The First We Can Remember: Colorado Pioneer Women Tell Their Stories

Appendix: The Correspondence of Anna Florence Robisonand LeRoy Hafen

I have always been interested in doing something of this sort in this very region where we live but have never had the time and opportunity together. I can assure you it would be a “labor of love” on my part as well as a task done in order to earn again if you could possibly let me have a share in this project. . . . I want so much to work at anything I can do to keep my poor tiny mother from hardship. Anna Florence Robison AnnaFlorenceRobison,thefield-workerforMontezumaCountyin1934, corresponded frequently with LeRoy Hafen, curator at the Colorado Historical Society in Denver and the project director for the fieldwork being done across the state. Although Anna Robison need not be seen as necessarily representative of field-workers in general, certainly her correspondence sheds light on her own life as a field-worker, her reasons for working, her background, her interest in the project, and the day-to-day details of carrying out such a project. Anna Robison was born in Edmond, Oklahoma, on December 29, 1899, the only child of William H. R. Robison and Mary Eleanor Belt Robison. The family moved to Colorado and bought a house on forty acres just outside the community of Dolores. Robison attended Fort Lewis College in Durango and Western State College in Gunnison. Appendix The Correspondence of Anna Florence Robison and LeRoy Hafen 282 appendix She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, a Master of Arts degree (both in English), and in 1927 and 1928 she attended the School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York. She taught for a year in North Dakota (1930–31), after which her position was eliminated and she returned to her parents’ farm in Dolores. Her mother, born about 1858, survived Anna’s father, who died in the early 1930s. In 1934 Robison applied for a job with the Civil Works Administration (cwa). She worked for several months (off and on) under the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (fera), which replaced the cwa in mid-March 1934. After September 1934, her correspondence stops abruptly. Although the historical survey project was supposed to have been continued under what Hafen calls “Professional Projects,” it is not clear whether or not Anna participated. There are no later letters to or from Robison in the Hafen correspondence. According to Alice Odell of Mancos, Colorado, Anna played the piano and preferred Campbell’s soup to other cooking. After her mother’s death in the late 1930s, Anna married Clyde Everett Jewel, a millworker, miner, and mechanic. In the late 1940s the couple moved to Grand Junction, Colorado, where Anna became active in the Mormon Church. She died in the summer of 1970, a year after her husband’s death. She left her Grand Junction property to the Mormon Church. In addition to the Montezuma County narratives that Robison recorded and submitted as a part of the historical project, the letters she wrote to Hafen are testimony to her enthusiasm for the project and her integrity in carrying it out. Because she is a near-contemporary of the children of the women whose histories she collected and preserved , the account of her own career complements the narratives of the pioneer women. The narrative of her career suggested by the correspondence answers western women historians’ call for suggestions about “how the story turned out.”1 The letters are reprinted courtesy of the Colorado Historical Society, appendix 283 repository and owner of the records. Hafen’s letters are unsigned copies , whereas Robison’s are the signed originals. R.R. No. 1, Box 51, Dolores, Colorado January 2, 1934 The Secretary Colorado State Historical Society, Denver, Colorado My dear Sir: I have just been informed that your organization has funds from the cwa to put a certain number of persons to work throughout the state gathering historical data and stories of pioneers. I know nothing definite about the arrangements for this. But if at all possible, I should like to be considered for some of this work in this region. I shall ask the Employment Bureau at Columbia University to send you my credentials in case there might be a possible and much needed opportunity for me here. I believe I am fully qualified to do this work since, in addition an ab and an am in English, I have finished the two-year course in the School of Journalism at Columbia, and have...