Charles Todd Durfee and Anna Harms were married on February 20, 1889 in Rock Port, Missouri. They were my (Michelle’s) great-great-grandparents.
Charles was born to Aaron Bradford Durfee and Sallie (Sarah) Todd on November 29, 1864 in Atchison County, Missouri, near Rock Port. He went to Cornell College in Mt Vernon, Iowa. In 1884, he and his uncle Green Todd began homesteading on Black Tail Creek near Hulett, Wyoming.
Grandma Hazel Durfee Kellogg told me that she had been out to the ranch several times and once they went out to an area along the river where numerous family members had carved their names in the rocks. Supposedly there is a picture, but I’ve never seen it.
Charles near Hulett, Wyoming. I’m not sure if this was on the property they owned.
Anna Harms was born to Harmon Janssen Harms and Gretchen Yelkin on March 7, 1870 in Auburn in the Nebraska Territory. This was just across the border from Rock Port, Missouri.
They met and married in Missouri and moved to the homestead after their marriage. Wyoming became a state in 1890. They had 6 children, and lived on the ranch until 1929, when they bought a house in Hulett. Charles died June 29, 1946, and Anna died December 19, 1946.
Most of the family stayed in the area, or ended up moving back there later, as my great- grandfather, A.B. “Bud” Durfee, did when he purchased a dry goods store in Sundance. You can read more about it here.
Sources
Some of this information came from my grandmother, Hazel Kellogg, and the rest came from the book “Hulett Area Past and Present.” It was published in 1985 and written by B.B. Durfee, Helen Durfee Synder and Rosabell Mahoney.
