Jenni Hightower and Mary Jasper

00:04 All right, then we're ready for you. My name is Jenni Hightower. Today is Wednesday, November 25th, 2020. I am in Viola, Idaho, and I am talking today with my Mom Mary Jasper.

00:26 Good morning.

00:30 My name is Mary Jasper. I'm 79 years old. The date is November 25th 2020. I'm calling from Phoenix Arizona and I'm talking with my daughter Jenny Jenny Jenny.

00:50 So Mom, I know the last number of years you've been collecting a lot of family stories and writing them down and click and pictures because you are the last living oldest living member of our family and you have discovered that there are seven generations of Colorado. Colorado wind in our family people who still live there and there's been living there for Seven Generations. Do you know the story of how our family first went to, Colorado?

01:32 Yes, I do Jenny. It's very interesting. And I think that the Civil War.

01:42 Which is very important.

01:44 My great-grandfather Tinker on my mother's side had been a soldier in the last two battles of the Civil War that had been just totally devastating and then my great grandmother on my Father's son who was the first person on that side of the family to come to Colorado. She also was listed as a soldier and a nurse in Civil War at the age of 14 in in 16.

02:21 And it was such a devastating 500,000 people are killed in the Civil War. It was it was the bloodiest worst war that America has ever been in.

02:35 And when when are when my grandfather Tinker went back to sake Harper which was the Harper for New York City after the war since finding out such a horrible whores and when he got there if everything was in disarray. He was not just picking up where he had left when he gone to the war things are so different. He wasn't married at a time.

03:07 And

03:09 And so did my grand my grandmother. My great grandma's McNary had lived in, Kentucky.

03:20 And she is listed as a soldier in the Civil War at the age of 14.

03:30 And that she had been either arrested or had the app.

03:39 Getting a lot of trouble because of the 15th Amendment for some reason she she did not.

03:46 Go with the 15th Amendment, which is no slavery in America. I don't know what happened. But for both of them is been devastating.

04:00 And

04:02 My grandma did Jen got married to the doctors and medical doctor after the war and in.

04:13 In the early part of the twentieth century 1907 and her son or youngest son on my grandfather who is Frank decided that they would go to Colorado and Homestead.

04:38 And so that's so Deborah McNary is your great-grandmother. Yes and went to Colorado and she took one of her sons or persons took her to her. She was a widow and and and

05:06 She'd never seen mountains before. Mountains like the like the Rocky Mountains and at that time Colorado was blooming half of the 19th century the gold gold gold and the train made it so he could go to Colorado Rihanna lingerie and Cheyenne to Denver. So it was totally wide open and being such a terrible place in Civil War. The Colorado must have just seemed like heaven and many many of the soldiers in the Civil War. That's true.

05:59 Show my my grandfather Frank her son.

06:06 It's filed of in Homestead Act and I believe it was like

06:14 And 19 1909 and he didn't get in the March and was in Gone with her and in Denver for her to stay in while he got a building or some place to live and he went into the ranch. It's probably a hundred and twenty-five name of the closest town and she stayed in Denver while he while he went got things done.

07:02 I believe they went by train. I have some letters that Deborah has written to her sisters and she said that Frank has friends and and family who were going by covered wagon and when they went by covered wagon, and they had livestock and they were bringing farm implements with them that they didn't have any livestock and they didn't have a farm implement. So I believe that they traveled by train.

07:36 So then he must have had must have butt materials or something in Denver and then took them down to the homestead around Sugar City and hers later. She states that he has he had ordered and they had sense beans for the roots and for the first training house in the Deaver planning on doing song making fun after they had to have to have the Homestead Act that you had to live on your property.

08:15 And you you would be able to get it at a hundred and sixty Acres as a homesteader. And so that's that's what they said. That's what he was doing when she was living in a boarding house in Denver. And so the lender was sent for the house.

08:38 But when he tried to make sod Fort for the walls.

08:43 It only crumbled. They didn't realize how to try and semi-arid land 10 p.m. So I would and needed a regular house.

09:00 Made a little cabin, you know what they were planning to do or do you want to be a nurse or well they came.

09:15 The king from Kentucky and Missouri

09:20 That mean you're definitely farmland and it's it's very green and in inhibited and it's it's nothing like Eastern Colorado or letters that it had rained and didn't eat one night all night long and snowed in the mountains, but it's you haven't seen any more moisture for another 4 months.

10:03 And they just stand realized I did not realize how similar are it. It was in that they had heard that in Oklahoma and Kansas as soon as people get there and they start cultivating then the weather changes so that there would be more moisture and more rain, but they had to carry water for a mile and a half when they got there until my grandfather has been able to take away all so

10:39 Wow, so high desert

10:49 Really didn't didn't realize that. Well, they are there was Sugar City and a lot of investors came and they decided that they would start it and they would and it was a blue Town even if she doesn't like 1930-1940, maybe twenty or thirty thousand people lived in 7 8 Mile tonight. My family's properties near Homestead and

11:32 The Arkansas River came from Colorado. And so that's where that it takes a lot of water.

11:40 To grow sugar beets in into the refinery Denver Aurora is is a section of the game to her and Colorado Springs and Pueblo favorite towns in the Watershed before Eastern Colorado and they gone the water rights for the most of the Arkansas breeder. So by the time that night 19, can I get 11 or so came by when they have their most it's built and ready to go in the water. There was really no water for running. And so they rant they they got cheap angry sheep, and that's what they did my grandfather.

12:40 Was a became the county commissioner and I part of his job was for Education. He would go throughout the area and Sebring schools needed to be built and and my grandmother so my my great-grandmother than was was still living with him. And then there were two two sisters that weren't married and they came from, Ohio.

13:23 And they each had filed for a homestead which was 160 each you had to leave on your homestead. So they built one building and the border of the homesteads went right into the center of the building and so totally buy and sell any personal family. They didn't know anybody. So anyway, and I think

14:00 Alice Allison Janney Frasier

14:06 Can you freeze her and I think the Civil War also has been in some ways change their lives a little bit because they were Mary blades fit with 500,000 soldiers killed. I'm thinking that perhaps they were fewer fewer men around so they go to Colorado on Homestead in the meantime then.

14:36 Frank

14:39 And Mike my grandmother Alice.

14:42 Daily run they hosted next door and Frank was in charge of the school's my grandmother and Jenny and Aunt my aunt. Jenny had been both teachers in, Ohio.

14:57 And they built a one-room schoolhouse right in the vicinity of where they were homesteading and then the Two Sisters became the One World Schoolhouse teachers married.

15:23 So, okay. That's how that's how it started.

15:30 Sylveon

15:32 I don't know about years later. My my my my dream my father was born.

15:44 And it was at Christmas time and it was very she in her letter she mentions how cold it is in the house and she had no telephone no electricity. No running water. I need it if it was incredibly in our day and age it would be impossible and he lit my father was premature.

16:13 And there were no doctors around that my great-grandmother Deborah had to learn to be a nurse and she had later than married and medical doctor. And so she was a good nurse and when her grandson had was born and he was having a terrible he was he was dying. He like my grandmother did not have enough milk for her baby out on the Eastern semi-deserts migrate my great-grandmother. I'm sure nursed him as much as she could and might and they found in these sounds and add.

17:00 A meal order add floor of a formula feed babies and they sent away for that and I think it's called Tamplin where it's like

17:16 Anyway, it was some milk now and they gave it to my father and he started immediately to get better.

17:30 So there by that time he had lived at the ranch. I don't know 3:40 or I don't know maybe even longer than that and all the neighbors were doing the same thing, but there are no telephones no, no, you have to go talk to people. So if my neighbors in a few friends of families that were in the area they were homesteading to every morning they would get up and and take the Scopes and look and see if there was a diaper hanging I Allison's house if there was going to be a Good Sam was still alive.

18:29 Female order and they had to go 7 miles into Sugar City to ticket pick up their mail, and she's a miracle. I mean these people creative and test.

18:45 So there's no Amazon coming to deliver anything and 1910. Huh? Basically, no roads County Line Road, I mean

19:03 That's a great story. They must have seemed it must have seemed to us. It seems like that would be so isolating and lonely but it must have seemed like they had friends and family around because they had

19:21 They have the school and the school had all the children. And so what happened was they made the school into a church and my great-grandmother Debra's father was a doctoral Divinity in Kentucky, and he was a presbyterian minister.

19:51 And he had taught Deborah Greek because so much of the Bible is written in Greek. And so she she was and she knew everything about Creek and living in eastern Colorado in the early nineteen-hundreds. It's amazing story. And so she was at school and this little one-room schoolhouse and one of the letter says that the pastor from the church in in Sugar City ID, there was an evangelist it like a champ evangelist who is traveling around the United States and he he he came to saw the two of you can sit in the Sugar City ask your brother to their Little School House Church and brought people people to from from chick.

20:51 City and they were a lot of young people that says and there is if one family that wanted to be Christians, but they didn't know how and she lived in to the Lord and so they had lots of difficulties, but they also

21:09 We're very they were believers.

21:14 And like there's quite a community there that supported each other and influence each other and they they needed each other. That's right. That's right here in the positiveness is having spiritual Direction and she was she she grew up in a family like that.

21:41 My other side my my kinkers other side my mother's side. They came over on the Mayflower and then my mother had been in the Civil War and he and his wife had three children when they started out from New York Harbor across land and they had a one child born on the way and then to after they had gotten to North Central Colorado in the mountains in Fort Collins and

22:24 So it just says that they were relocating for three years this whole the family took 3 years ago Across the Nation from New York Harbor to Colorado along Moving Day unbelievable as that might Tinker my my mother's side of the family. My mother had one when brother

23:11 And he had been killed when he was just going to start college and in it and a gerbil accident and you had been so tremendous a chance for his mother who is my grandmother and his dad said she was in shock for several years. She just like this in, and things happened and and and they they have to move in my my grandfather did the whole thing. He would give her up and and dresser and cheater in the morning and then you have to have a job. And anyway, it was such a and and in my mother who was who was just a year younger than my

24:10 I didn't Sam my my person who became my father. They were both in high school. And I totally appreciate it for him because he had moved from Fort Collins to an associate. My mother was a nice cool and it was just so my grandfather found a small Presbyterian Church in Colorado Springs train trips didn't have any any teenage a place that that he could take my medicine me to find friends. So I might take her grandfather took my mother to the to this group for teenagers at this list Church in my father happened to be there.

25:11 We all a couple of days later. It was at the custom then if you wanted to date a girl then you would go to the Duggar family.

25:25 And make me hurt my father and mother and introduce yourself so they would know who their daughter who is dating. So my father did that.

25:38 And he went to their house and knocked on the door my grandfather answered and my father said and I would like to show the Chrissy this past 10 and it's my father talked and it's just a little bit.

26:03 And she was totally normal. It was his voice the fact that there was hope.

26:10 I don't know. It was just an absolute. It was a godsend.

26:18 Kind of sparked something in his future mother-in-law that made her realize that she could she could be pregnant again.

26:31 And then there were so I don't I don't know what it was exactly what it was but it was they had problems on steady. I mean huge Collins and magical times also said they were brought together and I think that was really with what spurred them on in this little church where my great-grandmother Deborah and my grandfather in the canary drink. Did they have been intrical part of this little Westminster Presbyterian Church that my father had met my mother at and when my grandfather Frank died

27:26 It was just a tiny church. I don't know probably have 50 people but when he died there was so many people that came to the funeral that if there was a blocks on each side of his tiny little church to people or standing on the sidewalk.

27:46 It's so that they could

27:48 Be part of his funeral. How did they leave the ranch? Cuz they're not they're not there anymore. So, how did they leave the ranch in? And where did they go?

28:00 Sealant sealant, Colorado Springs

28:03 And

28:06 So both both my Tinker grandparents and going to Colorado Springs and then my parents met each other and they had one of the reasons they had gone to Colorado Springs this because it was a very long drought.

28:30 And they need money. So they they took State they drove their sheep to the nearest railroad station and show their sheets Alice and Frank and Yampa, and it did for like a year or answered rain season, and it was like $0.10 a pound less that they could sell selling for at the river.

29:06 It'll be me a terrible drought.

29:11 In the letter letters, my great-grandmother had said that there were people who had brought plows to the farm and Emily's people would come and plow your land so that when it did rain or snow is the moisture wood into your ground.

29:38 Well night-night 1925 is when they left and I think so many people in the Homestead Act and getting France places to do with farms and it was there is a lot of water and rain and moisture and when they came and they wanted to farm they did Date Update topsoil.

30:06 And it didn't change the weather and so in the store and that is when Eastern, Colorado, Oklahoma unreal long drought and it was it was a very serious serious thing that they were already gone.

30:41 What does the Colorado Springs?

30:45 Deredere gold gold mines in the mountains near Colorado Springs and there was they brought the

30:59 Delta Railroad from Colorado Springs to Cripple Creek for the biggest mines and they brought all the or back down to Colorado Springs to Gold Refinery there and it that's why my grandfather found a job and he he work there and they bought a house and my my father was a fourth or fifth grade. He was like 10:11 and he'd never worn shoes. He hated the city that my great-grandmother who was the new Greek and he was very educated and sheets for father was a doctor of divinity and her husband is being a medical doctor. Anyway, she had spent

31:52 My my father is preschool years teaching him to read and write and that was her job that time and she loved a man after he got big enough to go the old map to go to the school that his mother and his aunt taught me and my great-grandmother didn't have to take care of America and what she did then was.

32:21 If anyone in the whole Homestead area.

32:30 If anyone was in the fan in any family anywhere was sick.

32:35 And she then if if they would contact her and tell her she had to wait and she get in your waking and go to the persons.

32:46 A house with a was so sick and she wouldn't understand back to be well or it's dinner or if they died then she would be clear their bodies and bury them.

33:01 You have a 7 minutes left slick. Keep them all going. I need their dearest they were so many things that

33:23 Did they had no control over?

33:26 But they really were believers.

33:29 And so that's been in there for a purpose in Colorado Springs food and have a good job.

33:47 Two children, he and his best friend went back to the back to the ranch and we're starting to build up their livestock and it was going great. His friend was on the ranch and he my father is was he ruined the project and second world war came and his friend was drafted into the second world war. So my father never got to move back to the ranch. He had hoped that would happen. But what can you do if a war comes along?

34:28 So anyway

34:31 I don't know. Well, I'm wondering I'm thinking about how different you know, how different a hundred a hundred and ten years is you know, we have got Debra and Frank taking the train West we've got Jenny and out your your grandma Alice coming out in the wagon to be teachers and two ladies who build their own house and live on it, you know what how and and and teach the children in the area and then what it must have been like to move to to the city and in that time frame cars are coming into into the scene and then they make it must have just totally to

35:25 2 total ends of the spectrum that they like homemade clothes never worn shoes and had to wear shoes needed but he could read and eat but Homesteader he actually had some skills that he could take and yes in this city to just not wearing shoes wasn't one of them. He was probably the best student in the class, but they and he had he had a gun.

36:08 Angie there were a lot of rattlesnake seed get killed rattlesnakes. He had a dog that that he and the dog he kept the dog with him all the time to keep him safe a while. We was out so and he also they had a car we could to go to town and my grandfather being the county commissioner and had to travel around my father at the age is a canner so learned how to drive and he would drive my grandmother into town which is Sugar City with 7 Mi away if she has had to go shopping with you, I don't think she hardly ever did go shopping but he was her chauffeur because my grandma is it was absolutely as far as freedoms and in doing things I was very difficult for my father to change that.

37:08 So Grandma Alice never learn to drive, but she did end up living in Denver, right? Yes. Yeah, I have to ask during the end of the second world war and and afterwards she lived in Denver and

37:27 Histories live together all their lives and when her sister died when they lived in Denver and my grandmother

37:38 Needed something to think about it and she became an expert. She knew everything about Shakespeare whenever anybody went to visit her or or or or she would tell us all about what she was wearing next Shakespeare.

38:06 Is cheating ever gone to Ally Shakespeare play that she learned and Annihilator on Opera and she did that through the radio and book review in the 1960s.

38:22 Well, we went I went your father and I are leaving in Denver and it was our first year of marriage and and it was Christmas time and I went to pick her up and then we were going to go get your father at work and we were going to Colorado Springs spend Christmas.

38:43 And it the traffic was just just before Christmas and the traffic was terrible in Denver in 1980.

38:52 1960 and I had it there were two free ways that time and I had to change from one to the other end and I heard which got nervous, What's wrong?

39:10 How can you do this married? This is so hard and difficult. I could never do this with all this all these cars all these roads and everybody showing patience and I looked at her and I was only 19 my baby lives in the backseat and I

39:33 Can you call instead it with Aunt Jenny by yourselves?

39:39 What you did was so much more difficult and breathes in and took so much more courage and and we both looked at each other and we thought wow the Lord put you where you are. Yes, it is. It is about perspective. We're just getting 40 minutes. So it's time to wrap things up.

40:12 But mom loves being seven generations of Colorado residents and that's just amazing and I love to hear in Old Colorado such an important.

40:26 Part of our family where we spend all our vacations and have so much family and loved ones there and friends and so much history and places that are family claims and loves to spend time and I love hearing how it all started and that's wonderful. Mom thinking right now in Colorado in our oldest daughter has eight had a children and they she lived in Colorado since she was in high school and

41:03 That that's her eight children live in live in Colorado and they all live in Colorado Springs or Buy Colorado Springs and they are now and they're their spouses All of Me come from Colorado. So that is like the 14 14 people in our adults in our family who had been born and raised and live in Colorado and zzz grandchildren of ours now had 18 great-grandchildren and they all live in the Colorado Springs area. So we truly are seven generations and we even to the very youngest

41:53 Why we have to wrap it up. Thank you both so much.

41:57 Thank you.