Dudley, Mary E. (Spencer) 1859-1932

DUDLEY, SPENCER, BRAY

Posted By: Marilyn Holmes (email)
Date: 7/6/2010 at 00:13:14

Grinnell Herald (Grinnell, Iowa)

EARLY SETTLER PASSES AWAY

Mrs. Mary Dudley, Aged 73, Dies Nov. 28 at Her Home In Colorado

(By W.G. Ray)

Gradually the early settlers of Grinnell are passing away. Mrs. Evelyn Spencer Bray has just received word of the death of her aunt, Mary Spencer Dudley, who died in Manitou Nov. 28 at the age of seventy-three years. She was the daughter of one of the early settlers here, Charles H. Spencer who with his family came to Grinnell from Jefferson county, New York, before the town was hardly more than ten years old. Mr. Spencer was killed at Colorado Springs in 1893, when the locomotive of an incoming train struck the truck on which baggage was transferred to the baggage car from the station. His wife died at an early date and his children are now all gone and only one grandchild, Mrs. Eveleyn Spencer Bray still lives here.

Charles H. Spencer was active in the early life of the town and served in the Iowa legislature in the nineties. He was a genial likeable man of upright habits and genial dispostion and when he was accidentally killed he left a large circle of warm friends.

The senior of the Herald knew Mrs. Dudley when she was a student in Grinnell college in the seventies and has always had a most kindly rememberance of her at that time. She was not a strong woman physically. Her husband died when she was still young and in rather poor circumstances leaving two sons. She lived in Manitou and for many years used her house to take roomers at this mountain resort. I knew her when she was working very hard to keep her family together and to make a home for them and a living for herself.

The story of her life is told in the accompanying paragraph taken from a Manitou paper. She lived a good life and leaves behind her many friends of her early days who appreciate the generous life she lived and her wholesome kindly manner in keeping with her early training and her lifelong unselfish disposition. The evening Telegram says:

"Mrs. Mary E. Dudley, one of the oldest residents of Manitou, who first came to the town in 1873, died at her home, 215 Canon avenue, at five o'clock Monday morning, at the age of 73 years. She had been ill of paralysis for more than three years.

Mrs. Dudley was born in Grinnell, Iowa, November 4, 1859, and as a girl accompanied her mother, Mrs. Mary A. Spencer, to Colorado, for the latter's health, as she suffered from asthma. They kept on from Denver to reach the mountains, and, coming to Colorado Springs by rail, took a stage coach to Manitou. Mrs. Spencer chose a site in some scrub oaks and built a house, one of the first, if not the first, frame house in the town.

A mountain lion troubled them nightly by crawling under the house and raising the floor board with its back. They put lamps in the windows on several occasions to keep it out. The lion was finally hunted and killed by Manitou men.

Mrs. Dudley returned to Grinnell, to attend Grinnell college and June 22, 1880, was married to George A. Dudley, who had come from Winterport, Me., and who engaged in the grain elevator business in Grinnell. Soon afterward, they homesteaded in the San Luis Valley, in southern Colorado, but did not remain long in that then new settlement area, going to Denver. There Mr. Dudley, who at different times was connected with an iron contracting firm and with the Colorado Fuel and Iron company, died April 13, 1902.

Mrs. Spencer and her husband, Charles H. Spencer, a Grinnell banker having both died, Mrs. Dudley moved to Manitou, where she had since made her home in what is known to old residents of the place as the Spencer cottage. She leaves two sons, Charles S. Dudley, a member of the Gazette and Telegraph staff and Arthur H. Dudley, of Long Beach, Calif. The latter visited her in Manitou recently. Mrs. Dudley was buried at Denver beside the body of her husband."