KNOWN BURIALS
This page is dedicated to the memory of all of the men, women, and children buried in the Caribou Cemetery. If the town (in its early days) kept a list, however, it hasn’t survived. In 1940, visitors recorded the then-legible names on 18 gravestones. Since then, newspaper accounts from the 1870s and 1880s added a few more names of those who died in Caribou but are not accounted for elsewhere. Likely there were more burials in unmarked graves. Today, all of the stones are gone, leaving only broken bases to mark the known graves.
Eight more burials took place between 1958 and 2020, however only one (Landon) has a plaque with a name. In September 2023, two stones were added to the grave of Thomas S. Hendricks. A plaque with his name and dates will be added.
An * indicates an image and more information, below.
1875 COLLINS, SARAH, age 36, grave site identified
1875 HICKS, WILLIAM H., age 27, mine accident (cartridge explosion), gravesite identified
1875 LLOYD, MARY E., age 3, grave site identified
1875 MURPHY, JOSEPH J., age unknown (adult)
1875 REDRUP, EMMA A., age unknown
1876 GOUGE, INFANT, age less than 1 year
1876 JOHNS, JOHN H.*, adult, mine accident, member Caribou I.O.O.F.
1877 PEARCE, RICHARD, age 3
1878 LUNSFORD, ALBERT W., age 1, grave site identified
1879 COSGROVE, THOMAS P., age 3, grave site identified
1879 GEORGE, EMMA, age 9, grave site identified
1879 PERKINS, MARGARET, age 45, grave site identified
1879 RICHARDS, ALICE M., age 3, diphtheria, grave site identified
1879 RICHARDS, ANNA, age 10, diphtheria, grave site identified
1879 RICHARDS, WILLIE, age 8, diphtheria, grave site identified
1879 STEVENS, WILLIAM F., age unknown
1879 WEBSTER, MARY, age 39, diphtheria, grave site identified
1879 WILLIAMS, JAMES T., age 30, grave site identified
1880 ELLINGHAM, ELLEN*, age 28
1880 PUGH, FRANCES A., age 62, grave site identified
1881 DAVEY, JOSEPH J., age less than 1 year
1881 JAMES, JOSEPH, age less than 1 year
1881 RETALLACK, JOHN, age 4
1882 EWERT, AGNES JULIA*, age 7 months, grave site identified
1887 MCKENZIE, BABY, age less than 1 year
1896 LEMON, BABY*, age less than 1 year
1898 SMITH, BEVERLY, age, less than 1 year
Unknown 1870s-1880s, SPANNER, BABY
Unknown 1870s-1880s, WEBSTER, JOHN
Unknown 1875-1885, ANDERSON, 2 CHILDREN
(No burials for 60 years.)
“I remember two rows of babies in that old cemetery with just a path between.” (Daily Camera 18 April 1944, stated by a cemetery visitor in 1915.)
1958 PILAI, A KUMARA, age 67
1972 LANDON, ADAH S., age 72, grave site identified
1992 PILAI, LG CHELLAMMA, age 93
1996 LEWIS, KENNETH D., age 63
2015 ROBERTS, JUDITH, age 80
2017 BROWN, DOROTHY L., age 94
2017(?) BROWN, MARBURY, age unknown, ashes scattered
2020 HENDRICKS, THOMAS S.*, age 70, grave site identified
Agnes Julia EWERT, 1882
Seven-month-old Agnes Julia was the first child of Methodist pastor Albert Louis Theodore Ewert (born in Germany in 1853) and Laura Hildegard Miller, from Illinois. The case of the baby’s death is unknown, but it likely was diphtheria or scarlet fever.
John H. JOHNS, 1876
More on John below:
Ellen ELLINGHAM, 1880
Ellen Ellingham was married to Samuel Ellingham. Their daughter, also named Ellen, was born July 29, 1880. The mother, Ellen, died 8 days later on August 6, 1880, likely from complications with childbirth.
LEMON baby, 1896
This baby, whose first name is unknown, was the child of Rose and Harry Lemon. There was some confusion in the cemetery’s list of burials, as only the baby died (in a fire). The mother survived.
Thomas S. HENDRICKS, 2020
Miner Tom Went Over the Range,
A century or more ago, an unnamed writer began a poem by stating, "Life is a mill and men the ore, roughest of rock may hold in store; the silver of love and the gold of truth, metals of strength and lasting truth.” These first lines, published in the "Mining and Industrial News," seem appropriate when remembering the life of Tom Hendricks. "Miner Tom," as he liked to be called, died peacefully in his sleep at the age of 70 on January 6, 2020.
As old-time Boulder County obituary writers used to state, he "went over the range.”
I first met Hendricks in 1981 when I interviewed him for a Camera feature story on his mining and milling activities. He was optimistic and enthusiastic about having recently reopened the Cross Mine, near the ghost-town of Caribou, west of Nederland. By the early 1980s, gold had jumped from $42 to $673 per ounce, and several hard-rock mines were in varying stages of development in Boulder County.
Hendricks said that he started mining with a pick, a shovel, a wheel-barrow, and a credit card. While still in his mid-twenties, he hired a small mine crew who helped him drill and blast rock. When the dust settled, the crew mucked (removed) the ore. They repeated the process over and over again.
During my first interview with Hendricks, I quickly learned that he took every opportunity to learn from old-timer miners and incorporate their passion. At the time, he was trucking his gold and silver ores to the former Allied Chemical Mill, at Valmont, east of Boulder. For milling advice, he relied upon Al McGowen, a retired mine and mill superintendent who had learned his skills from yet another generation of miners who had preceded him.
Like McGowen, Hendricks also was generous in sharing his knowledge with those to follow. He led many thousands of his peers and young people through sometimes-wet underground adits (tunnels). Usually, he preceded his tours with detailed accounts of early Caribou, located at 10,000 feet and first settled in the 1870s by hardy miners and their families, some who had relocated all the way from Cornwall, England.
Hendricks also liked to pepper his tours with personal anecdotes, such as the time he gave a tour to actress and super-model Margaux Hemingway. "She gave me a kiss, and I didn't wash my face for a week," he told me later.
For decades, Hendricks kept on mining and continued even after he was diagnosed with throat cancer. On a sunny but cold January day, his family and friends laid him to rest in the Caribou Cemetery, within sight of the Continental Divide. The setting is one that he loved, but everyone knew he'd rather be mining.
The anonymous writer from a long time ago finished his poem with sentiments that encompass both Hendricks and his predecessors by stating, "When I'm through and the cleanup is weighed, I hope there's an honest profit paid. May the mill-man speak not of laurels won, but simply say, "Twas a good mill run.”
(by Silvia Pettem, published in the Daily Camera February 9, 2020)
This page is IN PROGRESS, with additional information to come.
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