People

: Emma Samuels; A private school teacher who moved to teaching special education in the Washington School in 1955. She taught there through 1956, and helped with the establishment of the special education program in Mesa County public schools.

: Emma Shehigh; Aunt of Dudley W. Mitchell and reporter who published articles throughout the United States, including one published in the Kansas Republican about the Meeker Massacre.

: Emma Verena (Jones) Conner; She was born in Grand Junction, Colorado to William D. Jones and Mattie (Moore) Jones. Her father was a locomotive engineer. Her mother was a homemaker. Her parents were both Mesa County pioneers. She attended the Franklin School as a child. She also worked in her grandmother’s boarding house, which boarded sugar factory workers. She married Walter M. Edwards on October 22, 1911. Mesa County divorce records show that they divorced on October 16, 1917. She then married Rlonzo Dow Ray, a locomotive engineer, on June 5, 1918. It appears from US Census records that they had two children together, and that Ray had children from a previous marriage. Ray died in a railroading accident between Delta and Grand Junction. She always worked to support herself and her children. By 1930, census records show that she had married Clinton O’Conner. According to the 1930 census, she was working as a waitress and O’Conner was a switchman on the railroad. She died in Los Angeles at the age of 100 and is buried in Orchard Mesa Cemetery.

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