USA > New Mexico > History of New Mexico : its resources and people, Volume II > Part 22
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The war over, Mr. Carrington returned to Detroit, and in 1866 went from there to St. Louis, thence to Westport, Missouri, and from that place to Leavenworth, Kansas. Later lie made the journey with a wagon train to Denver, Colorado, and from Denver, in 1867, came to Elizabethtown, New Mexico. Not long afterward he went to Silver City, where he worked at the trade of millwright until 1871 : thencc to Taos, next on a prospect- ing tour in Colorado and elsewhere, finally in 1870 landed in Taos again, and since 1883 has made his home in Elizabethtown. For some fifteen years Mr. Carrington served as a justice of the peace. Several years he was school director. and for a time he acted as postmaster of Elizabeth- town, after the death of Postmaster C. N. Story. At present he is again serving as postmaster. While at Silver City he was a member of Farragut Post No. 1, G. A. R., but is not now affiliated with that order. In Sep- tember, 1880, Mr. Carrington married Miss Seferino Tenioro, who died in 1901, leaving him with four children: Frank, Emma, Mabel and Gracie. John Pearson, Sr., deceased, one of the pioneers of Elizabethtown, Colfax county, located in Elizabethtown in May, 1868. He was born at Sunsval, Sweden, July 7, 1848; learned the trade of shoemaker in Sweden ; came to the United States in 1866. His first winter here was spent in a Michigan lumber camp, from whence he went down into Indiana, where for six or eight months he worked at his trade. Next we find him in Kansas, employed in railroad construction work, and from there, a few months later, he came to New Mexico and located at Elizabethtown, where he worked on the Maxwell ditch until it was completed. Then he pros- pected in the Red River district, worked in the Aztec mines for six months, and clerked for Lewis Clark at Placidella Alcalde in Rio Arriba county. Coming back to Elizabethtown, he opened a shoe shop in partnership with Sam Salisbury. Afterward he was in business for himself at Cimarron. In March, 1872, he again returned to Elizabethtown and opened a shoe shop and grocery, being associated in this venture with Herman Froeliek. They dissolved partnership in the fall of that year, and Mr. Pearson con- tinued to run the shop in his own name. In December, 1874, he bought Peterson & Hitchcock's store on Willow Gulch ; in November, 1880, bought out Charles Rand on Ute Creek, and ran the two stores together. The
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former he sold in 1882 to Magnus Olson, his uncle, who came with him from Sweden : and then moved back to Elizabethtown, continuing, however, to run the Ute Creek store until 1903. On his return to Elizabethtown in 1882 he formed a partnership with Mr. Froeliek, bought the A. F. Meadow building, and conducted both a wholesale and retail business here until 1903. Also during a part of that time he was interested in placer mining. His uncle, Magnus Olson, also interested in mining for some years. died here in 1895.
Mr. Pearson served as school director of Elizabethtown, and for a number of years was postmaster of the town, having been appointed by President Cleveland in February, 1887, and served until 1897. Since Sep- tember 16, 1903, he resided in Douglas and Lowell, Arizona. He died at Lowell, Arizona, January 23, 1906.
Of his family, we record that his wife, formerly Miss Nephene Mary Guhl, was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. She still lives in Elizabeth- town. They have had eleven children, of whom three are deceased, namely : Amelia Mary, William Thomas and Walter Edwin. Those living are Nellie Renshaw. wife of James Abreu of Springer: Emma Christina, in Elizabethtown; Charles August, of Raton ; John, Jr., Elizabethtown ; Harry Guhl, Chilili, New Mexico; Roy Frederick, George Edward and Lillie Nephene, all of Elizabethtown.
John Pearson, Jr., was born January 2, 1880, in Willow Creek, Colfax county. He was educated in the public schools of Elizabethtown and Trinidad, and for several years clerked for his father and Herman Froeliek, after which, in 1901. he engaged in mercantile business for himself. He sold out in May, 1905, to Louis Leonard, and at this writing is again employed as clerk for Mr. Froeliek. Also he is interested in mining, be- ing vice president of the Gold and Copper Deep Tunnel Mining & Milling Company. Politically, Mr. Pearson is a Republican. Since the spring of 1904 he has been school director. July 29, 1902, he married Miss Perry Lou Kelly, daughter of James Perry and Lou (Schloemer) Kelly, the former a native of Pulaski county, Kentucky, and the latter of Longwood, Pettis county. Missouri. Mr. and Mrs. Pearson have a son, Lawrence, aged two years. and another son, John Perry, aged six months.
Stephen Eden Booth, who for nearly a quarter of a century has been one of the striking figures in the history of New Mexico, has been so actively identified with the development of the resources of the Terri- tory and so intimately associated with its political and social life that the simple record of his career, in epitome, in itself forms one of the dramatic chapters in the annals of the Territory.
Born in Monroe, Connecticut, March 6, 1830, Mr. Booth was taken to New Haven by his parents when two years old and was there reared to a sea-faring life. At the age of fourteen he ran away from home to follow the sea. His first voyage was to the Spanish main. In 1847 he visited Ireland with the first ship load of grain sent from America to the famine-stricken people of that land. In 1849 he went to California before the mast. Upon arriving at Benicia he fell a victim to the gold fever, deserted his ship, was captured and placed in irons for thirty-one days. Going to Sacramento after his release, he secured a job at "ten dollars a day and grub." his work being driving oxen for freighters. In the mines on Ynba river he was generally known by the sobriquet of "Connecticut."
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After mining on the Yuba river for four years he returned to Connecticut to purchase belting for mining purposes. On his return journey to Cali- fornia he met General Santa Ana at Acapulco and through the assistance of another Mexican purchased for thirty dollars a handsome serape which the general was wearing and which is now in Judge Booth's possession.
In 1855. Judge Booth left California, entered into the mercantile busi- ness until the opening of the Civil war. In 1861 he entered the United States navy under Commodore Porter and was made second in command of the Griffith, one of the twenty-one vessels in Admiral Farragut's squadron. His first service was as master's mate on the Griffith. He was at one time offered command of a brig with a commission to pursue and capture blockade runners, but declined on account of impaired health, which compelled him to retire from service after the fall of New Orleans. Among the sixty-two officers of this flotilla Judge Booth took first rank of his grade and still treasures a letter from Commodore Porter attesting that fact.
After the war Judge Booth continued his travels and in fact remains a great traveler to this day. He has visited many portions of the globe, attended the funeral of Daniel O'Connell in Dublin, dined with Don Pedro, the last emperor of Brazil. He was wrecked in the Sea Bell and was taken off with two others who died soon after rescue. He has spent five days on the ocean without food or drink. He was first mate of the ship Two Brothers when the crew mutinied, and he saved the life of Captain Meeks, whom the crew were about to throw overboard. During the years of his residence in California he helped found the city of Redlands and in many other ways became intimately identified with the upbuilding of that great state.
Coming to Colfax county. New Mexico, in 1883 with Wilson Wadding- ham, who had founded important stock enterprises in the northern part of the Territory, Judge Booth was made superintendent of the enterprise known as the Fort Bascom Cattle Raising Company. This company handled large herds of cattle on the Montoya grant for about ten years, when it went into liquidation.
During his residence in Las Vegas, Judge Booth was elected county commissioner of San Miguel county and made chairman of this body. While filling this office the historic "white cap" events that stirred San Miguel county occurred and he was drawn into the vortex of the trouble in the fulfillment of his official duties.
In 1893, Judge Booth went to Elizabethtown as the resident rep- resentative of the Maxwell Land Grant Company. He still fills that posi- tion, though spending much of his time in Las Vegas and in California. He has served as a member of the territorial cattle sanitary board. He is a stanch Republican and prior to the Civil war was a vigorous opponent of slavery. So strong were his principles in this direction that at one time, while in Rio Janeiro, he refused an offer of his weight in silver if he would go to Africa and obtain a ship load of slaves for the Brazilian trade. He has been a Mason since 1853 and was the organizer of Anawan Lodge No. 43, A. F. & A. M., at West Haven, Connecticut. Since 1853 Judge Booth has not tasted intoxicating liquor of any kind.
Judge Booth's wife, Mary Eliza Thompson, died in California. He
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has two sons: Fred E., of Elmhurst, California, and Elmer L., of Fill- more, California.
The subject of this biographical sketch, Melvin Whitson Mills, could be said to be one of the pioneer American citizens, though there were an- other still older lot that came to New Mexico between 1840 and 1850. The landing of M. W. Mills was not until 1868, at a time when quite a num- ber of Americans began to emigrate to the then quite remote Territory. The father of Mr. Mills, Daniel W. Milis, was already residing in New Mexico ; the mother, Hannah Mills, accompanying her son and only child to join her husband. These parents were of New England stock and of Quaker faith. The father, D. W. Mills, set out after his failure during the financial crisis of 1856, to regain his fortune in the West. He served as a soldier in the Colorado Home Guards during the Civil war. The boy, M. WV. Mills, received only an academic education, attending school at Adrian and Ann Arbor, Michigan, then graduating from the Law department of Michigan University in 1868.
The place of his landing in New Mexico was at Elizabethtown, a mining town that had started up for the most part that same year, upon the wild report that gold abounded in fabulous quantities from the grass roots down to bed rock. Such gold glittering reports going out over the country did not take long to gather together not only the adventuresome gold hunters, but as well the gambler and saloon keeper, the fugitive from justice, the dance hall speculator, and all sorts of people from all over the country, until a motley crowd as had ever cast their fortunes together, was on the ground mingling and commingling together, the subject of this sketch, a young lawyer among them. The place was high up in a mountain valley, with great mountains viewing each other with their snow capped peaks from all sides of the valley. There were only two outlets from this valley ; one to the west of the valley leading through the Fernandez Canyon to the very old settlement of Taos, and the other to the east, passing through the Cimarron Canyon out to the east connecting with the old road known as the Santa Fé trail.
The valley was called at one end the Moreno valley, at the other the Cieneguella valley ; this valley being a remote place in the mountains, and not settled until gold was discovered. The whole Territory was remote, and this valley considerably more so; hence the law and its enforcement a precarious happening. The predominating law at the place, for the few years it lasted in its better days, seemed rather more a sort of six shooter law than anything else, though there were several lawyers old and young, such as they were, pretending to be practicing law, but actually living by mining, gambling, or some other way. There were several halls of a hun- dred or two feet deep, generally having a liquor bar in front for the saloon part, then came the gambling tables with the dance hall, so that liquor bars, gambling tables, and dance halls all run together. These halls usually ran all day, or at least all night. The male dancer compensated for his privilege of dancing by going up to the bar after each dance, where he and partner partook of the luxuries kept there for the occasion. Such frequent visits to this flowing table soon induced a lot of conviviality, stir- ring up the wilder men, who most always had hung to their belts this six shooter law, and very often declared the law unto themselves, playing at such amusements as shooting out the lights in the halls; then shooting
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quite promiscuously, until a commotion or stampede resulted, when the crowds would tumble over one another in the dark, amid the screams of the more refined sex, until all should be quiet again, except for the groans of the wounded who lay dying after the commotion; and little was said next morning except that the shooter "got his man" last night.
It was at this valley that the notorious character, Charles Kennedy lived, who "had got" his fourteen victims. Charles Kennedy lived at the head of the Fernandez Canyon, where he kept a few log rooms where travelers sometimes stopped over night, some of whom turned up missing. Finally suspicion was aroused and the people sent a delegation to investi- gate. This investigation unearthed a few bags of human bones. These prospectors returned with Kennedy, who sought young Mills as his coun- scl. A mob jury was summoned to try Kennedy. The bag of human bones found buried in his yard and under his floor seemed quite convincing. Still young Mills got two jurors to desert the rest of the mob jury and hang up a verdict ; but it was for a little while only, as Kennedy was found hanging to a pine limb a few mornings later : his body was cut down and turned over to Dr. Bradford, who wired his skeleton together and sent it to the Smith- sonian Institute, where, with its most peculiar skull, it can be seen. Also in this valley lived that notorious character, Wall W. Henderson, who had on his pistol eight notches filed for victims wounded, and on the other side seven notches to represent the victims he had sent to their happy hunting grounds, regarding all of whom he boasted of having sent the ball straight to their eyes. One of his victims fell at the feet of young Mills one even- ing while he was addressing the bystanders, and a little later he had the honor to look down the same gun, under the command that he should go to the Justice of the Peace and make a speech that should legally discharge the prisoner for the same and other killings. A little later Wall fell a victim and his gun sent to the Smithsonian Institute where it is now. It was there also that Tom Taylor was first brought after killing his victim, and lodged in a little log jail. He also employed young Mills as his legal defender, who little later on concluded to part company with the log jail and his lawyer also. Tom Taylor then took into his confidence a young man called "Coal-oil Jimmie" and the two took to the mountains, hiding in the canyons, going now and then out to trails and public roads, and rob- bing everybody they met, thus spreading terror over the whole country They were afterward joined by Joe McCurdy and John Stewart, who called young Mills into their confidence at a midnight meeting to advise with him about some money that had been taken from a coach of one of their friends. At this meeting Joe McCurdy and John Stewart also came to discuss about assisting the two robbers, and it was there determined that they would join them in robbing the people over the country. In a week or so after this meeting McCurdy and Stewart returned to the town of Cimarron with the dead bodies of Tom Taylor and Jimmie on a farm wagon, sending at once for attorney M. W. Mills, and proposing to retain him to collect the $3.000 reward offered for the two dead robbers.
The lawless desperado elenient kept on increasing until respectable families were threatened with all sorts of violence and all kinds of crime seemed to be on the rampage. Then a lot of the more respectable people organized themselves for protection, afterward called "Vigilantes." This band of resolute and determined men would meet in a dark room, sending
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for young Mills to come to their place of meeting and pass a cigar box containing black and white gamblers' chips around, and by this means decide the fate of some desperado and also decide who should put him away; and in the next day or so, the fate of the condemned was known to everybody. It was not long after a few of the bad men had met this kind of fate, that this class of men who boasted of having "got their man" began to disappear.
Then came the winter of 1872 with a light snow fall in the mountains so that there was a scarcity of water for mining, and it became known that gold did not abound in such quantities from the grass roots down as was first reported. This town began to decline, and the town of Cimarron started up thirty miles away out on the prairie at the foot of the mountains. It became apparent that the county seat would have to be moved toward the new settlements, and M. W. Mills was chosen to go to Santa Fé and present the subject to the legislature then in session, which was done and the county seat moved to Cimarron. It is said that the new neighboring city never equaled in extreme wickedness the town of Elizabethtown, though there were eleven human creatures shot down in one bar room within a few months. There were other conditions surrounding Cimarron, the previous home of Lucien B. Maxwell. There were two tribes of In- dians who would get whisky in spite of all precautions, and with their wild demonstrations would frighten and terrorize the people, more particu- larly the families. On one of these occasions the people arrested and put in jail two of these wild Indian bucks one evening, the jailer being a young fellow called Bob Grisby. In the morning several hundred Indians of that tribe came into town and demanded that these bucks should be given up. A little previous to this time Grisby had sent a messenger to call M. W. Mills to come to the jail, who went thither and saw both Indian bucks cold in the grasp of death itself. The jailer claimed that the Indians assaulted him with a butcher knife while giving them something to eat. It was not long before the whole tribe became fully advised of the situation and they began to get ready for war, threatening to annihilate the town, which they could have done before the arrival of soldiers from the nearest fort. A few of the citizens with most influence with the Indians were selected to treat with the Indians, Mr. Mills being one of them, and after paying a few hundred dollars as a ransom, peace was restored. No one could describe the relief of joy that went through that little town when those Indians got on their ponies and went to their camp.
The town of Cimarron, lying on one side of the cattle range of country was frequented by the festive cowboy, who would visit the place, take on board all the bad whisky he could buy, and then amuse himself by dancing on the billiard tables, poking his six shooter down through the glass show cases in the stores to get what his eye fancied, then riding up and down the streets as if to imitate the wild drunken Indian by whooping and yelling and shooting sometimes into the doors and windows of the houses. The people, becoming a little tired of these antics, nominated Jack Turner for sheriff, and elected him upon the theory that he would arrest these cowboys when they came to town and got on these furious rampages. Soon after Jack got elected a little party of these cowboy braves came to town and took on the usual cargo of bad whisky. The sheriff summoned a lot of citizens and armed them ready for battle. Without much warning, the posse opened fire
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and the boys fled to their horses, mounted and were off, shooting back as they went; but the bullets of the posse flew after them and all but one fell from their horses, one of them (Wallace) surviving in a most miraculous form, as he was shot many times. He is still living, a most distorted look- ing creature. The escaping comrade, riding a white horse, after getting a half mile out of town on a high hill, waved to come back to help his party in distress, and some of the posse, to demonstrate their marksmanship, shot the poor fellow in a merciless way. The settlers out along . the creek who were mostly stock raisers, were sympathizers with these cow- boys, taking sides with them. Reports and warnings began to come into town thick and fast from these settlements that the town would be fired from all sides and burned up in the night time. About the only man in the place who had not supported Turner, who had not given countenance to this manner of arrest, and who had any friends and influence with these settlers and stock-raisers out along the creek was M. W. Mills. The town people began to entreat him to intercede for them, and to save the place from ashes. After a treaty, an armistice was effected. A little later two more cowboys, by name Davie Crocket and Gus Hefferon, took the town in somewhat the usual form, visiting it many times, and shooting it up at all hours of the night. A new sheriff had been elected by name of Rine- hart, a business partner of Mills; but the people did not seem to want to volunteer to help arrest these and other desperadoes. One day these boys went into the postoffice, pointing a double barreled shot gun at a man by name of Joe Holbrook, and another at the postmaster, John B. Mccullough, inviting these men to look down their shot gun barrels while they played with the gun hammers, and taunting them with all sorts of names, with charges of cowardice, etc. These men, Holbrook and McCullough, with Sheriff Rinehart. met at the office of Mr. Mills, and there offered to aid the sheriff in annihilating these midnight marauders, all of which was then and there agreed to. Accordingly, these men in the darkness called upon Crockett and Hefferon to halt. Instead of halting they began shooting, the sheriff and posse doing likewise, and the two dead outlaws were added to the long list. The sheriff and his two assistants, were tried and defended by Mills and another attorney and their acquittal easily secured in another county.
At the fall election of 1875 a bitter campaign was fought that had few equals if any in this western country, many people having lost their lives directly and indirectly over feuds growing out of this election. On the one side for the Legislature, Attorney Mills headed the ticket ; the battle for the Mills side prevailed, but a snakey trail followed in the wake. A month or so after this election, a minister, name Rev. Thos Tolby, who was com- ing down from Elizabethtown through the Cimarron Canyon on horseback was murdered, dragged off into the bushes, and his horse tied to a tree. A bad man by the name of Harberger, on the defeated election side, got hold of a Mexican named Cardinas and with a pistol pointed at him com- pelled him to subscribe to an affidavit charging a half dozen men with the crime of murdering Rev. Tolby. This affidavit charged M. W. Mills as be- ing the adviser of the murderers and knowing all about it. At this time Mr. Mills was up in Colorado attending court. A printer preacher by name of McMains took this affidavit, traveled all over the immediate country, through the settlements, and aroused the people so that they gathered at
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Cimarron to avenge the death of Rev. Tolby. The people turned out with their arms and in mob form, gathering from all sides so that the saloons and hoteis looked like arsenals with arms stacked and piled up on billiard tables and other places. Some of the principals so charged in this forced affidavit, the mob arrested, but Dr. Longwell who had been elected on the Mills ticket fled in advance of the mob and reached Santa Fe, a hundred and fifty miles away, a few miles ahead of the mob. The whole country was wrought up into a tension of intense excitement, and M. W. Mills was advised, by floods of telegrams from his friends, not to come home; but disregarding these warnings he fled to the scene of the mob assemblage, going in on the coach one afternoon. No sooner had he landed in the town than the mob took possession of him, proceeding to have a lynching party right away. But an opposition party arose of several hundred men who, with threats of vengeance and demonstrations of war, demanded that Mills should not then suffer death. For a little time it looked as if human blood would run like water in the Cimarron river. But the councils of a few men on both sides prevailed and it was agreed that the justice of the peace and men chosen from the mob should proceed with a trial, and all abide their verdict, and during the time of the trial, twelve men from each side of the two differing mobs, were to be selected to take Mills and hold him. The wires leading out of the town were all cut, until Indian Agent Irwin noti- fied the leaders of the mob that they were fighting Uncle Sam and that he needed the wires about his Indian business. The mob then connected the wires, upon the assurance of Irwin and the operator that no business should go over the wire except the United States Indian business. Indian Agent Irwin and the operator, however, to save human life wired the situation to the governor of New Mexico, Samuel B. Axtel ; and U. S. Cavalry came suddenly upon the scene, confronting the mob in the streets of the town, and leveling their guns upon them demanded the surrender of Mills. At this time the men guarding Mills were standing near by the cavalry, and Mills ran before he could be shot, and got in between the horses of the officers, the cavalry then marching to a camp established nearby. It is said that at this time, the mob of men began to murmur vengeance, while many of them, including their leaders, began to change front and say that they had not believed all the time that Mills was guilty. Anyway the mob court soon found that way, liberating Mills but implicating many others. The Mexican, Cardinas, was ordered back to jail, but was shot on his way, never reaching there, as also were others -- both shot and hung by the men composing this mob.
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