USA > Arizona > Arizona, prehistoric, aboriginal, pioneer, modern; the nation's youngest commonwealth within a land of ancient culture, Vol. II > Part 25
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A Catholic parish was organized in Phoenix in 1881 and the first church, of adobe, was erected in the same year, under the direction of Rev. Ed. Gerard, parish priest at Florence. The parish passed into the hands of the Franciscan order in 1896. On the site of the first little adobe Catholic Church in Phoenix, erected in 1880, there was completed early in 1915 the finest cathedral in the Southwest, erected at a cost approaching $200,000. It is especially a monu- ment to the energy of Father Novatus Benzing, a Franciscan, who for years had been in charge of the parish.
PIONEERING OF PROTESTANT DENOMINATIONS
It is almost impossible within the scope of a work such as this to give an accurate and authentic record of the early religious work of Arizona. Without doubt itinerant Protestant preachers of various denominations were found within the territory far back in the days of the passage of the California immigration. At Navajo Springs at the time of the inauguration of the territorial government was Wm. H. Reid, who offered a prayer, but who appears to have not been a regularly ordained clergyman. He and his wife in 1864 probably started the first regular religious services ever known in Northern Arizona in the gathering of a Sunday school.
Baptist and Methodist missionaries had been working in New Mexico as early as 1850, particularly Rev. J. M. Shaw and Rev. E. G. Nicholson. A Baptist church was built in Socorro in 1854. The first Baptist work in Arizona was done by J. D. Bristow, an unlicensed preacher, on the Verde in 1875. The first authorized church was at Prescott in 1879, under the supervision of Rev. R. A. Windes, now a resident of Tempe.
According to church records, the first Methodist minister to preach within Arizona was Rev. J. L. Dyer of the Colorado Conference, who came in 1868, and there is a record of the general service of Rev. G. H. Reeder of Ohio, appointed by Bishop Simpson in 1872 to work in the territory. In 1874 he was at Tempe. Rev. D. B. Wright of the New York Conference came to Ehrenberg in 1874 and Rev. J. J. Wingar reached Prescott in June, 1877. In 1879, a general Meth- odist organization was effected under the superintendency of Rev. Geo. H. Adams, who in September of that year found only four Protestant places of worship in all of Arizona. Mr. Adams was a great builder of churches.
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About 1871 in Phoenix was an organization of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, with Alexander Groves as pastor. In 1878 under Pastor L. J. Hedgpeth, was built an adobe house of worship on a site that the congregation still occupies. The same denomination also was early in occupying the Prescott field.
The Presbyterians in 1868 authorized the sending of a missionary into Ari- zona. In the following year Rev. J. M. Roberts was with the Navajos and Rev. Jas. A. Skinner of Stockton, Cal., was transferred to a charge at Prescott, ap- pointed by the American Bible Society. The church seems to have started about its first formal work on the advent of Rev. William Meyer, sent to Phoenix in September, 1878, by the Board of Home Missions. His congregation for a while found accommodations with the South Methodists, but in April, 1879, the mis- sionary and O. P. Roberts erected a church of a novel sort, a brush arbor on the south side of the courthouse plaza upon a lot owned by the Methodist Church.
One of the strongest religious forces of the state is the Arizona Sunday School Association, of which Rev. E. D. Raley is general secretary. It was organized in Phoenix March 31, 1890, its first president Rev. F. D. Rickerson, an early day Baptist pastor of remarkable ability and large attainments.
The Young Men's Christian Association for years has had strong branches, with well-equipped homes in Bisbee, Douglas, Phoenix and Tuscon. Bisbee, Phoenix and Tucson have branches of the Young Women's Christian Association.
THE EPISCOPAL DIOCESE AND ITS BISHOPS
Possibly the first Episcopal clergyman to visit Arizona was Bishop O. W. Whit- aker. Though he had been appointed missionary bishop for Nevada and Arizona in 1868, he waited till 1874 before visiting the southern part of his diocese, taking two months for a trip from Virginia City to Tucson, Florence, Phoenix and Pres- cott. On his suggestion, the missionary jurisdiction of New Mexico and Arizona was created at the general conference of the same year and Rev. Wm. F. Adams from Louisiana was created its first bishop. He never came West and resigned in 1877. A similar disinclination was shown by his successor, Rev. D. B. Knick- erbacker, of Minneapolis. For the three years following Arizona was under the charge of Bishop Spaulding, of Colorado. In 1880 there was a church report from Rev. Wm. H. Hill, of California, who visited the territory, where he found Phoenix a pleasing place, Tucson an important town and Tombstone a conden- sation of wickedness. It is probable that the establishment of the Episcopal Church in Arizona is really due to Mrs. Jessie Benton Frémont, wife of the governor, who, in 1879, wrote Bishop Spaulding suggesting that Prescott might support a clergyman of the faith. Tucson she considered rather unavailable because of its large Mexican population, while the pretensions of Phoenix were put aside as the town "recently had been included in an Indian reservation," developing a hitherto unsuspected historical lapse. November 21, 1880, Rev. Geo. K. Dunlop was consecrated bishop for New Mexico and Arizona, trans- ferred from Kirkwood, Missouri. He found in Arizona "not a church building, not a piece of property, not an organized congregation, not a clergyman and only forty communicants who had in any way reported." Bishop Dunlop died March 12, 1888, leaving church buildings at Tombstone and Phoenix and a con-
OLD PRESCOTT SCHOOLHOUSE, 1879, PARTLY OCCUPIED BY TERRITORIAL OFFICES
THE FIRST CHURCH OF PHOENIX
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gregation also at Tucson. Phoenix, headed by J. W. Pearson, had 176 communicants.
Then, with appointment date from January 18, 1889, came Bishop John Mills Kendrick, held in affectionate remembrance as veritably one of the saints of the Southwest. His diocese extended eastward from the Colorado River, including Arizona and New Mexico and Texas west of the Pecos. Not only did he establish congregations in all the largest settlements of the two territories, but he branched out among 35,000 Indians, one of his works being the establish- ment of an Indian hospital on the Navajo reservation near Fort Defiance. Bishop Kendrick had been a soldier in his youth. He served as first lieutenant and adjutant of the Thirty-third Ohio Infantry, later being promoted to be captain and assistant adjutant-general of volunteers. Yet he was not a militant sort of Christian. He was one who went up and down his land spreading confi- dence in his faith by gentle words and good deeds. It is probable that a sweeter character never lived nor one of greater compassion for the frailties of mankind. By his clergy and his congregations he was regarded as little less than a saint and his memory will long endure. In 1911, with advancing load of years and of religious cares, the diocese was divided, Bishop Kendrick taking the New Mexi- ean side. He died in Pasadena, Cal., December 16, 1911. Burial was at Phœnix.
When the diocese was divided, Arizona was given to Bishop Julius W. At- wood, formerly of Ohio, who had served as archdeacon and as rector of Trinity Church, Phœnix. Dr. Atwood, a ripe scholar and a religious executive of excep- tional force, already has his monument in Saint Luke's home, near Phœnix, a church institution for the treatment of tuberculosis. He has made progress also on the erection of a cathedral in the city of his episcopal residence.
GROWTH OF THE SCHOOLS OF ARIZONA
The first schools of the Southwest were those of the Catholic Church. At Santa Fé in 1852 was established a girls' school taught by four sisters of the society of "The Friends of Mary at the Cross." In 1859, also at Santa Fé, the order of Christian Brothers started a boys' school. One of Colonel Poston's first acts was to help in the establishment of a Catholic school at Tucson or San Xavier, especially for the Indians, but the institution had short life. In 1866 a Catholic school was started in Tucson under a teacher named Vincent and in 1870 the Sisters of St. Joseph there organized a girls' school and erected a building, for which the lumber was brought from the Huachuca Mountains by wagon. A number of Arizona communities now have large parish schools.
One of the important educational institutions of the state is St. Joseph's Academy at Thatcher, a Mormon institution with an attendance of about three hundred. A handsome new building for the use of the school was dedicated December 15, 1911. A similar church academy is maintained at St. Johns.
Schools were slow in coming to Arizona, probably because of the absence of children other than Mexicans. Few of the pioneers brought families into the territory. It is probable that most of the pioneers simply had an idea, like the first California adventurers, of "making their pile" and going "home." Upon the groundwork they laid, however, was established a more permanent civiliza- tion, within which schools were a necessity. The First Territorial Legislature
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passed a school code, but there seems to have been only one school, a small private one in Prescott, and that maintained largely by private subscription.
The educational system of Arizona had its beginning January 1, 1865, on which date became effective an act of the First Legislative Assembly that set aside $500 for the benefit of a public school in Tucson "in which the English language shall form a part of the daily instruction" and $250 each to Prescott, La Paz and Mojave, in each case conditioned upon the raising of a similar sum by the residents of the locality affected. An additional $250 was appropriated and donated to the Mexican school at San Xavier del Bac for the purpose of purchasing books of instruction, stationery, and furniture. A more permanent method of public school support was a direction to the treasurers of the different counties to pay over to the county commissioners all moneys that might accrue from licenses and not otherwise appropriated to be used as a fund for the benefit of such public schools.
The creation of school districts was effected by the Legislature of 1868, which gave the county boards of supervisors power to organize such districts in any village with a resident population of not less than 100 and covering an extent of country of not more than four square miles. For support of the schools of such districts should be levied a tax of not more than one-half of 1 per cent on the assessed value of all its taxable property.
Governor Safford in 1871, referring to a school census of 1,923 children, made declaration that in that year Arizona had not a single public school, though the school code provided county school superintenuents and a territorial board of education. Safford became interested in pushing education and soon there were schools in every community of any size.
Augustus Brichta, a pioneer Arizonan, appears to have made the first at- tempt in the teaching of a public school in Tucson in the spring of 1869, with fifty-five pupils, all boys. He had good backing in Wm. S. Oury, John B. Allen and W. W. Williams. In 1871, under L. C. Hughes, county superintendent of schools, with Samuel Hughes, W. F. Scott and W. C. Davis as trustees, John A. Spring opened a school on the corner of McCormick and Meyer streets, with an enrollment that reached 138, all boys, mainly Mexican in parentage. The same year the Sisters of St. Joseph started a denominational school, especially for the benefit of girls. Another girls' school was started in 1872 by Mrs. L. C. Hughes and in 1873 regular school sessions were started in Tucson, with Miss Harriet Bolton and Miss Maria Wakefield as teachers. The former became Mrs. John Wasson and the latter Mrs. E. N. Fish. There was a regular school building, a long adobe structure on North Congress Street in 1874, when the trustees were R. N. Leatherwood, Samuel Hughes and Estevan Ochoa. The principal study was the English language, for Spanish was the tongue of the community.
Miss Mary E. Post, now an honored resident of Yuma, opened a public school at Ehrenberg in 1872. About this time a graded school was opened at Prescott.
Phonix had its first public school September 5, 1872, the teacher J. D. Daroche and the trustees J. D. Rumberg, W. A. Hancock and J. P. Osborne, in the court room on the present First Avenue, just south of Washington. Later there was a permanent school building, on North Center Street, a little adobe, where the teacher was Miss Nellie Shaver, later Mrs. J. Y. T. Smith. In 1879 the
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LIBRARY AND ADMINISTRATION BUILDING, UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA, TUCSON
THE OLD SCHOOLHOUSE, PHOENIX. DEMOLISHED 1888
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teacher was R. L. Long. He had an assistant teacher in Mrs. Beverly Cox, whose primary class was accommodated in the South Methodist Church.
In the Legislature of 1875, at Tucson, there was much discussion concerning a possible division of the public school funds with the Catholic parochial schools. Already there had been several specific appropriations toward the support of Catholic schools in Tucson, where the church had been an educational pioneer. But any suggestion for legislative recognition of Catholic schools received bitter opposition. To combat this, Chief Justice Edmund F. Dunne delivered an ad- dress, pro-Catholic, in the hall of the House of Representatives, soon after the holding of a ball, whereat there had been raised a considerable sum to be ex- pended in local education. The bill dividing the funds with the church came up in the council a few days later and came within one vote of passing.
In 1879 Colonel Hodge made a record of all the schools of the territory. There were public schools at Yuma and Ehrenberg, Mineral Park, Cerbat, Pres- cott, Williamson Valley, Verde, Walnut Creek, Walnut Grove, Chino Valley, Kirkland Valley, Peeples' Valley, Wickenburg, Phœnix, Florence, Tucson, Tres Alamos (on the San Pedro), Safford, and a few other points. There were Cath- olic schools at Yuma and Tucson and Indian schools had been established by tlie Government at San Carlos and Sacaton.
In 1882 there were ninety-eight school districts, with over 10,000 pupils and the value of school property was given as $116,750. In 1883, under still more definite legislative provisions, M. H. Sherman, who had been principal of the schools at Prescott, was elected territorial superintendent of schools and later drafted a short code of school laws. The election of a territorial superintendent was in reality a violation of the governor's prerogatives, but continued for a number of years thereafter, unchallenged. Superintendent Sherman, who also served as adjutant-general and thereby gained a military title, later became one of the millionaires of Southern California.
A still more amplified school code was enacted in 1885. It was prepared by R. L. Long, who had been in charge of the schools at Phoenix and who in the year mentioned started a term of service as territorial superintendent.
The growth of Arizona's common school system may be indicated by con- trasting with the early allotments the present expenditures for primary and grammar school maintenance, which this year will amount to the enormous sum of $2,674,930, this in addition to $1,057,813 that will go to the university and normal schools and for vocational training. This is not all by any means, merely constituting the general allotments.
FOUNDATION OF THE UNIVERSITY
The university was established at Tucson by the Legislature of 1885, in pursuance of a legislative distribution of spoils in which there was little con- sideration of the probable value of such an institution. At the same time Tempe was given a normal school and Phonix the insane asylum, while Prescott retained the capital. Under the' authority of a congressional act of four years before, School Superintendent M. H. Sherman selected seventy-two sections of land in the forested area of the Mogollon plateau, to be preserved for the benefit of the university. A tract of forty acres was donated by B. C. Parker, E. B. Gifford and W: S. Reid for the university site.
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The committee that secured the university showed wisdom in this choice of state institutions, for from the Morrill Agricultural College fund and the Hatch Agricultural Experiment fund from the first were available about $37,000 an- nual income, an income from national sources that has increased with the years. The University Board of Regents was organized in November, 1886, with Dr. J. C. Handy as chancellor, C. M. Stranss as secretary and M. C. Samaniego as treasurer. The original building, on which construction was started the following spring, cost about $32,000.
Theoretically the school was started in July, 1889, with the appointment of Selim M. Franklin, a Tucson attorney, as professor of agriculture and director of experiment stations, in order to comply with the national laws and save the appropriation. The first regular term of the university, beginning October 1, 1891, ended in the following June. Dr. Theo. B. Comstock was the first ap- pointed president after the administrative consolidation of the colleges of agri- culture and mines. At the head of the latter was Prof. Wm. P. Blake, who had won distinction as a geologist as early as 1854. Prof. F. A. Gulley headed the agricultural college. Dr. Comstock resigned during the Hughes administration and was succeeded by M. M. Parker, who was removed in 1902.
Dr. K. C. Babcock, late of the University of California, was made president in the fall of 1903. Dr. Babcock in 1910 accepted an appointment in the Bureau of Education of the Interior Department and departed for his new field of labor bearing a gold loving cup as a testimonial of the esteem of the students of the institution. He was succeeded, May 1, 1911, by Dr. Arthur H. Wilde, from the department of history of the Northwestern University. Ad interim, the admin- istration of the university had been under Dr. A. E. Douglass, professor of physics and astronomy. President A. H. Wilde resigned in May, 1914, and acceptance was made effective in the following September. He was succeeded by Dr. R. B. Von KleinSmid, from Depauw University, Indiana, where he had been head of the department of education and psychology.
THE NORMAL SCHOOL IDEA
The Normal School of Arizona at Tempe started from an idea in the mind of Chas. Trumbull Hayden, "Don Carlos," the "Father of Tempe." A creating act passed the Legislature March 10, 1885, pushed by Assemblyman J. S. Armstrong. The first building, of which illustration is here given, was a low structure of four rooms, costing $6,500, placed in the middle of a donated tract of twenty acres. The first principal, and only paid teacher, was Hiram B. Farmer, who came to the position from the principalship of the Prescott schools. Incidentally, the present head of the school, A. J. Matthews, was taken from the same place. Among the principals of the intervening years, especially are to be mentioned R. L. Long, twice superintendent of public instruction; D. A. Reed, who had been at the head of the Phoenix schools; and Dr. James McNaughton. For years the school seemed to have little success, with only a small output of teachers. Since then it has been firmly established and has turned out hundreds of graduates, exceptionally well qualified to take charge of schools within the territory and state. The faculty now numbers nearly thirty and the buildings have grown from the single one-storied structure to a dozen, several of them expensive, and all equipped according to the most modern standards.
FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA, 1915
*
.....
PROFESSOR H. B. FARMER AND STUDENTS, FIRST TERM OF THE NORMAL SCHOOL, TEMPE, 1887
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The establishment of the Northern Arizona Normal School at Flagstaff was due to a sequence of changing ideas rather than to any demand for an additional educational institution. The main building was erected under a legislative appropriation of $35,000 for the establishment of a branch insane asylum, on ground donated by the Santa Fé Pacific Railroad Company. In 1897 an addi- tional appropriation was made of $18,000. Then the people of Flagstaff became rather dubious concerning the near prospect of such an institution in their midst, so in a succeeding Legislature a switch was made and the designation of the institution was changed. This time it was to be a reform school and within the handsome brown stone building a start was made toward the construction of a number of cell-like rooms. Still again there was local doubt concerning the advisability of bringing into the community a flock of incorrigible boys and there was a happy thought that the building might be utilized as a normal school. This change was made in the Legislature of 1899, which turned the Flagstaff building over to the Board of Education of the Normal School of Arizona. The buildings were fitted up for school purposes and the school itself was opened September 11, 1899, with a faculty of only two teachers, A. N. Taylor and Miss Fannie Bury. The school today has a faculty of sixteen, led by R. H. H. Blome, an educator of large ability, transferred to the position of principal from head of the psychology department in the Normal School at Tempe.
CHAPTER XLII
NEWSMEN AND NEWSPAPERS
Beginnings of Arizona Journalism at Tubac and Fort Whipple-Two Journalistic Duels that Were Bloodless-How Editor Bagg Evened an Old Score-Newspapers Known in Every Section-Hopes and Ideals of the Frontier Scribes.
The first printing press in the Southwest was brought to Taos and Santa Fé from Mexico in 1834, and there is extant one of its first impressions, a proclama- tion of Governor Perez, dated June 26, 1835. Probably from this same press was printed the first newspaper of New Mexico or Arizona, El Crepusculo (The Dawn), published by Padre Martinez in Taos. It had a life of only four weekly numbers, of which the first was printed November 29, 1835. There appears to have been no very lively demand for news in those days. In 1840 in Santa Fé and for three years thereafter was published an official paper, La Verdad (The Truth). It was succeeded in 1845 by El Rayo de Nuevo Mejico.
The Santa Fé Republican made its first appearance September 4, 1847, with its text divided between English and Spanish. It was published by Hovey & Davies, with G. R. Gibson as editor. . December 1, 1849, Davies and Jones started the New Mexican, but the present publication of that name dates back only to January 22, 1863, when it was founded by Charles Leib. It became a daily as far back as 1868. Sonora had a periodical publication as far back as 1850. It was La Sonoriense, published at Ures, especially for printing official announce- ments.
ARIZONA'S FIRST NEWSPAPER
Arizona's first newspaper was The Weekly Arizonian, the initial issue prob- ably in March, 1859, for the editor of this history has the eighteenth number, printed June 30. It was a decidedly neat four-paged paper, four columns to the page, reading matter and advertisements set in small type, very well dis- played, considering the period and the remote location. In the issue at hand, a well-written editorial declares unfeasible the plan for a separate territorial government for Arizona, as called for by a convention held at Mesilla on June 19. It was frankly stated that a territory such as proposed would be under the control of the Mexicans, a situation far from agreeable.
One of the advertisements called for the return of a Mexican peon, who had run away from his employers, Hoppin & Appel of Tubac. In the news columns was much of interest : A party from Tucson had returned after explor- ing the Pinal Mountain region, where two of the expedition had died from eat- ing wild parsnip. A soldier at Fort Buchanan had been drummed out of the
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DAILY & WEEKLY MIN
PRINTING OFFICE.
RO FREY ERY
THE PHOENIX HER
On left, office of Tubac Arizonian, 1859
The Arizona Miner's first office, 1864 Prescott's Pioneer Journal Office of the Phoenix Semi-Weekly Herald, 1879 FRONTIER JOURNALISM
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service after having been whipped, having had his head shaved and having been branded with a red-hot iron with the letter "D," standing for deserter. The people of Tubac, following the killing by Mexicans of John Ware, had organized their own civil government, with James Caruthers as justice of the peace. The first case was that of a Mexican who on conviction of theft was given fifteen lashes at the hands of the new constable, N. Van Alstine.
The printing material, including a hand press, was bought in Cincinnati and was brought in by way of Guaymas. The paper was owned by the Salero Mining Company, but the plant was in charge of the Wrightson brothers, with whom was associated Col. Ed. Cross, who appears to have done much of the editorial work. Colonel Poston was, at least, a valued contributor and is understood to have written much of the editorial matter at one time or another.
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