John Proops was born on January 17, 1848, in Bristol, England. After the death of his mother in 1856, his father moved the family to Charles Dickens’ London. Young John was apprenticed to a baker and, in 1867, he shipped out to Adelaide, Australia, as a baker.
Settled
by English debtors and convicts in the 1700s, Australia was a wild ‘n wooly
outpost of the British Empire. From
Adelaide on the southern coast, Proops walked to Melbourne, stopping to work at
sheep and cattle stations along the way.
From there, he went to Ballarat, where the discovery of gold had sparked
a gold rush similar to the 1849 one in California. Later, Proops returned to Melbourne to work
as a journeyman baker.
While
in Melbourne, Proops met and married Hannah Franks on February 18, 1873. Their daughter Rose was born in 1874. Thereafter, Proops became the chief cook and
baker at the Government Orphan Asylum at Randwick, near Sydney, where sons
Harry and Charley were born.
In
1881, Proops moved his family to San Francisco and then to Tombstone, but
misfortune dogged his steps. Only ten
days after arriving there, his son Charley died of gastric fever. Proops opened a bakery in Tombstone, but it
did not pay enough to support his family.
After two years, he gave it up and turned to hauling freight from
Kingston to Globe until his team of horses was stolen. Eventually, he found work at the new
courthouse in Tombstone.
In May 1887, Proops came to Phoenix in the course of
delivering a load of furniture for Mr. B. A. Fickas from his house in
Tombstone. He found employment first as
a porter at the Commercial Hotel and then as the janitor of the city hall and
gardener of the adjacent plaza.
Proops was said to have borne his previous financial
misfortunes with a light heart and cheerful disposition. A sociable fellow, Proops joined the
volunteer fire company, the Ancient Order of United Workmen (A.O.U.W.) and the
Foresters.
It was in the performance of his duty as a firefighter that
he contracted his final illness. On
Friday, December 29 or 30, 1895, the volunteer company was called to a fire on
East Madison Street. Thoroughly drenched
by the hoses and going home in the morning cold, Proops took a chill that
turned into pneumonia. He succumbed on
January 6, 1896.
On the day of Proops’s funeral, the fire house lowered its flag to half-mast. His comrades from fire company, the Foresters and the Ancient Order of United Workmen turned out to bury him in Phoenix’s A.O.U.W. Cemetery.
And there he remained until his widow Hannah died in 1903. She was one of the first to be buried in the newly-opened Beth Israel (Jewish) Cemetery at 35th Avenue and Van Buren, and their son Harry had his father’s remains moved there as well.
