Ivy H. Cox (1825-1898) - Methodist Minister and Judge

 

PCA Archives

Ivy Henderson Cox was born December 29, 1825, in Dungannon, Scott County, Virginia.   He was the son of James Longhollow Cox and Nancy Finney, originally of Russell County, Virginia.

Upon graduating from William and Mary College, Ivy Cox was ordained a minister. He then went to Texas, where he was eventually elected the presiding elder of the Methodist Episcopal circuit.  He married Mary Jane Cook of Alabama on July 5, 1852, in Fayette County, Texas.   They had eight children, the first six born in Texas and the last two in California.

Notwithstanding that he was a family man approaching the age of forty, Ivy Cox felt it his duty to serve during the Civil War.  Accordingly, he became a chaplain in the 8th Texas Infantry (Hobby’s Regiment), C.S.A.  The regiment was charged with defending the seacoast installations at Galveston and Port Bolivar.  Cox’s military career ended in May 1864 when he took an extended leave and did not return to his regiment.

After the war, the Coxes moved to California.  By 1877, they were in Florence, Arizona. Shortly thereafter, they came to Phoenix.  The federal census of 1880 records Cox as a lawyer but, because he was also a minister, he continued to officiate at weddings.  Cox was said to be a pure soul, a lover of justice, but quite tolerant in public matters.  He served on County Board of Supervisors from 1879 to 1880 and again in 1895.   He also became a judge.  

By the time they arrived in Phoenix, most of the Cox children had reached adulthood.  Sons Melancthon and William went into the construction business, while Franklin Ivy became an attorney for the Southern Pacific Railroad.  The five Cox daughters married into local families.  Most of them were still living In the Ivy Cox household in 1880.

Judge Cox’s wife Mary Jane died 29 December 1886 and was buried in Loosley Cemetery.   Sometime thereafter, Cox went to Quitman, Texas, to marry a woman named Ann, who survived him.

The last years of Judge Cox’s life were spent on the family ranch four miles north of Phoenix, where he engaged in growing fruit and keeping bees.  Late in 1898, he was living at the residence of Joseph DuPree Reed.  He died there on December 20, 1898, of congestion of the brain and paralysis.  He was buried in Loosley Cemetery next to his first wife.

- by Donna L. Carr

 

Dr. Alfred H. Graham (1824-1895) - Physician and Civil War Veteran

 

PCA Archives

Alfred Hamilton Graham was born about 1824 in Beattie’s Ford, Lincoln County, North Carolina, to John Davidson Graham and his first wife, Ann Elizabeth Connor. 

Ann Elizabeth died in 1836 after bearing fourteen children. John Davidson Graham remarried but died in 1847. The federal census of 1850 shows Alfred living with his step-mother, Jane Elizabeth Johnston Graham, and three half-siblings. 

In 1853, Graham enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania. Two years later, he received his medical degree. From 1856 to 1857, he was an assistant surgeon at Blockley Hospital, Philadelphia.

It is not known exactly when or why Graham came to be in Texas. However, by 1860 he was accompanying George Wythe Baylor’s Rangers as a field surgeon while the Rangers patrolled the western frontier of Texas to protect settlers from the Comanches.  

Graham was in Georgetown, Williamson County, Texas, when he married Mary Louise Mason on March 20, 1861. Their first son, Charles, was born in February of the following year.

On March 15, 1862, Graham joined the Confederate Army, enlisting in Company F, 18th Texas Cavalry (Darnell’s Regiment) as ‘acting surgeon’.  His unit was already fighting in the eastern United States as part of the Army of Tennessee when Vicksburg fell in July, 1863.

As the war ground on, recordkeeping in the Confederate Army became rather spotty.  No discharge papers for Graham have been found; however, owing to the fact that Graham’s wife gave birth to a daughter, Mary, on May 31, 1864, it seems likely that Graham was back home in Texas by September, 1863. The Grahams had two more sons in 1865 and 1868.

After the War, Graham resumed his medical practice and also purchased land in Williamson County.  An amateur archaeologist, he excavated and identified some cretaceous-period fossils and sent them to his alma mater in 1874.  He is also said to have written and published a number of accounts and articles about his Civil War experiences.

By 1880, Graham and his wife had also added three more children—Maggie, Mary Louise and James—to the family.  Graham continued to practice medicine in Bagdad and Lampasas, Texas, until about 1890.

Graham was in Phoenix when he died pneumonia on May 3, 1895.  He may have gone there in 1894 for his health.  There is some disagreement over whether he died of consumption, pneumonia, heart failure--or all three.  He was buried in Porter Cemetery under the auspices of the Odd Fellows, the Masons and the Ex-Confederate Association.

Graham’s widow Mary was still living in Houston, Texas in 1919.  She died in Williamson County in September, 1923.

A Graham family photo from 1881 is in the archives of the Pioneers’ Cemetery Association, Inc.

- by Donna L. Carr

 

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

 

 

John McCasey (1819-1895) - Civil War Vet and Mining Engineer

PCA Archives

John McCasey was born between 1819 and 1825 in Ireland.  At some point, he immigrated to the United States and settled in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.  He seems to have had a rather good education, enabling him to work as a machinist, mining engineer and metallurgist throughout his life.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, McCasey enlisted as a private in Company E, 8th Pennsylvania Infantry, on April 18, 1861.  He and Cornelia Connolly were married before a priest on June 4, 1861, in Scranton, Pennsylvania. 

McCasey was soon promoted to the rank of captain in Company K, 110th Pennsylvania Infantry.  However, he resigned his commission on July 29, 1861, stating that ill health made him unfit to perform his duties.  He returned home to recuperate, where his and Cornelia’s first child, William Francis, was born on August 12 of the following year.

McCasey reenlisted briefly on July 1, 1863, in Company B, 41st Pennsylvania Emergency Militia, an ad hoc unit raised to defend the state from the Confederate advance toward Gettysburg.  He was discharged on August 3, 1863.

Following the Civil War, McCasey found work as a machinist.  He and Cornelia, or Lillie as she was called, had eight children, although only four lived to adulthood.

The 1880 federal census of Jersey City, New Jersey, lists McCasey as a ‘silver miner’.  Shortly after his oldest son turned 21, McCasey moved to Arizona, while his wife Cornelia remained in Pennsylvania to raise the rest of their children.

McCasey found work as a mining engineer in the vicinity of the Harqua Hala Mine near Yuma.  In 1889, he wrote a detailed description of the ores and other minerals to be found there.  In 1891, he discovered a significant onyx deposit north of Cave Creek, Arizona.

John McCasey moved to Mesa, Arizona, and set up an assay office there in 1893.  After transferring his GAR membership to the John Wren Owen GAR Post, he filed for and received Invalid Pension #865,681. He seems to have lost touch with his friends back East, as his whereabouts were not known until one of his old Army companions tracked him down through the GAR.

McCasey died February 23, 1895, having been hospitalized for about three months with pulmonary tuberculosis.  He was buried in Porter Cemetery.

His widow Cornelia filed for and received a Civil War Widow’s pension, # 471,053.  She was living in the Bronx, New York City, when she died on June 29, 1919.

-Donna Carr

 

W. H. “Red” Nelson - Traveling hot-air Balloonist

Generated by Bing AI

W. H. Nelson was said to have been born in York, Pennsylvania, around 1860.  At some point, he became a parachutist whose act involved jumping from a hot-air balloon. How he came to his risky occupation is not known, but he and his partner, Otto Burke AKA Lochbaum, had been touring the West Coast with a carnival show. 

Red and Burke billed themselves as 'aeronauts'.  Their act depended upon a balloon which, when inflated, was fifty feet high and about thirty feet in diameter.  On August 1, 1895, they were booked to perform in Phoenix at a vacant lot on Jackson and Center Streets, where a merry-go-round had also been set up.  Coincidentally, this was the same lot where evangelists from the Salvation Army had been preaching in a tent nightly for about a year.

Many bought tickets to see the ascent that afternoon. The huge balloon was inflated and, when the ground ropes were untied, it rose about thirty feet in the air.  Unfortunately, the balloon sprang a leak and collapsed; Burke received minor injuries in the fall.

On another performance, more tragedy struck.  It involved Nelson this time.  When the balloon had ascended several hundred feet into the air, Nelson jumped.  His parachute opened properly but, in the gathering dusk, Nelson may have miscalculated his distance from the ground and detached the trapeze bar from the parachute too soon.

The tragic demise of the aeronaut had a sobering effect on the citizenry.   Pious folk murmured that the accident was divine retribution for using the Salvation Army’s meeting place for entertainment purposes…and poor “Red” Nelson had paid the price.

There is more to this story!  Come visit us at the PMMP for more about this incredible story!

--Story Shortened, Original by Donna Carr

Alexander Peter Petit (1819 - 1895) - Architect

rosson house, Library of Congress

Alexander Peter Petit was a well-known architect of his time in 1850s California designing theaters such as the National Theater and the New Pacific Theater.  Born in Pennsylvania around 1819 he and wife Catherine arrived in Phoenix about 1878 from California. 

Shortly after his arrival, he designed the Irvine Building on First and Washington Streets, one of the first two story brick buildings in Phoenix.  Petit and his wife moved to Tucson where he designed and built some of the commercial buildings along Congress Street, including the Henry Buehman Photography Studio and Gallery and a school near Military Plaza.  The Arizona Daily Star erected in 1883 is the only remaining evidence of Petit’s work in Tucson.

The Petits returned to Phoenix where in February 1891 Catherine died after a short illness.  She was buried in the IOOF Cemetery at the Pioneer and Military Memorial Park. 

Petit continued his work and his last design was the Rosson House located at 6^th Street and Monroe.  The Rosson House was completed a month before Petit died in March 1895. 

Alexander Petit’s contributions to Arizona have faded over time and one must search for his history.  The Petits’ graves were unmarked for many years in the cemetery making finding the Petits even harder to any historian.  In 2015 the Pioneers’ Cemetery Association, through our Memorial Marker Program, placed two new markers on the Petits’ graves in the I.O.O.F. 

-Donna Carr

Clark Churchill (1836 - 1895) - Attorney General

Phoenix Union High School Campus in 1940

Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 

Clark Churchill was born in Pennsylvania during June 1836.  In 1861, he traveled to San Francisco where he studied law.  He was considered to be very bright. 

During 1863, Churchill relocated to Virginia City, Nevada, where he became a junior partner with an established law firm, also serving as city attorney there in 1865.  Clark returned to San Francisco during 1866-1877, winning new laurels at the bar.   

 

In 1877 he removed to Prescott, Arizona.  While there, in addition to his legal and official duties, he successfully carried through the great project of the Arizona Canal.  His business interests also prospered. 

 

While on a professional visit to Phoenix in 1880, he was so impressed with the great resources and fertility of the soil in the Salt River Valley that he determined to take up residence there, making the development of the Valley his life’s work. He served as territorial  attorney general in 1881, dividing his time between Prescott and Phoenix. 

 

He invested heavily in lands in Phoenix, developing the Churchill Addition and building a mansion at 5th St. and Van Buren.  

 

Clark Churchill was a high-ranking member of the Masons, a member of the National Republican Committee, the territorial adjutant general for four years and attorney general for six years. Toward the end of his life he suffered a downturn in fortunes and eventually had to sell his mansion.  Acquired in 1897 by the City of Phoenix, it became Phoenix High School. 

Churchill’s wife and two nephews are handsomely memorialized in the family plot in the Masons Cemetery, but he is not.  - adapted from a story by Bob Cox  

 

         

Professor Dayton Reed (1841 - 1895) - Educator

Pioneers' Cemetery Association

Dayton Reed was born on 22 Dec 1841 in Millbrook, Wayne County, Ohio. He was one of seven children born to James and Mary Ann Reed. 

Dayton became a teacher and moved to Belleville, Ohio where he was a high school principal from 1866 to 1873.  During that time, his sister Eliza Douglass came to live with him bringing her son Beach.  Her marriage to William Douglass had ended in divorce. 

Dayton married Sarah Ordway on December 27, 1871 in Richland, Ohio.  That marriage seems to have ended with each one going their own way.  Sarah was living with her widowed father in Belleville, Ohio in 1880. 

Dayton moved to Los Angeles, California around 1873 where he continued to teach for 12 years.  He then moved to Arizona where he became principal for the Phoenix Public Schools in 1885.  He resigned that position in 1887 to enter into the more lucrative real estate and banking business in Phoenix.   

On June 28, 1890, Dayton became the third principal of the Arizona Territorial Normal School (Arizona State University) where he taught language, mathematics and pedagogy.During his short ten month tenure as principal, he supervised improving the appearance of the campus by having fencing, trees and plumbing installed.  His salary was $200 a month.

Dayton was forced to resign his position because he was suffering from consumption.  A long-time member of the Masons, he was elevated to Grand Master of the Phoenix lodge prior to his death.  He died July 12, 1894 and is buried in the Masons Cemetery of Phoenix Military and Memorial Park. 

Dayton’s sister, Eliza Douglass, died February 3, 1895 of cancer and is buried next to her brother.