The History of Adolphus Livernash (co-namesake with Stephen Moore of Livermore, CO) Presented by Craig Livernash and Christine Livernash Jackson At the Annual Dinner of Friends of Red Feather Library Western Ridge Restaurant, Livermore, Colorado 17 June 2010 AND The Livernash Visit to Livermore by Club Member and President Linda Adams
Introduction In May of this year, the Livermore Woman s Club received a query through its website from a Craig Livernash of Wisconsin Rapids, WI. Craig had some questions about the history of our community, and Club member Linda Adams undertook the task of responding to his queries. During their electronic conversations, Craig revealed that his ancestor and Livermore pioneer Adolphus Livernash was the brother of Craig s great, great, great grandfather. The Club knew that Adolphus Livernash and his friend Stephen Moore were co-namesakes of Livermore but knew little about Adolphus beyond that. Craig had done extensive research into his family genealogy and knew a great deal more. When Linda learned that Craig and his family intended to visit Livermore in June, she arranged for Craig to make a presentation about Adolphus and his life at the annual dinner of the Friends of Red Feather Library. Only members of the Friends can attend the annual dinner, so those Club members who wanted to hear Craig speak but were not members of the Friends had to join. This fortuitous circumstance brought almost 24 new members to that organization! Craig also wanted to visit the site of the cabin that Adolphus and Stephen Moore constructed along the North Fork of the Poudre River in 1863, which Linda happily arranged. In addition, he and his family (wife Jenny and children Allie and Aaron) intended to visit the Columbia Cemetery in Boulder, CO, where Adolphus and his wife are buried. What follows is an account of the life and times of Adolphus Livernash and his descendents, courtesy of Craig Livernash, and a brief summary of the Livernash s visit to Livermore provided by Linda Adams. The Livermore Woman s Club thanks Craig Livernash for sharing what he has learned about one of Livermore s illustrious pioneers.
Adolphus The Livernash Family traces its roots back to Les Sables-d Olonne, a seaside town in western France. In the sixteenth century, Les Sables-d Olonne was a cod fishing hub, with more than 14,000 inhabitants, but now is a resort area/tourist destination. The family moved from France to Canada, through Vermont and New York, eventually making their way to Wisconsin. The family name went through a number of changes, from Yvernage to Livernoche to Livernash. Adolphus was born in Wisconsin, to French-Canadian parents, Jean and Marguerite (Boucher) Livernoche (shown below right) It is believed that as a young teenager he and 3 of his brothers left their home in Wisconsin to seek adventures Out West. Two brothers, Edward and Joseph stopped and made their homes in Minnesota. John continued on to California, and Aldolphus ended up in Colorado. Adolphus probably spent no more than a few months in the Livermore area. During his stay, he and his friend Stephen Moore built (in 1863) a one-room cabin on the banks of the North Fork of the Cache la Poudre River, filed one or two homestead claims, and combined their names to call the area Livermore. The town of Livermore, with 6 north-south and 4 east-west streets, was platted by Russell Fisk in 1871. Adolphus moved on to Laporte, CO, where he married Sarah Elizabeth Isard. Interestingly, their marriage has a Livermore Woman s Club connection in that the ceremony was performed by James Swan, Club member Rene Lee s great, great grandfather.
Adolphus and Sarah had 3 children, Edward Francis (b. 1874), Margaret Daisy (b. 1877), and Ada (b. 1879). The family moved to the Boulder, CO, area where Adolphus opened a mine and became assayer for the town of Caribou. Adolphus died in the mine in 1883 when lightening struck the mine shaft. The obituary on the right is from the May 15, 1883, issue of the Rocky Mountain News and incorrectly indicates that Adolphus and Sarah had 4 children. Sarah and the children moved to Kansas to be with her family, but eventually returned to CO and lived in Fort Collins where she ran a boarding house for a time. She died in 1916. Adolphus and Sarah were buried in Columbia Cemetery in Boulder, CO. Their headstone is shown to the left.
Children of Adolphus and Sarah Adolphus and Sarah s son, Edward Livernash (shown in the center picture above), married Verna Taylor in 1900 and worked as a pharmacist in Denver and Boulder before opening a pharmacy and store (the Owl Drug Store, pictured on the left) in Fort Collins. Verna operated a hair salon (shown on the right). They had no children and were divorced after only a few years. Edward married his second wife, Jeanette Gillis, in 1909. Edward and Jeanette had one child, a son, Edward Robert, known as E. Robert Livernash. Later in life, they purchased a dry farm which Jeanette sold upon Edward s death. However, she retained the mineral rights on their property, which remain in the family to this day. Ada G. Livernash, shown on the right, married Walter Pat Hurley, brother Edward s business partner. She was known for winning a contest through the Fort Collins Weekly Courier a trip to Cheyenne s Frontier Show, in which more than 148,000 votes were cast. She and her spouse were also musicians who performed at various society events in Fort Collins. As of 1930, they were still residing in the city. They did not have any children.
Margaret Daisy Livernash was a respected stenographer in the Fort Collins area. In fact, Daisy was appointed head of the stenographic bureau at the agricultural college (Colorado A &M, now Colorado State University) in 1909. She also worked in Idaho and California, before returning to Colorado. She eventually married Dr. Ivan Mark Renfrow. Her husband was a dentist, practicing most of his career in Denver, before opening a practice in Arizona. They did not have any children. Grandchildren and Beyond E. Robert Livernash attended Fort Collins public schools and was a member of the track team that won three national championships. After high school he attended the University of Colorado, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude in 1932 and was awarded a fellowship to study at Tufts. It was there that he met his future wife (Virginia Hall), who was attending Jackson, the women s college at Tufts. He eventually earned his doctorate from Harvard and went on to have a distinguished career in teaching and administration. During WW2, Robert was vice-chairman and then chairman of the New England War Labor Board. After the war, he worked for a few years as director of labor relations for J.F. McElwain Shoe Company in Nashua, New Hampshire. He also taught at Tufts University. Dr. Livernash, an authority on collective bargaining and labor relations, was a member of the Harvard Business School faculty from 1953 to 1976. He directed the first study of collective bargaining in the steel industry at the behest of President Eisenhower in 1959. He was also a writer, his best-known book being "The Impact of Collective Bargaining on Management," published and funded by the Brookings Institution and co-authored with Sumner Slichter and James Healy. Dr. Livernash was named as Harvard's first Alfred J. Weatherhead, Jr. Professor of Business Administration in 1965. He was also the first president of the Iran Center for Management Studies in Teheran from 1972 to 1975, a school he helped to establish. After retiring from the Business School in 1976, he continued to work at the Harvard School of Public Health for several years. The last members of this line of the Adolphus Livernash family are Adolphus s great-grandchildren, Robert and Stephen Livernash, both sons of E. Robert Livernash, Adolphus s only grandchild.
Stephen Livernash, shown on the right, attended Swarthmore, the University of Chicago, and New York University (cinema studies). He spent most of his career on the staff of the Carpented Center of Visual Arts at Harvard, retired in 2009. He has been hailed as the unofficial dean of Hub 35mm projectionists, for setting a sterling example of film projection as a serious, aesthetic calling, and for extending his job definition to include film preservation. Generations of filmmakers are indebted to Steve for taking time at work to patch and mend their prints, so that the films can be projected in the proper way according to Boston.com. Robert Livernash graduated from Johns Hopkins and Columbia (journalism and international affairs), and spent most of his career in Washington as an editor and writer specializing in environment and development issues. He was the senior editor of the World Resources Report series (a bi-annual report on global environment and development issues published by the World Resources Institute and supported by the World Bank and the United Nations). Robert was also the principal author of three reports on U.S. environmental quality published by the White House Council on Environmental Quality during the Clinton administration and is still active as an editor and writer.
More on the Livernash Visit to Livermore by Club member and President Linda Adams I met Craig, his wife Jenny, children Allie and Aaron, and Craig s sister, Christine Livernash Jackson, at The Forks on the morning of June 17 and took them to Linda Lamb s where we met Catherine and Derek Roberts. We walked to the river and found a cattle crossing that made a clearing in the brush and decided this could be the spot on which the cabin had been constructed. We took photos (Craig, Jenny, Allie, Aaron, Christine shown on right with Derek Roberts at cabin site), came to my house for lunch and tours of the Batterson barn and grave, then climbed in my larger car for a roadside tour up to Red Feather Lakes where we visited the Library and later enjoyed ice cream cones. That evening, Craig and Christine made a very engaging presentation about the life, times, and descendents of Adolphus Livernash to a packed audience at the annual meeting of Friends of the Red Feather Library, and at the end presented to Mary Torrez and me a beautiful poster made by their cousin, Steve, who is a commercial artist in Wisconsin Rapids. The poster will hang in the Livermore Community Hall just left of the stage and will be an ongoing reminder of our wonderful visit with the Livernash family and how much they were able to add to our understanding of Livermore s past.