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

 

John Wren Owen (1822-1877) - Union Veteran and County Treasurer

 

PCA Archives

John Wren Owen was born December 16, 1822, in Franklin County, Illinois, the son of Thomas Harvey Owen and Mary Paine Wren, hence his middle name. 

In 1850, shortly after the beginning of the California Gold Rush, his parents moved their family to Solano County, California, where they engaged in farming.  By 1860, John Wren Owen was working as a real estate speculator at Suisun, Solano County.  

On November 30, 1864, Owen enlisted in the Union Army at the Presidio in San Francisco, California.  He was commissioned a captain and given command of Company F, 7th California Infantry, on December 15, 1864.  He transferred to Camp McDowell in Arizona Territory on August 2, 1865, after the Civil War had ended, and mustered out with his company at the Presidio on April 18, 1866.

Apparently, Owen’s time in Arizona had made an impression on him for he returned to Pima County. He was elected to the Arizona Territorial Legislature in 1868. The 1870 federal census shows him working as a clerk at Camp Crittenden in Pima County.

In 1874, Owen was elected treasurer of Maricopa County and reelected in 1876.  As treasurer, he was responsible for paying certain bills out of the county taxes; however, he seems to have exercised those responsibilities loosely.  He made no quarterly report of the funds in his possession to the territorial treasurer on June 30 or on September 30, 1877.

When Owen requested money for the public schools, the territorial treasurer authorized him to use the funds already in his possession, promising that he would be compensated later.  On October 11, 1877, Owen replied that he did not have the money to hand but would have it by the end of the month.  He then fell ill and died on November 4th.  When his body was prepared for burial in the first City Cemetery, he had only $2 in his pocket.

His fellow veterans turned out for his funeral and he was eulogized as "a man of few faults and many virtues."  It appears that John Wren Owen never married, and his obituaries did not mention any next of kin.

Following his death, a thorough search of his dwelling did not turn up any of the county's money.  His friends speculated that perhaps Owen had loaned the money to someone and that that individual was keeping mum about it.  A less charitable speculation was that he had spent it himself.  At any rate, no money was ever recovered.

Notwithstanding the missing County funds, the late Captain Owen seems to have enjoyed a good enough reputation that, when Union veterans established a post of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) in Phoenix in September 1885, it was named in his honor.

 - by Donna L. Carr