The photo shown has outlived my ancestors and the location it depicts; people died, a town changed, and there is an empty spot on the street where my grandfather's cabin once stood—burned down in a fire several years ago. This memento of my ancestors is a way for me to preserve the threads of my family’s history in a freeze frame of a certain place and time. I am trying to preserve the stories these relatives told me. I don’t want the tales to die out.
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| A family and friends scene at the Giggey log cabin in Nederland, Colorado. Left to right: unknown boy, unknown girl in the lap of George Nelson Giggey, Roland Giggey with crutches and brace on his left leg, unknown woman, Mary Edna Giggey (“Babe”), and Mary Ella Giggey sitting in a rocking chair. The family dog is taking a nap. Photo circa 1916. Unknown photographer. |
A traveling photographer opened the shutter on this family moment around 1916 in Nederland, Colorado, a small mountain town in southwestern Boulder County. Times were difficult. World War I was raging in Europe. The Battle of Verdun had started, leading to an estimated 1 million casualties. The US would enter the war the following year.
In this photo, an unscripted moment in the lives of my grandfather, Roland Wallace Giggey, and his family is recorded on a sunny summer day. The group is in front of the Giggey log cabin, built by my great-grandfather (George Leon Giggey) with large timbers he had hauled down the mountains with his draft horses. In the photo, my grandfather is 13. He is sitting on the ground. A brace is on his leg; two crutches are next to him. My grandfather suffered from Perthes disease, a rare childhood condition that affects the hip. His brother, George Nelson Giggey, is 15 years old and sits to the left of my grandfather, holding a small child in his lap. On the far right, sitting in a rocking chair, is my great-grandmother, Mary Ella Giggey. Next to her, on the left, is my Aunt Babe (great-aunt), at 10 years old. The standing woman, the small child, and the boy on the far left are all unknown, their names lost to history. Mary Giggey’s three children, George, Roland, and Babe, grew up in Nederland.
As I hold the photograph, I look at it carefully and begin to recall some of the stories of these early pioneers of Colorado and how strong these people were.
Missing in the photograph is my great-grandfather, George Leon Giggey. He spent his teen years in the nearby mining camp of Caribou. He later moved to Nederland, where he raised his family and worked as a teamster hauling tungsten ore. On Saturday nights, he played the fiddle at Nederland’s rowdy dance hall.
Nederland processed silver ore from Caribou. After Caribou’s silver mines declined in production, prospectors discovered tungsten (used in steel production) nearby, and the old silver mill in Nederland was converted to process tungsten ore. By the time the photographer took this photo (1916), Nederland had a peak population of nearly 3,000 people.
One morning after breakfast at my grandfather’s summer home, when I was a teenager, an elderly Aunt Babe told me stories about growing up in the Nederland cabin. She was sitting on the couch in front of the fireplace. The morning sun streamed through the window, illuminating dancing dust particles in the air. Aunt Babe began by telling how the logs in the Nederland cabin were hand-hewn by my great-grandfather, and that the brittle log chinking fell out in places, leaving holes where the wind blew snow inside the cabin and onto her bed. She told me how the blizzards stormed in from the mountains and piled up snow outside half a window high during many of the snowstorms.
Aunt Babe said that, one afternoon, her two brothers chased her onto the porch and rubbed a jelly sandwich in her face. This made me realize the similarity of brothers and sisters tormenting each other in any era. I try so hard to remember her now; she comes into focus and then fades. I remember the morning when she told me these stories while she was putting up her hair for the day. She never cut her hair, and it reached the floor. She kept her hair up in a bun on her head. Later in life, she painted oil landscapes and portraits of family members.
I look at this old photograph again, and more stories from my grandfather growing up in Nederland tease my memory, and then they begin to unfold. The nearby Barker Reservoir was a place for Nederland’s children to play. In the winter, my grandfather and his brother rigged a sail onto their sled that caught the cold wintertime gales that pushed them over the wind-swept ice. The two boys used their mother’s bedsheets. During the summer, they floated little canoes they made from tree bark on small waves in the water. Every time I pass the Barker Reservoir, I think of my grandfather and his brother playing there.
To earn some money, my grandfather and his brother cut down aspen trees and hauled them into town, where they sold them as firewood to a baker. My grandfather said that one day, while hauling wood, they discovered a dynamite shed that was unlocked. The two boys grabbed a stick of dynamite and a fuse from the shed and then set it off in a clearing. No one ever found out that they were responsible for the explosion, and fortunately, they escaped serious injury but had trouble hearing for a few days.
The two brothers enjoyed exploring the forested areas surrounding the town. My grandfather, because of his leg brace and crutches, rode “Becky” the burro while his brother George walked. One afternoon, they encountered a well-dressed English prospector who lived in a canvas tent, half hidden in the pines. The tent was well furnished. There were maps and books on a table, kerosene lamps, and a rug covered most of the wooden floor. A pot-bellied stove provided heat. My grandfather and his brother returned several times to talk with the Englishman. One day, the Englishman was gone, never to be seen again.
My grandfather and his friends spent some time at the Tanner Brother’s grocery store looking at the merchandise. One day in 1910, while at the grocery store, they heard a commotion in the street. When they ran outside to investigate, they saw a Stanley Steamer car puffing up Main Street. No one had seen anything like it before.
Prosperity in Nederland brought the extraordinary N.M. “Fatty” Mills and his movie theater to Nederland. Fatty started his theater in a white frame building on Main Street in 1914. An artist painted beautiful mountain scenes on the walls on either side of the sloping theater floor. The theater was a busy place; Fatty ran two shows each night and two matinees each week. Fatty Mills, who weighed over 300 pounds and smoked a corncob pipe, was very popular with the local youngsters. My grandfather turned the crank on the old projector and received 5 cents for each show from Fatty. Mills remained in business until his death 20 years later.
Soon my Great-uncle George Nelson Giggey—the boy sitting with the child in his lap in the photo—would be gone. The scene in the photo shifts a few years to 1918, when George was 17 years old and came home one October day from work. He was not feeling well and sank into the couch with aches that felt like his bones were breaking. George never left the couch, and a bitter gloom filled the room as he died. He was a victim of the flu that would soon become the deadliest epidemic in human history. The thieving shadow of death was everywhere in the town at that time, forcing the townspeople to convert the Antlers Hotel into a hospital to help the stricken citizens of Nederland.
During a camping trip as a young adult with my grandfather, I remember him telling me, as he stared into the burning campfire, about the loss of his brother George. As his eyes misted, he said that he still carried with him in his wallet the money that was in his brother’s pocket when he died. Years later, he had his brother’s body exhumed from the Nederland Cemetery for interment in the Boulder Cemetery, next to his mother. My grandfather would later join them when he passed away. My grandfather was with his brother once again.
The death of George ripped the Giggey family apart. My grandfather, his sister, and his mother moved to Boulder, Colorado. My great-grandfather left for Dove Creek, in western Colorado, where he took up ranching and started a new family. This portion of family history was buried deeper than a mine shaft, and I will never know what really happened.
This photograph also helps me remember the stories and historical realities that sit outside the frame of the photograph I want to hear my grandfather’s and great-aunt Babe’s stories again. I did not know how important these stories would be for me when I first heard them. I wish I could go back in time and hear them one more time. The bits and pieces of the stories I remember help me understand who I am and how I fit into the world. And the stories put me next to them—listening once again to my grandfather and great-aunt.
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