Manuel Harvey Reno (1831-1899) - Kentucky Judge

 

PCA Archives

Manuel H. Reno was born January 28, 1831, in Ballard County, Kentucky.  He was one of nine children belonging to Richard D. Reno and Celia Bohannon, a farming couple.  The federal census of 1850 suggests that the Renos had moved to Kentucky around 1830 from Alabama.

Around 1855, Reno married Ann D. Ellis in Ballard County, Kentucky.   Their first child, a daughter named Mary Belle, was born on March 23, 1856.  She was followed quickly by Susan Theodocia, born 1857, William Richard, born 1858, and Maggie, born 1862.

No evidence has been found that Reno was ever in the Confederate army.  Kentucky being a border state, it is possible that his sentiments aligned with the Union.  He seems to have remained a small farmer throughout the war. 

By 1880, the Renos were farming in Clinton, Hickman County, Kentucky.  Although there is no mention of where he read law, Reno eventually became a county judge in Kentucky.

The Renos retired to Phoenix around 1892.   Although Reno doesn’t seem to have practiced law in Arizona, he was active in local politics.  Originally a member of the Grange Party, he later became a member of the Populist Party which supported Buckey O’Neill’s short-lived political career.

In 1894, Reno launched an Arizona chapter of the Child’s Aid Society, which seems to have been an insurance company benefitting the children of deceased members when they came into their majority by providing them with a small fund to get a start in life.  In an era when fathers could not necessarily count on living long enough to see their children grow up, this might have been an attractive option.

Reno was an officer of the Hopeton Baptist Church and taught Sunday school there.

He died on December 11, 1899, of valvular heart disease.  After a funeral sermon preached by Rev. Lewis Halsey of the Baptist Church, he was buried in Ancient Order of United Workmen Cemetery. 

At the time of Reno’s death, his eldest daughter, Mary Belle, was teaching school at the Sacaton Indian Agency.  Although she had married James Zimmerman in Kentucky in 1883, she may have been a widow by 1899.

- by Donna L. Carr

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

Frederick Balsz (1831 - 1910) - Butcher and Meat Cutter

 

Picture Courtesy of PCA

Frederick “Fred” was born August 18, 1831 in Jugenheim, Germany, to Bartholomew Balsz and Phillipine Gerisch.  The couple had eleven children born between 1814 and 1836, several of whom came to the United States.  Frederick’s mother Philippine is believed to have died around 1836 in Germany shortly after the birth of her last child, David.  Bartholomew, a butcher, then immigrated to the United States with some of their younger children, settling in St. Louis, Missouri. 

Young Fred is thought to have married at the age of 17 in St. Louis and had a son he named Frederick, Jr.  The name of Fred’s first wife is unknown, but she died about 1849.

Soon thereafter, Fred left his son with family and went west with his brother David, who would have been 13 years old.  The brothers drove a team of oxen along the California Trail to Sacramento, where they found work as butchers.  They remained there until Fred eloped with his second wife, Mercedes Gonzales, around 1860.  The couple had three boys and one girl before Mercedes died about 1867.  Shortly after, Fred married Eliza Tapia who was about 16 years of age on November 12, 1867. She bore him five more children before her death in 1878.

By this time, Fred’s younger brother David had opened a slaughterhouse north of Phoenix in the Arizona Territory, so Fred moved his family there. Between Fred the butcher and David the cattleman, they had the perfect vertical business model.

Fred married his fourth wife, Sotela Bracamonte, on October 29, 1879 in Phoenix.  She was about 17 years old; he was 48.  Fred and Sotela would add at least ten more children to the family.  Between Fred’s family and David’s family, they had enough children to open their own school--Balsz School—which still exists today in Phoenix.

Fred continued to work as a butcher, going into business for a short time with Frank D. Wells in Phoenix.  That partnership was dissolved in 1884, by which time Fred’s sons were in business with him. 

Sotela died February 8, 1899, in Phoenix of heart disease and was buried in the family plot in the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.   Fred did not remarry this time, but he had plenty of children to care for him in his final years.  The number of children he fathered fluctuates by different accounts, but in 1906 he said he had had 19 children by his four wives.

Fred died at the home of his son Joseph on June 13, 1910.  He had suffered a bout of pneumonia the year prior and never fully recovered.  He was buried next to Sotela.

© 2020 by Patty Gault.  Last revised June 28, 2020

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