Thomas Clouser Colfax County, New Mexico

Thomas Clouser, of Elizabethtown, New Mexico, who for fifteen or sixteen years has been a mining prospector of this part of the territory, was born in Bloomfield, Perry County, Pennsylvania, about twenty-eight miles from Harrisburg, March 7, 1845 and was reared on his grandfather's farm. He was a youth of seventeen years, when, in June, 1852, he enlisted for nine months' service in the Union Army as a member of the One Hundred and Thirty-third Pennsylvania Infantry, participating in the battles of Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and others of minor importance. After a few months spent at home, following the expiration of his first term, he re-enlisted, in January, 1864, in the One Hundred and Twenty-third Pennsylvania Infantry, and did detached service until honorably discharged, in Philadelphia, August 28. 1865, the war having ended.

Returning home Mr. Clouser became imbued with a desire to seek a home in the west, and with a friend left Harrisburg April 13, 1866, for Leavenworth, Kansas, intending to go to Montana, but instead went to Junction City and accompanied one of Ben Holliday's ox-trains to Denver, driving a team in order to pay his way. In the spring of 1868, he started for Elizabethtown, New Mexico, arriving at Cimarron late in April, and two weeks later reaching his destination. Since then he has remained in this vicinity making Elizabethtown his home. He worked in a sawmill from May until September, and then spent some time prospecting in the mountains. Several lumber mills were in operation in northeastern New Mexico at that time, and he worked in the Hibbard lumber camps for a while. In the spring of 1869 he returned to Elizabethtown, and for a number of years worked in the shoe shop of Mr. Salisbury, whom he then bought out continuing in the business for several years. He then sold the business, but later purchased it again. Subsequently he went to Silver City, and upon his return to Elizabethtown opened a shoe shop, which he conducted for three or four years. He has since engaged in prospecting.

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Source: History of New Mexico, Its Resources and People, Volume II, Pacific States Publishing Co., 1907.