Page:Bench and bar of Colorado - 1917.djvu/18

14 of a probate court, along with a full complement of county officers, such as sheriff, registrar of deeds, coroner, attorney, road supervisors, etc., was determined upon. An election was held in March, 1859, and S. W. Wagoner, one of the earliest arrivals in the Pike's Peak country, received most votes for the office of probate judge.

Memoirs of pioneer residents and the records of the State's early history fail to give any definite information regarding the territory over which the jurisdiction of this probate county extended—as a matter of fact, Judge Wagoner and the men who had elected him were not quite sure. In February, 1859, one month before Judge Wagoner's elevation to the bench, the Kansas legislature had enacted a law dividing the Arapahoe county of 1855 into four counties, Montana, Broderick, El Paso and Oro. The Cherry Creek settlements, where most of the people then lived, were within the confines of Montana, comprising practically the entire northwestern section of the State as constituted today.

Some contended that Wagoner was elected probate judge for the county of Arapahoe, as constituted by the Act of 1855, which had named Judge Tibbitts; others insisted that Wagoner's jurisdiction extended only over Montana county. Be this as it may, Wagoner duly qualified as probate judge, and the other officers elected with him assumed the duties of their office, among them Marshall Cook, the first county attorney.

Wagoner and his fellow officers had been in office but a few months when the settlers in the Rocky Mountain region, or at least a goodly portion of them, became imbued with the idea of seceding from Kansas and setting up an independent government. This movement, fostered chiefly in the Cherry Creek settlements, culminated in the establishment of what in history is known as the "Territory of Jefferson," and was, as far as the courts are concerned, responsible for a condition of affairs which may be called extraordinary. It brought into being a multiplicity of courts until there were so many of them that the law-abiding