CORNELIUS BROWN LOSES LIFE IN GLENWOOD FIRE

Most Disastrous Fire in Town's History Destroys Hotal Glenwood and Five are Known to be Dead or Missing in Gutted Building.

Five persons are dead or missing as a result of the disastrous fire which destroyed the Hotel Glenwood in Glenwood Springs last Friday morning.

Among the known dead is Cornelius C. BROWN of Eagle, whose body is the only one to be recovered so far from the ruins of the 59-year old hostlery. Mr. BROWN had just returned from a trip to California and stopped in Glenwood that evening on his return. He had secured a room at the hotel and went up to bed about 10 o'clock that night, according to C. R. McCarthy, manager of the hotel. His room was on the second floor, and his body was found near the front entrance to the hotel. Apparently he had awakened and partly dressed when overcome by fumes of the smoke which rapidly filled the entire building, and was unable to make it to the window in time to jump out...

... The corner ground room of the building was occupied by the Bullock Bros. clothing store. The fire is thought to have started in the basement of the store, and had gained great headway before discovered by the guests.

Owing to the fact that all of the records of the hotel were destroyed, Mr. McCarthy can make no sure check on those in the hotel at the time, or of the missing. It is thought by many of those who escaped that there were others who lost their lives in the fire. But to this time, owing to the tottering condition of the standing walls, no systematic search has been made of the ruins for the dead.

(Published in The Eagle Valley Enterprise (CO), December 21, 1945.)


CORNELIUS C. BROWN

Cornelius C. BROWN was born in McPherson county, Kansas, in 1883, and died in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, December 14, 1945.

In 1893, he moved with his family to the Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, where he lived until 1909, when he came to Eagle county, and had made his home here since.

He was married in 1918, and one daughter was born to his wife in 1919, during the flu epidemic, and both mother and child died a few days later, at the hospital in Glenwood Springs. He is survived by 10 brothers and 2 sisters. Two sisters and his parents preceded Cornelius in death. One brother, Frank BROWN, lives in Eagle.

He left Eagle November 26 for a trip to California and was on his way Back when death overtook him in the disastrous Glenwood hotel fire on the morning of the 14th, inst. He arrived in Glenwood at 10:00 o'clock the night of the fire, and checked in at the hotel, only two hours before the fire broke out.

Monday, Paul Andre of the Andre Funeral Home in Eagle, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Frank Brown, took the body back to Wakomis, Oklahoma, where it was to be laid away beside that of his wife and daughter.

(Published in The Eagle Valley Enterprise (CO), December 21, 1945.)