White-Plumb Farm History
 
 
 

White-Plumb Farm History

1870 - Ovid and Ann Plumb arrive in Greeley
Ovid Plumb (1823 - 1913) was born in Connecticut but raised in New York. He was well educated and had attended Williams College in MA for two years and Brown University in RI for one year. Forgoing a career in law, he worked briefly on his father’s farm in New York. By 1870 Plumb was a respected and prosperous businessman. He read about the Union Colony in The New York Tribune and wrote to Mr. Meeker about joining. (To learn more about the Union Colony and founding of Greeley click here) One of the wealthiest colonists, Mr. Plumb arrived in Greeley on May 9, 1870 with $20,000 in cash and a large “personal library” of scientific and literary works. Profits from the sale of his investments (business and residential lots and houses) made in Greeley during the 1870s enabled him to purchase a 1200 acre farm on the south side of the Platte River five miles east of Greeley in the 1880s. An experimenter, Plumb’s “scientific” approach to farming included building and improving irrigation ditches and head gates, cultivating and evaluating different kinds of meadow grasses and crops, and raising livestock. He married Anna L. Miles in 1852. Their children were Elizabeth, Augustus Miles, and Edward “Ned” Kendell.

 
1871 - Charles Augustine White arrives in Greeley
Charles Augustine (C.A.) White (1836 - 1922) was born and educated in New Hampshire. In 1849 at age 13, he worked six days a week from 5:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. as a bobbin boy in a cotton mill for three months. He left the mill due to poor health, but returned to the Amoskeag Cotton Mill when he was 16. At age 21, he went to Boston and worked two years as an apprentice carpenter and mason and also attended French’s Commercial College. A Civil War veteran, he enlisted in Co. A of the 3rd Mass. Volunteers Infantry and served from 1861 - 1865. Caroline Foster White was a Civil War nurse and attended to C.A. White and other wounded soldiers at a hospital in Virginia. White married Caroline P. Foster (1838 - 1904) in 1864. They had four children: Almira, Dorman E., and twin daughters---Augusta W. and Emily Foster. Charles White, age 34, stepped off the train at Greeley, Colorado Territory, on Jan. 20, 1871. He had been a bobbin boy, cotton mill foreman, carpenter, mason, soldier, and an employee in the Auditor’s office of the U.S. Treasury Department. In Greeley, he earned his living as a farmer and mason and constructed many of Greeley’s first houses, businesses, and churches. White held several Colorado government positions and was Greeley’s Postmaster (1884 - 1888) and Mayor (1888 - 1889).

Meeker School 1873 - Mr. White laid the first brick for the Meeker School, located at the NW corner of 10th Avenue and 8th Street. This building cost the Colony almost $30,000 and was considered the finest school in NE Colorado. It was razed in 1922.


 Park Congregational Church - White helped build several of Greeley’s first churches. This church was built at the SW corner of 10th Avenue and 8th Street in Greeley. Greeley Waterworks Pumping Station - As a mayoral candidate in 1888, White campaigned for a modern water works for Greeley. Built in 1888-89 for $65,000, it was located on the east side of 14th Avenue and “A” Street in Greeley.
1881 - White applied for 160 acres of land west of Greeley under the Timber Culture Act of 1873.
White and his family planted a “belt” of cottonwood and white ash trees around the perimeter of the property (SE 1/4 Sec2, Twp5N, R66W).
1892 - White becomes 1st owner of the 160 acre parcel
Original Timber Deed. An 1878 amendment to the 1873 Timber Culture Act (nicknamed the “tree claim” act) reduced the number of acres which had to be planted in trees from 40 to 10. White’s land patent was dated May 4, 1892, and the tree claim was the land between what is now 4th and 10th Streets and 35th and 39th (approximately) Avenues.
1893 -Families Join
Emily White (1871-1945) marries Augustus Miles Plumb (1860-1919). From their marriage, came the farm’s name: The White-Plumb Farm. Emily and Augustus raised eight children. One child, Charles Ovid (C.O.) Plumb would eventually live for 74 years on his grandfather White's tree claim.
1895 -Charles Ovid (C.O.) Plumb is born
Charles Ovid Plumb (1895-1997) grew up on the "Plumb Bottom" farm east of Greeley. He graduated from Greeley High School in 1912 and received a degree in agronomy from Colorado Agricultural College (now Colorado State University) in 1916. C.O. had a keen interest in farming. Entering the military he attained the rank of 2nd Lieutenant. As a drill master, he trained WWI troops for overseas combat. In 1918 he returned to Greeley and married Isabella Amelia Huffsmith (1898-1991), whose grandparents were Colorado pioneers. The young couple farmed at Plumb Bottom, but moved to Greeley in 1921 when C.O. took a position as the first 4-H leader in Weld County.
1903 - Water supplied to the farm
C.A. White helped design the Grapevine Lateral, an irrigation ditch with an irrigation flume that runs along the south side of the property along 10th Street. The Grapevine Lateral was used to get water from the Greeley and Loveland Irrigation Ditch, to supply water for the farm.

 
1906 - 80 Acres sold to fund house and outbuildings
In December, 1906 the east 80 acres of the "tree claim" were sold and provided White with the money needed to make improvements in the spring on the west 80 acres.

The Greeley Tribune of Feb. 14, 1907 noted that "Dorman White has the barn on his place well along toward completion. It is 24 x 48 on the floor and may serve as a summer home during the erection of the fine new home that will be built."

Farmhouse, bunk house, privy and barn
1907 - Farmhouse built
Greeley architect Bessie Smith, one of Colorado's first female architects, designed a modern eight-room cottage costing about $2,500 for Mr. White. It had conveniences like a downstairs bathroom and furnace and was wired for electricity, but electric lines didn't come to the rural area until the 1920s. The house has seven rooms. It is a well-proportioned box-style structure with symmetrically placed dormers, porch and fenestration. It combines features from 19th century architectural styles that became very popular: Colonial Revival and Queen Anne. The new house was "wired" for electricity which wasn’t "hooked up" until the mid-1920s when Greeley’s Home Gas and Electric Company extended electrical lines into rural west Greeley. A new "soft water" well was dug.

1918 - Dorman White leaves the farm
Although C.A. White paid for the house and other improvements, he continued to live in Greeley. Dorman White (C.A. White’s son) and his family lived on the farm until 1918. Not enthusiastic about farming and facing family problems, Dorman left Greeley and rented the farm for a few years

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1922 -C.A. White dies
C.A. White died in 1922 his children--Dorman, Almira, Augusta and Emily--inherited the farm. C.O. Plumb, executor of the estate, gradually purchased the farm from White's heirs, becoming its sole owner by 1945.

 
1923 - Charles Ovid (C.O.) and Isabella move to the farm
C.O. and Isabella moved to the farm on January 1, 1923. Here they raised six daughters and carried on the family farming tradition until Mr. Plumb's retirement. Everyone in the family worked. Isabella raised chickens and sold the eggs to hatcheries and egg routes and canned vegetables raised in the large kitchen garden. Mr. Plumb kept a small flock of sheep and grew certified seed potatoes, seed beans, corn, sugar beets, alfalfa, barley, oats and corn. Their daughters learned to cook, sew, can vegetables, harness the horses and drive the teams, cultivate and weed all the fields and the garden, and plant and harvest.

C.O. Plumb was a Weld County Commissioner from 1935-39. In 1934 he was a vice president of the Mountain States Beet Growers Association and served as president of the Weld County Health Association for two years.

Fourth of July parade - Very patriotic, C.O. Plumb represented WWI veterans by wearing his 1917 Army uniform and walking in Greeley's Fourth of July parade. Underground Irrigation System - C.O. Plumb designed an underground irrigation system using concrete tile, riser boxes, and gated pipe to conserve water and prevent soil erosion. A cleaning system of brushes, screens, and a waterwheel prevented trash from collecting in the pipe. The system was featured in Farmer and Rancher magazine in 1951.
 Farming By Tractor - Farming was done by horsepower until Mr. Plumb purchased his first Oliver tractor in 1939.
1997 - C.O. Plumb donates the White-Plumb farm
Mr. Plumb worried that urbanization would obliterate any trace of the town's agricultural heritage. He also wanted the farm to be a memorial to the foresight and determination of his Union Colony grandparents. He and Isabella decided to donate the remaining acres of the farm and two water rights to Lake Loveland to the City of Greeley Museums for use (after their deaths) as an agricultural learning center.

 
1999 - White-Plumb Farm Museum Opens
Upon Mr. Plumb's death at age 101 on March 17, 1997, the farm became the city's fourth museum facility and the site of children's educational programs which began in the summer of 1999. Between 1998-2000, an additional parcel of land adjoining the farm on the west was purchased for the museums. The legacy of a pioneer farm and the Union Colony roots of the families who lived here will be preserved for future generations.