Spencer Penrose

Spencer "Speck" Penrose (November 2, 1865–December 7, 1939) was a businessman, entrepreneur, venture capitalist and philanthropist at the turn of the 20th century. Although principally in and around Colorado Springs, Colorado, his interests included concerns in Arizona, Utah, and Kansas.

Spencer was born into a prominent Philadelphia family of Cornish descent to Richard Alexandria Fullerton and Sarah Hanna Penrose, and was brother to politician Boies Penrose, entrepreneur Richard (R.A.F.) Penrose and gynecologist Charles Bingham Penrose. In 1886, he graduated last in his class from Harvard. Penrose started as a ladies-man and an adventurer who became a successful entrepreneur in the gold fields of nearby Cripple Creek in the 1890s as a manager of the local real estate office of Charles L. Tutt, a general supplies' merchant and gold assayer; his great fortune evolved from his associations with his geologist brother's gold and silver mine in the Commonwealth mine in Pearce, Arizona, and in his prescient purchase of Utah property that held enormous reserves of low grade copper ore that was extracted via a new metallurgical technique developed by one of his engineers in his Cripple Creek associations.

Born Julia Villiers Lewis August 12, 1870 in Detroit, Michigan, her father, Alexander Lewis, was a prominent businessman and served as the Mayor of Detroit in 1876 and 1877.

Julie married James “Jim” Howard McMillan, son of U.S. Senator and Michigan Car Company owner James McMillan (1838–1902) on June 18, 1890. Julie and Jim had two children, Gladys (1892) and James II (1894). Julie and Jim, considered wealthy, moved to Colorado in hope the climate would cure his tuberculosis. James II died from appendicitis on April 3, 1902, and her husband died of tuberculosis on May 9, 1902, leaving her a widow.

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