People & Peoples

During Francis Warren's second term as Territorial Governor, Wyoming was granted statehood on July 10, 1890. Territorial Governor Warren was then elected Wyoming's first State Governor September 11, 1890.

Businessman, family man, territorial and state governor, U.S. Senator: Francis E. Warren succeeded in all of these roles, but he is best known for long service in the U.S. Senate on behalf of Wyoming. A Massachusetts native, Warren arrived in Cheyenne in 1868, when the city was still a mass of tents and other temporary structures, and quickly became involved in its business and politics. By around 1900 he was Wyoming’s most powerful Republican, and ran his party’s so-called Warren Machine for decades by patronage and pork-barrel politics.

The Finley Site, located near Eden in Sweetwater County, Wyo., was used by early American Indians to trap and kill bison. The Finley Site is an early Holocene Paleo-Indian bison-kill and processing area, dating back about 7,500 to 12,500 years before the present. This was the first place where Eden points and two kinds of Scottsbluff projectile points were found together, showing that the three were contemporaneous. The Finley Site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Fenimore Chatterton was born in Oswego County, New York on July 21, 1860. Chatterton was raised in Washington, D.C. where he attended public schools. After attending Columbian University (now George Washington University) Chatterton graduated from Millersville State Normal School in Lancaster, PA. He moved to Wyoming in 1878 and became a clerk in a general mercantile and banking concern.

A childhood love of adventure eventually led the Belgian Jesuit priest Father Pierre-Jean De Smet to become a missionary to the Indians of the Rocky Mountains. He traveled throughout the northern Rockies, along the way celebrating the first Catholic Mass in what’s now Wyoming on July 5, 1840, during the Green River Rendezvous. In 1851, members of his party named Lake De Smet for him as they traveled from the Missouri River in present Montana to assist in treaty negotiations with the plains tribes near Fort Laramie.

Educator Estelle Reel fought hard to obtain the Republican nomination for Wyoming superintendent of public instruction in 1894, after which she became the first woman in Wyoming elected to a statewide office. In 1898, President McKinley named her national superintendent of Indian schools.

Emma Knight, the University of Wyoming’s first dean of women, bore four children and served seven years as the Albany County, Wyoming superintendent of schools before she finally graduated from the university in 1911, the same year as her daughter. The wife and mother of UW professors of geology—Wilbur and Samuel H. Knight—she was highly regarded by her students and colleagues. Knight Hall on the UW campus is named in her honor.

Elliot S. N. Morgan was the only Acting Governor during the Territorial period, serving as Acting Governor upon the death of Governor Hale.

Edward Ivinson made a fortune in banking in Laramie, Wyo. in the 19th century. Late in life, he turned to philanthropy, making large contributions to benefit his town and community. His generosity funded a hospital, a cathedral, a home for aging ladies and an orphanage, all in Laramie.

The yarn that Thomas Edison dreamed up the idea of a bamboo filament for the incandescent electric light bulb while staring into a Wyoming campfire is almost certainly not true. He did come to Rawlins, Wyoming Territory in 1878, however, as part of an astronomical expedition, and he did go fishing afterwards. The rest of the facts still make for a pretty interesting story.