Thomas Hayden was born June 2, 1880, in Nova Scotia, Canada, to Thomas Hayden and Elmyra Ringer. Young Thomas studied civil engineering at Yale and, in 1908, came west to work on a dam in New Mexico. He was in Phoenix by the outbreak of World War I, during which he served. After the war, he returned to Phoenix where he became a surveyor and engineer for the Salt River Valley Water Users Association. Walking home from his office near the State Capitol, he often passed by a neglected pioneer cemetery. Intrigued, he surveyed the graves in 1937 and helped found the Pioneer’s Cemetery Association to preserve the site. Following Hayden’s unexpected death on December 23, 1940, his ashes sat unclaimed at the mortuary for 48 years. In 1988, they were finally interred on the south side of the Avenue of Flags in the cemetery he had helped to save.
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