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By Steve Plutt
January 22, 2022
Agnes Pursley was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky on January 3, 1887. Agnes came to Victor, Colorado in approximately 1909 when she was 22 years old and opened a millinery store there. It was in Victor that Agnes married local resident George Wayland on September 23, 1912.
George, who was born in Ireland in 1872, was the Victor Fire Chief and then went on to be the Undersheriff of Teller County. It was in 1917, due to the resignation of the sitting Undersheriff, that the Board of County Commissioners appointed Agnes to that position. This made her the very first female officer of the Teller County Sheriff’s Office and the Undersheriff at that.
While serving in Teller County, she made headlines after making her first arrest down in Woodland Park.
In time, Agnes left Victor for Colorado Springs where she was hired as a Deputy Sheriff there in El Paso County. The antediluvian headline below leaves the reader thinking what an accomplishment it was for a woman to undertake such a task.
George and Agnes were the parents of one daughter, Josephine, who was born in Kentucky on September 25, 1914. Agnes died at 69 years of age in Los Angeles on May 22, 1956. George died at 87 years of age in Los Angeles on November 2, 1959. Josephine also resided in and died in Los Angeles. She was married to George Eckhardt who was Killed In Action on November 12, 1944 in France during World War II.
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