A Thank You from some Satisfied Guests

Barbara D and I were lucky enough to tour these lovely ladies around last Friday morning.

I recently found this picture of the Papago Buttes in 1930. It gives you an idea of how rural the area was then! I found it on a great facebook site call Vintage Phoenix. If you have a facebook page and like history check it out!

Jeanne Tovrea's murder

For those interested, this seems to be a pretty good re-telling of the Jeanne Tovrea murder story.

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/classics/jeanne_tovrea/1_index.html

Canyon Vistas Vixens Blog About Their Tour

Follow this link http://canyonvistasvixens.blogspot.com/ to the Canyon Vistas Vixens blog on their recent tour and their lunch experience at The Stockyards. 

These lovely Red Hat Ladies - what a treat!

A Visit with F. L. Warner

Recently through Ancestry I was able to contact a descendant of F. L. Warner brother whose name was Frederick L Warner. The descendant lives in Tennessee where the family has been since the mid 1800s. He send me a had written story that was transcribed by his grandmother. He does not know what magazine or newspaper it came from. I do caution that stories told to a reporter like family lore is to be taken with a grain of salt

A Visit with F. L. Warner

 

“He lives in a house

By the side of the road

And is a friend to man.”

 

 

 

                                        A Visit with F. L. Warner

 

          On the state highway midway between Tempe and Phoenix, Arizona, some distance from the west entrance of the Papago Sahuaro National Park, one can see a sign on the south side of the Road which reads,” Warner Heights.”  Few people, as they speed along on the concrete highway, notice the small weather-beaten house resting on the highest of the several granite knolls, at the foot of which is one of the most beautiful cactus forests in the surrounding country.

          A winding road cut around the hills leads up to this house.  What a delightful breeze one feels as he reaches the summit.  The fresh desert air as it fills his lungs makes him thrill within and as he looks all around at the wonderful view of the surrounding country he can almost feel the very presences of the God who created it all.

          It was in the late afternoon of an early autumn day that I found myself standing on the hill by the house, catching my breath after the short climb from the previous knoll where I had left my car.  Presently the spell of the admiration’ which the pure air and delightful breeze had cast upon me, was broken by a soft voice, as I turned toward the door I saw an old and somewhat feeble woman who bade me come in.  “Sit down, my boy,” she said as she motioned toward a large overstuffed leather rocker, “and I will bring you a drink of water.”

          During her short absence I became deeply interested in the quaint and artistic furnishings of the room.  The long rows of windows on two sides of the room were draped with freshly laundered scrim curtains, and over-looked a green wooded river bed about a mile beyond.  The walls were hung with large oil paintings which she had painted and a bust or medallion of some noted artist filled each corner and nook.  A large fern trailing up the wall by the door waved its soft green tendrils in the sunshine.  The lady returned with a pitcher of water and was followed by her husband, a man gray and stooped with age, but exceedingly active.  After a cordial greeting he sank down in a large tapestry upholstered arm chair.  He spoke with a broken German accent. A lively conversation was started, in the course of which he told of some very interesting incidents which he had encountered.  “You must have had an extremely interesting life, Mr. Warner,” I said, “will you tell me the story of your life?”

          “Oh,” he laughingly replied, “it has been not very much.  I am eighty-eight years old now and I forget so easily some of my life, but I will tell you as much as I can.  I was born in Whitehall, Louisiana, a small town on the Mississippi River below Baton Rouge.  I was named Ferdinand.  My parents had been in the States only a few years.  I spent my early childhood on our sugar cane plantation and when I was thirteen years old my mother took me to Heidelberg, Germany where I studied for years.  One of the largest schools of Germany is now at Heidelberg.  We traveled all over central Europe before we returned home to Louisiana where I stayed only one year.  Again I went to Germany where I studied for two years in Tubingen University and then to Geneva, Switzerland, where I studied French.  Before returning to America I toured Europe again and went into Egypt.  How vividly I recall the trip up the Nile and our visit to Alexandria, Cairo, and the Four Cities.  From there I went across the Mediterranean Sea to France and then to my home in America.  I spent several years helping my father with the sugar cane crops until the Civil War broke out.

          Being a southerner by birth and father having negro slaves, I naturally went to a fight for our interests, so I became a member of the First Regiment of Heavy Artillery, Confederate Army of America, in 1861.  I was stationed at Fort Harris on the Mississippi but was later moved to Fort Donaldson where I helped build the water battery.  It was here that I experienced my first fighting, when General Grant came up the Cumberland River in gun-boats and waged a twenty-three day battle.  The general in command of our fort surrendered and I with fifteen thousand other men, was taken prisoner.

          My partner and I slipped past the guards one night and by swimming the Cumberland River we managed to escape to Nashville, Tennessee.  From there I was sent to Island Number Ten where we fought for two weeks when General Mc Call was forced to surrender the island with five thousand men.

          I was again taken prisoner but escaped to Memphis with five companies of heavy artillery which broke away from the guards.  From Memphis I was ordered to Fort Pillow where I fought until we were forced to evacuate and then I went to Vicksburg where I stayed for four months.  It was here we suffered one of our biggest defeats when General Grant came down the Mississippi with flotillas and General Farragut came up the river with his gunboats and bombarded Vicksburg.  On July 4, 1863 we surrendered and I was again taken prisoner but was later exchanged, man for man, for a colonel of the Seventh Cavalry of the Union Army.

          I then went with General Forests’ cavalry to attack Fort Pillow.  The fort was being held by negro troops under the command of white officers.  As we attacked the fort the Yankees raised a white flag of truce.  All firing ceased for a moment and as we started over the barricade to take the fort we were fired upon.  It was too late, however, for General Forest raised a black flag which means no quarters, kill the very last man.  We did.  Most of the officers fled and escaped but we brutally massacred the negroes, the very thing they had planned to do to us by establishing a false truce.

          On April 12, 1865 General Lee surrendered the entire Confederate Army to General Grant. There were no telephones or radios then so it was four days later that we learned of the surrender and ceased fighting.  Barefooted and in rags I walked to my home.  I suffered greatly because my health was broken by the strain and exposures of the war so I came to Arizona in February 1889, thirty-three years ago.

          I camped on a ranch near the Salt River about two miles below Tempe and raised a few chickens for a living and a pastime.  The west was wild at that time and the Americans were being killed by the Apache Indians in the Upper part of the valley.  Occasionally a white man was killed around here so I was always on the alert for the redskins.  One day as I was sitting in my shack I looked out and saw about forty Indians walking slowly about in my yard.  Some naked and some wore a few clothes, but all were armed with bows and arrows or guns.  I sat on my couch, white from fear, with my gun across my lap.  For two hours I underwent indescribable mental tortures with those naked redskins walking about me, peering in at the windows and cracks.  I knew they had come to kill me and I had decided to kill as many of them as I could as soon as they made a bad move.  Presently they all disappeared as suddenly as they had come, but that only frightened me the more for I was sure they had only retreated to make a new and final attack upon me.  I waited but they did not come so I stepped outside and the whole plot was revealed to me.  They had not come to kill me, but to kill rabbits.

          I could see them spread out in a fan shape going through the brush.  As I watched them they gradually gathered at a wooden pen where they killed their game.  They all got on their ponies and as they came back past my shack they stopped and watered their horses in a small irrigation ditch.  I felt greatly relieved as they rode away out of sight.

          After a time of open air living my health was restored and I moved to Tempe where I started a grocery store, but after seven years my health again failed and I gave up my business and came to these granite knolls to die, twenty-three years ago.  The fresh pure air and the beautiful desert flora have aided my good wife to nurse me to health again, so today I am as strong and healthy as anyone.  In fact, I am in my second boyhood.”

          As he finished his story the sun was almost behind the blue mountains in the west.  The few rifting clouds were fading from a delicate pink to beautiful lavender.  Along the mountain tops was a strip of golden clouds and I did not wonder, as I walked down the hill, that such a wonderful surrounding had given him such health and happiness in his old age.  

 

 

 

Transcribed by Hal Perry from a document written by Paul Parry, Oct., 1922 and originally transcribed by hand, by Mary Warner, Sept., 1925 (then age 16).

Notice of 10-year-old Freddie's death in 1898

EA profile from 1921

What was going on in AZ in EA's early days in the state..

In 1877, the Southern Pacific lobbyist in the territorial capital, Tucson, gave Territorial Governor Anson Safford $25,000 to “fix” the legislature.  According to a letter that Safford wrote, he returned $20,000, noting that the railroad had overestimated the legislature’s price. 

In the early 20^th century, when E. A. Tovrea was first getting into politics in AZ as mayor of Jerome, Governor W.P. Hunt said that a governor’s veto could be bought for $2,000.  In 1903, the New York Sun declared Jerome "the wickedest town in the West" due to its many saloons and brothels (http://www.geotimes.org/jan07/Travels0107.html).

Source:  Thomas E. Sheridan.  Arizona:  A history (Tucson:  University of Arizona Press, 2012)

The House at 1318 E Hubbell in Phoenix

1318 E Hubbell St is located south of Thomas Road, and east of 12th Street in Central Phoenix.  Built in 1940 in Womack Heights, the home is 1240 square feet with 1 bathroom.  It is in the Phoenix Elementary School District, just south of North High School.

Edward Tovrea Stalag Papers

This is a copy of Edward Tovrea Paper from the German Stalag!

And here he is in his uniform

Alessio's ad from the newspaper!

This ad is from the Casa Grande Dispatch Thursday March 9 1950

Very Cool!

Have You Seen this Video from April 2012 on Arizona Highways TV

Check out Roger and Eileen M...

http://youtu.be/tZzVns-lboY

The role of Ed Tovrea, grandson of E.A. Tovrea, in the Great Escape

Don Dedera – Arizona Republic – 9-14-1967

“Phoenician Real-Life Organizer of Television’s ‘Great Escape’”

This article recounts the involvement of Ed Tovrea, EA Tovrea’s grandson (oldest son of EA’s son Phil) in the event that would be re-created as the movie “The Great Escape.”  The movie was about to be shown on local TV.

Ed was 21 when he joined the Air Corps early in 1940.  In 1942, after he had shot down his first German plane, his own plane was shot down and he ended up in the English Channel, where he was captured by a German patrol boat.  For the next 33 months, “Ed was consumed by one burning ambition:  to escape.”

           

The column continues...

            As an officer under Geneva rules he was not allowed to work.  He was given standard duties in camp administration.  But his secret, primary responsibility was bossing the X-Committee, which planned and organized escapes.

            “We had tunnels going on all the time,” said Ed.  “We’d start with inventing the trap – the hidden entrance – and if we could build it so well that our own leaders could not find it, we were allowed to continue.

            “Usually we’d dig straight down 25 feet, to get below the range of German listening devices, then strike out horizontally.  We’d have a chamber for storing gear, a chamber for the air pumps, another chamber for storing sand while the tunneling progressed.

            “Sand disposal was our greatest problem.  We literally built roads with it.  Our flower gardens became raised. We flushed the sand down toilets.

            “Our cleverest trap was in the bathroom under a sump covered with water.  The trap of the tunnel of The Great Escape was the barracks stove and its brick foundation, which could be swung off the tunnel entrance.  To discourage German investigators, we kept that stove blistering hot at all times.”

The Americans even built decoy tunnels meant to be discovered by the guards. 

            “We never gave a thought to internal security,” said Ed.  “Americans of that camp were loyal to a man.  In a prison camp, you can fid any talent you need:  Pick-pocket, forger, engineer, photographer.  In the final few weeks before an escape a lot of things had to happen.  Civilian clothing had to be made.  Documents had to be drawn. Every American knew an escape was in the works, but we never had a traitor.

            “Sometimes I think the difference in the record of prisoners of our war and those of later wars was that we knew we were in our war to win.  We weren’t in the thing halfway, and we knew our country was behind us.”

As it happened, Tovrea was transferred to another camp before The Great Escape.  Of the 86 prisoners who made it out, 50 were shot and only 3 were able to reach friendly lines.  Ed was not liberated until the war was over.

While watching “'The Great Escape,'” he said, “I think I’ll be telling myself that I wouldn’t do it again for a million dollars, but I wouldn’t take a million for the memories.”

Cutahy Purchase of Tovrea Meat Packing Company

Found this add recently from the Arizona daily Sun in Flagstaff in the paper dated May 5, 1947. The ad states that Cudahy completed purchase of the Tovrea Packing Company facility on May 3, 1947. I am not sure if this is for the entire company or just a facility in Flagstaff. Has anyone ever found the date that the Tovrea Meat Packing Company in Phoenix was purchased by Cudahy?

More Time in the Castle

Cindy G. and I did the morning tour today, and as we were getting organized, Marie mentioned that a number of evaluations have suggested more time in the castle.  So, we decided to move the family histories into the great room of the castle--the Warners beside their display, EA's story beside his, and the story of Della's time with WP Stuart beside his.  This had the advantage of allowing more time in the castle and less time in the sun.  We also did the basement information in the kitchen, but I think a fair number of folks have already moved the basement info into the castle.

Anyhow, although there were some rough edges since we were making this up as we went along, it seemed to work well, and based on the evaulations, the guests enjoyed it--of course, our tour guests usually seem to enjoy the tours, which is what makes it all so gratifying and so much fun.

Phil1 saves a life...

According to James W. Byrkit in Forging the Copper Collar:  Arizona's Labor-Manaement War 1901-1921 (pp. 238-240) after the kidnapping and "deporting" of anybody that Phelps Dodge felt was remotely involved in union activity, there was still vigilante type stuff going on, including a "kangaroo court" set up by Phelps Dodge--sounds like they maybe actually called it that.

Anyhow, one guy who was never a member of the union, not involved in the strike and therefore not "marked for deportation," had briefly run a pro-union newspaper, so he was still not a man to be trusted and he kept a journal, in which he relates a story about being jailed one day, then being turned over by the sheriff to the Loyalty League and taken by several men on a ride out into the desert in a car driven by Phil Tovrea.  After about an hour they stopped, and "young Tovrea balked at the prospect of becoming a murderer" and said they'd do "the other," which meant beating him senseless and leaving him out there.  The guy did survive, and I have found references to a case that involved Phil and several other men, separate from the main case against EA and all his buddies, but haven't gotten the details yet to know if it was about this incident or something else..  Will keep working on that, but isn't it nice to know Phil1 kept a guy from being murdered?

Yep, EA was divorced from his first wife before marrying Della

According to the marriage certificate that Don and Tamera found a while back, Della and EA were married in Cochise County on December 26, 1908 (not 1906, as we formerly thought).  According to what I found at the State Archives last week, the papers from EA's divorce from his first wife were filed in Cochise County on the same date.  Della and EA's marriage certificate wasn't actually filed until two days later--to make sure there was no chance the marriage could have been "official" before the divorce?

Rob and I were asked on our tour Sunday if there was some sort of significance to the ram's head cornices?   Anybody know?

Is the dress in the Castle Really a copy of Della Dress?

In the main room of the castle is formal black dress that we say is a copy of one of Della's dresses. It was always my understanding that the dress was in the collection of the Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott, so one day I decided to take some time to see if I could find any information on it.

After a bit of research with Google, I locate a page for the museum that included a page for the Della Tovrea Stuart Collection. It is a Facebook page so you may need a facebook page or you may not, the link is

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150964553720122.773982.91039685121&type=3

The first picture is the exact dress we have a copy of in the castle.

So we know for a fact that the one in the castle is truly a copy of an original dress!

From a 1958 interview with Alessio Carraro

AZ Rep – 1-12-58

Interview with Alessio Carraro by Don Dedera

“I had the great dream,” said Carraro.  “I was going to subdivide the land and build fine homes.  The money I lost!  The depression came along and I sold the place in 1931, and today it is all worth millions and millions.”

About the grotto:

“All my life I searched for this place,” he said.  “I wanted to build a grotto.  People told me I couldn’t build a grotto in Arizona, yet here I have built a grotto.”

(about water witching)

"I have the power,” said … Carraro.  “It was given to me directly from up above.”   He held a machete in one hand and a short-handled ax in the other. Chunky, frowning, almost belligerent, he was convincing as all get out...

“I hold a string to a bob.  I sprinkle water on my hand, and the plumb line begins to vibrate, and the water structure of the land for miles around is revealed to me.  It is as clear as television.”

Did you know that E.A.was arrested for kidnapping in 1919?

E.A. was one of the hundreds of Cochise County posse members involved in deporting/kidnapping (depending on your point of view) more than a thousand miners as Phelps Dodge began destroying the power of miners' unions in Arizona.  Here's his arrest record:

http://azmemory.lib.az.us/cdm/compoundobject/collection/ccobisb/id/1080/rec/1

Here's a link to a 2011 article from the AZ Republic about the deportation/kidnapping:

http://www.azcentral.com/travel/articles/2011/08/17/20110817bisbee-deportation-1200-miners-shipped-by-train-new-mexico.html