People
Collection for person entities.
Pages
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- Josephine Kate (Ramsay) Biggs
- She was born in Oklahoma to Robert W. Ramsay from Scotland and Mary E. Ramsay from Illinois. Her father was in the dry goods business. She attended Smith College in New England. Josephine came to the Grand Junction area in November of 1920. She had been working as the YWCA national secretary (Young Woman’s Christian Association) in Denver and was sent to Grand Junction to found a local YWCA. When interest in founding a local chapter fell through, she left town, but ended up returning. She was a friend of Walter B. Cross, owner of the Red Cross Land and Fruit Company, operator of Cross Orchards. They met while the two of them lived in the LaCourt Hotel and Cross often let her ride his Arabian horse up First Street, and also invited she and her fiance to dinner at his house in Cross Orchards. According to William Hartman, she had a role in helping Mesa College purchase land along North Avenue for a future home. She was an artist and contemporary of Mesa County artist Harold Bryant. During the 1920's, they met at meetings of the Beaux Arts Club in the Manhattan Cafe in Grand Junction.
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- Josephine Meeker
- Daughter of Nathan Meeker. During the Meeker Massacre, she and her mother were kidnapped by Ute Indians who sought to use them as bargaining chips. They were left bound to the Surrender Tree on the Grand Mesa.
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- Josephine Rader
- She worked in an emergency hospital in Palisade in the early Twentieth century. Mother of Josephine (Schneible) Rader.
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- Josephine S. "Jo" (O'Quinn) Ferguson
- She was born in Colfax, Louisiana to James W. O’Quinn and Mary Catherine (Killingsworth) O’Quinn. Her father was a watchman and a machinist. Her mother was a homemaker. The 1910 US Census lists Josephine by the nickname “Minkie” at the age of 13. Josephine attended Colfax High School, a boarding school in Natchitoches, and then the Louisiana Teacher College in the late 1910’s. The 1920 Census shows her living with her parents and teaching at the age of 22. She later obtained her Master’s Degree from Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado. She came to Colorado as a teacher in 1921. She met George Gibson Ferguson at a rodeo in Rifle, Colorado and married him in Glenwood Springs in 1922, when she was 24. They lived together on a ranch where the town of Battlement Mesa is now located. She was a ranch wife who cooked for several ranch hands. They later lived on a dairy farm in Rifle. They lived briefly in Las Vegas, Nevada before moving to Grand Junction sometime in the mid-1940’s. There, they ranched, and Mrs. Ferguson taught at Central High School. Over the years she taught school in Arkansas, Las Vegas, Eagle, Silt, Rifle, and Roan Creek. She retired from Central High School in Grand Junction, Colorado in 1965. She wrote poetry. She attended Crossroads United Methodist Church in Clifton. She belonged to the Order of the Eastern Star and to the Rifle Reading Club. She helped organize the Business and Professional Women’s Club of Clifton and the Future Teachers of Colorado at Central High School. She was on the board of the Clifton Water District for many years.