February Theme for Bios - Forgotten No More

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Our February theme for bios will be "Forgotten No More". The theme will highlight the lives of those who have been long forgotten in our cemetery. These individuals journeyed west for various reasons, some seeking a new life, others seeking health, only to pass away shortly after their arrival. Many came with hopes of recovery from tuberculosis or other ailments, believing the dry desert air would restore them. With no close family nearby and relatives back East who eventually lost touch, their stories faded into obscurity. In the next few weeks, we will be telling their tale and restoring dignity to those whose graves remain unvisited and whose histories deserve to be told.

Lindley Hogue Orme (1848 - 1900) - Maricopa County Sheriff

 

The Orme family of Arizona has a long and distinguished history, making many of their descendants eligible for membership in the DAR and other patriotic societies.

Lindley Hogue Orme was born December 18/19, 1848, in Montgomery, Maryland.  He was the fourth of eight children of Charles Henry Crabbe Orme and Deborah Brooke Pleasants.

When Lindley’s older brother, Charles Henry Crabbe Orme, enlisted in the 35th Virginia Cavalry (CSA) on March 1, 1863, Lindley accompanied him, although he was only about fourteen at the time.  Military records say that the brothers served in White’s Battalion, known as “the Comanches”.   Lindley was a private in Company B, while Charles was in Company D.

When Richmond, Virginia, fell to the Union Army on April 2, 1865, Lindley was taken prisoner.  A few weeks later, he signed his oath of allegiance and was released.

According to his obituary, Lindley and his brothers drove a flock of sheep to California at some point thereafter.  Lindley then settled in Phoenix where he acquired three sections of land in central Phoenix and raised over 600 acres of grain.  He is credited with bringing the first threshing machine to the Salt River Valley. 

Orme wed Mary Florence Greenhaw on March 15, 1876.  Unfortunately, Mary Florence was suffering from tuberculosis, so she and Lindley had no children.  She died on March 16, 1883.  Lindley eventually married Mary A. Jeffries, with whom he had one son, Alfred.

Orme served as sheriff from 1880 to 1884. During this time he was also appointed a deputy U. S. marshal, not bad for a former Confederate.  Henry Garfias was one of his deputies.  In April of 1883, a smallpox epidemic broke out in Maricopa County.  As sheriff, Orme was directed to quarantine the afflicted families to prevent the spread of the disease. 

Water being essential to the future of Phoenix, Orme helped form the Agua Fria Water and Land Company in 1888.

In 1891 and 1893, Orme was again elected sheriff. The county was growing at such a rate that a new courthouse and jail equipped with electric lights were needed.  During Sheriff Orme's last term, he became something of a media celebrity when he foiled a plot by Dr. J. M. Rose to murder three members of a Williams family in Mesa.

Lindley Orme died 24 September 1900, at the age of 52, having been in poor health for some months prior.  He was buried next to his first wife in the IOOF Cemetery. 

-By Patty Gault, Val Wilson, Donna Carr

Photos PCA Archives

 

The Various Lives of Lawmen

 

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In the rugged days of the Old West, being a lawman often didn’t pay enough to cover the bills. To make ends meet, many sheriffs and marshals took on unusual side jobs, creating some fascinating stories of dual lives. Some of them dabbled in mining, gambling, bounty hunting, and even owning a saloon.  For example, there was even a lawman up North who owned a funeral parlor.  He offered a package deal stating he could “shoot the bad guys, embalm them, and bury them” (True West, 2016).

This multifaceted lifestyle of early lawmen reflects the resourcefulness required to maintain law and order while keeping their own households afloat. It also adds a human dimension to the larger-than-life figures immortalized in history and folklore.

Edward J. Lowry (1855-1905) - Sheriff in Ferry County, Washington

 

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Edward J. Lowry was born in 1855 in Carbon Township, Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania.  He was the son of Irish immigrants Michael Lowry and Bridget Conley. 

Huntingdon was coal-mining country, and Michael was miner.  He may also have been a member of the Molly Maguires, a secret society whose intent was to counter the exploitation and terrible working conditions of coal miners.  The Molly Maguires are sometimes considered a precursor to the labor unions of later decades.  If Michael was involved with the Molly Maguires, perhaps that was why the Lowry family left Pennsylvania for Saline County, Ohio.  By 1870, Edward, aged 15, was himself working in the coal mines there.

In 1877, Edward married Sarah Humphrey.  The young couple moved to Boulder, Colorado, where their first child, Edward, Jr., was born in 1879.  Edward continued to work as a miner, and he also became an organizer for a short-lived union, the Knights of Labor.

Something must have intervened in the late 1880s to set Edward on a different path.  Sarah was living temporarily with her parents in Bevier, Missouri, when the Lowrys’ second son, Ralph, was born on April 18, 1889.  A decade later, in 1900, the family had reunited in Republic, Washington, a sparsely populated region in the far West.  Edward and his older son were still working as coal miners until, in late 1900, Edward was elected sheriff of Ferry County.

Apparently, Edward was pretty good at his job.  The local newspapers printed detailed accounts of the sheriff’s activities, including the time when five prisoners sawed through the wooden ceiling of their cell and escaped via the roof on Christmas morning, 1901.  Hot on the trail of the fugitives, Sheriff Lowry caught up with two of them three days later, just as they were in the act of robbing the customers of a saloon!

January 1904 brought a case of a personal nature.  Sheriff Lowry’s wife Sarah, who had been suffering from an unspecified mental illness, escaped from the Mount View sanitarium in Spokane.  Fortunately, she was found the next day at a local hotel.

By 1905, Lowry was suffering from tuberculosis.   Seeking a warmer climate, he and his 16-year-old son Ralph set out by train for Phoenix, Arizona, arriving on October 9th.  Perhaps the long trip had exhausted Lowry’s strength, for he died the following day.  The Fraternal Order of Eagles arranged for his funeral and burial in Rosedale Cemetery.

Lowry’s son Ralph graduated from Washington State College in 1917 with a degree in civil engineering.  He was eventually employed as a senior engineer for the U. S. Bureau of Reclamation and worked on the Hoover Dam, the Shasta Dam and the Grand Coulee Dam.

-by Joseph P. Lowry

 

 

Jacob Waltz Gravesite Dedication Ceremony!

Patty Gault

Our dedication to our Jacob Waltz Gravesite was a big success.  You can check out some snaps of the event here: Jacob Waltz Gravesite Dedication

Make and Take! - Vintage Valentines - January 25th

Come make a vintage valentine, while supporting a good cause!

 

Noah Broadway (1831?-1905) - Maricopa County Sheriff

PCA Archives

Noah Broadway is believed to have been the son of William M.  Broadway and Mary “Polly” Key.  On the federal census of 1850, Broadway was living with his brother John in Kemper County, Mississippi, and his age was given as 19, making him born around 1831. 

No photo of Broadway has ever been found, nor evidence of him marrying or serving during the Civil War.  He seems to have been a somewhat solitary man.

Broadway is known to have been farming in the Salt River Valley by 1868.  He and seven other men formed the Prescott Ditch company on 26 Sep 1870, and dug the Prescott (later Broadway) Ditch to irrigate his crops.

The Maricopa Crossing was on Broadway’s ranch.  It was a nice crossing with a firm gravel bottom, and the stages usually crossed the Salt River there.  The road which ran through Broadway’s ranch is known today as Broadway Road.

Broadway never sought public office but was nominated for sheriff by Dr. W. W. Jones and elected on the 14th ballot in late 1884.  Although he was considered to be of good and honest character, some didn’t support him as he had publicly expressed a desire to ‘string up’ men who were selling whiskey to Indians. 

Broadway was the first sheriff to have his office in the new, two-story brick courthouse between First and Second Avenues facing Washington, the previous office being in an adobe structure.  The county jail was not very secure and security was lax; eight prisoners almost escaped one day when someone failed to lock up.

As sheriff, Broadway regularly conveyed prisoners to Yuma.   Another of Broadway’s duties was conveying insane people to the hospital in Stockton, California.  On 9 March 1885, the county approved the issuance of bonds to build an insane asylum in Phoenix. 

Broadway’s term as sheriff was plagued by a rash of armed robberies.   Men dressed as Indians held up stagecoaches carrying Wells Fargo boxes north of Phoenix.  Detective work led to the arrest of one John Pennington and two cohorts. The massacre of the Martin family in 1886, supposedly by the Valenzuela gang led by S. P. Stanton, also occurred during Broadway’s watch.

Water rights were a contentious issue in frontier Phoenix, for land was virtually worthless without it.  Broadway occasionally had to fight for his rights in court.  He owned the NW quarter of Section 30, Township 1N, Range #E.  He later acquired the NE quarter and the NE quarter of Section 25, Township 1N, Range 2E.  In time, Broadway and Michael Wormser became the two biggest landholders in south Phoenix.

By 1902 Broadway’s health was declining and his ranch was much neglected.  When he died in 1905, his lawyer sold the ranch and liquidated his assets, which amounted $12737.  Since Broadway had no other heirs, this sum was divided among his three surviving sisters.

-by Donna Carr

Pioneers at the Pioneer and Military Memorial Park - Come Visit Us!

 

Jacob Waltz Site Dedication - January 11

Come Join Us This Weekend!

 

Joseph Thomas Barnum (1832-1909) - Maricopa County Sheriff

 

Thomas Barnum

Photo from Maricopa for Lodge #5

Joseph Thomas Barnum was born in 1832 in New York state, the son of Truman Barnum and Harriet Rich.  Although he is said to have been a cousin of P.T. Barnum, the famous showman (Phineas was the son of Philo, while Joseph Thomas was the son of Truman), so far no proof has been found that Philo and Truman were brothers. 

The Barnums came to Arizona in 1864 and settled first in Prescott, where Joseph Thomas met and married Jeanette Jane “Jenettie” Osborn, daughter of John P. Osborn and Perlina Swetnam, on 10 May 1865.  He was 33, almost 17 years older than his teenaged bride.

When Barnum, who usually went by his middle name of Thomas, moved his family to the Salt River Valley in 1868, his wife was one of only four Anglo women in the rough settlement.  Barnum was quick to see the Valley's potential and went into partnership with J. W. Swilling in digging irrigation ditches.   He was also one of the signers of the original Salt River Valley Town Association pact on 20 October 1870.

When Maricopa County was created in 1871 from Yavapai County, it became necessary to elect county officials for the first time.  After one candidate for sheriff, a man named Chenoweth, shot and killed another candidate, J. Favorite, in a gunfight, Barnum became the front runner for the office.  He was elected and served from May until August, 1871.

Besides enforcing the law, Barnum's duties included developing a tax roll and collecting taxes for the new county.  He also had to take convicted felons to the state prison in Yuma and transport the insane to the nearest mental hospital which was in California.  Being out of town so often made it difficult for Barnum to attend to the running of his ranch, so he resigned as sheriff in August of 1871.  The federal census of 1880 lists his occupation as ‘saloonkeeper’.

Barnum’s ranch eventually prospered but, between 1873 and 1884, he and his wife mourned the loss of five of their thirteen children. 

As he had demonstrated earlier in digging irrigation canals, Barnum was willing to invest in the future. In 1901, he was among the signers of the articles of incorporation for the Phoenix Independent Telephone Company.  Like many other Arizona pioneers, he also had mining interests and became a partner in the Gold Coin Mining Company in 1901 [8].

Barnum died on 26 January 1909 at the age of 77 [9].  Although his death certificate says he was buried in 'the Catholic Cemetery', it is believed that he was actually buried in the Catholic section of Loosley Cemetery, next to his five little sons.  The rest of the Barnum family is buried about a mile away in Forest Lawn Cemetery [10].

 -by Donna Carr

 

Meet the Pioneer Lawman of the Wild West at the PMMP!

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In the untamed days of early Phoenix, it took courage, grit, and a strong sense of justice to maintain law and order. These remarkable men were the first to serve as peacekeepers, shaping the foundation of our community and paving the way for the city we know today. 🏜️⚖️

Did you know that many Old West lawmen often wore multiple hats—sometimes working as sheriffs by day and gamblers or saloon owners by night? 🎲🤠 Their lives were as rugged and multifaceted as the frontier itself!

Join us as we uncover the stories of these trailblazing lawmen—heroes who brought order to the wild frontier and left their mark on history. 

Stay tuned for a glimpse into their lives and legacies!

 

Happy New Year! - 2025