Anne Morrison Perley (1865-1932) - A Teacher in Puerto Rico

Pinterest Post Card - 1907

Anne Morrison Perley was born January 28, 1865, in Henry County, Illinois, to Peleg Stone Perley and Nancy Eliza Morrison.  Anne had three siblings:  Bruce, Grace and Harriet (known as Polly).  

Anne came from a family of teachers.  Her grandfather, Nathanial Perley, had been an educator for over 30 years, and her father Peleg was a teacher prior to becoming a lawyer and practicing law in Henry, Illinois.

  Peleg Perley was the postmaster of Henry, Illinois, in the early 1880s.  In 1883, he employed Anne as a postal clerk.   She was attending Washington University’s College of Fine Arts in St. Louis in 1887.

 The Perley family moved to Arizona where Peleg continued his legal career in a milder climate.  Anne travelled to Tombstone to fill the position of assistant principal at Tombstone High School in January, 1892. It was a temporary appointment, and she returned to Phoenix at the end of the school year in June.  Having acquired some administrative experience, she was then hired as the assistant principal for the old Central School at 201 North Central Avenue in Phoenix. 

Anne remained in Phoenix, teaching, until after the death of her parents--her father in 1898 and her mother in 1900.  Thereafter, she went to teach in Bisbee, returning to Phoenix in 1903.  A few years later, Anne departed Arizona for New York and accepted an offer to teach in Puerto Rico.  She arrived there in September 1909 aboard the Steamship Coamo.   The 1910 federal census recorded her as a schoolteacher living in Pueblo Norte, Aibonito. 

Anne may have learned to speak Spanish during her years of teaching in Tombstone, Bisbee and Phoenix.  Acquired by the United States from Spain in 1898, Puerto Rico had a need for bilingual teachers, especially after the Foraker Act of 1901 mandated that English should be the language of instruction in Puerto Rican high schools.

It is not known how long Anne remained in Puerto Rico teaching.  However, by 1920 she was back in Brooklyn, New York, and working as a translator for an export business.  Presumably, she was by then fluent in Spanish. 

Anne was still living in Brooklyn in 1930 when she fell ill and was sent to a private sanitarium in Stamford, Connecticut.  She died there on May 23, 1932.[i]  Her sister Grace arranged for her cremains to be returned to Arizona where she was buried in her parents’ cemetery plot in Porter Cemetery.

 - by Patricia 

George Frank Breninger (1865-1905) - Naturalist

 

Masons Cemetery with Masonic Memorial - PCA Archives

George Frank Breninger was born September, 1865, probably in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  From age fifteen, he manifested an intense fascination with nature, collecting specimens, pelts and eggs.  His collection of birds’ eggs was at one time considered the fourth largest in the country.

Breninger became an ornithologist and expert taxidermist, mounting many of his specimens himself.  As a naturalist, he had traveled widely in the continental United States from the Rockies as far south as the Isthmus of Panama to locate and collect rare species.  Some of his work was sent to the Smithsonian Museum and Field Columbian Museum in Chicago.  Another of his collections was at Colorado State University. 

He married Margaret J. Hoag, daughter of Addison Hoag in Fort Collins, Colorado, on September 19, 1888.  Although he and his wife had five children, only their oldest son, David Addison, had a somewhat normal lifespan.  Juvenile diabetes seems to have run in the family, as son Walter and daughter May both died of it before insulin became available to treat it.  Another child died in infancy, and daughter Luella Ruth died of scarlet fever in 1903.

The family moved to Phoenix around 1897.  In 1900, Professor Breninger spent six months in the Rockies, collecting specimens for the Foote Mineral Museum in Philadelphia.  He published several scholarly papers about birds.

In 1903, Professor Breninger traveled to Guatemala and Nicaragua for four months to secure 500 bird specimens for the Field Columbian Museum.   The conditions of the trip were rather primitive and Breninger’s team was regarded with some suspicion by the locals, who feared they might be a filibustering expedition intent on destabilizing the Mexican government.  Breninger collected many parrot specimens and even some ocelots.  He also brought back an orchid plant.  It survived the six-week journey back to Arizona and bloomed in 1904.

Breninger grew different varieties of crops on his farm to determine whether they could survive in desert conditions.  His wife Margaret had a fine flower garden and sold cut flowers in season.  It is not known whether they had a greenhouse for their more delicate plants, although there were greenhouses in Phoenix by 1913.

For years, Breninger was exposed to arsenic in the course of his taxidermy work.  Although he knew it was detrimental to his health, such was his devotion to his nature studies that he accepted the risk.  He suffered three strokes, with each one leaving him weaker. 

He died on December 2, 1905, at his home at 386 North Sixth Avenue.  After a Christian Science funeral, he was buried in Masons Cemetery. 

-by Donna Carr

 

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Jay H. Miller (1865-1895) - A Mystery of Long Standing

PCA Archive

For over a century, the Knights of Pythias Cemetery has held an unusual grave marker.  Unlike the typical headstone, it was a large, smooth, pink granite boulder inscribed with a barely visible inscription: “In Adoring Memory of Jay.”  But who was Jay? 

In the late afternoon of November 25, 2006, longtime PCA volunteer Diane Sumrall was picking up trash in the cemetery.  As she passed Jay’s boulder, she chanced to glance up at the underside of the stone.  The setting sun was just at the right angle to reveal another faint inscription that had been hidden from view.  It read “H. Miller.”  Mystery solved!

Jay H. Miller was born in California on January 7, 1865, to James Miller of Tennessee and Susan Sawyer Miller.  Mr. Miller seems to have died before 1870, as the 1870 census records only Susan, a seamstress, her son Jay, and her mother Abigale in Sacramento.   By 1880, Susan was living with teenaged Jay and her new husband, John W. Hughes.  

Jay Miller moved to Phoenix around 1887, where he began working for the newly established Maricopa & Phoenix Railroad.  He eventually became the Maricopa & Phoenix Railroad’s commercial agent in Phoenix, responsible for running its freight department.  

With increased responsibility came a better salary.  Around 1892, Miller acquired a large lot at the southeast corner of Seventh and Pierce Streets. He hired C. J. Dyer to create a plat map and subdivided the lot into 10 individual smaller lots.  By 1895, the Phoenix Street Railway system had been extended so it ran along Pierce Street in front of Miller’s property; easy access to the streetcar line must have increased its value and potential for development.

On the evening of September 7, 1895, Miller shared some drinks with companions at the Cabinet Saloon on the northwest corner of Central Avenue and Washington Street.  Around 10 PM, he stepped out into the alley behind his office with a Mr. Conroy.  A few moments later, two shots rang out and Conroy ran for help, saying that Miller had killed himself.

The Arizona Republican newspaper covered the coroner’s inquest in great detail.  Almost 50 individuals testified about Miller’s activities that night, and several indicated that he sometimes seemed despondent and had spoken of suicide in the past.

Jay Miller was buried in the Knights of Pythias Cemetery.   Since he had died intestate, his mother was his sole heir.  Undoubtedly it was she who had the pink granite boulder inscribed with his name and installed on his grave as a tombstone.

-         - by Diane Sumrall, Debe Branning, Derek Horn

 

 

Robert E. Lee Brown (1865-1902) - Mining Engineer and Adventurer

 

PCA Archives

R. E. L. Brown may be one of the most unique characters in the Pioneer & Military Memorial Park, both for his colorful life--and the speed with which he was forgotten after his demise.

Born May 31, 1865, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Laurence and Martha Brown, he trained as a mining engineer, then went out west to locate promising mines.

In 1889, Brown was surveying potential mining claims in Washington state. During a violent labor strike in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, in 1892, he started a newspaper called The Barbarian, which took the side of the mine owners versus the unionized miners.  This earned him the nickname “Barbarian Brown”.  Threatened with death during the strike, he caused a cannon to be wheeled into the street outside his office.

Much as he enjoyed the furor his newspaper editorials provoked, Brown remained first and foremost a mining engineer.  He speculated in mines and was well regarded internationally for his expertise.  Seeking new adventures, Brown journeyed to South Africa in hopes of securing some promising claims during a land rush in Witfontein in 1895. Competition was fierce for the best claims, but Brown hit upon a method that could outrun the swiftest horse:  a heliograph!  He set up heliograph stations by which he could transmit confirmation almost instantaneously to his confederates in the field who were waiting to stake his claims. 

On July 19, 1895, the day of the land rush, twelve thousand miners were gathered in Doornkoop to register their permits.  But Brown had devised a plan to ensure that he would be first in line.  A fan of American football, he recruited a group of rough men from local bars to form a “flying wedge” to cut through the crowd.  The ruse worked; however, the Pretoria government initially refused to honor his claims.  Brown sued the Boer government and eventually won a huge judgment, the exact value of which has never been ascertained.

Having worn out his welcome in South Africa, the brash engineer returned to North America where, on September 26, 1898, he wed Maud Higgins in Victoria, British Columbia. 

Brown was in London in 1901 when he apparently contracted tuberculosis.  In late 1902, he traveled to Phoenix in a private train car with his wife, his personal physician and a nurse.  Unfortunately, he had left it too late; he died on October 3, 1902, scarcely a week after his arrival.   Despite his fame and fortune, his death rated only a few lines in the local newspaper, and he was buried under a simple wooden headboard in Rosedale Cemetery.  

One can only speculate as to why Brown’s remains were not shipped back East and why a more elaborate headstone was never erected over his grave.

- 
 -  by Donna L. Carr

 

 

Albert S. Wray (1865-1900) - Dairy Proprietor and Murdered by Horse

 

Courtesy of the Wray Family

Albert S. Wray was born 21 September 1865 in Belle Prairie Township, Morrison County, Minnesota.  His father is believed to have been William S. Wray, born 1833 in Henderson, Pennsylvania.   Albert’s mother, Sarah Ellen Reid, was born 1843 in Kentucky.  Albert was the fifth of her ten children. 

By 1875, the Wray family was farming in Lake Mary, Douglas County, Minnesota.  However, by 1880, the family had broken up.  Albert’s father William was still married but living in the household of his parents, Robert and Mary Wray.  Albert’s mother Sarah was committed to an insane asylum in 1883.

Left to make his own way in the world, Albert S. Wray enlisted in the U. S. Army at St. Paul, Minnesota, on 4 February 1890.  At that time, he was described as having blue eyes, blonde hair and a fair complexion.  He gave his occupation as ‘clerk’.  Albert was assigned to the 8th Cavalry at Fort Yates, North Dakota.  On 15 December 1890, the great chief Sitting Bull was killed on the nearby Standing Rock Reservation.  Family stories say that Wray helped carry Sitting Bull’s coffin, made by the post carpenter, to his grave.  Wray was discharged in April 1891 with a disability for which he later received an invalid pension.

On 10 August 1898, Wray married Isabelle Grantham in Phoenix, Arizona Territory.  Isabelle had been born in Canada to Irish immigrant parents.  A photograph of Wray taken around this time shows a bespectacled young man with wavy hair and a luxuriant mustache. The couple eventually had a daughter, Myrtle, born May 1899.  By 1900, Wray was the proprietor of the West End Dairy.  Paradoxically, it was located east of town. 

Wray was killed 26 June 1900 in a runaway accident .  Around 4 PM, Mr. Wray was driving east on Washington Street in a one-horse open buggy.  With him was a friend, Thomas Treadwell .  As they passed in front of the Gazette newspaper office, the horse began to kick and plunge.  Although Wray endeavored to quiet the animal, the breeching strap broke and the buggy pushed against the horse, spooking him into running north on First Avenue.  Seeing the buggy about to collide with another, Treadwell jumped out.  The ensuing collision threw Wray partway out of the buggy, although he held onto the lines and tried to crawl back in over the dashboard.  The horse meanwhile was kicking furiously.  Another jerk threw Wray completely out of the buggy, and he landed on his head so hard that bystanders heard the thud. 

Dr. Wylie, the first medical man on the scene,  assisted Wray into Mr. Melezer’s store.  Although Wray had not suffered any obvious injuries and was able to speak, albeit in a somewhat incoherent manner, he was taken around 5 PM to the office of his family physician Dr. Hawley on West Washington for further observation.  His condition deteriorated, and his wife was called.  She and little Myrtle arrived shortly before Wray expired at 8:45 PM, presumably from a concussion or subdural hematoma caused by the accident.

Wray, being an Army veteran, was buried in Porter Cemetery, Lot 10, Grave C. 

Less than a month after his death, a posthumous son, Albert Steven, was born to Isabella.

-By Debe Branning

 

Robert E. Lee Brown (1865-1902) - Mining Engineer and Adventurer

PCA Archives

R. E. L. Brown may be one of the most unique characters in the Pioneer & Military Memorial Park, both for his colorful life--and the speed with which he was forgotten after his demise.

Born May 31, 1865, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Laurence and Martha Brown, he trained as a mining engineer, then went out west to locate promising mines.

In 1889, Brown was surveying potential mining claims in Washington state. During a violent labor strike in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, in 1892, he started a newspaper called The Barbarian, which took the side of the mine owners versus the unionized miners.  This earned him the nickname “Barbarian Brown”.  Threatened with death during the strike, he caused a cannon to be wheeled into the street outside his office.

Much as he enjoyed the furor his newspaper editorials provoked, Brown remained first and foremost a mining engineer.  He speculated in mines and was well regarded internationally for his expertise.  Seeking new adventures, Brown journeyed to South Africa in hopes of securing some promising claims during a land rush in Witfontein in 1895. Competition was fierce for the best claims, but Brown hit upon a method that could outrun the swiftest horse:  a heliograph!  He set up heliograph stations by which he could transmit confirmation almost instantaneously to his confederates in the field who were waiting to stake his claims.

On July 19, 1895, the day of the land rush, twelve thousand miners were gathered in Doornkoop to register their permits.  But Brown had devised a plan to ensure that he would be first in line.  A fan of American football, he recruited a group of rough men from local bars to form a “flying wedge” to cut through the crowd.  The ruse worked;  however, the Pretoria government initially refused to honor his claims.  Brown sued the Boer government and eventually won a huge judgment, the exact value of which has never been ascertained.

Having worn out his welcome in South Africa, the brash engineer returned to North America where, on September 26, 1898, he wed Maud Higgins in Victoria, British Columbia. 

Brown was in London in 1901 when he apparently contracted tuberculosis.  In late 1902, he traveled to Phoenix in a private train car with his wife, his personal physician and a nurse.  Unfortunately, he had left it too late; he died on October 3, 1902, scarcely a week after his arrival.   Despite his fame and fortune, his death rated only a few lines in the local newspaper, and he was buried under a simple wooden headboard in Rosedale Cemetery.  

One can only speculate as to why Brown’s remains were not shipped back East and why a more elaborate headstone was never erected over his grave.

-Donna Carr

 

#6 - Marie Vaux Lane (1865 - 1898) - Teacher

 

PCA Archives

Marie Vaux Lane was born in Doylestown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania around 1865 to William Vaux and Mary Henry. She was a teacher at the Doylestown Seminary where she most likely met her husband Rev. Henry Polhemus Lane, a Presbyterian minister. They married in 1888 in Doylestown and became the parents of five children. Marie was in Phoenix from San Diego when she developed “la grippe” or influenza which developed into pneumonia. She died on December 26, 1898, and was buried in Rosedale Cemetery.

 

The Young Volunteer - Life as a Soldier in the Civil War, 1865

Click to See and Read the Document from the Library of Congress

Read about the experience of a soldier during 

the hard times of the Civil War.........

Post War Cartoon - 1865

"Give me your hand, comrade! 
We have each lost a leg for a good cause; 
but, thank God, we never lost heart."
Harper's weekly, v. IX, no. 434 (1865 April 22), p. 256.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

Two Union soldiers shaking hands after the war.  A unification message, and a depiction of the sacrifices our military made......

Anne Perley (1865 - 1932) - Educator

Pioneers' Cemetery Association Archives

Anne Morrison Perley was born January 28, 1865, in Henry County, Illinois, to Peleg Stone Perley and Nancy Eliza Morrison. Anne had three siblings: Bruce, Grace and Harriet (known as Polly).
Anne came from a family of teachers. Her grandfather, Nathaniel Perley, had been an educator for over 30 years, and her father Peleg was a teacher prior to becoming a lawyer and practicing law in Henry, Illinois.

Peleg Perley was the postmaster of Henry, Illinois, in the early 1880s. In 1883, he employed Anne as a postal clerk. She was attending Washington University’s College of Fine Arts in St. Louis in 1887.  The Perley family moved to Arizona where Peleg continued his legal career in a milder climate. Anne travelled to Tombstone to fill the position of assistant principal at Tombstone High School in January, 1892. It was a temporary appointment, and she returned to Phoenix at the end of the school year in June. Having acquired some administrative experience, she was then hired as the assistant principal for the old Central School at 201 North Central Avenue in Phoenix.

Anne remained in Phoenix, teaching, until after the death of her parents--her father in 1898 and her mother in 1900. Thereafter, she went to teach in Bisbee, returning to Phoenix in 1903. A few years later, Anne departed Arizona for New York and accepted an offer to teach in Puerto Rico. She arrived there in September 1909 aboard the Steamship Coamo. The 1910 federal census recorded her as a schoolteacher living in Pueblo Norte, Aibonito.

It is not known how long Anne remained in Puerto Rico teaching. However, by 1920 she was back in Brooklyn, New York, and working as a translator for an export business. Presumably, she was by then fluent in Spanish.

Anne was still living in Brooklyn in 1930 when she fell ill and was sent to a private sanitarium in Stamford, Connecticut. She died there on May 23, 1932. Her sister Grace arranged for her cremains to be returned to Arizona where she was buried in her parents’ cemetery plot in Porter Cemetery.