We are much gratified to welcome Will Stebbins and his charming young wife back to Golden as permanent residents. He has accepted a position with the enterprising lumber firm of Jobes & Snyder.
Colorado Transcript – March 10, 1886
Mr. and Mrs. Will Stebbins are gloriously full of joy over the arrival of a bright new daughter yesterday. Grandpap Snyder is full also–of joy at this evidence of advancing years.
Colorado Transcript – July 21, 1886
Mr. Will P. Stebbins, one of our old-time Golden boys…is now manager of the Farm Department of the Maxwell Land Grant Company, with headquarters at Maxwell City, New Mexico, a very important position.
Colorado Transcript – November 29, 1893
Wilbur P. Stebbins was arrested last Monday on a charge of threatening to commit bodily harm on his wife in this city.
Colorado Transcript – March 17, 1904
120 Years Ago
Wilbur F. Stebbins was shot and instantly killed by his wife, Ida M. Stebbins, at about seven o’clock Tuesday evening. The killing took place at the home of W.G. Lewis, about three miles east of Golden, where Mrs. Stebbins and her four children have been picking berries for several weeks.
Colorado Transcript – August 11, 1904
Mrs. Stebbins and her children had been living in a tent near the railroad tracks as they supported themselves with agricultural jobs. They hadn’t seen Wilbur since his arrest, five months earlier. When he arrived at the farm, one of the little girls spotted him and ran screaming to her mother. The mother pushed the children into the farm house, locking them in the bathroom. She then returned to the front door, where her husband was shouting and demanding that she let him in. When he drew a gun and kicked in the front door, his wife rushed to join the children in the bathroom. One of the children handed her a gun, and when her husband forced the bathroom door open, she shot him twice–once in the forehead and once in the chest. The Sheriff and the Coroner went to the scene and allowed Mrs. Stebbins to go to her father’s house.
The article commented that both Mr. and Mrs. Stebbins had grown up in Golden and that “he was, until whiskey got the better of him, a good husband and father….”
It concluded that “Mrs. Stebbins has the respect and sympathy of all, and no doubt exists in the mind of anyone but what she killed her husband while protecting her own and her children’s lives. It is the opinion of several that Stebbins had been on a protracted spree and meant to kill his wife and children and perhaps himself.”
The Coroner held an inquest, which concluded that “the shooting was done wholly in self defense and without felonious intent.”
Many thanks to Esther Kettering for sponsoring Golden History Moments for the month of August.
