| Denver, Colorado Society |
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| August 2003 | Biographies | Last updated on 06/17/2006 |
A record of those citizens of Denver who have succeeded in their respective business enterprises must necessarily include the name of John N. Ammen. He was born in Fincastle, Virginia, in 1842 and early in life was placed in a good school in his native town. But his studies were soon interrupted and military discipline usurped the mild regime of college life. As a member of the Fincastle Rifles, he was ordered to Harper's Ferry, to suppress the insurrection of John Brown, and was on duty at the time those unfortunate people paid the penalty of their treason to the State of Virginia. When the "Rifles" were discharged from further service to the State, John Ammen resumed his studies at Fincastle until the "Fincastle Rifles" were again ordered into the service of the State, at the breaking out of the great rebellion. Responding to the summons, the "Rifles" marched away again, not to suppress the mad efforts of the slaves to gain their freedom, but to assist in carrying on for several years the most sanguinary warfare known to the pages of modern history. It was mustered into the Confederate service and became part of the Army of Northern Virginia, participating in the first battle of the war at Blackburn's Ford and ending with the surrender of Lee. Sharing with his comrades the toils and dangers of the war, the young soldier was engaged in all of the great struggles of the different campaigns--Manassas, Drainsville, Williamsburg, the seven days fight--Fredericksburg and Gettysburg and many of the skirmishes and minor engagements. He was twice wounded, once at White Oak Swamp, on the sixth of the seven days fight and again at Five Forks: and three times a captured prisoner and exchanged.
At the close of the war, he returned to his native town, working for a couple of years on his father's farm, when he went to Baltimore and completed a course of studies in a commercial college of that city. During the next four years, he clerked in a country store in Bonsack's, Va. and then removed to Denver in 1872. But mining was too alluring to permit him to become a permanent resident at that time. In the neighborhood of the South Park he spent two years in prospecting and afterward, in 1877, lost several months in the Black Hills. Returning to Denver, he assumed a controlling interest in the City Laundry, 553 Blake Street, where is now conducted by far the largest business in that branch of industry in the State of Colorado. The establishment employs about thirty persons, such as washers, ironers, etc., and two wagons constantly collecting and delivering articles. It is proposed soon to remove their business to a more commodious building and to introduce machinery of a greater power and possessing all the improvements of modern science in that class of mechanics. Mr. Ammen is unmarried--in the prime of life--and starts out well for the goal of fortune by combining industry and enterprise in the management of his business.
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