Every Family Has One ~

…a favorite place that is. Or maybe I should say a place that is deeply a part of the family.

Colorado is, without a doubt, our family’s favorite place to be.  It's also the state that defines my mother's side of the family.

William Eickelberg Family

 My family’s history with Colorado goes back many, many years.  This picture of William and Nellie (Auflick) Eickelberg and family would have been taken in roughly 1887/1888 because the baby in the picture, William Jr was born Feb, 1887.  The family moved out to Denver sometime between William, Jr's birth and the birth of his older sister (my great-grandmother) Nelle who was born in 1885 in Indiana. Eventually Nellie Auflick [the mother in this picture] would see her own parents and both her younger brother's and older sister's families move out to the Denver area.  I've posted a picture of Thomas and Margaret Auflick's gravestone in a previous post.


Although I don’t have any pictures, I do know that the Nissen side of the family (my mother's mother's side) was also in Colorado around that time as they were enumerated in Colorado’s 1885 state census.  They lived near Denver, in what is now Broomfield.  On our recent trip to Colorado I was able to stop at Riverside cemetery and photograph this gravestone.  Anna is my great-great-grandmother.  Her husband, August Henry Nissen is also buried in this plot although his name was not on the stone.  He died 06 April 1914. 

Jack H Quick

My grandfather Jack H Quick – the son of the cute little girl in the picture above – was born in Colorado in 1911.   He lived there for the first 30 some years of his life.  I don't know where the picture to the left was taken, but it was someplace in Colorado where he is taking his first steps.

Jack & Belle Quick far right

I know that he and a buddy climbed Long's Peak many times.  They liked to camp up there.   The mountains were always a big part of his life and he spent vacations in a cabin above Denver that his mother owned.  I have numerous pictures of outings that he took with his wife and other couples up to that cabin. 
Not only did he spend time there, but all of Nelle's children and grandchildren spent time at the cabin. My mom is the cutie-pie right in the front with the floppy hat.  They are sitting out on the porch of the cabin.

Jacqulin Ann Quick,

My mother was also born in Colorado.  For the first 8 years of her life, her grandmother would take her to Dewey Studios in Denver to have her picture taken on her birthday.  I have a beautiful group of pictures of her taken there including this one on her 4th birthday.  So, for my mom, both of her parents were born in Colorado and several of her grandparents were as well.  The Colorado mountains are definitely a part of her ancestry!

While I was born in elsewhere, I've been told that I took my first steps in Colorado. My mother and her parents had taken me out to Colorado to visit some relatives that still lived here. I liked the state so much even then that I decided to start walking.

Much later we took an extended summer trip again going out to Colorado to visit my Mom's Aunt Pearl.  My mom took this picture of us that, surprisingly, did NOT cut off any of our heads!  We had a wonderful time and I remember so vividly being up in the mountains standing on top of a snow drift in June - I thought that was amazing! 

We also stayed in that very same cabin of my great-grandmother's.  She was still alive and we visited her and she came up to the cabin with us.  The thing I remember about that cabin - there was no indoor plumbing but the outhouse has a fancy green toilet seat!  Oh, and did I mention the player piano??  Yes, the cabin had a player piano!

We didn’t get to come out as much after that, but when my youngest sister - the cute baby in the sunbonnet - had her first child the family started going to Estes Park for vacation.  The first year is was just my parents and sister's family.  But that started a new tradition and we began going out almost every year.  My nieces and nephew have wonderful memories of hiking in the mountains.  Here they are taking a break and getting their feet wet in a cold mountain stream.

Codi, Colton, Kyli

We also like to drive up what one of my nieces called "the scary road" which is the old Fall River road up to the top or Trail Ridge.  It's a dirt road which now can only be traveled one way - up.  Along the way there are places to pull off and things to see or short trails to follow.  It is usually fairly cold and here one of the girls has "borrowed" her daddy's shirt!

As recently as last week my parents and sister (NOT the baby in the sun bonnet) were out spending Thanksgiving in Estes Park.  We hiked several mornings and one day even got to snowshoe.  My Mom took this picture of my sister and I up at Bear Lake.  Oh my goodness was it cold - and this was the warmest day of the week!


So here's to Colorado, sometimes our home, sometimes our home away from home, but always that place where family memories are made!

Thanks for the poster fM!

This post was written for the 100th edition of the Carnival of Genealogy: "There's One in Every Family" to be hosted by Jasia at Creative Gene. Jasia is looking for 100 posts for this edition - So let's all help achieve that...I'm sure we all have something to share!

An Unfortunate "Meeting" at the Top of the Mountain

The 77th edition of the Carnival of Genealogy invites us to "Tell about a disaster that one or more of your ancestors lived through."

While I'm sure that there were many natural disasters, such as tornadoes and epidemics, that had an impact on my ancestors' lives, I don't have anything in the way of pictures or stories to share. As I sat down today to work on my scanning project - working my way through the 1,000+ negatives from my Grandpa Quick - I realized I had the story of a more personal "disaster" right at hand. I chose to call it,

"The Unfortunate Meeting at the Top of the Mountain"

On the evening of Saturday July 17, 1937, my grandfather, Jack H Quick and his soon to be second wife, the current Mrs. Braddock, were involved in a head on collision on a mountain road near Woodland Park, Colorado. I was never given much in the way of the history of this event, as my Grandpa Quick never referred to a time before he was married to "Ollie Belle", as she is named in the newspaper article below.


While I always knew that my Grandma Quick was not my mother's mother, I was well into adulthood before I knew that she had also be married previously. At the time of this accident - July, 1937 - both divorces had been granted but were not yet final. Jack and Belle would be married on October 25, 1937. Belle had the scars on her knee from this accident all the rest of her life.

The pictures of the wrecked cars are the first pictures in what would be a lifetime of pictures albums that my Grandpa Quick kept.

In the Wintertime We Go...

I realize this is supposed to be a "Photo Essay" but I can't help it, I like WORDS. As soon as I saw the icon for the 64th COG, I immediately remembered a poem from my childhood. I rushed to my Childcraft How and Why Library, volume 1 and there it was:

White Fields

by James Stephens

In the wintertime we go
Walking in the fields of snow;

Where there is no grass at all;
Where on top of every wall,

Every fence and every tree,
Is as white as white can be.

Pointing out the way we came
- Every one of them the same -

All across the field there be
Prints in silver filigree;

And our mothers always know,
By the footprints in the snow,

Where it is the children go.

I suppose I thought of this because who loves winter more than children? When we are young the excitement of a new snowfall makes getting bundled up until we can hardly move seem all worthwhile.

For the photo part of this photo essay, I have chosen some picture of my Mom and her brothers taken in Denver in 1942. I am so fortunate that my Grandfather not only took a lot of pictures as my Mom was growing up, but also labeled and dated them. These are re-creations of the pages in the albums rather than just scans of the pages. I have put in the captions just as my Grandfather had them.



















Weren't they just adorable?

I sure hope my Mom hadn't just walked home from school in that outfit! Of course I remember wearing dresses to school in the winter - we weren't allowed to wear anything else. But we wore snow pants under the dresses and took them off when we got to school.





[This post was written for the 64th Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy hosted by Jasia at Creative.Gene]