Louise was the only child of Walter T. Gregory and his wife, Augusta Frances “Gussie” Russell. She was born around July or August and died in Yuma on December 20, 1903, of “stomach and kidney trouble”. Her parents brought her little casket to Phoenix for burial, because that had been Mrs. Gregory’s home and her parents were still living there.
By the time of Louise’s birth, her father Walter had already had a rather colorful life. The son of a hotelier, he had been born in frontier Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1873 and had grown up in California, Tombstone and Tempe, Arizona. Walter was working as a newspaper reporter in Phoenix when the Spanish American War began, and he enlisted immediately in Company B, 1st U. S. Volunteer Cavalry, otherwise known as the “Rough Riders”.
That short war had scarcely concluded when Gregory reenlisted in Company K, 4th U. S. Cavalry to serve in the Philippines. Although generally in good health, he suffered recurrent bouts of malaria from his military service in the tropics. Upon his discharge, he went to New York for a brief period but returned to Arizona when his father died in Tucson.
Thereafter, Walter moved back to Phoenix where he met and married Augusta Frances “Gussie” Russell. In 1903, Walter’s former military commander, Alexander O. Brodie , by then territorial governor of Arizona, appointed Walter secretary of the territorial prison in Yuma. It was there that little Louise was born and died. Walter and Gussie divorced within the next few years.
Disillusioned with life out West, Walter moved back to New York, where he found work with his brother Will’s theatrical booking agency. Unfortunately, he succumbed to pneumonia on April 16, 1909. Because of his military service, he was interred in Arlington National Cemetery outside of Washington, D. C.
The parents of Walter’s ex-wife had by this time relocated to southern California, and she had joined them there. Gussie, or Frances as she was now calling herself, met and married Edmund J. Mulvihill, Jr., a railroad telegrapher. However, she died still relatively young in Los Angeles on May 31, 1927.
No comments:
Post a Comment