Maricopa County AZ Archives Biographies.....Simms, J. T. 1833 - living in 1896
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Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com March 6, 2005, 7:13 pm

Author: McFarland & Poole

p. 512-513

  J. T. SIMMS. Among those who have been closely identified with the growth and
prosperity of Arizona Territory is J. T. Simms, a man well and favorably known
throughout its length and breadth. Seldom has a life been crowded with so much
incident and adventure. The record of it reads more like a romance than the
story of the life of a man of the present generation. Mr. Simms is a native of
that grand old mother of States and statesmen, Virginia, his birth occurring in
Lewis County in 1833. His father was a farmer; he assisted on the farm after
leaving school, until seventeen years old, when he secured a position in a
country store, owned by George A. Jackson, and at the headwaters of the West
Fork of the Monongahela River. In a few months he was given entire charge of the
business, the proprietor doing the buying, but the latter becoming ill, was
obliged to sell the business and our subject was out of employment. He spent
some time traveling in the West, and then decided to go to Chicago, which at
that time had a population of about 50,000. The houses at that time were built
on the level of the prairie, but many of them were being raised, and Mr. Simms
remembers that Lake Street was being graded and raised several feet. This was in
1853. From Chicago he traveled through the Northwest for several years selling
agricultural implements. In 1856 or ‘57 he engaged in merchandising on his own
account, and continued this until January, 1859. He then sold out and went with
a party to Brazil, South America, to build the Dom Pedro Railroad across the
Serra do Mar (Mountains of the Sea). He took passage on the good ship Banshall,
which was engaged in the coffee and flour trade between Baltimore and Rio
Janeiro, and although the vessel experienced two severe storms, and when near
the equator was encalmed for a week, he, after a voyage of forty-seven days,
reached his destination. The vessel entered the harbor of Rio Janeiro at about
nine o'clock at night, and Mr. Simms says he will always remember the grand view
bv gas light of the largest city south of the equator. When the health officer
came on board the next morning and told them that the death rate from yellow
fever was two hundred a day, Mr. Simms and his companions gathered up their
belongings and left for the mountains, where they would be safe, as soon as
possible. The road had been built from Rio Janeiro to the foot of the mountain,
and the section they were to build, although only ten miles, was very heavy
work, as there were thirteen tunnels, from six hundred feet to one and a half
miles each. After four months' experience as bookkeeper, timekeeper, storekeeper
and assistant superintendent for the company, Mr. Simms, with another Virginian
(a thorough railroad man), secured a contract to build one mile of the railroad
on which were two tunnels and very heavy outside work. The road passed through a
dense forest populated with tigers, monkeys, boa constrictors and other animals.
After finishing the work with profit to themselves, Mr. Simms and his companions
secured a contract on the extension of the road through the great coffee
plantations, and after finishing that, in 1862, secured a large contract on the
Santos & San Paulo Railroad, three hundred miles south of Rio Janeiro. Mr. Simms
was in charge of from one hundred to three hundred men, consisting of
Portuguese, Spaniards, Brazilians, Africans and other nationalities, from July,
1859, to September, 1864, and after settling up the business, left Rio Janeiro
December 10, 1864. He took passage on the royal mail steamship "Parana" for
Southampton. The experiences and incidents connected with his six years'
residence in South America, if written up, would make most interesting reading,
for railroad men at least. Mr. Simms ridicules the hot weather of Phoenix, and
says that the night before he left Rio Janeiro, December 9, 1864, at ten
o'clock, the thermometer stood at 110 degrees. After a passage of twenty days,
during which time they stopped at Bahia, Pernambuco, and the Canary Islands, for
coal, the vessel reached Southampton, England, and the same day Mr. Simms went
to London. The voyage was without incident except that they got in the path of a
terrible hurricane, which capsized twenty ships and barges in the Tagus River at
Lisbon. During this storm the waves reached forty feet in height, as estimated
by the officers of the "Parana." Out of eighty passengers our subject was the
only one able to eat an English Christmas dinner, the others being very seasick.
After viewing the wonderful sights of London, Mr. Simms made a tour of the
Continent, and then returned to his native land, reaching America before the end
of the year 1865. Having acquired a knowledge of railroad building and liking it
better than any other business, he was soon at work in the Western States. In
1878 he directed his course Southwest, and his first contract was in the Grand
Canon of the Arkansas River, west of Canon City, Col. The road was being built
by the Santa Fe Railroad Company on account of a prior right of way. The United
States Court, in a decision handed down in July, 1879, awarded the road from
Canon City to Leadville, then nearly completed, to the Denver & Rio Grande
Company, they paying the cost of building. Mr. Simms secured a contract with the
Santa Fe Company and continued with that company, doing a great deal of the
heavy work to El Paso, until the work was completed. From there he went to the
Atlantic and Pacific in 1881, and built eleven miles of railroad, including one
tunnel, from near Williams to Fairview. It cost the company $365,000 to build
this, and Mr. Simms finished it in about a year. The scarcity of water was a
great hindrance there, and for five months it cost $125 a day to haul water for
the force engaged in building this road. From there Mr. Simms went to Lordsburg
& Clifton Railroad, where he built four tunnels and had other work on the road.
His last contract was the Arizona Canal, in 1883, and this was finished the
following year. Then after twenty-five years spent as a railroad contractor and
doing all kinds of public work, he retired and went to farming and stock
raising, in which occupation he lost money. In 1887 he retired from the business
for good. When on his way to the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad, in 1881, Mr. Simms
passed through Phoenix, and was so impressed with the Salt River Valley that he
determined to make his home there. He has never regretted settling in this
lovely spot, and he believes there is a great future for this Territory.


Additional Comments:
From:

A Historical and Biographical Record of the Territory of Arizona
Published by
McFarland & Poole, Chicago, 1896

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