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By Carol A. Wood Submitted by Helen Wood
Around 1877 the Lillie’s came on the Santa Fe Trail with 1 small child and 3 babies born on the Trail as a book was found on midwiving with items passed down from Cynthia Pitcher Lillie. My grandmother, Grace was born in 1883 in one of the two log cabins where the Yucca Hotel & Interstae Bank now stand in Raton. There were two log cabins and the rest were tents. The town was originally named Willow Springs and later renamed to Raton. They went to free land to ranch in Sugarite Canyon where Lake Maloya is now. The Troys, Rogers, and Lillies were all there. The John Lilley Ranch was 160 acres in the North area of Lake Maloya. (To this day you can still see a few of the fence posts sticking up.) They also went to Catskill on the Vermejo River, now part of Ted Turner’s Vermejo Ranch, where John Lillie had a dray service and store. The Nailers had the Hotel, and Ed Cassell, who was married to Grace’s sister Fannie (I called her More Aunt Fannie), was the blacksmith. The Maxwell Land Grant was proven they all had to move. They then moved to Cimmaron. They were given a Land Grant in 1903 from the Federal Gov’t for 160 acres in Colfax County. Grace Lillie then met and married J.C. Wilson and they had a son named Charles S. and a daughter named Fannie Mae. Charlie was my father, and was named after his uncle, Grace’s brother Charlie Lilley. One summer the archeologist from Denver Natural History Museum came down to the land when the Folsom Man was found and my dad, Charlie Wilson, took them to see the footprints and other fossils on his grandfather’s ranch in Sugarite Canyon. At age 15 while playing football Charlie (my dad) broke his collarbone, at that point he was told to get out and get a job. He went to work for room and board at the Wells Fargo, sleeping in the back room of the station. He next went to work for Snootgrass’ the grocery store. He told about the beautiful house at the head of Sugarite Canyon and about the big white regal dogs they had when he delivered groceries there. The house still stands there high on the hill just as you enter Sugarite Canyon. Snottgrass had the Company Store at the camp and he got a job in the mine office where he met Helen Hubbard, a teacher in the Sugarite school. Helen’s brother, Dr. Allen Hubbard, was the camp doctor. My dad would talk about going up to the Troy Ranch and taking the Troy sisters to the camp dances as they didn’t have any boyfriends. Myrtle and Marie were twins, and were very tall. My dad was only 5’5”. Mr. Rogers’ use to remember the parties that all the boys (Troys and Lillies) would throw and he could watch from his home on top of the mesa. Troy got married to a girl back East and they moved out to the ranch. One day they came in and found she had taken “rat poison”. They took her in to Raton, wired her family, and went back to the Ranch. When he got word that she had died and went to pick up her body, he found her family was coming for her body to take back East. Troy took her body back to the Ranch and buried her there. There was a storm and Troy went to see about the cattle. He didn’t come back and his horse returned without him. Charlie Wilson (my dad) came up to the ranch to look for him. They found him by the fence, killed by the lightening. The other rancher felt the brothers’ of Troy’s wife came and killed him as there were no burn marks on him or the horse. Mr. Stockton, who had a ranch on the land where the Old Cliffton House (Stage Stop) said yes, the story was true. Mr. Stockton’s grandfather was one of the regulators and he was named for him. Charlie Lillie (my great uncle) worked for the railroad but when they went on strike he got mad and rode off to work for Poncho Villa on the railroad in Mexico. Later he married and moved to Tucson, AZ to work on the Railroad until he died in 1917.
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