USA > Arizona > Arizona, prehistoric, aboriginal, pioneer, modern; the nation's youngest commonwealth within a land of ancient culture, Vol. II > Part 39
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ROBERT N. LEATHERWOOD
A noted old timer is R. N. Leatherwood, best known as "Bob" despite his honorable accumulation of years. He came to Tucson in 1869 and served vari- ously as city councilman and mayor, county treasurer, twelve years as sheriff, three times as member of the Legislature. He was a member of the company that built the gravity water supply for Tucson in 1883 and served as superin- tendent of the Arizona exhibit of the St. Louis Fair.
SAMUEL H. DRACHMAN
Samuel H. Drachman died in Tucson in December, 1911, after residence in that city since 1867. For thirty years he had been in the tobacco business, but when he first came, an immigrant from Russia, he cut hay, for sale to the Government, within the present corporate limits of Tucson.
EDWARD N. FISH
Edward N. Fish died at his home in Tucson, December 19, 1914, aged 87. He came to Arizona in 1864, entered into business at Tubac and other points as a member of the firm of Fish & Garrison. He started a mercantile business in Tucson in 1877, at times making large profits and again losing much on account of Indians. In 1874 he was married to Miss Maria Wakefield, who was the second American woman to teach a public school in Arizona, and who came to Tucson in 1873 from Sacramento, California.
I. S. MANSFELD
Ranking with the pioneer newspaper men of Arizona was I. S. Mansfeld, who in 1870 established in Tucson the first book store and news stand in Ari- zona. Mansfeld became one of the most active members of the Society of Arizona Pioneers and very entertainingly has told his early experiences in the distribution of literature. Times were very dull' in those days and money was in circulation only on military pay days. It took two weeks to bring news- papers in by mail, the mail buckboard coming only twice a week from Yuma. No reliance could be placed upon the mails, however. Sometimes there were lapses of three weeks. Mansfeld's first Christmas goods did not arrive until the middle of the following February, though ordered in October. This, he said, however, was taken in good nature. The people were so used to such things. There were only about two hundred Americans and no social lines were drawn. They yearned for the news of the outside world, for at that time
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only meager information was to be had locally. There were only two news- papers in the territory, one each in Tucson and Prescott and only three towns of any size. There was only one place of worship, the Catholic Church and a primary school.
WILLIAM C. GREENE
One of the most picturesque characters ever known in the Southwest was Wm. C. Greene, who rose from a most humble beginning to be a capitalist, at one time rated at $30,000,000, who lived his life in strenuous excitement, which he seemed to like better than peace, and who died what he would have con- sidered poor, but still defiant of fate. He came to Arizona in 1877; prospected a mine in the Bradshaw Mountains with George Burbank as partner; went to Tombstone in the boom days, and worked as a miner; cut fire wood in the Dragoon Mountains and sold it for $14 a cord; married and settled on a San Pedro Valley ranch near Hereford. About this time be formed Mexican min- ing connections that afterward dominated his life's work. While ranching, Greene's neighbor on the San Pedro was Jim Burnett, a man of violence, who long was justice of the peace at the nearby Town of Charleston. One day Greene's dam across the river was blown up and in the resultant flood, Greene's daughter Helen and a girl playmate were drowned, as they were playing on the bank of the stream. Though Burnett was not in the vicinity, Greene be- lieved him responsible for the destruction of the dam, hunted him down at Tombstone and slew him on the public street, thereafter declaiming. "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord." Sheriff Scott White did his duty, but when Greene came to trial he was acquitted more on account of the personality of the defendant than on account of the jury's belief that Burnett had really blown up the dam. It is told that long thereafter, nearly every man connected with that case who had shown any friendliness, including the sheriff and other peace officers and the members of the jury, were given good jobs in some one of Greene's enterprises. It is commonly said that "Bill Greene never forgot a friend."
Greene's interest in Mexican mines led him into a number of encounters with the Apaches from which he escaped alive and with credit, but these affairs were of small importance relatively to those in which he afterwards engaged with Wall Street bankers and brokers.
In 1898 Greene had an option on a half-dozen Mexican mining claims in the Cananea district, conditioned upon the payment of about $47,000, for which amount he had to go beyond his own means. There resulted the forma- tion of the Cobre Grande Copper Company, within which Greene was to receive $250,000 and a one-twelfth interest in the company, for his claims, for other property he was to add and for his assistance in promoting the enter- prise. Largely through the assistance of George Mitchell, a well-known Jerome smelter man, the necessary money was raised, mainly in Arizona, and the com- pany formally was organized in Cananea May 26, 1899. Thenceforward for years, litigation, trouble of many sorts and even bloodshed filled the history of the enterprise. A 200-ton smelting furnace was started in May, 1899. but produced only about a third of the camp's running cost. An "angel" was found in July, 1899, in J. H. Costello, a Pennsylvania capitalist, who bought
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31,000 shares of stock, with the proviso that he be put in charge. Costello's management lasted till October, when Greene, Mitchell and their mining engi- neer, Prof. Geo. A. Treadwell, took forcible possession of the property. Con O'Keefe of Jerome, was displaced as superintendent, forced out by order of a Mexican court with which Greene had large influence and soon thereafter the property was transferred by Greene, acting upon his original claims, to the Cananea Consolidated Copper Company.
As early as 1905, Greene's activities had resulted in the establishment of a community of over 20,000 people in the Cananea Mountains, with 4,000 men employed in the mines and smelter. Greene had been fighting his way through the courts of Mexico, of Arizona, New York and other states. He had entered the great Wall Street game and only his tremendous pluck and known willing- ness to kill saved, on one occasion, stock valued at several millions of dollars taken by him from a desk which he had broken open in the office of one of his associates, whom he then awaited, revolver in hand. This wild-western way of playing the game was the only one known to him and for a time succeeded. In Arizona and Sonora he had gathered around him scores of men upon whom he could rely to the death, and there were times when the mines were held in defiance of Mexican law processes. One of his lieutenants, Foreman Massey, in his loyalty even disobeyed orders and insisted on sinking on the Capote property long after he had been ordered to quit and thus ran into the greatest body of copper ore ever encountered in the Cananea Mountains, worth many millions of dollars.
Greene's Mexican corporation, the Cananea Consolidated Copper Company, was represented in the United States by the Greene Consolidated Copper Com- pany, which afterward, with Amalgamated support, in the course of a Wall Street fight, in which Thomas Lawson was an active enemy, became the Greene- Cananea Consolidated Copper Company. Greene in the meantime had bought a large part of Northern Sonora as a cattle range, had purchased mines and holdings in the timbered Sierra Madre Mountains, with the controlling interest in a railroad that tapped the timber district, had built a railroad from Naco to Cananea, as well as a twelve-mile line to tap the mines of his corporation, he had invested in smelters at various points and had backed several mining companies of large claims, from which came small results. He provided against the future by walking into an insurance office and buying a $100,000 policy for $66,000 cash. About this time his private car used to be attached in almost every state in which it traveled under a judgment secured by a firm of New York bullion brokers. Wherever there was a faro game Greene loved to tarry, and to bet blue chips, with the ceiling as the limit. A man of large physique and tremendous strength, he busied himself continually. In speculation he was gambling on the largest of scales. On several occasions only his personal influence at Cananea soothed the anger of Mexican mobs composed of striking workmen.
It is probable that Greene considered his never-ending litigation very much as he would a game of poker. He usually managed to employ about all the able lawyers in sight, and about a score of attorneys in Southern Arizona, mainly in Tucson, rose to affluence through his patronage. It used to be said that even his leading lawyer, W. H. Barnes, didn't know all of Greene's litiga-
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tion, and that the only man on earth who could write the full story of the various trials was Editor William Spear of the Phoenix Republican, who had rather specialized on the subject.
Naturally such a career as this had a dramatic ending. Greene's end was after he had lost nearly all of his wealth, save a competency secured to his family. He died at Cananea, August 5, 1911, through accident, thrown from a carriage by runaway horses.
COL. EMILIO KOSTERLITSKY
Early in 1913 revolutionists in overpowering numbers forced across the line a command of loyal Mexican troops commanded by Col. Emilio Koster- litsky. This force was taken for internment to Fort Rosecrans on the San Diego Bay, and about the same time a large number of refugees from the more eastern points along the border were sent to Fort Wingate, New Mexico.
Colonel Kosterlitsky, still living, a resident of Southern California, has had a romantic career. A Pole of good birth and an officer in his own land, he was driven to America by political changes and enlisted in the United States army. Here it has been told that he became a corporal at Fort Wingate in a troop of the Sixth Cavalry, commanded by Capt. Adna R. Chaffee, and the tale continues that he was so severely treated by Chaffce that he left the army for Mexico, where he readily found congenial employment as an officer of the rurales of the frontier guard, under Col. Juan Fenochio. Chaffee, regretful of his actions, is said to have been instrumental in removing any stigma that might have attached to his ex-corporal's departure. Kosterlitsky soon rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel and later to full colonel. It is believed that no man could have done more than he to put down the disorder that was so com- mon in Sonora. His methods were sharp and decisive and a known criminal rarely ever was left to the delay and doubtful justice of the courts. The rurales, with the full approbation of the central government, usually resorted to "la ley fuga" and the criminal was left in a shallow grave. He participated with distinction and success in a number of expeditions jointly with American troops and his services especially were appreciated by the very officers with whom he had served in the United States Cavalry.
Possibly it would be well to insert here an alternative story of the way he joined the Mexicans. It is to the effect that he deserted from the Russian navy at New York, preferring service in the saddle. He took an American vessel to Guaymas, where he enlisted in the Mexican army, in which he had service of forty years.
PAULINE CUSHMAN
One of the notable women of the latter pioneer days of Arizona was Pauline Cushman, who lived in Casa Grande for many years, the wife of Jere Fryer, who served a term as sheriff of Pinal County, and who kept a hotel and corral near the Casa Grande Station. Before marrying Fryer, she had managed hotels and eating houses in several southwestern camps. Before the Civil war she was an actress in New Orleans and is said to have been the first woman who ever played the part of Mazeppa in the United States, a daring innovation in the early days of the theatrical business. During the Civil war she became
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a Federal spy and did such good work that she was at least brevetted, and is said to have been commissioned, to the rank of major. About that time she is said to have been a remarkably beautiful woman of Creole type. About 1881 she left Casa Grande for Oakland, California. Thence she made two trips to Alaska and she was back in Arizona in the fall of 1895, rather inclined toward settlement in Mexico. In a copy of the Tucson Citizen of twenty years ago has been found this appreciation of her character: "Miss Cushman is one of the best-known women on the Pacific Slope, having been at one time or another boardinghouse keeper in every prominent mining camp this side of the Rockies. Among the miners she has a world of friends, for no man was ever turned from her door, whether he had means or not. It is said that she grubstaked more than a thousand prospectors in her time, but still the long-looked-for bonanza has not been struck." She died in Oakland, where she was buried by the Grand Army with military honors. Fryer died in Tucson a few years later.
THE ARIZONA PIONEER SOCIETY
The Arizona Pioneer Society was organized January 31, 1884, at a meeting at the old Palace Hotel in Tucson. At that time the date of admission was set at 1870, though there have been modifications of this rule since that time. A large number of the pioneers were men who came in the California Column, but an unexpectedly large number dated their residence before the Civil war. On the admission date fixed, the settlement at Prescott had been only six years old and that at Phoenix only a little over a year, though many at Yuma were eligible. The original membership roll herewith is reproduced, with year of arrival annexed :
Chas. D. Poston. 1854
Thomas Steele 1867
Hiram S. Stevens 1854
Wm. Zeckendorf. 1867
Peter Kitchen 1854
E. Brune 1863
Samuel Hughes. 1858
Ferdinand Franco 1862
Michael McKenna 1856
Henry Gibson
1862
Wm. S. Oury 1856
J. McC. Elliott.
1852
N. B. Appel 1854
Chas. H. Tully.
1867
Jas. H. Toole.
1862
Wm. H. H. Burpee
1854
F. M. Martin.
1862
Thomas Burke.
1864
P. M. Smith. 1853
G. F. Foster. 1864
Wm. J. Osborn 1863
M. G. Samaniego. 1869
Geo. O. Hand. 1862
Palatine R. Burke. 1859
I. H. C. Waltemath 1865
Edward N. Fish 1865
A. Lazard. 1858
P. R. Tully. 1858
Thomas Gates.
1865
Dr. J. C. Handy
1866
Isaac Goldberg
1863
T. G. Rusk
1855
George Martin. 1855
Philip Drachman 1863
Leopoldo Carrill 1859
A. G. Buttner. 1865
Wm. C. Davis. 1869
S. H. Drachman
1867
W. A. McDermott 1868
Chas. T. Etchell 1864
E. I. Smith. 1869
D. T. Harshaw 1862
Thomas Hughes 1868
Adam Sanders 1865
G. Witfield 1861
Wm. C. Ferguson 1860
Mart Maloney 1869
Geo. T. Martin.
1862
W. F. Scott. 1859
Thos. J. Jeffords.
1860
D. G. Sanford. 1862
James Quinlan 1865
Horace H. Appel 1862
R. N. Leatherwood. 1869
HISTORICAL
ARIZONA
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SEAL OF ARIZONA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
SOCIETY OF
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SEAL OF SOCIETY OF ARIZONA PIONEERS
ARIZONA-THE YOUNGEST STATE
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D. Velasco
1859
Tom Driscoll
1869
Estevan Ochoa
1857
E. A. Yerkes
1869
N. Van Alstine
1856
Alex. Levin
1863
Robert Fraser
1866
M. R. Johnson. 1868
Edward A. Clark.
1869
Augusta Brichta
1862
Henry E. Lacy
1865
A. J. Keen. 1858
F. L. Austin.
1868
Horace B. Smith
1864
Placido Ruelas. 1855
James Lee 1856
Peter Mathews. 1866
Daniel Madden
1852
Chas H. Meyers
1858
J. E. Mills
1869
A. L. Jones.
1868
J. S. Mansfield
1869
W. W. Williams
1864
Oscar Buckalew 1864
Fred Maish
1869
E. D. Woods
1867
CHAPTER L NORTH OF THE GILA
R. C. McCormick-Sol. Barth-C. B. Genung-J. H. Lee-Ed. Peck- Jack Swilling -Darrell Duppa-Abe. Frank-Al. Sieber-Tom Fitch-C. H. Gray-Michael Wormser-E. F. Kellner-The Pioneers' Home and Its Inmates.
Save at Forts Defiance and Mojave and on the lower Colorado, there was no permanent white settlement before the date of territorial organization in all the vast expanse of Arizona north of the Gila River or of the southern transcontinental highway. The land had been explored by survey parties, trappers and miners, whose experiences have had mention heretofore in this work, but of permanent settlements, beautiful Prescott was the first. Naturally, the pioneers of Tucson have seniority, but it is probable the men of the north knew at least equal hardship with those of the south and served as effectively in wresting control of the land from savage hands.
RICHARD C. McCORMICK
Richard C. McCormick, the first secretary of Arizona and later its governor and delegate, has high popularity among the pioneers of the territory, who knew him best as "Dick" McCormick. He was a born newspaper man and publicist, with great enthusiasm in his work and with deep interest in the natural resources, physical attractions and unwritten history of the Southwest. He was in reality the editor of the first newspaper brought into Northern Arizona and did important work toward securing population, by spreading the news of the riches of the land. Early legislation had a habit of passing resolutions of thanks directed to him. One of these resolutions tendered thanks "for his constant integrity, and for the faithful manner in which he had dis- charged the duties of his office and for his untiring efforts on behalf of our people, and particularly for the intelligent zeal with which he set forth the resources and prospects of the territory while in the East during the last summer, whereby they were prominently and favorably made known to the people of the Atlantic states."
When McCormick went East in 1865, it was by way of the Greytown, Cen- tral American route. On the steamer he met Miss Margaret G. Hunt of Rah- way, New Jersey, who became his wife in September of that year. The letters of both from Prescott gave vivid pictures of life on the frontier, where there would have been no windows in the governor's mansion had not McCormick had the thoughtfulness to bring sash and glass from St. Louis.
Governor McCormick delivered a Fourth of July oration in Prescott in 1866. In the winter of 1866-67 he and his wife took a long journey through
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Western and Southern Arizona, ending in Tucson, where there was trouble with the language, for McCormick did not learn Spanish.
Mrs. McCormick came to the Southwest by way of Panama and San Diego, by stage coach to Yuma and river steamer to Ehrenberg, thence overland to Prescott, carefully nursing all the way the root of a red climbing rose. This she planted under the window of the log cabin that was the first executive mansion of Arizona. On the capitol grounds in February, 1907, was a pretty ceremony, the planting of a slip from this first cultivated rosebush ever brought into Northern Arizona. The bush had been taken by Mrs. Margaret A. Ehle, who had cherished it through the years until her death in 1906. The shoot was planted by Governor Kibbey himself, territorial officials added earth and Miss Sharlot M. Hall told the story of the rose. Mrs. McCormick died April 30, 1867, aged 34, at the old Fleury log house, on the birth of a child, and both were laid in one grave nearby, later to be taken East. Attending at the funeral was Rev. Chas. M. Blake, chaplain at Fort Whipple.
McCormick was born in New York City, May 23, 1832. Soon after leaving school he served as a newspaper correspondent in the Crimean campaign and in the same capacity with the Army of the Potomac in 1860. In 1876 he served as commissioner of the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia, in 1877 was assist- ant secretary of the treasury and in 1878 commissioner general to the Paris Exposition. Active in republican politics in New York he was defeated in 1862 and 1886 when there nominated for Congress, in which he served three terms from Arizona, but success attended another eastern effort in 1894. He declined appointment as minister to Brazil offered by President Hayes. He married again in 1873, wedding Rachel Thurman, daughter of Senator Allen G. Thurman of Ohio. Death was of apoplexy at his home in Jamaica, Long Island, June 2, 1902.
SOL BARTH
Few men have had a more curious history than Sol Barth. He was born at North Orange, New Jersey, seventy-four years ago, but was taken back by his parents to the Posen district of Eastern Prussia when only a few months old. At the age of 13, he joined an uncle who had embraced the Mormon faith and with him journeyed back to America. For part of the distance, on a road that eventually led to the Mormon settlement in San Bernardino, Cal., he traveled in true Mormon fashion, at the bar of a two-wheeled pushcart. He left San Bernardino in 1862 for the Colorado River town of La Paz, to work for Michael Goldwater. At this time probably 1500 men were washing gold in the creek beds around La Paz. Among the settlers were Miguel Peralta, M. Goldberg, Levin, later of Tucson, and Hermann Ehrenberg. In 1864 Barth went to the first term of court held in La Paz by Judge Allyn, to secure citizenship, for, curiously, at that time he was not informed of the fact that he had been born in New Jersey and he thought himself a native of Germany. He knew Kit Carson when the famous scout came through Zuñi as a colonel of volunteers, to settle some trouble among the Navajo Indians. His memory of Carson was that of an ignorant and uncouth frontiersman. Barth went to St. Johns in 1864 with a prospecting party, though not to stay. About that time he was still freighting and packing with a train of seventy burros, which he later traded to Genung and Kirkland
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for the Peeples Valley Ranch, though he never occupied the ranch or gained any benefit from its temporary ownership. After freighting around New Mexico for a year, in 1869 he was for a year sutler at Camp Apache. In 1874 he located permanently in St. Johns, where he still resides.
CHARLES B. GENUNG
Premier among the pioneers of Northern Arizona today is Chas. B. Genung, who not only has the distinction of an early arrival, but who has written ex- tensively upon his experiences, and who expects to publish the history of his interesting life in book form. Genung is distinguished as an old-timer who came to Arizona for his health. Afflicted with weak lungs, he left San Francisco July, 1863, for the south, expecting to go to Mexico, but at Los Angeles he was diverted to Arizona in getting the news of the placer strike at Rich Hill. He was fortunate in crossing the desert to have as a companion Ben Weaver a half- breed son of Pauline Weaver. The Colorado was crossed at Bradshaw's Ferry, at what was called Olive City, on the Arizona side, not far from La Paz, which was then a town of several hundred inhabitants with several stores. With a considerable party, Genung made his way up Bill Williams Fork and over on the Hassayampa to Walnut Grove. After panning creek beds for gold, some rich float was found, above which was located the Montgomery mine, believed by Genung to have been the first quartz mine located in the new country. Notice of the location was carried to John Pennington, the district recorder, and entered upon his little book of records at his office, which was under a big juniper tree on the Hassayampa. In December the partners had managed to build a small arastra and by the end of the month saw a clean-up worth nearly $300 in gold, the first quartz gold taken out north of Gila River in Arizona. This gold was retorted in an old musket barrel, and was used for the purchase of badly- needed provisions. In the northern journey to Granite Creek, Genung, bearing the gold, had a single meal, a chicken hawk, which he broiled on the coals of his camp fire and ate without any condiments or accessories. Bill Kirkland, who had his family with him, was working a placer mine about twelve miles below Genung's. A. H. Peeples had started his ranch, sixteen miles to the southwest, and there were a few neighboring miners, one of whom was Sandy Hampton, who was killed early in 1864 by a Mexican, whom he had made welcome.
With the guide only of the large-sized shoe tracks of Hampton 's horse, which had been stolen by the Mexican, Genung started on the trail and chased the fugitive nearly to the Mexican line, south of Tucson, and, still led by the tracks, finally found the Mexican lying under a bush, while the hobbled horse grazed near by. Genung, in his manuscript memoirs, states that he was "about the worst-looking, black, scar-faced greaser that I ever looked at, but he looked good to me just then." Genung is careful to state that he had a loaded shotgun, but he leaves at this point of his narrative what may be described as a string of stars. In any event, the Mexican never again was heard of, though Hamp- ton's horse was recovered.
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