Colorado Baers

   

I’ll start this story where it started for me, with the two people whose portraits hung over our couch: Henry & Lucy May (Cross) Baer, my 2nd great-grandparents.

Henry Baer was born in Waumandee, Buffalo County, Wisconsin, on June 2, 1859, to farmer Johannes “John” Baer and Anna Hess, both Swiss immigrants. Henry’s mother Anna died in childbirth on November 27, 1870, when he was 11 years old. It appears he left school at that time, as he is later listed as having a 5th grade education. The surviving family moved to Missouri in 1874. His father died there on July 21, 1878, and Henry and his brothers Fred and John returned to the Wisconsin homestead. The brothers sold the farm in 1881 and Henry went to telegraph school in Janesville. After graduating he took a job in Marathon, Iowa, but became bored and returned to Missouri to sell the Baers’ second farm, where he met Lucy.

Lucy May Cross was born in Randolph, Cattaragus County, New York, on May 1, 1866, to William Henry Cross and Lucy C. Torrance. The family moved to York, Nebraska, to farm in 1871 (or 1872) when she was 5 years old. Her mother died in childbirth on January 27, 1880, when Lucy was 13. She probably left school at this time, as she is listed as having an 8th grade education. Her father soon remarried, to a local widow named Agnes Jane McKee.

How Lucy got from York County, Nebraska, in 1880 to Brookfield, Missouri, in 1885 (at age 18) is unknown, but Henry Baer and Lucy Cross were married in Linneus, Linn County, Missouri, on August 13, 1885, by Rev. J. S. Barwick “Preacher of the Gospel” (as he wrote on the wedding license). Both were living in nearby Brookfield at the time. Linneus was the county seat, so they may have been married at the courthouse. They then moved to York County, Nebraska, where they rented farmland from Lucy’s father, William Henry Cross.

The couple’s first child, Lucy Anna Baer, was born in Morton Township, York County, on August 16, 1886, three days after their first anniversary. But after a year of farming in York County, the Baers moved to Chase County, Nebraska, where they homesteaded. (Chase County borders Colorado in western Nebraska—not exactly prime farming land.) The couple’s second child, Edward Henry “Cub” Baer, was born here on November 3, 1887. The farm failed after three years, due to drought.

In 1889 the family moved to Palmer Lake, Colorado, but apparently didn’t stay long. From there they moved to the mountain community of Thomasville in Pitkin County, near Aspen. Some records say they lived in Norrie, the next town up the Frying Pan River. Their third child, Marion Mae Baer, (grandma’s mother,) was born in Norrie on March 6, 1894. Henry worked at a sawmill in Thomasville for 13 years; the 1900 Census lists the Baers as living on South Mill Street. Today Thomasville is a ghost town, and Mill Street does not appear on any current maps. Some homes remain in Thomasville and Norrie, and are still occupied.

In 1902 the Baer family moved to Eagle, Eagle County, Colorado, their final hometown. The 1910 Census has them living on Church Street, one block east of 332 Howard Street (the home we’re familiar with), though these addresses might be referring to the same home—their lot touched both streets.

In the summer of 1906 Henry bought a transport business from a man named Hugh McGuire. He became a drayman, carting goods from the train station to businesses and homes around town. In the 1930 Census, Lucy is listed as a laundress, working from home.

 

All three of the Baers’ children married in the Eagle area. (Lucy) Anna Baer—she went by her middle name—was living at home when she married Arthur Sherman Rule on January 30, 1904. Two years later on April 15, 1906, they welcomed their first and only child, Clarence Arthur Rule. The couple divorced on November 8, 1907, and Anna returned with infant Clarence to live with her parents.

 

Cub Baer married Rena Pearl Yost of Gypsum on March 1, 1909. The couple was living in a rented house in Eagle in 1910. They would go on to have five children together.

 

Anna married again on November 26, 1910, to Charles William “C.W.” Brown. They had a son, Howard Love Brown, on September 10, 1911. Anna and C.W. divorced sometime after 1913 but before 1920, when she is listed in the Census as living back home with her parents and her two young sons.

 

The Baers’ youngest child, Marion Mae Baer, married Jesse Ray Green in Glenwood Springs on June 20, 1913. On July 25, 1914, Marion gave birth to Virginia Mae Green, my grandmother, at the Baer home in Eagle. Sometime in the next few years the family moved to New Mexico, where Jesse worked as a station agent for the Santa Fe Railroad in several different towns. They had a second child, Jesse Rae Green Jr., on January 30, 1919, while living in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

 

Marion (Baer) Green died on March 2, 1925, in Socorro, New Mexico. Virginia, age 10, and Jesse Jr., age 6, accompanied their mother’s body back to Eagle where she was buried in the Sunset View Cemetery. Both Virginia and Jesse Jr. stayed with their grandparents until their father remarried in April 1926, and they returned to New Mexico. Henry and Lucy must have understood what their grandchildren were going through, having both lost their mothers when they were young—Henry was 11 when his mom died, Lucy was 13. 

 

 

 

In researching the Baers, I learned that Henry helped thwart an attempt by the Ku Klux Klan to take over the Eagle town government in 1926. The local Citizens Party, who opposed the Klan, nominated Baer as a Trustee after their original choice, A. B. Koonce, dropped out of consideration. The KKK had only two candidates, one for mayor and another for trustee, though the election was for mayor and three trustees. The night before the election the KKK secretly distributed a sample ballot that included its two candidates and two trustees from the Citizens Party slate, one of whom was Baer, to confuse the voters as to which slate was which. But the plan didn’t work; the Citizens Party won the mayor’s race and all three trustees, including Baer.

 

The Baers’ daughter Anna married a third time on July 9, 1926, to John D. Mathews, in Glenwood Springs. A year later, Anna died from injuries sustained in a car accident in Glenwood Canyon on July 18, 1927, and was buried in Eagle’s Sunset View Cemetery.

 

Henry Baer retired from his work as a drayman in April 1936, at the age of 77. He and Lucy were in declining health, and Mrs. George Priest became a caretaker for the couple for the last years of their lives.

 

The Baers’ son Cub—their last surviving child—died on March 8, 1945, and was buried in Sunset View Cemetery.

 

On August 12, 1945, the day before their 60th anniversary, the Baers remarried in a ceremony at the Community Methodist Church. Mrs. Bartrug played “I Love You Truly” on the piano, and later they had a reception with a large cake on the lawn outside.

 

Lucy (Cross) Baer died in their home on July 24, 1947, at the age of 81. She had been in poor health for several years and had suffered a stroke just days earlier. Two days later a funeral was held at the Community Methodist Church and she was buried in Sunset View Cemetery, just up the hill from the couple’s home.

 

In early June 1952, Henry Baer fell in his home and broke his hip. His health steadily declined and he died on November 5, 1952. He was 93 years old, the oldest citizen of Eagle at the time. Having outlived his wife and three children, he was buried beside them all at the Sunset View Cemetery on November 9, following a service at the Community Methodist Church led by Rev. Delbert Paulson. The Eagle Valley Enterprise wrote: “With Mr. Baer’s passing, the town loses a fine old gentleman, of whom it truly can be said, ‘He had no mortal enemy.’”