In the summer of 1859, Owen J. Goldrick made a flamboyant entrance into the dust-choked mining settlement of Auraria. Clothed in a black broadcloth suit, yellow kid gloves, expensive linen and a black silk stovepipe hat, Denver’s future superintendent of schools was herding an ox-team into town and (reportedly) swearing vigorously in Latin and Greek. He naturally became a curiosity among townsfolk, who dubbed him “the professor.”
The son of a court reporter who spoke several languages, O.J. Goldrick was born March 30, 1831, in County Sligo, Ireland. He attended Trinity College in Dublin and, after immigrating to America with his brother James in October 1847, continued his education in New York City at Columbia University. Since jobs for classical scholars were scarce even in those days, he moved on to Ohio to teach school and briefly settled in St. Louis, Mo. There, he met Joseph B. Doyle, who owned a large ranch and trading post in New Mexico. Originally hired to tutor Doyle’s children, Goldrick caught “gold fever” when he reached Denver and set out on a short-lived quest for riches.
Owen J. Goldrick was Denver’s first teacher and first superintendent of schools.
Before long he abandoned prospecting to open the first Sunday school on St. Louis Street in old Auraria. On Nov. 3, 1859, the Rocky Mountain News published an announcement that Goldrick, Lewis Tappan, Jacob Adriance and W. Fisher would open Denver’s first Sunday school at the house of preachers Adriance and Fisher. Classes would be held every Sunday at 3 p.m., and parents were encouraged to attend with their children. Twelve children came to that first class, which later grew so large that meetings were moved to the Masonic Hall at 1346-54 11th St. The only adult present, other than those who signed the announcement, would be Aunt Clara Brown, a black laundress known for her charity. She would later make a fortune in Central City, washing clothes for the miners.
On Oct. 3, 1860, after raising $250 in pledges, the professor founded the Union School, a private establishment for Denver and Auraria children. He received his first textbooks from a professor in Boston, who was thrilled at the prospect of a new school out in the far West. In a log cabin on 12th Street, between present-day Larimer and Market streets, the city’s first public school opened for 13 children, nine sons and daughter of settlers, two Mexican children and two Native Americans. Pupils were assessed $3 per term and collected in Goldrick’s wagon to make sure they got to school. Grateful Denverites elected him Arapahoe County’s first superintendent of schools on Dec. 2, 1861, a post he filled for 10 years. In 1953, more than 70 years after his death, Goldrick Elementary at 1050 S. Zuni St. was named in his honor.
The professor is buried at Riverside Cemetery.
Goldrick later worked as a journalist for several newspapers. Dramatic and expansive, his flowery style contained so many classical allusions and unnecessary metaphors that even the Victorians considered him too wordy. His description of the Cherry Creek flood of May 19, 1864, in the Rocky Mountain News began with this 134-word sentence:
About the midnight hour of Thursday, the nineteenth instant, when almost all in town were knotted in the peace of sleep, deaf to all noise and blind to all danger, snoring in calm security, and seeing visions of remoteness radiant with the rainbow hues of past associations, or roseate with the gilded hopes of the fanciful future–while the fullfaced queen of night shed showers of silver from the starry throne down o’er fields of freshness and fertility, garnishing and suffusing sleeping nature wither balmy brightness, fringing the feathery cottonwoods with lustre, enameling the housetops with coats of pearl, bridging the erst placid Platte with beams of radiance, and bathing the arid sands of Cherry creek with dewy beauty–a frightful phenomenon sounded in the distance, and a shocking calamity presently charged upon us.
Unappreciated by the more succinct William Newton Byers, he left the News to become editor of the Central City Times and took a brief hiatus to publish an anti-polygamy newspaper in Salt Lake City. While writing for the St. Louis Democrat under the pen name “Observer,” he was threatened with a revolver by Postmaster W.P. McClure if he did not retract certain published allegations about the official and his friends. Later attempts to arrest McClure were unsuccessful, but fortunately for the city (and Goldrick), the government worker left town to fight in the Civil War. Still at odds with the News, Goldrick founded his own Denver newspaper, The Rocky Mountain Herald, in 1868 and continued publication until his death
Despite his personality quirks and reputation as a ladies man, the professor contributed much to the community. Not all of Goldrick’s civic ventures were successful, however. In the winter of 1859-60, he organized an association to establish the first city library, a short-lived endeavor which finally met with success under a different leader in the 1880s.
A long-standing problem with alcohol may have nudged Goldrick into an early grave, but he actually died of pneumonia in on Nov. 26, 1882 at age 49. Although the Catholic Bishop Machebeuf was summoned to his deathbed, Goldrick requested an orthodox minister instead. Apparently he still resented the fact that his father had been excommunicated from the Catholic Church for disagreeing with Church policies.
