Cosgriff

The Cosgriffs were the sons of an Irish immigrant, John Cosgriff, who settled in Colchester, Vermont today a suburb of Burlington.

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Thomas Cosgriff in particular had a superior instinct for business and moneymaking through diversification.

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By the time the Cosgriff boys were growing up, sheep raising in Vermont was more costly and beginning to give way to dairy farming.

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His younger brother, John B. Cosgriff, apparently came west with Thomas.

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The two older sons were Thomas A. and John B. Cosgriff, educated at Burlington High School, the boys all powerfully ambitious in the get-ahead spirit of their time.

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Thomas Cosgriff, sensing the chance to make something big out of the raw Wyoming Territory, shifted north to Cheyenne in 1882.

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In the 1880s the brothers set up the Cosgriff Sheep Company, buying vast acreage in Wyoming, especially land abutting the open range Red Desert, regarded as superior sheep grazing ground.

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The buyer was that poor Vermont farm boy, Thomas A. Cosgriff, who worked his way up to become president of the massive Cosgriff Sheep Company.

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The Cosgriff Sheep Company property was broken apart, the Cow Creek section going to James E. Cosgriff, the section west of Saratoga sold to John Hartt, one of their young partners.

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Canny Thomas Cosgriff noticed a need for banks and began attaching them to his various stores.

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