Maricopa County AZ Archives History .....History Of Tempe ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/az/azfiles.html ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joshua Taylor http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00006.html#0001358 June 27, 2005, 7:11 pm Book Title: Mrs. Robinson, no date Winchester Miller was one of the earliest settlers. He came in 1869 and was one of the men who began the Tempe Canal. During his life he was a peace officer, surveyor and land owner. He built a two story house between the Creamery Road and the river near the Butte. In 1873 he married Maria Sotelo and they had ten children. Dona Manuela Sotelo homesteaded the quarter section along the Creamery road east of what is now Rural Road. Others who came in the 1870's were James T. Priest, George Nelson Finch and Mr. and Mrs. Thomposn Walker. Antonio A. Celyea worked at the flour mill for Don Carlos Hayden, as the Mexicans called him. George R. Finch was a farmer. Later he was in the livery business for thirty years. He was also a member of the school board and served on the city council. Neils Peterson, a native of Denmark, helped rebuild the rock and brush dams across the Salt River when they washed out. He also worked on the canals. Mons Ellingson, a native of Norway was one of the early ranchers. Frank Fogal was another. George W. Nichols was another early rancher. Josiah Gregg was one of the farmers who also helped build the Tempe Canal. Aaron N. Cosner was a carpenter. Maria Gonzales came from Mexico in 1874. She married James T. Priest the next year. Mr. and Mrs. Whitfield T. Cummings and five children left Missouri for Arizona by ox team in 1877. They settled on a farm two and a quarter miles southwest of Tempe. Dr. John L. Gregg was the first doctor. He came in 1877 and lived with the Haydens for a while. They built a little adobe house for him west of the Casa. Dr. Gregg had only one leg but he was very active. At one time he was also county supervisor for four years. Samuel Brown came in 1877 and F.G .Hardwicke the next year. They were both blacksmiths in Mr. Hayden's shop. Later Mr. Hardwicke farmed land and sent the first bale of cotton ever grown in Arizona to the fair in Phoenix. This was in 1885. The cotton was picked and seeded by hand. Mr. Brown served on the Tempe City council and was in the territorial legislature. Jerry H. Cummings was a carpenter and a cabinet maker. He was also justice of the peace in Tempe for a term. James E. Sturgeon was the owner of the Pioneer Meat Market in Tempe in 1879. Frank Fogel came to Arizona by covered wagon in 1877 when he was nine years old. He went to the Tempe schools and later became a farmer. He married Alice McBrayer in 1895. Charles Morton Mullen first came to Arizona from Concow, California. He drove four mules hitched to a buckboard. That was in 1875. He helped build a station on the Black Canyon. Later he was a blacksmith and worked in different places. In 1888 he bought a half section of land southeast of Tempe. He had a hardware store in Mesa from 1894-1906 and was mayor of that city for a time. Then he returned to Tempe and bought a ranch and home east of town. John Merritt Mullen came to Fort Whipple in August 1865 as a soldier in Company A of the First California Cavalry. He was kept there three years in the Indian Service. He returned to Concow but came back to Arizona again in 1873. He drove a herd of loose horses that time. Then he returned to Tempe and bought a quarter section southeast of Tempe. Joseph B. Mullen, another brother came to Arizona in 1886. The railroad across the southern part of the state was finished, but he had his family take the stage from Maricopa to Phoenix. The next year he bought land near his brother. James McClintock came to visit his brother C.E. McClintock, who was editor of the Salt River Herald about 1879. James was a member of the first graduating class of the Normal School and taught in the Kyrene school south of town. He was a Justice of the Peace of Tempe, when he was twenty two. He later served in the U.S. army with the Rough Riders under Colonel Theodore Roosevelt during the Spanish-American War. He was wounded in Cuba. Later he wrote a history of Arizona. Romulus Adolphus windes and his wife came to Arizona in 1879. He drove two small mules hitched to a spring wagon. He was active in the Baptist Church. He organized several churches in the territory. He also sold real estate and insurance. He had three sons. Mrs. Windes was one of the first women in Arizona to write poetry and have it published. She also helped start the first public library. In 1884 James Goodwin came to Tempe and took up land seven miles south of town. He and his brothers farmed the place. James Goodwin was interested, in 1895 in building a street car line. The tracks started by the mill and ran south on Mill Avenue to Eighth, then east on Eighth to the canal. Young Garfield Goodwin waited until the train came in, then he took people where they wanted to go for a nickel. The Goodwin brothers had a brick yard across the street where the Wayne Ritter School stood. He built a brick house on the corner of Eighth and McAllister. Tom and his brother Willy went into the grocery business in the building on the northeast corner of Fourth and Mill. Later they sold out and tom became a farmer. Will Goodwin started the first show business in Tempe. It was known as the Goodwin Opera House, on Fifth Street next to City Hall. Silent pictures were shown. Garfield Goodwin, youngest of the six brothers ran Wells Fargo Express Company for twenty two years and at the same time built Goodwin's Novelty Store. Charles Corbell came from Texas in 1882. He was a farmer and interested in developing the irrigation system in the valley. Frances Marion Blake came the same year and was also a farmer. James M. Gilliland came to Tempe from Missouri in 1882. He drove four mules hitched to a covered wagon. In 1889 he married Rachaelener Cosner. They lived on a farm south of Tempe. Curtin Miller came to Arizona from Pennsylvania in 1882 and was publisher of the Tempe Daily News from 1887 to 1944. He also was postmaster, mayor, town clerk, member of the Tempe Normal School Board, board member for school district #3 (Tempe Grammar), chairman of the State Board of Pardons and Paroles, Captain of Company C of the Territorial National Guard and chief clerk of two sessions of the territorial legislature. The James F. Haiglers came in 1886 and rented a quarter section of school land. Turner Ashby Haws came the next year and was also a farmer. Ira H. Frankenberg and William Shelton Austin came in 1888 and took up farming. Mr. Austin came from Texas in two covered wagons. An uncle who made the trip with them had two more. Their trip was like others. The Pecos River was in flood so one of the wagons had to be made into a ferry. Another time blowing sand hid the road. After weeks of hardship they reached Tempe. Nanna Brown came to Tempe in 1887 when she was fifteen years old. Her mother, Mrs. Almeda Brown brought her four children to Tempe because of the Normal School. Nanna Brown went to the little adobe school at Eighth and Mill for one year, then went to the Normal School for two years and graduated in 1890 (the third class to graduate). She taught school for a short time and then married John Knight. In 1896 John Knight bought some property at the corner of Canal Street and Eighth. He had a store there for several years. He was the third mayor of Tempe and held office from 1897-1902. The James Woolfs did not come to Tempe until 1889. They and a few neighbors started the first building additions to the Normal School. Mr. Woolf was a director of the Tempe National Bank and of the Tempe Irrigating Canal Company. Charles, his oldest son graduated from the Normal School in 1893 and then went off to law school. Upon his return he was employed as town attorney at ten dollars a month. Charles became a director and later president of the Tempe National Bank. Ida Woolf, the oldest daughter, graduated from the Normal School in 1894 and taught in the Double Butte School. There were twenty-five children in grades one to seven. James T. Birchett first came to Arizona in 1880 with his parents. He was six at the time. The Birchetts did not live in Tempe until 1891. Joseph graduated from the Normal School in 1894 when he was nineteen. He taught school for a year in the Rural School. In 1902 he and his brother joined their father in a grocery store in Tempe. He married Guess Anderson who was visiting her sister, Mrs. B.B. Meour. Dr. Benjamin Baker Meour came to Tempe in 1896. He was called to take care of the sick and injured all over the valley. On long trips he sometimes had to change horses four times. There were no phones when he first came, making his work harder. But he was always ready to go where he could help. The early settlers came by covered wagons and teams. They were weeks and months on the road. Indians sometimes made the trip dangerous. Ditches and canals were dug with plows pulled by mules and scrapers pulled by more mules. Men shoveled dirt into wagons, mules hauled it way and all the farmers helped to make the ditches and canals. Any trips to the valley were made by horse drawn vehicle: a buggy, a surrey, a buckboard, spring wagon or a big freight wagon. The dirt roads were usually dusty or muddy. In really wet weather the only way to go was on horseback. A railroad did not come to Tempe until 1887. There was a railroad across the southern part of the state as early as 1880 and it went through Tucson and Yuma. People who wanted to come to the Salt River Valley had to get off at Maricopa Wells and make the rest of the trip by team. The first grammar school began in an adobe saloon on Mill Avenue between Sixth and Seventh Streets. George Holmsley, daughter of the first blacksmith was a pupil. Three of the early teachers were Miss Rembest, Miss Dumphey and Miss Pendleton. In 1878 a one room adobe school was built on the corner of Eighth and Mill on land given by Mr. and Mrs. Hayden. A heating stove in the corner kept the room warm in winter. A shelf held a water bucket and a dipper. The school furniture was made by Jim Basto from lumber that was hauled in from Prescott. Another school was located a miles and a half west of Tempe on Broadway, near Double Buttes. Ida Woolf (now Mrs. O'Connor) taught there in 1895-96. Elizabeth Cosner (later a teacher in the Grammar School) was one of the pupils. The first automobile stage was a White Steamer (steam-driven car) ran between Phoenix, Tempe and Mesa. It went by way of the Central Avenue bridge because the Tempe people still had to ford the river. In the spring of 1913 Freeman Fike came from Tucson and opened Fike's Auto Livery. He took people on special trips. In the fall of that year he started the Fike Auto Stages that went between Phoenix, Tempe, Mesa, Chandler and Gilbert. At one time Mr. Fike had forty seven Fords and four Jordans. Beginning in 1915 he ran stages to Globe by way of Roosevelt Dam. In 1918 he sold out to Shaugnessy and Beutke who had a stage line between Globe and Phoenix. The first bale of cotton was sent to the territorial fair in Phoenix in 1885 by F.G. Hardwicke. Mr. Charles Waterhouse, who first came to Tempe in 1895, raised the first long staple cotton in 1910. In 1912 he helped build the Tempe Cotton Gin. In 1918 when the first world war needed a lot of cotton he was superintendent of a 10,000 acre cotton ranch on the other side of the river. Mrs. R. A. Windes helped start the first public library in Tempe. She and some other members of the Women's Christian Temperance Union did not like to have the men hanging around saloons, so they had some books given and fixed up a room where people could go and read. The women who helped her were Mrs. D.G. Buck, Mrs. F.G. Hardwicke and Mrs. Ernest Schmidt. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/az/maricopa/history/other/historyo641gms.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/azfiles/ File size: 12.5 Kb