A New Beginning

Ruby Gladys Yake was born on December 21st, 1884 on the old Stone Ranch near Culbertson, Nebraska where her father was foreman. When Ruby was about two years old, the family left Nebraska by covered wagon and settled in Wallace County, Kansas and her father became a successful rancher. Ruby’s father, John, passed away suddenly at the young age of 56 of an apparent heart attack on May 25, 1902. Four months later and just 17 years old, Ruby married Henry Amel Chinburg, a ranch employee.

Henry was born in Altona, Illinois on December 1875. Henry’s family also came west by covered wagon pulled by oxen and settled in Wallace County, a “pioneer community” with a school that kept an irregular schedule. Speaking only Swedish at home, Henry learned English at the little school and would successfully complete McGuffy’s Fifth Reader.

Henry worked at the railroad roundhouse for awhile, but wanting something for himself, began to farm in western Kansas seven miles from the Kansas/Colorado state line near Kanorado, Kansas. Around 1910, the young family homesteaded in Colorado where their first home was a “dug-out” in the earth that they later used as a vegetable cellar. Henry eventually moved a “high-front store building” from Kanorado and began a decade-long renovation turning the building into a home. Henry said “he was going to add a bathroom, and build the rest of the house around it.” The little building became a two bedroom home with a living room, dining room, kitchen, pantry, bath and a screened in porch along the east side of the house.

Dust Bowl in Southeastern Colorado

In the 1930s, like other farmers acting under Roosevelt’s Agricultural Adjustment Agreement, Henry was paid not to raise crops or livestock. Fields were supposed to lie idle and tilled to keep them free from weeds. The affect of this Act along with what is considered one of the worst climatic events in the history of the United States is described by Henry: “the fine drift dirt sifted into the best of houses. The weeds in the fence rows caught the dirt and piled up fencepost high. The static electricity in the dirt stalled cars and burned vegetation. The cattle died and people died from dust pneumonia.”

Henry and Ruby were not getting any younger and Henry’s health was failing, so in 1945 he began to look for a place to buy in Boulder, Colorado. When he saw the house at 1937 Spruce Street, he realized that it had the same room arrangement as the farm house (only lacking the screened porch). Henry sold the farm, auctioned off personal belongings and purchased the house on Spruce in the winter of 1945.

Ruby and Henry moved into their new home where their greatest pleasure was spending time in their yard where Henry planted fruit trees, grapes and roses. They took walks downtown and Henry became acquainted with other older men whom he entertained with his stories of the past. Ruby loved to sew and used a treadle machine -- she said she "got hungry to sew".  She loved to read to her husband and play the organ.  It was Ruby who furnished the music for neighborhood dances.  Speaking of her father, their daughter Edna said, “In spite of the many hardships he encountered in his lifetime, he had an optimistic outlook on life and whistled as he went about his work.” Those were happy days.