Colorado's Eccentric Captain Jack
Of the women who came to Colorado in the late 1800s, Ellen Jack could well have been the most unusual. After several deaths in her family, Ellen left civilization to run several successful businesses in Gunnison’s “gold” country.” In this reprint of her autobiography, The Fate of a Fairy, Ellen relates probably the wildest of tales of a woman’s life in the early West.
- Published
- 2010
- ISBN
- 978-1-932738-89-6
- Pages
- 220
- Category
- Reprints
- Place
- Gunnison
- Publisher
- Western Reflections Publishing Company
- Listed at
- $21.53
Publication details from Open Library. The price shown is the last one on record and is historic, not a current offer.
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About this book
Colorado's Eccentric Captain Jack is a reprint of the autobiography of Ellen E. Jack, called The Fate of a Fairy in its original form. Our description calls her possibly the most unusual of the women who came to Colorado in the late 1800s. The catalogue lists this Western Reflections edition as a 2010 Reprint.
The description says that after several deaths in her family, Ellen left civilization to run several successful businesses in Gunnison's gold country. In the book she tells what the description calls probably the wildest of tales of a woman's life in the early West.
Readers should know how that story has been judged since. A 2025 Colorado Springs Gazette feature quotes Leah Davis Witherow, curator of history at the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, who says parts of The Fate of a Fairy are "exaggerated, if not wholly fabricated." The same article describes a 2023 book by Jane Bardal that sorted fact from fiction using documents, newspapers and court records. So this is best read as a personal legend told in her own voice, with a character as large as the claims it makes.
What is inside
An unusual woman
The description presents Ellen Jack as perhaps the most unusual woman to come to Colorado in the late 1800s.
Loss and departure
After several deaths in her family, Ellen left civilization behind.
Gunnison businesses
She ran several successful businesses in Gunnison's gold country.
Her own telling
The text is her autobiography, so events come as she chose to tell them.
A wild tale
The description promises probably the wildest of tales of a woman's life in the early West.
Who it is for
This book is for readers of women's frontier history and of Colorado mining country who enjoy a first-person voice and a larger-than-life subject. It is an autobiography, so treat it as one person's account and not a checked record, as the museum curator quoted in the Gazette cautions. People interested in Gunnison, Crested Butte and the Black Queen Mine will find the setting familiar from local history. It will also suit anyone curious about how a frontier legend gets built and argued over.
About the author
Ellen E. Jack was born in England in 1842, according to a Pioneers Museum caption in the Colorado Springs Gazette. The article says she was widowed in 1874, opened a boarding house and restaurant in Gunnison around 1880, and later settled on High Drive near Colorado Springs, where she died in 1921. This is the only book of hers in our catalogue. Her author page lists it.
The place and the period
The Gazette article traces Jack's life after the book's story. Her earlier Bon Ton Hotel on Coney Island burned in 1876, and she fought a long court battle afterward. Her husband, Charles Edward Jack, had died in 1874, according to Jane Bardal's research as the article reports it.
Around 1880 she opened a boarding house and restaurant in Gunnison. Her Black Queen Mine near Crested Butte, the article says, brought her early fame and fortune, but she fought legal battles over it, including with her second husband, Walsh.
In Colorado Springs she settled on High Drive, running a tourist stop, staking mining claims she called Mars and selling alcohol, which led to more disputes. She filed for bankruptcy in 1918. Newspapers attributed her death in 1921 to heart problems and stress after a flood wrecked High Drive and she could not return. The article reports her autobiography appeared before her death.
Source: Colorado Springs Gazette, The colorful, complicated life of Captain Jack
Good to know
What is the original title of this book?
Is everything in the autobiography true?
Where does the story take place?
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