People

: Harold Charles Hutchinson; Son of Major Joseph Sykes Hutchinson and Anabel McPherson, pioneer family of Chaffee County.

: Harold D "Hal" Matthes

: Harold E. Bryant; Harold Bryant was born in Pickrell, Nebraska to John Edward Bryant and Anna (Soule) Bryant. US Census records indicate that the family moved to the Appleton area of Mesa County, Colorado sometime between 1900 and 1910. There, they homesteaded. Harold Bryant, as the only boy of several children, did much of the farm's labor. His father was a Dunkard (Church of the Brethren) and, according to Al Look, “a tough old religionist.” Harold rejected the church and its restrictive ideas of morality. He attended the Chicago Art Institute, and was successful as an illustrator working for the Atlantic Monthly and other magazines. When the mediums of radio and photography conspired to make illustration less popular, he returned to the Grand Valley, where he painted. Mesa County Oral History Project interviewee Ernest Hicks described Bryant, whom he met after the artist returned from New York, as an “odd, tern-like fellow” with a dry sense of humor and a keen intelligence. Though he did have a gallery showing in the Grand Central Art Gallery in New York City, his paintings were never received to great fanfare among the New York establishment. He was, however, recognized as an artist by other Western artists. At one time, he also owned a cabin, built by T.E. Wright, on twenty to thirty acres near the lake fork of East Creek on Pinon Mesa, Colorado. His wife Ruth Bryant, a business woman from New York, arranged for the sale of his paintings to a calendar company and furthered his career. According to oral history interviewee Jennie Dixon, Bryant and Ruth often invited Dixon and her husband over to his studio to socialize after he finished a painting. Though Bryant received what Dixon describes as good money for his paintings from a calendar company, his widow was unable to secure the rights to his paintings after he died. Bryant was a World War I veteran. He was an avid deer hunter and a member of the Appleton Gun Club. He loved horseback riding, and often accompanied his friend and brother-in-law John Duncan Hart on rides through Western Colorado and Eastern Utah while Duncan was on patrol as a federal officer. He spent some of his last years in a cabin on Pinon Mesa constructed by pioneer Phidelah Rice. * Some information taken from 125 People 125 Years: Grand Junction's Story by Laurena Mayne Davis, and from Harold Bryant: Colorado's Maverick with a Paint Brush by Al Look.