According to some, Hank was forced to leave Minneola, Kansas, under a cloud and the threat of legal prosecution. They say that he had to abandon his homestead. He purchased the ranch in Branson, Colorado, and took as much as he could, including transporting a shed on a wagon from the Kansas homestead to Colorado. Hank left Kansas in approximately 1911.

    After the death of his first wife, Hank married Birdie Holbrook in 1912, it is thought that Hank met Birdie Holbrook after arriving in Colorado. This union lasted only a couple of years and Birdie left the ranch around 1914. The Colorado homestead was a barren, desolate place with back-breaking work for everyone and Hank was a harsh and demanding taskmaster. In 1915, Nettie Owings Voss (sister of Hank’s first wife, Birdie Owings) came to the ranch to pick up the Bloxsom children and take them to California. This was either just before, or just after, Nettie was married to Henry Voss. It was at the time that virtually the entire Owings clan migrated to California. At the end of the summer, Hank sent the children money to come home but Gladys refused to go. She said, “Tell Papa that he can go to Hell!” Later, Rosa said, “Of course, I wanted to stay in California, but someone had to take care of the other children”.

    When Myrtle, Fee, Rosa and Juanita returned to the ranch in Colorado, they found that they had a new stepmother, Nola Burnham. Nola had two children by a previous marriage, Murl & Dolly Burnham. She was at the ranch from 1916 until 1919.

    By most accounts, both Birdie Holbrook and Nola Burnham were nice women who tried to be kind to the children. The best guess and opinion as to why these women left Hank was, that he “was just plain mean”. Certainly this was the most frequently stated opinion about the man, and in itself a radical minimization.

    Juanita later reported a conversation that one of the stepmothers had with a neighbor. The stepmother (either Birdie or Nola) said that the next time Hank left the house, she was going to “Take those damn kids down to the woodpile and chop their heads off”. That statement was supposed to have been the end of that particular stepmother’s regime on the ranch. Perhaps this reputed statement should be considered in light of other information indicating that the Bloxsom children were little hellions, and cussed almost as much as their father.

    Hank was an angry, volatile man with few redeeming qualities and he was notorious for beating his children. It is said that he broke Rosa’s arm in one beating and that as a young man, Lloyd Fee finally pulled a gun on his father to prevent further beatings. There are no actual reports of Hank beating his first three wives, but, first-hand and vivid accounts of Hank beating his fourth wife, Esthrid.

    Hank married Esthrid Josephine Dalhot-Kierstead on October 9, 1927 in Trinidad, Colorado. At the time that he married Esthrid, his five older children (by Birdie Owings) had themselves married and left the home. Lloyd Fee married in 1919, Rosa was married in 1920, Ila Myrtle in 1924 and Juanita in 1925.