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10 October 2018

CGS Library Collections: Colorado


One of several Who's Who-style books in
our Colorado collection
One in a series by CGS member Chris Pattillo, highlighting some of our holdings at the Library in Oakland. For a fuller listing of our books, journals, and more, consult the CGS Library catalog. Our catalog is also listed in WorldCat.

After California, Colorado was a breeze. Our collection includes fifteen print books and two boxes of The Colorado Genealogist – a Quarterly Publication of the Colorado Genealogical Society from 1974 to 2003. The first tome to catch my eye was a dense turquoise-covered volume titled Colorado Families: A Territorial Heritage published in 1981 by the Colorado Genealogical Society. This book offers a short early Colorado history and 629 pages of family histories. For example, the Samuel and Caroline (Smith) Andrew family begins on page 14 and continues to page 33. Each individual has a biography and the names of their children are listed. 173 members of the Andrew family are featured in the book along with many other families. The book is well indexed.

I found three Who’s Who-style books and was not surprised to find the now very familiar George R. Dorman bookplate on the inside cover of Who’s Who In Colorado, which resembles a Bible with its black, leather-bound cover. The volume was published in 1938 and offers biographies of “Leaders in Business, Professional and Public Life.” The book content is organized by county and includes a short county history at the beginning of each section followed by short individual biographies. The index lists each county but not the individuals.

Another Dorman donation is The Glory That Was Gold – Central City Opera House first published in 1932. With that title, one would think it was a book about the opera house or about the impact of gold mining on the state, but it is actually another book devoted mostly to biographies of prominent Colorado citizens.

A student text written jointly with the State
Historical Society of Colorado
This student text includes a chapter on Indian Sign language
The last book I checked was a colorful picture book: Colorado: Crossroads of The West by Matthew T. Downey and Fay D. Metcalf. This is actually an elementary school history textbook first published in the 1970s and used to teach students about the different people and cultures that inhabited the state of Colorado. It is very well illustrated and has some interesting subject matter like a chapter on Indian sign language.

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