One Man Among Millions
By McKensey Bishop
George W. Baugh
November 20, 1885 – December 26, 1955
In November of 1885, George Washington Baugh was born in Denver, Colorado. Unfortunately, information regarding his parents or early childhood is not well documented, but it is known that George did not spend much of his young life in school as he had only completed up to his 4th grade year in elementary education. Despite his lack of a formal education, George was able to read and write well and by the time he was 21, he was working as a laborer in the Denver area,[1] As a young man, George’s life included an eclectic array of work.
In 1910, he was living as a lodger, performing odd jobs for an older woman named Mary Mauldin.[2] In the years to come, he was employed as both a pipe molder and a teamster.[3] A teamster worked to make deliveries via horse-drawn carriages, which was an extremely demanding career. Teamsters labored 12-18 hours a day, 7 days a week and yet still only earned a wage of about $2 per day.[4] Due to his experience in this type of work, it came as no surprise when Mr. Baugh was assigned a role as a “wagoner” when he was deployed as a World War I soldier in 1917. George heroically served in Europe from 1917-1919 in the Ammunition Training branch of the US army.[5]
Figure 1. WWI Wagoner Soldier
When he returned to Colorado once the international war conflicts resolved, George added another role to his resume as a Rio Grande truck driver in Denver which was made possible now that more advanced technology was used for the transport of goods beyond just horse-drawn wagons.[6] Life remained relatively consistent for George after this point until 1925 when he took Elizabeth “Lizzie” Oldson as his wife and adopted her two children as his own.
Lizzie was born in Kansas and married young at the age of 21 to John Newton Edwards. With him, she had two children, Neeva and Gladys Edwards. Not long after their youngest daughter, Gladys, was born, Lizzie and John divorced and John moved to California.
After her divorce, Lizzie was supported by her large family of seven siblings and eventually she relocated to Denver with her two daughters. This is where she met, fell in love, and married George. The happy couple bought a quaint house on South Humboldt Street in Denver while George continued to work as a local laborer.
Figure 2. George & Lizzie’s Marriage Certificate
There is little information on the whereabouts of George’s oldest step-daughter, Neeva, but what is known is that as Gladys grew older, she remained in the Denver area and began doing general office work and eventually held a job at Edwards Frank Plumbing Company.[7] She married a young man named Orville Richardson at age 20 and lived in an apartment off of Corona Street nearby her parents.
As a military veteran devoted to serving his country, George registered for the US World War II draft in 1942.[8] He was never deployed, but since he was 56 and nearing retirement at the time, he likely would have used his experience with horses and as a laborer to do non-combatant work to support the war. On his registration card, he referred to his employment status as “WPA” meaning the “Works Progress Administration.”[9] The Works Progress Administration was a government-subsidized program to support the unemployed, so it appears George had been struggling to find work for some time. There is no information known about his employment status after this point, but in 1951 George and Lizzie were still living together in a small home off of Broadway in Denver.[10]
When George was younger, he invested in some rural land in Kremmling, Colorado to raise livestock, but never officially lived there until the final years of his life.[11] George passed away in December of 1955 in Kremmling, and it appears that most of his family moved to that area to join him before he died. Mr. Baugh was buried in the Fort Logan National Cemetery and when Lizzie passed away a year later in 1956 she was buried right next to him.,[12]
Gladys never had any children of her own, but George’s eldest step-daughter, Neeva, did have a few kids to continue the family line. Several generations later, the most recent descendants of George W. Baugh include his great grandchildren Leni Allen and Harry Uncapher who are both in their 50’s and 60’s now. Leni lives in Craig, Colorado not far from George’s land in Kremmling, and Harry moved further away to a town in Washington several years ago. In the end, although he was one man among the millions of soldiers who fought in World War I, there is much deeper significance than just that to unpack from the life of George W. Baugh.
Figure 3. George W. Baugh’s Gravestone.
Footnotes ↓
[1] Year: 1940; Census Place: Denver, Denver, Colorado; Roll: m-t0627-00491; Page: 1A; Enumeration District: 16-229; link; Ancestry.com. U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.; link
[2] Year: 1910; Census Place: Denver Ward 13, Denver, Colorado; Roll: T624_117; Page: 8B; Enumeration District: 0174; FHL microfilm: 1374130; link
[3] Ancestry.com. U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.; link; Ancestry.com. U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011; link
[4] “The Early Years.” International Brotherhood of Teamsters, May 21, 2020. https://teamster.org/about/teamster-history/the-early-years/#:~:text=In%201900%2C%20the%20typical%20teamster,for%20lost%20or%20damaged%20merchandise.
[5] Ancestry.com. Colorado, Roster of Men and Women Who Served in World War I, 1917-1918 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2001; link
[6] Ancestry.com. U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011; link
[7] Year: 1930; Census Place: Denver, Denver, Colorado; Page: 15A; Enumeration District: 0230; FHL microfilm: 2339970; link
[8] The National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; World War II Draft Cards (Fourth Registration) for the State of Colorado; Record Group Title: Records of the Selective Service System; Record Group Number: 147; Box or Roll Number: 009; link
[9] “Works Progress Administration.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Accessed June 2, 2021. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Works-Progress-Administration.
[10] Ancestry.com. U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011; link
[11] Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office Records; Washington D.C., USA; Federal Land Patents, State Volumes; link
[12] Ancestry.com. U.S., National Cemetery Interment Control Forms, 1928-1962 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012; link; National Cemetery Administration; U.S. Veterans' Gravesites; link
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