By ED PECK
George Hazen’s daughters did well also in Meeker. Miss Agnes Hazen was teaching at the Mesa School on May 4, 1889. Her sister, Grace Evangeline Hazen Adams, also taught school in Axial about 1892. According to the April 7, 1894, Meeker Herald, Agnes was the assistant principal at the Meeker School. She was also attributed as the first woman to prove up on a ranch in Rio Blanco County. Her other claim to fame was to be the first of her sex to exercise her right to vote and cast the first ballot in the town’s 1894 election. Colorado, as a state, gave women the right to vote in 1893.
I personally feel that her claim to be the first woman to prove up on a homestead is debatable. Miss Agnes Hazen received patent #99 on April 23, 1891. Mrs. Susan Wright received patent #133 on Sept. 15, 1890. One could argue that Agnes filed her claim first, but it may have taken longer to “prove up.” Both were remarkable women in their time.
Not much is revealed about George’s sister, Emeline Lucretia Hazen. In the 1880 Census, she was 58 years old and caring for her father, age 87, in Potage, Ohio. After her father, Reuben, died that year, she must have joined one or more of her brothers out West. She apparently never married and wound up dying near Meeker in 1898 while visiting the Kissinger ranch. She is buried in Highland Cemetery.
In the 1900 Colorado Federal Census, George S. Hazen was residing at the Soldier’s Home in Rio Grande County, Colorado. In the early 1900s the government operated a major hospital for Veterans in Sawtelle, Los Angles, California. I have found several of our Meeker Civil War soldiers treated there in this time period. George was admitted March 3, 1903, and again on March 5, 1908. The hospital records show him as 5 feet, 7 inches, with fair complexion, widowed. His pension was $12 a month. He died in California of cerebral hemorrhage. At the time, his daughter, Grace E. Hazen Adams was living in Meeker. His other daughter, Agnes E. Hazen Richardson was living in Glenwood Springs. George Stillwell Hazen died July 29, 1908, in Santa Monica, California, and was interred Aug. 1, 1909, in the Los Angeles National Cemetery.
