Maude McFerran ^{1 2 3}

  General Notes:

Excerpt from History of Colorado Deluxe Supplement By Wilbur Fiske Stone. S. Clark e Publishing Co., Chicago, Illinois. 1918. p. 781- 782

Mrs. Price has figured very prominently in social clubs, literary and musical circles. She became the organizer and was made the first regent of the Society of the Colonial Daughters of the State of Colorado. She is state director of the Children of the American Revolution and for eight years she was the president of the El Paso County Pioneers Association. She is the regent of the Lewis Cass Chapter of the National Society of the Wars of 1812. She also became the founder and was made life curator of the El Paso County Permanent Pioneers Exhibit and Museum located in the lobby of the El Paso County Courthouse.

In September 1906 her literary and musical talents were brought into play in the composition and writing of the song "Colorado" which was composed especially for the Centennial celebration at Colorado Springs of the one hundredth anniversary of Zebulon Pike's discovery of Pike's Peak. This song has been generally accepted by the public as the state song and petitions carrying with them thousands of names of prominent men and women of Colorado asked that it be made the state song for Colorado. In the Manitou Springs Journal of October 22, 1915, appeared the following: "One of the best things the State Federation of Women's Clubs did during their annual meeting held in Colorado Springs recently, was to endorse Mrs. Maude McFerran Price's song, 'Colorado' as a state song. Popular sentiment has always endorsed this song as the official one of the state; school children sing it and there is no pioneer gathering in which 'Colorado' is not on the program." In 1913, at the Continental Congress of the Daughters of the American Revolution held in Washington, DC, "Colorado" was voted by far the cleverest and most popular of all state songs out of a list of over one hundred songs sung in the contest.

At a meeting of the Colorado Federation of Women's Clubs in September 1905, Mrs. Price was awarded both prizes given at that meeting; the first prize for the best vocal composition and one for the best instrumental composition. The first prize was won by a composition "Angelina Seraphim" and the latter by the Emily Waltz. The song, "Colorado" received immense applause at Madison Square Garden in New York city when sung there by the Mormon choir of two hundred voices of Salt Lake City, Utah. It has appeared in various papers from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Mrs. Price belongs to that class of cultured women to whom art, literature, and music are not interests of a leisure hour, but are a necessity and she has been a most potent factor in promoting the cultural interests of the state.

Maude married William Wells Price, son of Basil Wells Price and Eliza Jane Burr, on 26 Jan 1893 in Denver, Arapahoe County, Colorado. (William Wells Price was born on 3 Apr 1863 in Leesburg, Highland County, Ohio and died in Colorado Springs, El Paso County, Colorado.)