Arizona Legends
|
Pleasant Valley War
Typically, cattlemen and sheep-herders in the Old West didn't get along and this was no exception in the Pleasant Valley of Arizona during the 1880's. The Pleasant Valley War, also called the Tonto Range War, first began as early as 1882 between the cattle-herding Grahams and the sheep-herding Tewksburys. Though the feud would last for almost a decade, it was most heated between 1886 and 1887. The conflict between the two factions began over property lines and water and grazing rights. Adding fuel to the fire was the long-standing cowboy disdain for sheep-herders. Even without legitimate conflicts, there would, no doubt, have been a personal dislike of the Tewksburys on the part of the Grahams. The Grahams also contended that the sheep grazed the open range clean, leaving nothing left for the cattle. Ironically, the Tewksburys were actually cattlemen, but supported the sheep-herders due to a long-standing quarrel with the Grahams. This first dispute was said to have been over cattle stolen from a man named James Stinson. In any event, when the Pleasant Valley conflict erupted, the Tewksbury’s gave protection to a band of sheep actually owned by the Daggs brothers of Flagstaff. In addition to the Grahams, there were numerous other settlers in the area who were upset at the appearance of sheep on the open range that had been previously utilized exclusively by cattle. Those who had not taken part in the Tewksbury-Graham quarrel before, began to unite in defending their range against the sheep. Almost every man in the valley was eventually drawn into the conflict. The long-standing argument turned deadly when, in February, 1887, a Navajo Indian employed by the Tewksburys was herding sheep in an area called the Mogollon Rim, a vicinity that had been accepted as the line across which sheep were not permitted. The Indian was shot and killed by Tom Graham, who also drove out or destroyed the sheep. This event began the bloody battle that would be responsible for 19 known deaths, and as many as 30. At one point, known hired killer Tom Horn took part in the “war,” but it has never been established which side employed him. On August 17, 1887, William Graham was gunned down at his home but lived long enough to identify Ed Tewskbury as the shooter. A jury found Tewksbury guilty in his absence and Sheriff Mulvenon set out to arrest the man, but he had fled into the hills. In September, 1887, the Graham faction surrounded one of the Tewksbury cabins and shot down John Tewksbury and William Jacobs as they started out for horses. Though the two were dead, the Grahams continued firing at the cabin for hours, only stopping when Mrs. Tewksbury finally came out of the cabin with a shovel to bury the dead men. A few days later, a man named Andy Blevins, a member of the Graham faction, was overheard in Holbrook, Arizona, bragging that he had killed both of the Tewksbury men. Holbrook Sheriff, Commodore Perry Owens, got wind of the confession and having a warrant for Blevin's arrest for cattle rustling, decided it was a good time to pick up the lawless man. When Owens went to the Blevins family home on September 4, 1887, the family was in the midst of Sunday dinner and Andy refused to come out. Within moments, Andy’s half brother, John, opened the door and took a shot at the sheriff, who quickly drew his six-guns, sending bullets into both John and Andy. A gunfight inevitably erupted and Sam Blevins, just 15 years-old, ran out the door firing at Owens, who returned the shots. A friend of the Blevin family named Mose Roberts also fired upon the Sheriff. The melee, lasting less than a minute, left Andy and Sam Blevin, as well as Mose Roberts dead. John Blevins was wounded. Despite the many shots fired at him, Owens was uninjured and as word spread about the gunfight, it made the man a legend. Though the shooting was ruled as self-defense, Owens was fired by the County over the incident. Later that month, Sheriff Mulvernon of Prescott pursued brothers, John and Tom Graham, and Charles Blevins to Young, Arizona. Leading a posse sprinkled with Tewksbury sympathizers, they caught up with the trio on September 22nd. As the three men approached Perkins Store, Mulveron demanded their surrender, but instead, a shoot-out ensued. When the dust cleared John Graham and Charles Blevins lay dead. Tom Graham was able to escape. Over the next few years, several lynchings and unsolved murders of members of both factions took place, often committed by masked men. In August, 1892, the feud ended when the last of the Grahams, Tom Graham, was murdered in Tempe, Arizona. Before he died, Tom said that the shooter was Edwin Tewksbury, a fact that was confirmed by several witnesses. Ed was arrested for the murder and tried two times. However, the first trial resulted in a hung jury. The second trial ended in conviction, but, because of a legal technicality the verdict was deferred and in 1895 the case was dismissed. Edwin Tewksbury was the last of the men involved in the Pleasant Valley War. He died in Globe, Arizona on April , 1904. Today, some of the graves of many of the murdered men can still be seen in the Young, Arizona cemetery and the Perkins Store still stands as a museum. |
|
The Pleasant Valley War or Also Called Graham-Tewksbury Feud The number of casualties will never be accurately determined, in part because of the many nameless strangers who were perhaps in the wrong place at the wrong time.Fortunately, nowadays a Pleasant Valley cowboy, upon seeing an approaching horse-man, is not likely to dismount, lay his rifle across the saddle, and scrutinize a stranger until he determines whether it is friend or foe. In the 1880s, Pleasant Valley served as the backdrop for the bloodiest feud in Arizona's history. Yavapai County SherifFWilliam "Billy" Mulvenon and Apache County Sheriff Commodore Perry Owens were charged with stopping the killings and arresting the guilty. As in the Hatfield-McCoy and other famous feuds, lawmen could not stop the killing, because the participants obeyed a strict code of silence. Those who did not found lonely graves in the remote stretches of Pleasant Valley. As late as 1920, old-timers were still reluctant to discuss the feud with author Zane Grey while he prepared his fictional account of the vendetta in To the Last Man. Although he had been just a child at the time of the conflict, Bob Voris still worried about breaking the code of silence in 1957. He talked to Globe (Arizona) historian Clara Woody about the Pleasant Valley War on the condition that his story remained sealed until twenty-five years after his death. Many still believe that the vendetta resulted from the Tewksburys bringing sheep into Pleasant Valley. However, Mormon pioneer and rancher Osmer Flake wrote, "The one point I want to emphasize is, this was not a sheep and cattle war; the trouble started years before Mr. Jacobs brought the Daggs sheep into the Valley." Two Sheriffs,
the Grahams, and the Tewksburys
Commodore Perry Owens was born on July 29, 1852—the anniversary of his
name-sake Commodore Perry's victory over the British fleet in the
Battle of Lake Erie. Raised on a Tennessee farm, Owens escaped an
abusive father and arrived in Arizona around 1881. He worked on various
ranches and guarded the Army Cavalry horses at Navajo Springs. He stood
five feet, nine inches, had a deceptively soft face, and sported long
blond hair. He carried a late-model Winchester repeating rifle and wore
his long-barrel Colt revolvers butt-forward, forcing him to cross-draw
with "wonderful speed." Billy Mulvenon was born October 28, 1851, to Irish immigrants in Massachusetts. By age seventeen he was working as a government contractor at Fort Harker, Kansas. With the restlessness of youth, Mulvenon left his job and followed the Santa Fe Trail on horseback, arriving in Prcscott in 1876. He mined in rhc Bradshaw Mountains and served four years as a deputy sheriff before being elected Yavapai County sheriff on the Democratic ticket in 1884. Two years later voters gave him a second term. Yavapai Count)' jurisdiction at that time included all of present-day Coconino County and parts of Mohave and Gila Counties, as well as present-day Yavapai County. Participants in the feud lined up with one or the other of two prominent Pleasant Valley pioneer families: the Tewksburys and the Grahams. John Dunning Tewksbury Sr. had sailed from Boston to California during the Gold Rush days. He married an Indian woman from California, who bore him four sons, Edwin, John Jr., James, and Frank. After her death in 1878, John Sr. moved his family to Globe, Arizona, where he married a well-to-do widow, Lydia Ann Shultes, a native of Wales. The Tewksbury men bred fine horses and established their headquarters on Cherry Creek. Good pasture and year-round water, along with abundant game such as deer, antelope, and half-wild hogs, assured a good life. The Tewksbury brothers enjoyed frequenting the bars in neighboring towns, where in the summer of 1882, they met Tom and John Graham. The Grahams had left Boone, Iowa, for California, but stopped in Arizona when they heard about Globes silver strike. They told the Tewksburys that they had gambled and won some cows, but didn't know what to do with them. Ed Tewksbury said, "You come and go with us and we'll go up to Pleasant Valley and we'll make cattle kings out of you." The Grahams accepted the invitation and drove their cattle into Pleasant Valley. No Honor Among
Thieves
James Stinson, a Virginian, had brought cattle into Pleasant Valley in 1873 and established a second ranch in the Salt River Valley. He hired John Gilleland, a tough Texan, as foreman of his Pleasant Valley enterprise and John Paine as a cowboy. Paine's camp would become a haven for thieves, and he would count the Grahams among his friends. Stinson promised to pay the Grahams "firry head of good American cattle" in exchange tor any evidence of depredation against him—instead, the Grahams helped themselves to his herd. Graham cattle herds continued to increase, while those of their neighbors decreased. They needed cowboys, so a younger brother, William Graham, joined them, and they hired Jim Tewksbury as a cowpuncher for S50 a month. The Grahams bought two hundred two-year-old heifers from William J. Flake. Jim Tewksbury accompanied the Grahams to Snowflake, where the Grahams took possession of their new herd. Before beginning the ride home, the Grahams produced two running irons, and told Jim Tewksbury that they intended to do some "mavcricking." (A maverick is an unbranded range animal, especially a calf that has become separated from its mother, traditionally considered the property of the first person to brand it. Cowboys often used this as an excuse to steal cattle they knew belonged to someone else.) Jim agreed to help so long as he got his fair share of the profits. Flake did not trust the Grahams, so he sent Chris Nielsen (one of his cowboys) to make sure none of his cattle got in their herd. When Nielsen rode up, one of the Grahams said, "We have some of Flakes cows in the herd; they got in and when we cut them out they followed up." Jim told his family what had really happened along the trail, and his father insisted that he leave the Graham's employ. John Graham registered the cattle he had purchased from Flake—and the cattle they had rustled along the Flake drive. When Ed Tewksbury learned that the Grahams had sold the rustled cattle, he demanded half of the money for which the rustled cattle had been sold (since his son had helped with the mayericking). Tom Graham told him, "Ed, hit the trail!" Because of Jims earlier involvement in the Grahams' rustling, the Tewksburys could hardly ask the law for assistance with their own stolen cattle. Before long, the Tewksburys and the Grahams were saying harsh things about each other. Every rancher within a sixty-mile radius of the Grahams lost cattle, and all tracks pointed to the Graham corrals, though many still suspected the Tewksburys. Stinson, who suffered depredations at his Pleasant Valley ranch, charged both the Grahams and the Tewksburys with cattle rustling. Then he promised the Grahams that if they would turn states evidence against the Tewksburys, he would give them fifty cows and calves each and see to it that they didn't do any time. The Grahams cooperated but muddled their testimony so badly that the judge threw the case out of court. When Ed Tewksbury found two Stinson heifers in his herd, he offered to vent his brand (scratching lines through the brand to void it) and return them to Stinson. Stinsons foreman, John Gilleland, refused to take the cattle and filed charges of rustling against the Tewksburys. But Stinson told his foreman to accept the cattle and leave the Tewksburys alone. Gilleland smarted from Stinson s reproach. On January 11, 1883, fortified with whiskey and a bruised ego, Gilleland, his fifteen-year-old nephew, Elisha, and a Stinson cowboy, Epitacio "Potash" fyiiz, visited the Tewksbury ranch. Gilleland hoped to find rustled cattle so he could bring new charges against the Tewksburys. At the Tewksbury house, Gilleland said, "Good morning." Ed Tewksbury asked, "You are hunting somebody?" Gilleland said, "I am hunting no one. I have lost no one," scanning the brands on the cattle in the Tewksburv corrals. Ed fired his pistol and said, "Well I have, you thieving son of a bitch." With the first gunshot, Ruiz disappeared. Gilleland whirled and returned the fire. Elisha fell, wounded, from his horse. Gilleland deserted the boy, but he stopped at the Grahams', where he said that Ed Tewksbury had fired on him for no good reason and that Elisha was probably dead. The Tewksburys tended to Elisha, who was actually just more scared than hurt. After this incident, the Grahams brought charges against all the male Tewksburys. Frank Tewksbury joined his brothers in Arizona some time between the Gilleland shoot-out and the Prescott trial. Although this vouth knew nothing about the shooting, he still had to travel to Prescott, because the charges included "all male Tewksburys." During the return ride, Frank contracted measles, and back home he came down with pneumonia and died around the middle of January 1883. This first death in the Pleasant Valley War had nothing to do with guns, but the Tewksburys blamed Frank's death on the Grahams. To compound law-enforcement problems, the Aztec Land and Cattle Company established itself in Pleasant Valley; most of the Aztec cowboys were cattle rustlers and were often on the wrong side of the law. With the completion of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad in Arizona (and because of a drought in Texas), Arizona's cattle industry boomed in the 1880s; the Aztec Land and Cattle Company, created by the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad executives in 1884, claimed more than a million acres in the state. Although not large by Western standards, its lands were advantageously laid out in alternate one-mile squares, in such a way that no one else could really set up a ranch on the remaining square miles. The railroad company purchased most of the odd-numbered sections of lands extending twenty miles on either side of its railroad tracks between New Mexico and California for 50 cents an acre. The railroad company then developed the Aztec Land and Cattle Company, better known as the Hashknife, and went into the ranching business. The brand, modeled after the hashknife that cowboys used to chop beef and potatoes, had been officially registered in Texas, but the Aztec Land and Cattle Company acquired it from a struggling Texas cattle company. The Aztec then bought 30,000 Texas longhorns, branded them with the hashknife, and shipped the cattle to Holbrook, Arizona. Henry Warren, vice president and general manager of the Hashknife, registered the brand in Apache County on June 2, 1885. The Aztec Land and Cattle Company needed cowboys, and they paid well. Osmer Flake wrote that the Hashknife had some real fine men—and "some of the worst that ever left Texas." Flagstaff's Arizona Champion warned that trouble was brewing between the sheep raisers and the Aztec. The Aztec Land and Cattle Company ruthlessly ran off sheepherders, horse breeders, small ranchers, and Mormon colonizers, who felt they also had a right to public lands. Pleasant Valley had long been and still is a land of open range, where cattle from different owners grazed together, and the rancher had to constantly work his herd to make certain someone else's brand did not appear on his calves. Cattle kept disappearing, and in 1885 the Yavapai Livestock Association hired one Robert Carr Blassingamc to spy for them. William S. Atchison filed charges against the Grahams after Blassingame found Atchison's cattle among the Graham herds. Once again the defendants were discharged. In February 1887, word spread throughout Pleasant Valley that the Tewksburys intended to bring sheep over the Mogollon Rim for the Daggs brothers, who had a sheep ranch north of Pleasant Valley. For several days, cattlemen watched as the line of "white woolly maggots" snaked their way along the Rim to the "dead line," commonly agreed on as rhe line over which no sheep were supposed ro move. Realizing that their range was in danger (because sheep pull grass out by the roots while grazing), many ranchers who had no personal quarrel with either the Grahams or the Tewksburys now sided with the Grahams. P. P. Daggs, who had hired the Tewksburys to bring in the sheep, wrote, "It cost me enough, ninety thousand dollars." As the sheep crossed over the "dead line," several cowboys ambushed the shepherds and shot and beheaded a Basque sheepherder. The cowboys drove the sheep over the cliffs and dashed them to death on the rocks. The Basque sheepherder was a brother-in-law of Apache County Deputy Sheriff James D. Houck, and the tracks of his murderers led straight to the Graham corrals. In early August 1887, Martin Blevins disappeared when he went to look for stray horses. His son Hampton, along with some Hashknife cowboys—Tom Tucker, Bob Glasspie, Bob Carrington, Jim Roberts, and John Paine—went looking for him. Ed Rogers, the Hashknife foreman, threatened to "start a little war of our own." On August 9, the Hashknifers rode up to George Newton's Middleton Ranch, where the Tewksburys were staying. When Paine asked if they could get dinner, Ed Tewksbury replied, "No, we do not keep a hotel here." Paine called Ed a "black son of a bitch" and reached for his gun. Before he could draw, Ed shot him out of the saddle. A slug from Jim Roberts's gun clipped Paine's ear and when he ran for cover, Jim Tewksbury finished him off with a bullet. Hampton Blevins wheeled his horse and fell when a bullet crashed through his skull. Carrington fled when a bullet tore through his clothing. A rifle slug hit Glasspie in his leg and passed through his horse. After painfully making his way for two days on foot with nothing to cat, he arrived at the Blevins ranch. When a bullet ripped through both of Tuckers lungs, he hunkered down behind his horse. To kill Tucker, Ed would have to kill the horse, and he was "kind of squeamish about killing horses." During Tuckers flight, an angry mother bear with her two cubs also confronted him. By rhe time he got to the Flying V Ranch his wound had become infested with blowflies and maggots. The Law Steps In
 Tom Graham threatened that if the sheriff did not arrest the Tewksburys then the Grahams would fight them into extermination. When Mulvenon and his posse went to saddle up, all their horses had been stolen. Mulvenon got his Irish up and cursed every man in Pleasant Valley. Within a few hours the horses were returned. At the Middleton Ranch, Mulvenon and his posse found two dead horses and the shallow graves of Hampton Blevins and Paine. The house and barn had been burned to the ground. Newton told Mulvenon, if he obtained warrants for the Grahams, the Tewksburys would turn themselves in voluntarily. (No sooner had Sheriff Mulvenon left Pleasant Valley than another herd of horses disappeared, this time from the Graham corral.) On the evening of August 17, young Billy Graham rode home after a futile search for the horses. Deputy Sheriff Houck claimed to carry a warrant for John Graham. Houck had stopped at the Haigler ranch, where Haigler fed him, but told him to move on because he did not want trouble with the Grahams. At dawn, Houck rode on down the trail to wait for John Graham. Instead Billy appeared. Both men drew their guns, but before Billy could get off a shot, Houck fired and mortally wounded Billy, who died two davs later. The Grahams and theit friend Andy Blevins Cooper did not go after Houck, but set out to eradicate the Tewksburys on September 2, 1887. During the crisp early- morning hours, the avenging party made its way down a trail and cautiously entrenched themselves behind the boulders around the Tewksbury house. John D. Tewksbury Sr., his sons Ed and Jim, Jim Roberts, and John Tewksbury Jr. s pregnant wife, Mary, were inside their cabin. John Tewksbury Jr. and William Jacobs were outside working their horses. Grahams party unleashed a volley of rifle shots that killed John Jr. and Jacobs. For a number of days, anyone attempting to leave the cabin faced a barrage of bullets. Those inside the cabin watched in horror as a herd of wild hogs began devouring the bodies over the next few days. Charles Perkins, who later helped bury the dead, said, "It was not possible to move them. They were badly torn by the hogs, and decomposition had gone so far that burying them was a most disagreeable task. All we did was to dig two very shallow graves and rolled the swollen mutilated bodies into them with our shovels." When word of the fight got back to Prescott, Justice of the Peace John Meadows rode out with "gravel in his gizzard" to convene a coroners jury. Jim Tewksbury said, "No damned man can kill a brother of mine and stand guard over him for the hogs to eat him and live within a mile and a half of me." < Shortly after Martin Blevins's disappearance, the Blevins family moved to Holbrook, about seventy-five miles northeast of Pleasant Valley. Cattle depredations around Holbrook and nearby St. Johns worsened, about the same time that Andy Blevins Cooper arrived in town to visit his family. Apache County Sheriff Owens had won his election with the backing of the Apache County Cattlemen's Association. The St Johns Herald berated Cooper and his friends who "openly boasted that the officers of the law were afraid of them." In late August, the Apache Count)' Board of Supervisors ordered Owens to arrest Cooper within the next ten days or else they would initiate removal proceedings against him. Owens, tired of insinuations that he was afraid, went after Cooper on September 4, 1887. When Sheriff Owens rode into Holbrook, John Blevins was at the livery stable.Although John did not know Owens, he suspected that this stranger might be the new sheriff, so he warned his brother, Andy, who told him to bring a horse around to the house. While Owens stopped to clean his six-shooter, Sam Brown (chairman of the Democratic Party) advised him that Andy Cooper planned to make a getaway. Owens quickly reassembled his gun, took his Winchester, and walked toward the Blevins cottage. Andy Cooper, John and Eva Blevins (and their baby son), Mose Roberts, Sam Houston Blevins, Martin Blevinss widow Mary, her daughter Artemisia, and a friend, Amanda Gladden (with her baby), were inside. Owens knocked and Cooper cautiously opened the door a crack. When he saw the sheriff, he slammed the door, but the sheriff got his foot in the door and told Cooper that he had a warrant for horse stealing. Cooper asked Owens to wait- but Owens went ahead and shot him dead. John Blevins fired and missed the sheriff, but his bullet passed through a wall and killed a horse. Owens hit John with a shot from his Winchester. The sheriff then dashed across the street so he could cover two sides of the house. He fired another shot, mortally wounding Roberts, who was armed with a sixshooter, when he jumped through a window. Mose Roberts shortly thereafter had a privilege accorded few men: on the verge of death, he testified at his own inquest on September 6, 1887. Roberts insisted that Owens never called for him to surrender. Fifteen-year-old Sam Houston Blevins grabbed Coopers weapon over his mothers protests. He hollered, "Where is that blankety-blank so-and-so? I'll git him." As he stepped onto the porch, Owens put a bullet through Sams heart before the boy had a chance to cock the trigger. With four shots, Owens had killed three men and wounded a fourth. Without a word to the bystanders, Owens rode out of town. A grand jury exonerated Owens, and the newspapers heaped praise on him. John Blevins survived che shoot-out, only to be accused of attempting to murder Owens. When the grand jury questioned him about a spent shell from his gun, he explained, "Yesterday I shot it off once at rabbits as I was coming in with Andy." Blevins languished in the Apache County Jail for almost a year before his trial came up. He was found guilty of assault with the intent to commit murder. On September 20, 1888, Judge James H. Wright sentenced him to five years in the Yuma Territorial Prison. On November 1, Owens and his prisoner, John Blevins, boarded the train for Yuma. On board the train, the conductor gave Owens a telegram signed by Territorial Governor Conrad M. Zulick, ordering him to release the prisoner. Owens ignored it. Later another telegram ordering Owens to release Blevins arrived, along with instructions for the conductor to read it to Owens. Owens put Blevins off the train, and Blevins walked back to Holbrook and his surprised wife. Why Zulick pardoned Blevins is unclear. Perhaps he thought Blevins had spent enough time in jail for his part in a shoot-out that he could not have avoided. The Apache County Critic (out of Holbrook) aptly predicted, "All of this is simply a chapter of the Tonto Basin history, and no man can foretell the end." The Holbrook shoot-out did not end the Pleasant Valley War. Cabins and corrals mysteriously burned to the ground, and sheepherders were ambushed. Horses and cattle kept right on disappearing. Both Ed Tewksbury and Tom Graham fanned the fires of hatred by spewing their propaganda onto newspaper pages. Governor Zulick, Yavapai District Attorney John C. Herndon, and Sheriff Mulvenon met in early September of 1887 to find ways to stop the violence. When the Prescott Journal-Miner learned of the meeting, it published their plans in detail. Zulick had told Mulvenon, "Kill them, and no one will be hurt for it." They decided that Yavapai County Sheriff Mulvenon, Apache County Sheriff Owens, Gila County Sheriff Ed Hodgson, and Maricopa Count)' Sheriff Andrew Jackson Halbert, each with a posse of ten men from their respective counties, would "scour the country until every man for whom there was an outstanding warrant is arrested." The multi-force posse action never came about, because Maricopa County did not care for the idea. However, Mulvenon raised a posse of twenty men from Yavapai County and swept through the valley. He intended first to arrest the Graham partisans, and then send an emissary to the Tewksburys to notify them of the capture and that the lawmen were coming for them as well. Deputy Sheriff Dan Francis, with a posse from Flagstaff, rendezvoused with Mulvenon at Payson. The lawmen then rode to the Haigler ranch, which provided an excellent lookout of the trail leading to the Graham ranch. At Haigler's, deputies Joe McKinney and Glenn Reynolds, each with four more men, joined Mulvenon. The next day Deputy Sheriff Houck, with several more men, arrived. Mulvenon arrested even suspect along the way, to preserve the secrecy of his mission to apprehend the Grahams and the Tewksburys. During the night of September 21, all the posse members except McKinney and his men hid their horses and took up positions behind the partially constructed walls of Perkins s store. McKinney s posse had the dangerous job of serving as decoys; Mulvenon detailed McKinney to take his men and approach the store by passing the Graham and Rose ranches in broad daylight. When they passed Al Roses place, Rose fired off warning shots. The Grahams fired in response and sent John Graham and Charlie Blevins to investigate McKinney s presence. When Graham and Blevins came within fifteen steps of Perkins's store, Mulvenon stepped out and said, "Put up your hands, boys, I want you." The riders spurred their mounts. Graham pulled his pistol, but buckshot from Mulvenon's shotgun brought his horse down. A rifle ball tore into Graham's left arm above the elbow and passed through his body. Mulvenon finished Blevins off with his next barrel of buckshot. The posse moved the dying Blevins to the shade of a tree and gave him a drink of water. Mulvenon asked Graham, "Johnny, why didn't you put your hands up when I told you to? Didn't you know me?" Graham shook his head. Mulvenon said, "He knows he is a damn liar, he knew me." Graham died an hour later. Mulvenon and his men rode to the Tewksbury place, where they found Ed and Jim Tewksbury, Jim Roberts, George Newton, and Jake Lauffer ready to surrender. McKinney heard a participant mutter, "There will be a quiet assassination going on here for some time to come." Vigilante
Justice Is Served
Autumn in Pleasant Valley is beautiful, with the brilliantly colored leaves and the crisp cool mountain air, but nothing cooled the Pleasant Valley War. Mulvenon deputized extra men in case violence erupted in Prescott during the trial. Yavapai County voters criticized Mulvenon for the high costs of his posses, which by now amounted to over 53,000. In mid-October of 1887, Ed and James Tewksbury, with their partisans, were indicted for the murder of Hampton Blevins. Ail of the men made bond and were released. When their cases came up for trial no one would testify and everyone went free. Cattle rustling and horse stealing continued to plague even the non-participants in the feud. Tough, taciturn Jesse Ellison, with his family and two thousand head of cattle, had moved into Arizona in 1885. According to Bob Voris (whose memoirs on this dark history were not unsealed until many years after his death), Ellison led the Vigilante Committee of Fifty. This group, Voris recalled, which was "fast, grim, and deadly, soon became feared in Pleasant Valley as no other body was ever feared." This vigilante committee hanged Al Rose at the Houdon Ranch in early November 1887. Rose, a Graham partisan, had been ordered by the committee to leave the valley, because they knew he rusded horses, and he talked too much. He decided to round up his cattle and horses first. On the morning that the vigilantes hanged Rose, Louis Naegle had stopped by to visit him and was almost hanged, too, "for being in bad company." James Stott, a newcomer from Massachusetts, stopped first in Texas to learn the ranching business and then went to work for the Hashknife. Stott picked up the bad habit of rustling cattle to stock his own homestead about forty miles south. Other Hashknife rustlers also used Stott's place to hide their stolen cattle, and Jim Scott and Billy Wilson, Hashknife cowboys, spent their last night on earth at Stott's ranch. Motte Clymer, a young tubercular was working during this time at Stott's ranch for his room and board. On the morning of August 11, 1888, six to eleven men, including Deputy Sheriff Houck, rode up to Stott's cabin. In the Western tradition of hospitality, Stott invited them to come in and eat breakfast. Afterwards, the vigilantes "invited" all but Clymer to take a short ride. Encouraged to leave the area immediately, Clymer boarded the next train out of Holbrook. The vigilantes and their prisoners rode down the Verde road. Scott and Wilson pleaded for their lives, but Stott faced his assailants with curses and called each man by name. After putting the nooses around their necks, the vigilantes switched their victim's horses across their rumps, leaving each prisoner to dance the dead mans jig. On December 3. 1888. James Tewksbury, the deadliest gun of Pleasant Valley, died of tuberculosis while visiting a friend in Phoenix. Still, the war would continue. On April 10, 1892, George Newton, a Tewksbury partisan, disappeared. Several friends had unsuccessfully attempted to dissuade Newton from making the dangerous trip from Globe to his Pleasant Valley ranch that night. His wife's 510,000 reward attracted many searchers, including Ed Tewksbury, who discovered Newton's pack-horse on a Salt River sandbar, with its load still in place. Newton's other horse was found shot between the eves. No one ever found Newton. The Death of Tom
Graham
 Tom returned to Pleasant Valley for one day, and hired Silas Young and a few more cowboys to round up his cattle. Bill Colcord rode out to meet Tom Graham's party and asked, "Well. boys, is it peace or war?" Graham said he preferred peace. He drove his cattle to Tempe without incident. Silas Young agreed to manage Graham's seven hundred head of cattle on shares. Tom heard rumors that the Tewksburys began a week-long bacchanal the day he left the valley. He. in turn, spread the story the Tewksburys were afraid to hurt him while he was in the valley. On August 2, 1892, Tom Graham passed a wooded area while riding ro Tempe with a wagonload of barley. Mollie Cummings and Grace Grifluh, on a morning buggy ride, saw two men with guns hiding in the brush. The men fired, and a rifle ball severed Tom Graham's spinal cord. In those brief moments just before he collapsed from being shot, he turned to sec his old adversaries. Ed Tewksbury and John Rhodes, leveling their Winchesters at him. The horses spooked and galloped, with the dying Tom and the wagon, to the house of W. T. Cummings. During his final hours, Graham spoke with visitors and with his wife, Annie, at the Cummings home. Dr. Scott Helm tactlessly said, "They have got you this time, Tom." Graham admitted that he was "done for." A coroners jury ruled that Tom Graham came to his death from a gunshot wound caused by John Rhodes and Ed Tewksbury. The newspaper headline read, "Murdered: A Culmination of the Bloodiest and Most Savage Feud That Ever Cursed the Territory." After Tom Graham died at age thirty-eight, Ed Tewksbury became the "last man." The Trial
That same morning, Tempe constable Manuel Gallardo arrested Rhodes about ten miles from Phoenix. The unarmed Rhodes, who probably had given his gun to Tewksbury, did not resist and professed innocence. Samuel W. Einley, a Phoenix bartender, knew Tewksbury and was a good friend of Rhodes, so Maricopa County Sheriff John Montgomery deputized him to bring in Tewksbury. Finley left for Pleasant Valley on the evening of Tom's murder to arrest Tewksbury, who agreed to surrender to Gila County Sheriff John H. Thompson in Globe. Rhodes appeared for his hearing on August 9 before Judge W. O. Huson. (This was summer in Phoenix, Arizona, with no air-conditioning in the courtroom.) second day, Mollie Cummings and Grace Griffith both identified Rhodes as one of the men they saw shoot Tom Graham. In the afternoon, after asserting her right to sit at the front of the courtroom near Rhodes, Annie Melton Graham threw back her black widow's veil, and "her eyes glittered with a deadly purpose." She asked for a glass of water and stood up to drink it, while glaring at Rhodes. No one knew that she had smuggled Tom's gun into the courtroom. Suddenly she sprang forward and placed the muzzle of her cocked Colt .45 revolver against Rhodcs's back. She tried to pull the trigger, but the hammer caught in her handkerchief. Everyone in the courtroom dashed for the exit. Sheriff Montgomery seized Annie, and with help of several bystanders took the gun away from her. Annie screamed, uOh, my God! Let me shoot! Oh, do let me shoot! Oh, God, he killed my husband!" The next day the courtroom filled to capacity- to hear Annies testimony. The composed rwenry-four-year-old widow testified calmly regarding the events on the day of Toms murder. Judge Huson ruled that the defense had so conclusively proved their alibi that he had to release the prisoner. After spending the night of August 19 in jail, Rhodes left for Pleasant Valley the next morning with a troop ot heavily armed friends. The press scorched Huson for what it perceived as a miscarriage of justice. People lost interest in Rhodes when Ed Tewksbury came before Judge Harry L. Wharton for his hearing on the charge of murdering Tom Graham. Mollie Cummings provided a moment of high drama, when she pointed to Tewksbury and said, "That is the man." On December 5, Tewksbury was arraigned on a charge of murder. His attorneys moved for a change of venue. On September 10, 1893, Judge Richard E. Sloan ordered the trial moved to Tucson. On December 14, Tewksburys trial opened under District Judge J. D. Bethune. Within a week the jury* received the case, and after two days of deliberation it brought guilty verdict. Tewksburys attorneys knew that even if they did not win the case, they could not lose. Before the judge pronounced sentence, the attorneys informed the court that Tewksbury had not been allowed to plead either innocent or guilt)'. When his plea could not be found, Judge Bethune had no choice but to grant Tewksbury a new trial. Tewksbury appeared before Judge Richard Sloan in Tucson on January 2, 1895. This time the prosecution lacked an important witness. Annie Graham had remarried and moved to California. Sympathy shifted to Tewksbury, who had spent almost three years in the Pima County Jail. After a long deliberation, the jury found itself hopelessly deadlocked. A new trial might result in another hung jury or acquittal for Tewksbury. In case of a conviction, Tewksbury would certainly appeal. Then the territory would face the problem of securing a supreme court quorum. Three judges constituted a quorum for the Arizona Territorial Supreme Court. However, Chief Justice Albert Baker could not rule on the case because he had been Tewksburys attorney. Judge Bethune could not act, because Tewksburys case had been tried before him in the lower court. This left only two supreme court judges with the right to act on a Tewksbury appeal, so the Maricopa Count)- district attorney felt he had no choice but to drop the Tewksbury case. On February 6, 1895, while waiting for approval on the paperwork to drop the case, Judge Bethune set Tewksburys bail at $10,000. Within a week, Tewksbury posted bond and walked out of jail a free man. He returned to Globe, where he served as a constable and as Gila County deputy sheriff. On April 4, 1904, Ed Tewksbury lost his last fight when he died of tuberculosis. The Sequel:
Lawless Become Lawmen
William Mulvenon, after serving two terms as Yavapai County sheriff, went on to represent Yavapai County in the Territorial legislature. Mulvenon died at age eighty-eight in 1915 in Prescott. Jefferson Davis Adams, the young cowboy who had been seriouslv wounded in the July 1884 shoot-out at Stinson s cabin, served as a Maricopa County deputy sheriff under Sheriff Carl Harden. When Havden became the first United States senator from Arizona, Adams succeeded him as sheriff. After serving as Apache County sheriff. Commodore Perry Owens applied for the sheriff's position of the newly created Navajo County, where he served a relatively quiet term. After losing the next election, Owens went to work as a special agent for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, and for Wells, Fargo and Company, and served as a deputy U.S. marshal. In 1900, he married Elizabeth Barrett and opened a mercantile in Seligman. Owens died on May 10, 1919. Glenn Reynolds, alleged to have been a member of the vigilantes, was killed while transferring the Apache Kid and other Apache prisoners to the Yuma Territorial Prison in his capacity as Gila Count)' sheriff. Samuel W. Finley, the deputy who had brought in Ed Tewksbury, was shot and killed in the spring of 1902 near Tonopah, Nevada. While trying to arrest four outlaws, Finley killed three of them before the fourth one murdered him. John C. Gilleland, wounded in the Pleasant Valley War, went on to become a Gila County deputy sheriff. Gilleland, who homesteaded near Buckeye, died at his Phoenix home on January 3, 1936. Tom Tucker, the Hashknife cowboy, later became a lawman in New Mexico; in 1905, Tucker served as a cattle inspector at Socorro, New Mexico. When the sheriff of Santa Fe County, New Mexico, asked Tucker to serve as his undersheriff, the former outlaw embarked on a long law-enforcement career wherein he shot nine men "who disputed his authority to arrest them." In 1929, Tom Tucker died in his seventies of natural causes. James D. Houck, a sheep man and Apache County deputy sheriff, suffered business reverses toward the end of his life. One day after feeding the chickens he told his family that he had just taken strychnine because he was "tired of living." He lay down on his bed and asked that his shoes be removed. Besides serving as an Apache Count)' deputy sheriff during the Pleasant Valley War, Joseph McKinney was appointed constable at Winslow in 1887- He joined the Arizona Rangers in 1905. McKinney died in Mesa on October 2, 1948. John Blevins became a prosperous rancher and homesteaded land southeast of Heber on the Mogollon Rim, and served as Arizona cattle inspector in 1928. On May 23, 1929, he was killed near Buckeye by a hit-and-run driver. John Rhodes married Mar)*, the widow of John Tewksbury Jr. On August 1, 1906, Rhodes at age fifty-five became the oldest man ever to serve in the Arizona Rangers. His superiors rated him "excellent." John Rhodes died in 1918 of tuberculosis. Many who started on the wrong side of the law ended up being Arizona officers of the law. One must remember that in the 1880s in Arizona, the law was bought with guns, and no one questioned too carefully where the experience came from. Source: Arizona Sheriffs Badges and Bad Men |
