Click on this line to the March 2014 newsletter

Sierra Vista Historical Society Newsletter
SVHS NEWSLETTER
WWW.SVHSAZ.ORG
[email protected]
Volu
m
Mar
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201 h
4
e 12
Num
Marion Margraf, editor
President
Ed Riggs
Vice-President
Charles Morrison
Treasurer
Paulette Doyle
Secretary
Ingrid Baillie
ber 1
Spring
ARTICLES
MUSEUM NEWS
A very busy and successful season.
Continued on Page 2
The Orphan Train. Image from the Nation Endowment for the Humanities p. 4
TALES FROM WHITE CITY
Fleshing out the history of our
community.
Continued on Page 6
SOBAIPURI--EARLY SETTLERS ALONG
THE SAN PEDRO RIVER
A review of a book that masterfully
brings us up to date on early dwellers in
this area.
Continued on Page 7
February’s SVHS luncheon: Bisbee postcards p. 6
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[email protected]
Sobaípuri village* p. 7
Henry F. Hauser Museum !
SVHS Newsletter
PAGE
2
Curator’s Corner
We're almost a month
into our project Smithsonian
Museum on Main Street,
Journey Stories, and the
response from our community,
county residents, and out-of town visitors has been
overwhelming! It's exciting to
witness the successful
completion of a project that has
been two years in the making.
With that in mind, I would like
to take this opportunity to thank
the many project participants
and volunteers who have given
their stories, photographs,
financial contributions, time,
and talent!
This experience has
hopefully set the groundwork
for future county endeavors and
new museum partnerships. The
success of our Off-Site Speaker
Series is astounding. On March
8th Erik Berg from Phoenix
spoke about the World War II
Army Airfield in Douglas.
Room capacity was only 45-50
and so many came to hear him
that we asked Erik to give a
second presentation, which he
din
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Phot
graciously did. Some of those
turned away went to visit the
Douglas Air Border Museum
and returned for the second
program, and others toured the
Douglas-Williams House. We
had well over 100 visitors that
day!
The next Saturday,
March 15th, Bob Nilson gave
an presentation on the railroads
of Cochise County. Once
again, we had over 100 in
attendance--but room enough
for them, fortunately. Many
who came also visited the
Visitor's Center and Benson
museums.
Our Camp Naco presentation and tour, limited to
60, has been sold out for weeks
and we are in the process of
scheduling a second one.
The last day for Journey
Stories is Saturday, April 5th.
We look forward to the
possibility of bringing more of
this type of series to you in the
future.
After April 5th, the
museum will be closed for three
he num
hours voT
lunteers dber of
the muse
onated to
was 657! um in February
due to the The increase was
the Journ help they gave to
ey Stories
project.
[email protected]
weeks for tearing down,
packing, and shipping the
exhibit back to Washington
D.C. The museum will reopen
Saturday, April 26th to host the
final Quilt Documentation
Event. So many people have
spent so much time creating this
Journey to Cochise County
companion exhibit we felt it
deserved a longer stint.
Therefore, the banners will be
moved into the museum, and
some will rotate through
assisted living facilities in the
area through the end of the year.
Our Summer Saturdays @ the
Museum series, which begins in
June, will focus on subjects
from this companion exhibit.
Thanks to all who have
made this such a HUGE
success! We couldn't have done
this without YOU!
Until next time,
Nancy Krieski
(520) 417-6980
[email protected]
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SVHS Newsletter!
PAGE
3
Tombstone 1881: A Sampling of Rogues--A Glorification of Thugs
Josephine Sarah Marcus
by Ed Riggs
Update
Besides the prospectors and miners who came to Tombstone to search out wealth in the form of silver ore, others
arrived to search out alternate ways to strike it rich. This is one of a series of articles about those who came to
Tombstone, Arizona Territory. Some were rogues, some were thugs, some were not. You get to decide in which
category they belong.
By way of a caution to
those of us who enjoy
historical research, in this
issue I offer an update to the
biography of Josephine Sarah
Marcus that appeared in the
February, 2011 SVHS
Newsletter.
When I searched for
information for my article on
Miss Marcus, I found an
image of her (just below) at
Wikipedia, the online
encyclopedia.
h Marcus
Josephine Sara
photo C. S. F ly
However, the recent
(2013) publication of Ann
Kirschner’s biography of
Josephine Marcus Earp,
entitled Lady at the O.K.
Corral – The True Story of
Josephine Marcus Earp,
raised questions about the
accuracy of Wikipedia’s
identification of the subject in
that photo to being Josephine
Sarah Marcus.
It is not unusual for the
identification of a person in a
photo to be questioned. After
all, it is often the case that we
accept someone’s assertion
that so-and-so is the person in
the photograph, even if we do
not have sufficient or
corroborating documentation,
and once something is
published there is a natural
tendency to accept the photo
as a true representation of the
person in question.
So, if doubts are raised,
what are some strategies to
use in the absence of proof?
A YouTube video of a
discussion with Ann
Kirschner and a photographic
forensic consultant associated
with the John Jay College of
Criminal Justice in New York
[email protected]
City goes into considerable
detail about the comparison of
known pictures and
unconfirmed images of the
subject. That video, in eight
parts, can be seen at http://
www.youtube.com/watch?
v=Kj0sJhrHLo8.
The photograph I have
attached (below) is discussed
in the videos as probably
being an early image of
Josephine Marcus, circa 1880.
I hope the readers of this
article and others on
Tombstone in 1881 will
continue to approach the
subject with skepticism and
expectations of new
information coming in the
future.
nnn
SVHS Newsletter!
PAGE
4
Amazing Arizona Speaker Program
The Orphan Train
The fourth of the 2013-2014
Amazing Arizona presentations
attracted even more attendees
than usual. In fact, so many
people came to the Ethel Berger
Center on February 4, 2014 to
hear about the Orphan Train
that some had to stand and
others had to be turned away
for concerns about safety in
case of fire.
Because of the popularity of
this presentation, it will be
offered again in substantially
the same format at a later date,
to be announced.
Instead of a speaker at the
podium supported by a slide
show, this presentation took a
different form: the topic was
framed by singers, slides, clips
from a television documentary,
and a narrative reading.
The orphan train movement,
operating between 1853 and
1929, was the largest child
migration in United States
history. It was started by
Charles Loring Brace, who
founded the Children’s Aid
Society to help the over twenty
thousand orphaned and
abandoned children living in
New York City. Brace thought
that institutionalizing children
was bad for them, and instead
thought that there would
certainly be a place for them in
families, particularly pioneer
families to the West. Soon, the
Catholic New York Foundling
Hospital joined his effort.
Folk singers Alison Moore
and Phil Lancaster began the
performance with a song and
slide show about children
arriving in New York from
other countries, mostly Ireland,
or from the deep South, with
just a note in their pocket and a
hope that someone would be
there to meet them.
So it was that these
homeless children (many of
whom had been given up
because their parents could not
afford to feed and clothe them)
boarded special train cars to
ride for three to four days, nuns
watching over them, to new
homes.
The singers introduced
video clips from a PBS
documentary about the Orphan
Train. ( http://www.pbs.org/
wgbh/amex/orphan/)
At train stops, children were
led out to a platform for
inspection by prospective foster
families. One person featured in
the clips was Janet Graham,
who recounted enduring a man
sticking his hands in her mouth
to check her teeth.
Another person featured in
the clips was Ed Gray, who
[email protected]
recalled that one person who
wanted to take him home was a
farmer who smelled horrible.
Ed refused to go with him, but
did go home with a banker and
farmer who promised him a
pony. He was grateful to this
adoptive father for saving his
life.
The performance also
included a narrative reading by
Alison Moore of her novel
Riders on the Orphan Train, an
historical fiction based on this
movement.
The child relocation
movement came to a
shuddering stop in 1929 as the
result of an unfortunate case in
Clifton, Arizona in which the
children who were taken into
the homes of American citizens
of Mexican descent were
removed by neighbors in the
Anglo community, to be
adopted by other Anglo mining
families, or sent back to New
York City.
There is a museum in
Concordia, Kansas dedicated to
the history of the Orphan Train.
http://orphantraindepot.org/
orphan-train-rider-stories/
by Carolyn Cruz
nnn
SVHS Newsletter!
PAGE
5
Geocaching
Are you a geocacher?
Geocaching is an outdoor
recreational activity, similar to
orienteering, or a treasure hunt,
in which containers have been
deliberately hidden (cached).
Participants use a global
positioning system
(GPS) receiver or mobile
device and other navigational
techniques to look for the
containers in "geocaches" or
"caches,” anywhere in the
world.
SVHS would like to thank
Barbara Jensen for creating a
geocaching activity to
complement our Historical
Plaque Program. Several
visitors to Sierra Vista have
recently logged their “finds”
with the Hauser Museum, and
many have returned to
complete the program, noting
that they “enjoyed it so
much.”
plastic storage containers
(Tupperware or similar) or
ammunition boxes can also
contain items for trading,
usually toys or trinkets of little
financial value, although
sometimes they are of
sentimental interest.
A typical cache is a small
container holding a logbook
where the geocacher enters the
date they located it and signs it
with their established code
name. After signing the log,
the cache must be placed back
exactly where the person found
it, so others may search for it,
too. Larger containers such as
If you are interested in trying
this fun activity, there are
several websites available.
These sites will also explain
the strict geocaching etiquette
rules of which you’ll want to
be aware. An easy place to
start is www.geocaching.com.
by Bob Bobar
nnn
Railroads of Cochise County
The Curator’s Corner (p. 2) mentioned
the talk given by Bob Nilson on the
railroads of Cochise County. He handed
out a map of the lines that have crossed
our county with a helpful color key to
mark the routes. To the right is a list of
those lines and their dates of operation.
Southern Pacific, 1880-1996
New Mexico & Arizona, 1881-1898
Arizona & South Eastern, 1888-1901
Copper Queen, 1888-1901
Gila Valley Globe & Northern, 1894-1910
El Paso & Southwestern, 1901-1955
Arizona & Colorado, 1902-1910
Tombstone & Southern,
1903
Cananea, Río Yaqui Pacífico, 1905-1909
Johnson Dragoon & Northern, 1907-1925
Mexico & Colorado, 1909-1910
Mascot & Western, 1914-1932
Arizona Electric Power Co-operative, 1975
Union Pacific, 1996-current
nnn
[email protected]
SVHS Newsletter!
PAGE
6
Tales from White City
When we think about
our beloved Buffalo Soldiers,
oftentimes we visualize them in
their fine uniforms gallantly
performing their duties. Mostly
missing from the narrative is
how many spent their off duty
hours just outside of the main
gate in “White City.” A series of
letters between an anonymous
citizen, the 10th Cavalry
Commander, the Cochise
County Sheriff, and an
Assistant U.S. Attorney provide
a sample of the extracurricular
activities some Buffalo Soldiers
enjoyed.
In 1917, this anonymous
citizen delivered a handwritten
letter to the 10th Cavalry
Commander, COL Cabell. The
writer was indignant about
Mamie Robinson selling liquor
out of her home to the soldiers
for $3.50 a pint. The writer
informed the Colonel that the
military guards dispatched to
keep the soldiers from buying
the whiskey were of no help
because she provided free
liquor and they got drunk right
along with the soldiers!
COL Cabell promptly
wrote a letter to Sheriff
Wheeler explaining that he had
received promises from Mamie
and other proprietors that they
would not allow gambling or
liquor sales, and further would
enforce an 11:00 p.m. curfew
on the soldiers. However,
despite promises, the Colonel
was certain the proprietors were
still selling whiskey because his
soldiers were getting drunk
there quite often. COL Cabell
asked the sheriff to aid him in
enforcing federal law giving a
maximum $1000 penalty and
one year confinement for sale
of liquor to a soldier in uniform.
Sheriff Wheeler wrote
to the Assistant U.S. Attorney
in Tucson explaining that his
limited manpower was not
sufficient to “regulate as much
as possible the necessary evil of
White City.” He requested
federal officials to come to
White City, believing that if a
couple of the whiskey sellers
were sent to prison, “there
would be no trouble after that!”
The Assistant U.S. Attorney
quickly responded that with a
promise to send a Federal
Special Agent to assist Sheriff
Wheeler to clean up White City.
There is no record of further
correspondence on this
particular matter but by all
indications, White City
continued to thrive for several
years.
by Chrysti Lassiter-Jones
nnn
February Member Luncheon
Annie Graeme Larkin,
Bisbee Mining and Historical
Museum Curator of
Collections, was the speaker at
our February 21, 2014
luncheon. Her book, Bisbee-A Postcard History, was
recently published and is
available at the Hauser
Museum Gift Shop.
She recounted that she
became entranced by a family
cache of postcards one
summer as a youngster, and
just kept collecting them. Her
book reproduces many of these
postcards and is accompanied
by a narrative that expands our
knowledge of what they
depict.
[email protected]
She assured me that
there must be some postcards
of Sierra Vista, especially from
the 1950s. If you have one,
consider donating it to the
Hauser Museum.
--Editor
nnn
SVHS Newsletter!
PAGE
7
Book Review
Where the Earth and Sky are
Sewn Together: SobaipuriO’odham Contexts and
Colonialism, by Deni J.
Seymour. Salt Lake City:
University of Utah Press
(2011). 327pp.
were Quiburi, Santa Cruz de
Terrenate, Santa Cruz del
Pitaitutgan, and Santa Cruz de
Gaybanipitea.
Seymour draws on
historical documentation,
ethnographic studies, and the
archaeological record, linking
This work, the product of
the lines of evidence from
thirty years of research, brings
each field into a coherent
together history, ethnography,
picture of the Sobaipuri. She
and archaeology. The author,
shows the relationships
herself an archaeologist, seeks
between the disciplines using
to clarify what is known and
archaeology, which is
can reasonably be inferred
concerned with material
about the native residents of
evidence, as the arbiter
the San Pedro River valley
between conflicting
first described by Spanish
information. The majority of
sources in 1691.
the book is presentation and
The term used to identify
discussion of the material facts
our variation of O’odham is
in relation to the
Sobaipuri. They were one of
complementary disciplines of
the subgroups of the
history and ethnography.
widespread Piman language
Although the San Pedro
family, and practiced a
Sobaipuri enter the written
riverine economy based on
record only in 1691 when
irrigated corn, beans, squash,
visited by Father Kino,
and cotton. On the west side of
Seymour points out that by the
the river the four major
time of Kino’s observations
Sobaipuri villages on the San
the native
Pedro, from north to
population would
south,
have already been
e
h
t
impacted by the
t
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f the
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unders enting the s mation righ tal and
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documlogical infor in both digiurself: Can
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t
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find th
,
writtenomeone else
s
r
I, o
past. She shows that the
Sobaipuri were never an
isolated people living on the
eastern margin of the
Sobaipuri region. They were
in contact with Hopi and Zuñi
pueblos, as well as the
Western Apache and other
groups to the north and south.
Seymour notes that Father
Kino says that before the
Pueblo Revolt in 1680 there
was trade (for corn) with
Spanish colonials from the Rio
Grande, and the San Pedro
was a major north-south
corridor. The earliest dates
(archaeomagnetic) for
Sobaipuri occupation are
around A.D. 900-1000. About
1762, the remnant of the San
Pedro Sobaipuri joined their
relations at San Xavier de Bac,
leaving the San Pedro to the
Apache. It appears that the
last self-identified Sobaipuri
died in Tucson in 1930.
This work will remain the
definitive source on the San
Pedro Sobaipuri for many
years. Not only does it
elucidate what can be said
about them, it provides a
broad range of information of
a general nature about this
division of the Upper Pimans
and their neighbors.
by Charles R. Morrison
nnn
*The image of the Sobaípuri village on page one used
by permission of the artist, Scott Seibel.
www.seibelstudio.com
[email protected]