center on Hwy 50.  And try to remember - employees clock in at 8 am and out at 4 pm.  It is just a job to them.  There is no compassion and they don't really concern themselves with a tiny little insignificant lost journal!

Why is this important at all?  The family stories of the descendants of the Cotopaxi Colony claim that the Jews were tricked into going to Cotopaxi.  They were lured with stories of how great farming would be when a man named Saltiel only wanted them to work in their mines.  They were tricked.  They ended up working in his mines to survive....and then he didn't pay them.

This lien does 2 things.  It provides the names of some of the members of the colony, and it shows how many hours they worked without pay.  Some worked 2 1/2 months without receiving their pay.  Can you imagine doing that today?

They got together as a group and put a lien against Saltiel's mine to stake a claim for their wages.




You can see the entire document on the Cotopaxi-Colony website. 

So even though I acquired this from the local Clerk and Recorder's office, you cannot go there to verify my research.....other than to see the document, 10869, still listed in the index books.  Fortunately, it is listed in each index with the name of each miner, so I don't think that will ever be removed.

Lost from the Clerk and Recorder's office.....but not lost from the world!  Ah! gotta love research snafus!

Edited - February 19, 2016

I woke up at 2 am this morning with a realization of the significance of the "loss" of the book A of L by the Clerk and Recorder's office.  Is this a crime???

A of L was book "A" of Liens.  The entire book was liens against early mine claims in Fremont County.

How very convenient that this book is found after not being looked at for 33 years....and then it miraculously turns up "lost"....."forever"!  Liens against a mine that have not been resolved could easily alter the course of ownership to the present day.  Title insurance companies could go broke because they "insured" that the property was clear.  An entire book of liens - found - could create a nightmare for the assessor's office, the clerk and recorder's office....I think the list might be endless!!!

And so the book was "lost".

And although I have copies of most of the liens in this book - if you were to do a title search to the property - and you do not have the original lien....you would be screwed because the lien is no longer in the clerk and recorder's office.

And absolutely no one is held accountable for this crime!  I am sure everyone who works there is thinking that no one will ever question them some 134 years later.  I am now wondering if this book was ever actually sent to the national archives to be recorded....or was it tossed in the trash?  Small town Canon City - people "take care of business" their own way?

WOW!

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