Gilpin County. Biographical
JHl GILPIN COUNTY. BIOGRAPHICAL. HON. JAMES BURRELL. County, and was elected its first President, and The subject of this sketch was one of the at the same time Judgejof the Miners' Court, to early pioneers of the country, coming to Colo- fill vacancy. The erection of the first quartz rado in 1860. He was born in Bucksport, mill there, "builtin Lower Georgetown, when the State of Maine, March 29, 1815, and lived at his boys had to sit up nights to keep the beaver father's homestead on a farm there until four- from undermining the dam,'' was superintended teen years of age, when, upon the death of his by him. In May, 1862, he was appointed First mother, he was apprenticed to a house and Lieutenant and Regimental Quartermaster of ship joiner" in Bangor, in the same State. His the Second Colorado Volunteer Infantry, then education was only such as good common being raised for the war, in which he honorably schools of his time afforded, but he so improved and faithfully participated, filling also by ap- the privileges of those schools that he became pointment important positions in other de- a teacher (herein himself during two winters partments of the service in addition to the after his term of apprenticeship had expired. duties of his own until its close. He returned, He was actively connected with, and principal in 1865, to Colorado with the Government ex- manager of, a commercial and building associa- pedition under charge of Lieut. Fitch, U. S. A., tion, doing business between Bangor and Ap- with a corps of engineers, that laid out the palachicola, Florida, from 1837 to 1841, when stage road from Fort Riley, Kan., to Denver, Florida was a Territory, and the Seminoles known as the Butterfield route, via Smoky Hill.
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