of provisions and land, for the development and cultivation of such land which the society has taken possession of, and for commercial or industrial enterprises." The members were to work for the common benefit and not for individual profit, and, after five years had elapsed, the profits of their joint labor were to be distributed among those who survived.

In November, 1869, three members of the company, Carl Wulsten, Rudolph Jeske and Theodore Heinlein, went to Colorado and selected the Wet Mountain Valley, now in Custer County, as the site of their settlement.1 On February 8, 1870, the members left Chicago in a body for the West, under the auspices of the National Land Company. C. N. Pratt, the general agent of the latter company, was made the resident agent of the colonization company in Chicago. The Germans reached the Wet Mountain Valley in March and started on their shortlived career as a Colorado colony. The story of their attempt to practice communism in the mountains will be told in the second volume of this series.

The second colony to reach the territory was the far more famous and prosperous Union Colony. Organized in New York in December, 1869, its members began to arrive in Colorado in April and May, 1870, and founded the settlement centering at Greeley. The consideration of its early history is reserved for fuller treatment in a later section of this introduction. The plan of the Union Colony was the model for three colonies founded during the latter part of the year 1870. These were the Chicago-Colorado Colony with its community centre at Longmont, the St. Louis-Western Colony at Evans, and the South Western Colony at Green City.2

1 The accounts in the Colorado newspapers of the progress of the colony will be published in another volume of this series.

2 It is planned to print the material relating to all three of these colonies in a later volume of this series.

The Chicago-Colorado Colony was organized in Chicago. In its formation C. N. Pratt, acting for the National Land Company, played the leading part. On November 22, 1870, after a period of discussion of the project, a constitution was adopted and officers elected. The president of the colony was the famous Unitarian preacher and lecturer, Robert Collyer; its secretary, C. N. Pratt. The constitution was modeled upon that of the Union Colony. The locating committee arrived in Colorado in January, 1871, and with the assistance of William N. Byers, selected a site with its centre the present town of Longmont. Their selection was ratified in February and the colonists began to arrive in Colorado in March. Though hardly so prosperous as the Union Colony, the Chicago-Colorado Colony was in its early days a marked success.

The St. Louis-Western Colony owed its formation to the activity of the Rev. A. C. Todd of Oakdale, Illinois. The news of his interest in a project of emigration spread and soon Pratt and Byers took a hand in the proceedings in order to induce the proposed colony to go to Colorado. In time they gained the assistance of James H. Pinkerton, then of the Union Colony, and a former resident of southern Illinois; his influence seems to have been decisive. On November 29, 1870, a meeting was held in Oakdale, at which it was definitely decided to organize a colony. Somewhat later a constitution was adopted. The first name of the colony, Western Colony, was changed to the St. Louis-Western Colony when the headquarters of the association were removed to St. Louis. In March, 1871, the locating committee selected the land lying in and about Evans, some four miles south of Greeley on the Denver Pacific Railway, as the place of settlement. The colonists began to arrive in April. The colony enjoyed only a moderate measure of success and was never a

serious competitor of its near neighbor, the Union Colony.

The South Western Colony was also known in the territory as the Tennessee Colony, and as the Memphis Colony. Its promoter was D. S. Green, formerly of Denver. It was organized in Memphis in either November or December of the year 1870. Alone of the colonies of its kind it was located outside of the railroad land grant. Its locating committee reached Colorado in December, 1870, but it was not until February, 1871, that it was decided to settle on the South Platte about twenty-five miles east of Evans. Before the arrival of the colonists in Colorado it seems to have been intended that a part of their time should be devoted to mining, but this plan was abandoned. The colony town, Green City, was named after the founder of the association. Owing to bad management neither the colony nor Green City prospered and within a few years both had disappeared.

An interesting feature of the development of all four of the colonies last mentioned was the attention given to town building. Due to the desire to gain as rapidly as possible the benefits of community life, schools, churches, societies and the like, the farmers instead of scattering, settled in a town and from it went to their outlying land. This was an essential part of the colony plan. The result was that during the early days of the colonies the spectacular growth of Greeley and the other towns overshadows the advances made in the construction of ditches and the cultivation of the outlying farms.

The plan of organization of the Kentucky Fountain Colony places it in the debatable region between colonies and unorganized group migration. In November, 1870,

1 For brief accounts of this colony see: Daily Rocky Mountain News, November 30, 1870, p. 4; The Colorado Chieftain, December 8, 1870, p. 1; ibid., February 23, 1871, p. 3; May 4, 1871, p. 1; June 22, 1871, p. 2; August 17, 1871, p. 1.

there was formed in Kentucky, probably at Cynthiana, the Central Kentucky Emigration Society. The members proposed to gain reduced rates of transportation to the West, to employ a locating committee, and to settle in a body, but no co-operative undertakings beyond these were contemplated. The society purchased no land, laid out no town and did not even construct an irrigation ditch.

The list of town development companies using the name colony was fairly long. The first and most prominent of these was the Fountain Colony at Colorado Springs. It was founded in the summer of 1871. Belonging to this class were the Independence Colony at New Memphis, founded in 1871; the Agricultural Colony at Fort Collins, and the Pueblo Colony at Pueblo both founded in 1872; and the Monument Colony at Monument, the Beaver Colony at Buffalo, and Corona on the site of Green City, founded within the next year or so. All of these alleged colonies were promoted by men who had land to sell. If the towns prospered they reaped the financial benefit. To call the purchasers of town lots colonists and to paraphrase the colony circulars in advertising, shows the popularity of the colony plan, but could not transform such companies into colonies.1

BEGINNINGS OF THE UNION COLONY.

The story of the development of the Union Colony during the first year and a half of its existence is best told in the contemporary records printed in this volume. The brief account of the early days of the colony which follows is, therefore, but a summary of certain phases of the activities of the association written in the belief that

1 The Fountain, Pueblo and Agricultural colonies published pamphlets describing their organization. The others probably did the same, but they have not been found by the writer. Brief notices of all these companies may be found in the Hand Book of Colorado, published annually from 1871, by Blake and Willett, in Denver. See especially the volume for 1874.

it will make easier the understanding of the documents and excerpts from the newspapers.

Nathan C. Meeker, the agricultural editor of the New York Tribune, visited Colorado and the West in the autumn of the year 1869. He then conceived of the plan of founding a colony for settlement in Colorado. After his return to New York he communicated his plan to Horace Greeley and the distinguished editor of the Tribune gave it his approval. Greeley's support in the columns of his paper was thereafter of the greatest value to the enterprise.1

The first public notice of the colony plan, signed by Meeker, appeared in the Tribune on December 4, 1869. A few days later a call was issued for a meeting of all interested persons to be held in the Cooper Institute Building, New York, on December 23.2 At this meeting, after a discussion of the proposal it was decided to organize. The name Union Colony was adopted, officers elected and the amount of the membership fees decided upon. Meeker became the president of the association, General R. A. Cameron its vice-president, and Horace Greeley its treasurer. Five men were elected to serve with the three officers as an executive committee. To this committee was left the task of drawing up a constitution. It did so and adopted the completed document on December 27 without submitting it to the colonists for their approval.

The organization of the colony, as outlined in the constitution, was extremely simple. Membership was

1 Boyd, D., A History of Greeley and The Union Colony, pp. 1-30. Hereafter this book will be referred to as Boyd. Meeker's letters from the west are reproduced in part by Boyd. On the inception of the colony plan see also J. Max Clark, Colonial Days, pp. 131-133. The extracts from the newspapers reprinted below give a bare outline of this visit.

2 The records of these notices and the subsequent meeting are found

in the Proceedings of the colony. See below.

3 Hereafter, unless otherwise noted, the statements made in this introduction are based upon material contained in the text of this volume and no direct references will be given.