Skip to main content

Eliza Tupper Wilkes

Eliza Tupper Wilkes (1844–1917) was a circuit-riding preacher who started eleven Universalist and Unitarian churches in the American West. The Unitarians and Universalists were two Protestant denominations that shared an interest in abolition, women’s…

Jewish Colony at Cotopaxi

In 1882 a group of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe settled at the Cotopaxi Colony. The colony was the result of persistent efforts by several prominent American Jews and Jewish organizations to offer a better life for those fleeing the Pale of…

Julia Greeley

Julia Greeley (c. 1840–1918) was born into slavery in Missouri. Around 1880 she moved to Denver and became a Catholic. Despite being poor herself, Greeley spent the rest of her life doing good deeds for the impoverished. In 2016 the Catholic Church…

Nathan Meeker

Nathan Cook Meeker (1817–1879) was an agriculturalist, newspaper editor, and Indian agent. He founded the Union Colony at present-day Greeley as well as the city’s oldest newspaper, the Greeley Tribune. In 1878 he was appointed Indian agent of the…

Rev. John O. Ferris

The Reverend John O. Ferris (d. 1942) was a spiritual leader in Trinidad during the Coalfield War and Ludlow Massacre of 1914. Ferris was one of the few people permitted to search the ruined Ludlow tent city for the bodies of slain miners, women, and…

Rev. Thornton R. Sampson

The Reverend Thornton R. Sampson (1852–1915) was an important religious figure and educator in Texas who disappeared on a hike in the Rocky Mountains in 1915. Sampson’s disappearance received national coverage. The massive search effort launched by his…

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini (1850–1917) was an Italian Catholic nun who came to the United States in 1889 as a missionary tasked with ministering to the country’s growing population of Italian immigrants. Over the next three decades, during her…