Who was early Denver’s Favorite Auntie? Aunt Clara Brown, a slave freed by her owner who was impressed by her piety and intelligence, made her way to Denver by working for an 1859 wagon train headed for the Colorado Gold Rush. She made her way to booming Central City where she opened the first laundry and made a bundle washing the clothes of miners. She used some of those funds to help establish Central City’s first Methodist Church and then went east in search of her husband and children who had been sold to separate owners. She found only her daughter Eliza Jane. She fed and housed the poor especially Blacks who she helped move to Colorado.
- Courtesy of “Dr. Colorado” Tom Noel