My great-aunt Laura Lightner came to Colorado in 1903. My dad and his first cousin, Gene Cox, always told family stories about her, but nobody knew what happened to her. We still don't have all the story.
When I came to Colorado in 1997, I thought I might do some looking around. On a free weekend, my family and I went to Trinidad to look around. As her last known residence was Sopris, we stopped in the Carnegie Library to see if they could help me find anything. The librarians and volunteers were extremely helpful.
We never did find Aunt Laura, but we did get a lot of information about her second husband, Julian Gallegos.
Laura married Ashford Hickman in West Virginia in 1896. A constable, he died Oct. 1, 1902, of pneumonia. That left Laura with a young son, Charles Morgan Hickman. Those are all hard facts with documentation. Here's where the family stories kick in.
A young widow, Laura, 27, supposedly traveled west as a Harvey Girl. Somewhere she met Julian Gallegos from Santa Fe, New Mexico. On April 29, 1903, she married Julian in Harrison County, West Virginia. On the marriage license, Julian's residence was noted as Trinidad, Colo. They moved to Sopris, Colo., where they leased and ran the Sopris Hotel.
The family story makes sense. I really don't know how else she would have met Julian except if she went west and probably as a Harvey Girl, one of the ways many women from back east met future husbands. It's not highly likely that Julian would have traveled to West Virginia in search of work. The Cardenas in Trinidad was a Harvey Hotel. So it is probable that they would have both been in Trinidad.
As Charles was only 5 years old, staying back in West Virginia with his grandparents or other relatives also makes sense. Having Laura and Julian traveling to West Virginia to get married is logical, especially if they came back to pick up Charles.
The only bits of communication we still have from Laura are two telegrams: one dated only 1903 from Sopris, concerning the death of her son Charles, and a second dated August 26, 1903, from Trinidad concerning Julian. Laura wrote each time to her father, David Lightner, asking for $100 "to bring home" her family members. The telegram about Julian starts with "Julian murdered." My dad always said that the story was Julian was killed in a shoot-out in a saloon.
According to both the Trinidad and Sopris newspapers, Julian and Laura had leased the Sopris Hotel. After only running it for only a few months, they had defaulted on the payments, owing $35.
The Trinidad newspaper states that Charles died Friday night, August 21. According to the paper, Laura had taken Charles on Santa Fe No. 8 to Trinidad for burial. She would have been in Trinidad at the time of the murder of Julian.
According to both the Trinidad and Sopris papers, Julian had attempted to collect rent owed them by a hotel tenant, S.C. Chapman. The newspaper reported that on Saturday Julian had caused "a great deal of commotion" about the debt Chapman owed the Gallegoses. On Sunday, August 23, Julian supposedly rode up to the hotel and called Chapman out, saying that if he didn't pay the $7 debt, he would kill him. According to the paper, Chapman borrowed a gun from a friend to defend himself.
According to the newspaper reports, later that night, Julian returned. Chapman, seeing Julian in the hotel office, went around the back and climbed up to his room on a ladder. There were no further incidents that day.
Monday morning, as he was coming down for breakfast, Chapman saw Julian again. This time, as Julian entered the hotel, a friend of Chapman slammed the door on Julian's face. Julian broke the door down and the newspaper reported he called "Chapman a d-m-d coward." Julian reportedly grabbed Chapman by the coat and reached for his own gun. Chapman grabbed the one loaned to him and shot Julian twice in the chest.
The Sopris paper reported on this for several days. Laura must have heard about this while she was in Trinidad as that is where the second telegram was from. Again she asked for $100 to bury Julian. According to the Sopris paper, she was arguing with the sheriff about the case. She wanted Chapman arrested and justice served.
The reporting in both papers demonstrates something of the attitudes of the times. Julian is always referred to as "a Mexican." When the sheriff refused to act on my great-aunt's concerns (she is referred to as "an American"), it is always written in a way that makes is sound like he found investigating anything for "a Mexican" was a waste of time, especially in view of "an American" who did the shooting. Chapman is described as fair and blue-eyed. The reporter for the Trinidad paper described his eyes as "mild blue eyes which filled with tears this morning when talking to a reporter about the trouble." I would suspect the only reason the Sopris paper gave the incident so much coverage was my great-aunt's complaints and arguing with the sheriff, especially by a woman, was newsworthy or amusing.
After that, Laura essentially disappears. The Sopris Hotel was reclaimed by its owner. There is a listing in the 1904 Trinidad telephone book for a Laura Gallegos in a boarding house, but it is hard to know if it was her. She doesn't appear in any of the Colorado marriage records. She doesn't appear in the 1910 census under Gallegos, Hickman or Lightner.
Rumor had it that she moved on to Denver. As a former Harvey Girl, she could have gone back to work at the Cardenas or may have moved on to the Harvey Hotel in Colorado Springs or La Junta.
Someday we may find out what happened to her, but until then, Aunt Laura remains a mystery.