The General Index is a unique tool for Denver and Colorado history and biography. Researchers in the know often go slack-jawed or misty-eyed when they realize what they've discovered...
Known by staff and researchers as the GI, it is an index of about 6.5 million entries on 1 million cards to previously un-indexed local and county histories, biographical works, some manuscript material, and western journals and serials. It makes accessible the otherwise inaccessible. Researchers in the know often go slack-jawed or misty-eyed when they realize what they've discovered.
In 1935, the newly created Western History Department acquired an index of local subjects begun by the Reference Department. With this base, new subject headings were added to broaden the scope beyond Denver and the established headings were refined. Then, in the midst of the Depression, the Western History Department benefitted from a federal stimulus: a Colorado Works Progress Administration (WPA) grant to index in detail the Rocky Mountain News, 1865-1885. The result? An every-name index for the premier Colorado newspaper of the day for a more than twenty-year span.
In the years that followed, the Department's staff continued to index contemporary newspapers, journals, and some standards of Colorado history, while also adding retrospective sources such as the Denver Times, 1872-1913. The General Index closed to additional entries in 1995.
Still housed in its original wooden card catalog cabinets and situated across from our reference desk, the GI is available to all visitors to the Department. The entire General Index has been digitized, and can be searched online.
An Ode to the General Index
Among the treasures of the Denver Public Library, few rival the massive General Index in the Western History Department. This product of more than a half-century’s work, if recreated at current costs, would be worth $2 million or more. An index of an estimated four million entries to articles, books, newspapers, and other material, it is an outstanding contribution to scholarship - a college in itself. Without it scholars would be impaired and devotees of well-researched local history would be impoverished. Without it the Denver Public Library would be a far less splendid institution that it is. All hail to the generations of librarians and Denver taxpayers who have supported, built, and maintained such a superb research tool.
Stephen J. Leonard. Trials and Triumphs: A Colorado Portrait of the Great Depression, with FSA Photographs. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1993 page 300.
A man named Clarence Ralston
A man named Clarence Ralston was killed when D. F. D. Asst. Chief John Healy struck him while responding to Fire Alarm Box 41 at 19th St. and Market St. at 12 o'clock noon on July 4, 1910. He was buried without a headstone in Block 12, Lot 6, section 12, at Riverside Cemetery.
Hi, chatting with a DPL
Hi, chatting with a DPL online person they gave me this link. My goal is to find the burial spot for a distant relative with an interesting history who I am sure died penniless. We have a connection to John Dillinger via him.
Via prison records I know he died 1-31-83 in Denver but no record of where he was buried. I have searched via Ancestry.com, Newspapers.com and FamilySearch with no data.
It's the final point of my research on him. How can I use this source to search. I am in Wisconsin and coincidentally will be in Denver area Jan 6-10, 2022. Thank you in advance for any help.
Deceased name is Walter (Welton) A Sparks.
Thanks for commenting, Steven
Thanks for commenting, Steven. Please submit this request to our contact form so that we can take a look at the resources and send you scans of anything we find! You can submit that request at https://history.denverlibrary.org/contact-us
I submitted my request in Dec
I submitted my request in Dec-21 but haven’t heard anything so just checking in.
Hi Steve, Thanks for checking
Hi Steve, Thanks for checking back in. It looks like your question was closed anticipating that you'd be coming in. I'll reopen it and send it to our new genealogy librarian for follow-up.
Hello: during the Spanish Flu
Hello: during the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, my grandfather and his family lived in Denver. The family was dirt poor but as the story goes on the night of the World War 1 armistice (11 November 1918), the whole family went down to see the parade. On the way back from the parade several of the children started getting sick. That night three of the children died from the Spanish Flu. Those three children along with my grandfather all slept in the same bed. When my grandfather woke up in the morning the other three had been removed during the night as they had passed. By some miracle my grandfather was untouched. I have been trying to find the graves of the three but have run up empty on all of the regular sites. On the 1910 census two of the children were identified as;
Rosco Smith 8 years old born in 1902.
Isaac Smith 2 years old born in 1908.
The third child’s name is lost to time but must have been born at some time after the 1910 census and died before the 1920 census. So his name was never recorded. My grandfather said he was the third youngest so I know the last two died before the census of 1920. My Grandfather also said that after his three brothers died, he became the youngest in the family. My Great Grandmother’s name was Hester Smith (1870-1930) and my great grandfather’s name was Arthur E. Smith (1861-1935). Also the first names of the two identified brothers could be their middle names. It was the custom in the family to be called by their middle names. I began to wonder if maybe all three brothers were placed in potters field due to the extreme poverty of the family. Sorry for the long story but I believe the background is important to this saga. Thank you for your help in this matter. It’s important for everyone to be counted in this world no matter how short a time they lived.
Hello,
Hello,
Looking for James J. Boiz and children, last record in 1929 in Denver, Colorado as a painter living on Culfax Ave. Lost his family to a Juvenile Farm in Omaha in 1924 due to extreme poverty and squatting in a fruit cellar. Seems to have met up briefly in Colorado where son was still in Juvenile care, and other children unaccounted for when his wife Hilda remarried.
Thank you.
I am likely too late to find…
I am likely too late to find my biological dad I never met, and so far I was told he spent some lengthy time working in Denver. I moved o Ft. Collins, CO on 1983 but didn’t learn his name until my adoption records were finally unsealed and in 2007 the file was sent to me at no charge due to the Amazing history of my infancy and the county Judge granted the teary eyed clerk permission to mail me a complete copy and she did.
It would please me to learn if ROBERT JOHN WIDGER could be buried there, and if so, would I be permitted to drive there to view his grave site? If no identification is found, where else could I contact in the Denver area? I am working with a newly found second cousin our genealogy, who found me, and has performed many long weeks, days, and hours trying to help me find or learn more about him and more Widgers back in Pennsylvania. Thank you kindly for any help you can provide us.
Many blessings to you and yours!
Lynda G Sizemore
comidwife00@gmail.com
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