Early Pagosans with interesting histories

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Photo courtesy John M. Motter The Pagosa Lumber Company Commissary, the Company Store, stood in the southern part of town on Seventh Street. Photo courtesy John M. Motter
The Pagosa Lumber Company Commissary, the Company Store, stood in the southern part of town on Seventh Street.

Barzillai Price and Martha Butler married in Lincoln County, Ohio. The couple moved to Little Sioux, Iowa, in the 1860s, then to Hebron, Neb.

Barzillai was the first judge of Thayer County in that state and helped draft and pass the woman’s suffrage bill there.

In 1879, the Price family moved to Pagosa Springs, setting up a stage stop near today’s Chromo. When the first post office was established at Chromo, it was officially named “Price.”

Barzillai was active in community affairs in Pagosa Country, serving as county school superintendent and county judge. He was also involved in the conflict between Hispanics and Anglos for control of the county government during its earliest years.

The Price homestead was said to be near the bridge which bears his name and where the old stage road from Chama reached the Navajo River.

Martha died Jan. 25, 1918, in Goodsprings, Nev., at the age of 88. Barzillai had died three years earlier.

Mary C. Pomeroy, nee Mary C. Opdyke, was born April 17,1848, at Utica, Ohio, and died April 23, 1923.

In 1869, at Warsaw, Mo., she married Capt. E. Pomeroy. Mr. Pomeroy died Feb 5, 1894, and a daughter, Catherine, May 5, 1898. She moved to Archuleta County, making her home in Pagosa Junction and Pagosa Springs. She was survived by daughters Mrs. Gertrude Elliott,  Mrs. Walter Zabriskie: sister Mrs. Davie Fitzhugh, and brothers C.W. and J.L. Opdyke.

George Warren Potter was born in Bethel, Ill., July 8, 1866, and died March 30, 1943. He came to Pagosa Springs in 1890 to visit his sister, Mrs. Eve Meade. Here, he met Miss Nettie Garvin, whom he married December 30, 1894, at Hiatville, Kans. They moved to Pagosa Springs in 1907. He was survived by daughters Mrs. L.C. Lynch and Mrs. Charles McCoy, and sons Schelly Potter and Elmeron Potter.

Schelly A. Potter was born May 21, 1899, in Toconic, Iowa, and came to Pagosa Springs in a covered wagon as a small child with his parents George Warren and Nettie Potter. After farming, logging, and trucking most of his life, he established San Juan Supply and Trucking, which he operated until 1952. He died Oct. 11, 1979.

Joseph E. Prewitt was born near Bowling Green, Mo., April 26, 1859, and died in February of 1940. He moved to Durango, Colo., in 1881 where the family engaged in real estate. He managed the commissary department of the Pagosa Lumber Company at Pagosa Springs from 1912 to 1915.