Daniel H. Wallace (1821-1894) - Banker and Judge

 

Donna Carr

Daniel Hendrickson Wallace was born November 3, 1821, in Beaver County, Pennsylvania.  The son of Robert James Wallace and Margaret Hendrickson, he came from a large family--eight brothers and two sisters.

In 1845, he wed Mary Jane Elder and embarked upon domestic life.  Career advancement came gradually, however; in 1850, he was working as a jailer in his home town of Beaver.  However, by 1860, he was a banker in New Castle, Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, with personal property worth $10,000.

Although he was already successful businessman and nearly forty years old, Wallace enlisted in the 76th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry on August 28, 1861.  He soon achieved the rank of lieutenant colonel and was present at the capture of Fort Pulaski, Georgia, on April 11, 1862. Shortly after, he was severely injured in a fall from a horse and was discharged as incapacitated on August 19, 1862.  Thereafter, he returned home and resumed his lucrative banking practice.

Wallace and his wife Mary Jane had six children while residing in New Castle, two of whom died in early childhood.  Mary Jane herself passed away in July, 1867, after which Wallace married Rebecca Cunningham, with whom he had four more children.  By 1870, his personal fortune had reached $25,000.

Throughout his career, Wallace maintained contacts with fellow Republicans in Washington, D. C. and, in 1885, he accepted an appointment as receiver of the U. S. Land Office in Tucson, Arizona.  Although he lost his patronage post in the next general election, he then moved to Phoenix where he practiced land law and became a judge.  His widowed daughter Ada acted as his legal assistant.

Having already applied for a disability pension on the basis of his 1862 injury, Wallace joined the John Wren Owen GAR post.  He died on January 14, 1894, of pneumonia and a liver abscess.  Initially buried in Porter Cemetery, his remains were moved to Greenwood in 1917.

The judge’s daughter, Ada Wallace Irvin, achieved local prominence as a member of the Woman’s Relief Corps, an auxiliary to the G.A.R.  When she died in 1923, she was buried in the same plot in Greenwood.

 

- 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

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

#1 Amos J. Dye (1847-1905) - Judge and Ohio State Legislator

 

PCA Archives

Amos J. Dye was born April 2, 1847, in Marietta, Ohio.  He was the son of Amos J. Dye, Sr., and Maria Taylor.  In 1860, the Dyes owned a large and valuable tobacco farm.

On 18 January 1864, at the age of eighteen, Amos enlisted in the Union army and was assigned to Company H, 77th Ohio Volunteer Infantry.  Just a few weeks thereafter, he married Marinda Jane McCowan on February 11, 1864. 

On January 1, 1865, he transferred to Company D, 77th Ohio Volunteer Infantry.  He was discharged March 8, 1866 in Brownsville, Texas, with the rank of private.  Possibly his unit went there after the Civil War as part of the Reconstruction effort.

Amos Dye and Marinda had a son, Herbert, in 1867, and a daughter, Ida, in 1868.   He was admitted to the Ohio bar as a lawyer in 1877.  By 1880, the Dyes were living in Huntington, West Virginia, where Amos was practicing law.

Marinda died of stomach cancer in May, 1894, in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she had been active in a fraternal society called the Knights and Ladies of Honor.  Amos Dye himself was by then a Mason, and a Republican state legislator.  Soon, he became an attorney for the Ohio State Dairy and Food Department.

Dye married Ida Selma Schaetzle, a divorcee, on December 12, 1895.  A son named Amos was born in 1897 and a daughter, Selma, in 1901.   Another son, Stelman, seems to have died in infancy.

In 1896, Amos Dye was accused of accepting a $5000 bribe from a representative of the Paskola Company on condition that the state would not prosecute a case against the company.  Dye vigorously denied taking a bribe and countersued.  Apparently he did not lose his state position since he continued to handle cases.

Tiring of Ohio winters, Dye purchased the Rumney house on Grand Avenue in 1902 and thereafter, the Dyes spent their winters in Phoenix.  The Dye family was living a mile and a half north of Grand Avenue when Amos died on December 30, 1905, of cardiac insufficiency.  He was buried in the Masons Cemetery, Block 17, Lot 3, Grave 3.

Dye’s widow Ida was left to raise their two surviving children alone.  She filed for a widow’s pension on February 17, 1906, but her application was rejected on the grounds that Dye’s cause of death was not the result of his military service.  She did not remain alone for long, though.  Sometime in 1908, she married Peter William De Jong.  Ida lived until 1954.

-by Donna Carr

 

#4 - Ivy H. Cox (1827 - 1898) - Minister, Judge, and More!

PCA Archive

Ivy H. Cox was born January 9, 1827, in Virginia. After graduating from William and Mary College, he was ordained a minister. He then went to Texas, where he was elected the presiding elder of the Methodist Episcopal circuit. He married Mary Jane Cook of Alabama. During the Civil War, Cox served as a chaplain in the 8^th Texas Infantry (Hobby’s Regiment). Around 1869 he moved to California. In 1877 he moved to Florence, Arizona, and shortly thereafter to Phoenix, where he turned to the practice of law and became a judge. His wife Mary Jane died December 29, 1886, and was buried in City/Loosley Cemetery. 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. He died December 20, 1898, and was buried in City/Loosley Cemetery next to his wife.

John Tabor Alsap (1830 - 1886) - Renaissance Men

John Alsap - Arizona Archives

John Tabor Alsap was born 28 February 1830 in Frankfort, Kentucky. He was the only son of Rev. John Alsap (sometimes spelled Alsop) and his wife Keziah Randall. After studying medicine in Ohio, young John went to California in 1853, intending to practice medicine there. 

Once in California, however, he developed an interest in mining--an interest which brought him to the Walker diggings in Yavapai county, in November 1863.  Alsap’s medical skills came in handy in 1864 when he accompanied King Woolsey's second expedition against the Apaches as the party's surgeon.  

His reputation thus established, he was appointed territorial treasurer in late 1864 by Gov. John Noble Goodwin.  He soon opened the first saloon in Prescott, a shrewd business move which brought him into contact with much of Prescott’s electorate. 

Alsap became Yavapai County's representative to the territorial legislature in 1868. However, his larger political ambitions were not to be fulfilled in Prescott. In 1869, he moved south to the Salt River Valley, where he helped to select the 320 acres comprising the original Phoenix townsite. He was one of the original commissioners of the Salt River Town Association, formed in 1870 to promote settlement along the Salt River.

Alsap now turned his attention from the practice of medicine and mining to the practice of law. As the fledgling community along the Salt River gained a foothold, he petitioned to have a new county created, with Phoenix as its seat. Following the creation of Maricopa County in 1871, Governor Safford appointed Alsap its first probate judge.  

For information on John Alsap, visit us at the PMMP.  - by Donna Carr