Anna Mary Fisher Dameron (1839-1894) - From Missouri to Arizona

 

Porter Cemetery - PCA Archives

Anna Mary Fisher was born March 27, 1839, in Lewis County, Missouri.  She was one of five children of James Fisher and Lucinda Doke, who were fairly well-to-do farmers.

On Valentine’s Day 1866, Anna married Willis Monroe Dameron in Adams County, Illinois.   Willis had been married previously to Sarah Dysart, the daughter of a clergyman. She had died in 1860, presumably from complications following childbirth.   Dameron, who was supporting his widowed mother and his little son Everett, seems not to have served on either side during the Civil War.

After their marriage, Willis and Anna farmed in La Belle, Lewis County, Missouri.  They had two sons of their own:  Logan Douglas, born in 1867, and Richard Monroe, born in 1872. Logan was named after his paternal uncle, a successful dry goods merchant.

The Damerons’ son Logan attended La Belle Academy and taught for five years before enrolling in Hospital Medical College in Louisville, Kentucky.  After graduating in 1891, he moved to Phoenix where he went into practice with Dr. H. A. Hughes.

By then, Anna was in poor health.  When Logan returned to Missouri for a Christmas visit in December, 1892, he persuaded Anna and Willis to accompany him back to Phoenix.

Anna lived for two more years before dying of pneumonia on December 31, 1894.  After a Methodist Episcopal service conducted by Rev. W. A. Harris, she was buried in Porter Cemetery.  Her husband joined her in January, 1907.

Shortly after Anna’s death, her son Logan married Bettie Hughes, the daughter of his partner.  Having helped to start the Arizona chapter of the American Medical Association, he became its president in 1903.

 - by Donna L. Carr

 

 

DeForest Porter (1839-1889) - Territorial Justice and Mayor of Phoenix

Donna Carr

 

The man who would one day be the mayor of Phoenix, Arizona, was born on February 2, 1839, in western New York state.  He was the youngest of nine children belonging to George A. Porter and his wife, Anna Gillett.

Young DeForest grew up in Albion, Orleans County, New York.  He enrolled in St. Lawrence University with the intention of becoming a Unitarian minister.  However, while campaigning for Lincoln in 1860, his imagination was fired by politics.  Upon graduation, he was ordained but decided to go into law instead, as had his older brother George, Jr.

According to sources, Porter enlisted in the Union Army and received a severe wound at the Battle of Gettysburg.  After the war, he married Julia Sophia Trowbridge and they settled in Brownville, Nemaha County, Nebraska, where Porter opened his law office and began his political career.

In 1872, Ulysses S. Grant nominated Porter to the Arizona Territorial Supreme Court. He moved to Arizona City (now Yuma) in April to become an associate justice.  Because the summers were so hot, Porter’s wife Julia was staying in California when their son, DeForest Jr., was born in 1875.  In 1876, Maricopa County was added to Porter’s judicial district and he moved to Phoenix, an agricultural area where it was marginally cooler.

After Julia’s death in 1878, Porter married Lois "Lulu" Gertrude Cotton on December 29, 1880.  They had one daughter, Marian.  Porter acquired considerable land in Phoenix, and he also had mining interests.

Porter resigned from the Arizona Territorial Supreme Court in 1882, hoping to be elected to some legislative office.  Although initially unsuccessful in that, he was elected mayor of Phoenix in 1883.  Among the achievements of his first term was the establishment of the fraternal cemeteries that occupy Block 32 [Neahr's Addition] of the Phoenix townsite. They are now part of the PMMP. 

Porter served briefly in the territorial legislature in 1885-1886 before being elected to a another term as Phoenix mayor.  During his second term, the Normal school in Tempe (now ASU) was established as well as the Territorial Insane Asylum, and Porter lobbied the heads of the Southern Pacific Railroad to lay rails to Tempe from Maricopa.

Porter's health was adversely affected by Arizona's hot climate.  On Feb. 17, 1889, he  died following a severe bout of erysipelas.   Although originally buried in the Knights of Pythias Cemetery, he was moved to Porter Cemetery in March 1890, after his widow had had the new Porter cemetery laid out.  His remains, and those of his first wife, were moved to Greenwood in 1916, where the Porter and Cotten families share an impressive monument.

- by Donna L. Carr

George Washington Sanders (1839-1904) - Union Veteran and Mining Superintendent

 

PCA Archives

George Washington Sanders was born September 6, 1839, in Fort Covington, New York.  He was the oldest of eleven children born to Eliphalet Pike Sanders and his first wife, Melissa Henry.   In 1846, the Sanders family moved to Ashtabula, Ohio.

On September 9, 1861, George Sanders enlisted in the Union Army at Trumbull, Ohio, and was assigned to Battery C of the 1st Regiment Ohio Light Artillery. However, he did not see much action as he was often sick and in hospital.  On September 26, 1862, he was discharged for disability at Camp Chase, Columbus, Ohio.  Despite his relatively short service, he became a devoted member of the Grand Army of the Republic, being elected commander of the Arizona Department in April 1903 at the San Francisco Grand Encampment.

Sanders moved to Polk, Iowa, in 1863.  In 1866, he married Mary Beebe, and they soon had two children, Albert and Ethel.   After Ethel’s birth, Sanders moved the family to Salt Lake City.  He and Mary had two more children in Utah; Ida and George.   

After Mary’s death in childbirth in 1877, Sanders took his family back to Iowa.  By 1880 he was remarried to a woman named Lizzie.

It wasn’t long before Sanders set his sights on the West again.  This time he travelled to Arizona.  By 1881, he and nine other men had created the Sanders Arizona Mining company which aimed to produce copper, silver, gold and other metals from mines in Pima County.

It was right at the turn of the century and near the end of his life that Sanders experienced his greatest achievements and his greatest losses. By 1899, he had divorced his second wife Lizzie and lost his daughter Ethel and grandson Sanders in what was believed to be a murder-suicide. But it was also that same year when he became superintendent of the Vulture Mine near Wickenburg and began work to get the mine back into production.

When Sanders first took charge, the Vulture Mine didn’t have enough water. By cyaniding the tailings, he recovered enough gold to finance drilling the mine deeper to locate an existing water source.  In 1901, the mine struck a new vein of gold ore.  As one of the financiers, Sanders received much of the initial profits.  

It was also during 1901 that Sanders was married for the third time--to Clara Glenn.

On March 20, 1902, Sanders sustained serious injuries when he was thrown from a streetcar of the Phoenix Railway Company.  He died on February 6, 1904, of heart complications attributed to his 1902 accident.  He was buried in Porter Cemetery under the auspices of the local GAR post.

 - by Tricia Alexander

 

#5 Alexander D. Cole (1839-1907) - Union Veteran

 

PCA Archives

Alexander D. Cole was born May 17, 1839, in Moosup, Connecticut, to Caleb Cole and Hannah Crandall.  The Coles were fairly prosperous farmers.

In October 1862, Cole enlisted in Company A, 12th Rhode Island Infantry, for a period of nine months.  His regiment took part in the Battle of Fredericksburg that December.  After that, it was on guard duty in Kentucky and Ohio.  Cole reenlisted at the end of his initial hitch and served until July 29, 1865.

On January 16, 1868, Alexander Cole wed Ella Augusta Lord in Boston, Massachusetts.  The young couple was living in Southbridge, Massachusetts, when their first child, Fannie, was born on November 20, 1869.   Alexander was employed in a woolen mill.

Although little Fannie thrived, the Coles’ next three children—Charles, Henry and Gertrude—did not live long enough to see their first birthdays.  It wasn’t until October 28, 1876, that Ella gave birth to a son, George Elbert, who would grow to adulthood.  One more child, Nellie, was born May 26, 1882.

Over the years, Alexander and Ella seem to have parted ways, as he is listed as divorced on the federal census of 1900; he gave his occupation as ‘landlord’.  He and his two daughters had moved to Phoenix around 1895, possibly because Fannie was suffering from a malady which caused her joints to ossify, limiting her mobility (may have been something like rheumatoid or osteoarthritis). 

At first, Fannie was active in the local Presbyterian church and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (W.T.C.U.).  In time, however, she was confined to bed, unable to bend her arms and legs.  On September 17, 1901, her doctor tried a surgical intervention to ‘break’ her joints, but Fannie died of shock following the operation.   After a funeral conducted by Rev. McAfee of the Presbyterian Church, she was buried in Rosedale Cemetery.

While living in Phoenix, Alexander Cole joined the John Wren Owen G.A.R. post.  In March, 1907, he applied for an invalid pension and received Certificate #969811.  He passed away on October 5, 1907, of cardiac dilation, and was buried next to his daughter Fannie in Rosedale.

Nothing further is known of Cole’s younger daughter, Nellie; likely she married.  Cole’s son George Elbert lived in Phoenix for a brief time, at least.  In 1910, his nine-year-old daughter Ella died of tuberculosis while residing at 716 West Madison.  She too was buried in Rosedale, probably in the Cole family plot.

by Donna Carr

 

 

 

#11 Reuben A. Hill (1839-1905) - Skilled Soldier, But Odd With Money

PCA Archives

Reuben A. Hill was born November 5, 1839, in  Naples, Cumberland County, Maine.  He was the son of John Hill and Rebecca Garland, farmers in the area.  Farming did not seem to be in Reuben’s future, however.  By 1860, he was already in San Francisco, California, working as a common laborer.

That changed with the outbreak of the Civil War, when Reuben Hill enlisted in the Union Army for a term of three years.  On September 29, 1861, he mustered in at Camp Downey, near Oakland, California, as a third corporal in Co. I, 1st California Infantry. 

As part of the California Column commanded by Colonel James H. Carleton, Hill’s unit was posted to the New Mexico Territory, where it saw action against the Confederates at Picacho Peak, Arizona.  Hill seems to have been an effective soldier.  He was promoted to sergeant and then commissioned a captain in Co. K, 1st New Mexico Volunteers (New), at Fort Sumner, New Mexico Territory, Feb. 29, 1864.  Captain Hill resigned at Fort Union, New Mexico Territory, on February 6, 1866. 

After the war, Hill returned to Maine where he married Vesta Marhon Whittier on January 19, 1865, presumably while on leave from his military duties.  They remained married until January 1880, when Reuben divorced Vesta so that he could marry a widow, Jane Tyler Burrell Wilson.

Jane later alleged that Hill drank excessively and was abusive.  By the time he moved out in 1894, he had spent all of Jane’s money.  Destitute, Jane was forced to move in with her married daughter.  Although Hill suggested that Jane divorce him, she did not do so—possibly because of the social stigma of being a divorced woman.

Reuben Hill then secured a loan from another widow, Olivia S. W. Payne, with which he purchased a hotel in Strafford, New Hampshire.  He remained in New Hampshire until about 1902, when he sold the hotel and moved to Arizona to speculate in mines.  Once in Phoenix, Hill was cagey about his past and intimated that he had traveled in Europe on a mission for the U. S. government’s secret service. 

On December 7, 1905, Reuben Hill died of a broken neck when thrown from his wagon near his mining property at Cave Creek, Arizona Territory.  He was buried in Rosedale Cemetery, North section,  Block 168, Grave 7.

Hill’s widow Jane did not learn of his death until her son-in-law saw a notice published in a Boston newspaper.  Since she was still legally married to Hill at the time of his death, she applied for and received a widow’s pension based on his Civil War service.

 -by the Pioneers’ Cemetery Association, Inc.