John Brisben Walker

Walker was born on September 10, 1847, at his parents' country house on the Monongahela River, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. On that river his grandfather owned a shipyard reputed to be where the keelboat used by the Lewis and Clark expedition was built, although this is disputed.

After a brief stint as a Georgetown College student, Walker transferred to West Point in 1865. In 1866 he was court-martialed for deserting his post as a sentinel in cadet barracks before being relieved, suspended for ten weeks, and set back a semester. In 1868 he was again court-martialed, this time for stretching a seven-day New Year's leave to seventeen days.. After being convicted, he resigned from the Military Academy without graduating.

The Rocky Mountain News described Walker as follows: "Of virile Scotch-Irish stock, he was handsome, moody, restless, known for his sparkling wit and brilliant, original mind."

Walker's first wife and mother of eight of his children, Emily, survived him by four years, dying in January 1935. His relationship with his purported second wife, Ethel Richmond, remains a question. The 1900 Federal Census lists Ethel living in Inwood, a section of northern Manhattan, with two children, her mother and father, three servants, and a husband named John Ruthven, whom according to that Census she had married in 1891. The 1902 New York City Directory lists Ethel Ruthven as "widow of John A., home Inwood" but three years later in 1905, the New York State Census taken on June 1 has Ethel living in Inwood with Ruthven four children. The following year Ethel arrives in Colorado as Walker's "wife".

In 1910, while Walker was still legally married to Emily, Ethel and her four children, now all designated as "Walkers", were living in a house on Shore Road in Brooklyn, with Walker's father. Five years later, a New York State Census lists Walker, Ethel, and four children living in Stapleton, Staten Island. There is no question that Ethel Ruthven and Ethel Richmond, Walker's "second wife", are the same person. Ethel Ruthven's parents are identified in the 1910 Federal Census (Inwood-on-Hudson, N.Y. City Ward 12, N.Y.) as Charles E. and Marion Lee. The death notice of John Ruthven Walker, who died in Denver in 1943, named Ethel's three other children (Herbert Lee Walker, Ethel Walker, Nathalie W. Richmond) as his siblings, her mother as his grandmother, and her sister, Maude R. F. Valle, as his aunt. (Nathalie called herself Mrs. Richmond even though she had married a Russian immigrant named Georgi Dobrovolsky. Sibling Ethel's middle name was Richmond.) In an interview given to a California newspaper after she celebrated her 100th birthday, Maude confirmed that after divorcing her husband she had moved to Denver "to be with her sister, who was married to the remarkable John Brisben Walker," who "had owned Cosmopolitan Magazine."

John Brisben Walker had 12 children from his first two marriages, 9 of whom were sons. He had no children with his third wife.

Children by Emily Strother: Wilfred Walker (died young), John Brisben Walker Jr. (1870–1941), David S. Walker (1874–?), James Randolph Walker (1879–1942), Justin Clement Walker (1881–?), Harold Strother Walker (1883–1919), Ethel Strother Walker Sweetser (1887–1957), Gerald Walker (1890–1945).

Children by Ethel Richmond: John Ruthven Walker (1896–1943), Herbert Lee Walker (1898–1964), Ethel Richmond Walker (c.1900-?), Nathalia (Nathalie) Richmond Walker (1903–1998).