In 1880 fewer people lived in Wyoming than now live in Laramie but an analysis of the occupations of some of the people shows the diversity of the population in the young territory.

Cheyenne was the largest town in 1880. Casper was not yet founded. The 42-year-old territorial governor J. W. Hoyt is listed along with his wife, young son and 26-year-old "Black servant." The territorial judge, William Peck, was boarding at the home of a butcher on 20th Street when the census taker made his rounds in 1880.

Oddly, the first people counted in the capital city were prisoners housed in the county jail. The motley group of 23 included a civil engineer, three cooks, two barbers, two prostitutes and a "book agent." There is not hint, of course, as to the reason for their temporary residence in the county facility. The city jail population was just as diverse. A soap maker, a hatter and two painters occupied cells there. So did a sailor. Unless he operated a canoe on Crow Creek, he had not been employed in his occupation while a Cheyenne resident.

Laramie citizens counted on the 1880 census included an "owner of a silver mine," a number of teamsters, several saloonkeepers, railroad conductors, rolling mill employees, clerks and doctors. Lizzie Palmer was listed as "keeping a house of ill fame" on what is now First Street. She had three "employees." A male "house plasterer" had quarters in the same house, according to the census record.

E. W. "Bill" Nye was listed as a 29-year-old attorney. (Editor of the Boomerang, he later became a well-known columnist in the East.) H. L. Halstead, 28, confidently had his profession listed as "gambler."

The territorial penitentiary at the time was in Laramie and the prisoners listed on the 1880 census include a brewer, a blacksmith, two farmers, a postal clerk, a bank clerk and a hunter. The 56-year-old marshal in charge of the operation was suffering from "rheumatism" at the time of the enumerator's visit.

Just as now, towns were anxious to count as many people as possible. The Laramie census taker even counted 31 members of a government pack train temporarily camped just outside of town. At Rock Creek (now Rock River,) Noel Cornfield, a 17-year-old Turkish born "tramp" was counted with the more permanent population.

At least six people listed in the 1880 census had jobs relating to fossils. W. M. Reed and three associates were "collecting fossils" at Como Bluff and all four shared the same quarters in one of the three listed houses. In Green River J. H. Johnson was a 47-year-old "dealer in fossils." Lewis Lamothe, a 50-year-old Canadian-born resident of what is now Sheridan and Johnson counties, was engaged in the "collection of specimens."

Like the Cheyenne sailor, the "ship carpenter" listed at Fort McKinney (near present-day Buffalo) seemed to be out of his element. The four saloonkeepers in Buffalo (population, 40) were probably mush busier. The Evanston population included a "saw filer" and a "wiper in a railroad shop."

J. S. Thompson, a "visitor" at a home on lower Horse Creek in Laramie County, was by the census taker's notation a "gentleman." Cheyenneite C. Boutier was a "capitalist" and an 83-year-old Lander man was a "plane maker."

The Union Pacific towns enjoyed frequent visits by traveling thespians. A "show agent" counted in Evanston may have been booking a future performance by the Vampire family "Julian, Jean, Mary and Otto," who had been counted in the Cheyenne census. (One can only guess the nature of the program presented by the touring Vampires.)

Seven pages of entries for Chinese coal miners were listed for Rock Springs. Also making up a sizeable portion of the town's population were Finnish, Swedish, Welsh and German coal miners. A copy of the 1880 census is in the collection of the Wyoming State Archives.

Miner's Delight, a boom town in present-day Fremont County, had Chinese residents, too. They were three men who wee "gold miners." South Pass City had been a boom town in 1870 but by 1880, only 37 people still lived there.

The population in what is now Park County was even smaller. "Stock herders" and a few teamsters were the only people listed there. Just one man is shown as a resident of the "Stinking Water District" which was apparently along the Shoshone River near present-day Cody.

One-third of the people living in Owl Creek (Hot Springs County) were "druggists." Living near the two men was an "ornamental plasterer." More common occupations were present at Runningwater (present-day Lusk), however. Most of the 31 people were cowboys, a couple were stage drivers and the rest were teamsters.

Few people in the entire state were listed as being "without occupations" although many people probably were missed. "Persons numbered 5-9 were hunting cattle on the range and could not be found" noted an entry for present-day Converse County. Others were just barely counted. A 29-year-old man on the Big Popo Agie in what is now Fremont County is listed with the notation, "gunshot wound - must die from its effect."

Boarded in the Carbon County Jail in Rawlins was James Averill. He died from the effects of a lynching when he and Cattle Kate were strung up on the Sweetwater nine years after the census was taken.

There were coal miners at Almy and Carbon, railroad workers at Rawlins and Evanston, soldiers at Forts Laramie, Steele and Washakie. Most women were listed as "keeping house" for their husbands but one exception was Jennie Bennett, a Rawlins "news dealer."

Wyoming territory was barely a decade old when the census was taken 124 years ago and it is reflected in the listed birthplaces of the people. Few could make the claim of four-year-old Wyoming Smith of Powder River. There weren't many natives of Wyoming in 1880.

Although few residents realize it, November 29 is a state holiday in Wyoming. Known as Nellie Tayloe Ross Day," the holiday commemorates the contributions to Wyoming by Ross, the first woman governor of any state. Born in St. Joseph, Missouri, in 1876, she came to Wyoming with her husband, William Ross, in the early 1900s.

Nellie Ross was not only the first woman to be elected governor of any state, but she also had once served as the state's first lady. William Ross, born in Dover, Tenn., in 1873, came with his wife to Cheyenne early in the 20th century from Nebraska where he had gained his legal education. Throughout the next two decades, as a Cheyenne trial lawyer, he represented a variety of clients. He had success with many, but one of his clients was the defendant in the so-called "Indian club murder" in Cheyenne in 1912.

A respected railroad worker, J. Warren Jenkins, was charged with murdering his wife in their home (that once stood on the site of the Memorial Hospital parking lot). Mrs. Jenkins, somewhat older than her husband, owned considerable property.

The incriminating evidence in the case turned out to be buttons from what the prosecution claimed was the blood-soaked shirt that Jenkins was wearing when he murdered his wife. Jenkins couldn't explain why the shirt was burned that day in the couple's stove. Police, in searching the house, found the still warm but fire-resistant buttons in the stove when they investigated the scene.

Attorney Ross was unable to shake the prosecution's assertion that Jenkins had killed his wife for her estate. Jenkins was convicted, sentenced to hang and, as if he already didn't have enough difficulties, the judge fined him $1,000. Jenkins was hanged in the State Penitentiary in Rawlins on Nov. 14, 1913.

In November 1922, Ross, a Democrat, was elected governor of Wyoming. (His opponent, John Hay of Rock Springs, had defeated the incumbent Republican governor, Robert Carey, in the primary election that summer).

Soon after his election, Ross proposed a constitutional amendment to allow the State to collect severance taxes on mineral production in the state. The legislature authorized that the amendment be voted on in the general election of 1924, halfway through Ross' term as governor. Throughout the fall of 1924, Ross campaigned throughout the state for passage of the amendment. In late September, 1924, he was speaking in Laramie to a group at "Old Main" on the campus, advocating passage of the amendment when he suddenly became ill. Admitted to the hospital in Cheyenne the next morning, he died four days later from an apparent ruptured appendix.

Because his death came a month before that year's general election, the law required that a new governor be chosen in that election. Both parties were caught unprepared to run candidates for an office they thought would not be up for election until 1924.

The Republicans nominated the House Speaker, E. J. Sullivan of Casper, while the Democrats turned to Ross' widow, Nellie Tayloe Ross. Even though she had never served in any elective office before, she was elected governor, becoming the first woman in the United States to hold that office. She pledged she would follow through with many of her husband's policies, but one of them already had met electoral defeat. In the same election where she became governor, the constitutional amendment for a severance tax that her husband had campaigned so strongly for, went down to defeat. The measure actually gained more voters in favor of it than were opposed to it, but under the Wyoming Constitution, the measure had to gain a majority of voters casting ballots in that election. It failed to gain that margin by just a few hundred votes.

Later, Mrs. Ross lost in a re-election bid, but went on to be superintendent of the United States Mint in the Franklin Roosevelt administration. She died on Dec. 19, 1977, at the age of 101.

And it wasn't until 1969 that a severance tax, along the lines proposed by William Ross, became law in the state of Wyoming.

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