Monday, January 10, 2011

Memories of George Monthan at Rancho del Lago

Voices of Vail and the Cienega Corridor

Interviewed by J.J. Lamb
 
Vail Preservation Society


“…My fathers name, grandfathers name was Tatters field. It was very well know within the milling business in the midlands of England, but they had 5 boys. The oldest was Harold, then Erik, Guy, Karl, and Oscar. I’ll get to them later. They were all, they all had the same middle name-Monthan. My dad for example was Guy Monthan Tattersfield. Well the family came on hard times because of the industrial revolution, they didn’t keep up with modern machinery and so forth. I don’t know what happened but you could say the family went broke more or less and they decided to immigrate to the United…Canada. And so the 3 oldest boys went over first and scouted out and bought a ranch outside of Calgary, and then the family, the rest of the family, the youngest boy Oscar, being 10 or 11 years old at that time, they came later. Well they settled in Canada for several years and my dad (Guy) at that time was 19 or 20. I guess he spent a little stint in the royal Canadian mounted police. Well ranching was ok except they couldn’t stand the winters, their completely out of business
for 6 monthes you know, so they decided they had to move to a warmer climate. Mexico, Argentina… And Argentina appealed to them. So they sold the family ranch. Loaded all their possessions on two or 3 wagons. They had a string of about 15 horses to pull the wagons and to ride and they took off from Calgary to go to Mexico or Argentina without knowing anything about what lay ahead of them…”

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