What we know
Dr. William McConnell, who grew up on his father's land at Table Rock (see the McConnell homestead), finished medical school in 1893 and came to Monument in 1895; he was railway physician for both the Santa Fe and the D&RG between Castle Rock and Husted, and married Lucy Anne Pring in 1898 (Lavelett, S-0011, p. 60). The house had been Col. and Mrs. Ford's and was 'the first in town to have modern plumbing' (p. 130). The McConnell drug store and office burned in the 1940s, when it was the Grange Hall (p. 80). His daughter, Dr. Frances McConnell Mills, became a Denver toxicologist whose laboratory tests 'provided the necessary evidence to convict many killers' (p. 61). Case gives 1895 for his medical degree (S-0110); Lavelett has 1893.
Where it was
'Dr. McConnell's home and office was on Second Street across from the Town Hall' (Lavelett, S-0011, p. 60). When she wrote, in 1975, the town hall was the old Woodmen Hall at 166 Second Street (mapped), on the south side, so the point is across Second Street from it. Good to about 200 feet.
Placed from a written description, such as a land section, a distance from a landmark or an old survey note.
Sources
- S-0011: Lucille Lavelett, Through the Years at Monument, Colorado: The Story of Monument, Colorado, 5th printing (Palmer Lake: Palmer Lake Historical Society, 2004); first published Colorado Springs: Valliant Press, 1975
- S-0110: Linda Saulnier Case, "Monumental Happenings and Histories" (The Tribune, 2018–2019), part of S-0108
Sources are named in the text above. Numbers such as S-0080 refer to our source list. Most newspaper quotations were read in the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection. Long quotations from recent books are shortened here.