Louise Cora Clough Dunn (1840-1896) - Miner’s Wife

 

PCA Archive

Louise Cora Clough was born in Maine around 1840.  When she was a young girl, she appears to have been known as Caroline.  The family eventually moved to Douglas County, Kansas, where her father, the Rev. Mace Richard Clough, was a Methodist circuit preacher and farmer.  Judging from the birthplaces of their children, the move took place between 1850 and 1857.  At the time, Douglas County was at the epicenter of “Bleeding Kansas”, with settlements sharply divided between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions. 

 Louise married William B. Walling on November 22, 1857, in Lawrence, Kansas.  Like herself, Walling was a New Englander, born January 31, 1835, in Vermont.  Walling seems to have been in the lumber industry, so it was only natural that, around 1859, the couple would leave treeless, windswept Kansas for the mining towns of Colorado. 

The Wallings settled near Central City, Colorado, where William built a sawmill.  Over the following years, he and Louise had several children:   an unnamed child who died at birth around 1858, Frederick A. (1859-1946), Herbert Benjamin (1864-1947), Edward (~1867-), Addie (~1868-), May (1870-1953), and Elmer Ellsworth (1871-1965).

After a dispute with his business partner which culminated in a shooting in self-defense, Walling moved his sawmill to Caribou, Colorado, and branched out into cattle-raising and real estate sales.  He constructed a small steamboat and, on the Fourth of July, 1872, launched it at a popular amusement park built on a small lake south of Central City.  Residents appreciated the novelty and lined up to buy tickets for excursions.

 But all was not well with the Walling marriage.  They divorced on June 16, 1875, and Louise married John Casper Dunn in Denver just thirteen days later, on June 29, 1875.

Dunn was a miner and a Union veteran of the Civil War.  The year 1880 found the Dunns living in Denver, where Louise’s youngest child, Elmer Ellsworth, had adopted the Dunn surname.   None of Louise’s other children, who had continued to use the Walling surname, were in the household. 

The Dunns may have moved to Phoenix, Arizona, after Louise developed pulmonary tuberculosis.  The family was living near Five Points when she died quite suddenly on September 9, 1896.  She had reportedly eaten a hearty supper and was washing dishes afterward when stricken with a hemorrhage from which she died a few minutes later.

 Louise was buried in Loosley Cemetery, Section 11, Grave 7.

 - by Donna L. Carr