by Charles W. Bowman
Biographies
CHARLES S. PARSONSLouisa County, Va., near Richmond, was the birthplace of Mr. Parsons. He was born in 1850. He attended school and worked on a farm until the spring of 1864, when he entered the Southern army and remained in the service until the close of the war. In 1865, he went to Mississippi, where he remained a little more than a year, raising cotton. In the spring of 1867, he went to Montana, to the head of navigation on the Missouri River, but returned the same year, reaching St. Louis in December on his way to Mississippi. There he spent another ten months in cotton-raising. Having sold out his interests in that State, he removed to Texas in the fall of 1868, where he herded cattle on the frontier, and driving them to Shreveport, La. He came to Colorado in 1871, with a bunch of Texas cattle, and stopped at Point of Rocks, on the Arkansas. For several years after coming to Bent County, he was employed in herding cattle, working for James C. Jones & Bros. for four consecutive years. In 1876, he relinquished this occupation and came to West Las Animas, and engaged in the livery business, which he has followed until the present time. Mr. Parsons was married, January 1, 1879, to a daughter of H.W. Jones, now of Pueblo, who has been a resident of Colorado for more than twenty years. He has served the county of Bent three years as Deputy Sheriff, and on several occasions has acted as Deputy Treasurer.
