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American Pioneer &
Cemetery Research Project
Presentation
Version 090207
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John Tewksbury – William
Jacobs Grave
Information on Feud
By Richard Pierce
![](Tewksbury_Jacobs_Master_files/image002.jpg)
Joint graves of John Tewksbury and William Jacobs. c.
1997
Buried together – when the bodies were found,
decomposition made moving them impossible.
Photo Courtesy: Jim McBride
A single grave and two bodies, the corpse’s had already
started to decompose and likely had been gnawed on by some critters in the area
by the time they were found and buried.
As the photos sort of show below , you can't see the James
Dunning Tewksbury cabin from the site of the murders, but the tail is that the
Graham faction kept the people in the cabin pinned down with a "withering
fire" for several days.
Any one with an good-eye who has stood on the ground there,
will tell you it was not likely! Like a Tewksbury
descendent said, who would set around waiting on Ed Tewksbury? Especially after
killing his older brother.
![](Tewksbury_Jacobs_Master_files/image010.jpg)
The old Tewksbury ranch photo Courtesy William D. Brown a Tewksbury descendent.
Actually a descendent
of John Tewksbury, buried in the grave
The old J.D. Tewksbury place was at the confluence of Cherry
Creek and Couch Creek.
Mrs. Crouch was tending J.D. who was sick at the time of the
killings. The Crouch family lived up near the headwaters of Crouch Creek and
she was a school teacher at a point in time.
Section 10, T8N, R14E on the Tonto map, but they no longer
show the grave on the new map nor do they show the road going to the fence, but
it does. then you have to walk down to the grave, half mile or so... ?
Courtesy:
The
Pleasant Valley War
Arizona, The Youngest State
McClintock,
1913, page 484
Ed Tewksbury as it turns out, was the last man in the bitter
Arizona range
feud of the 1880s and 1890s. Historians list from 19 to 30 men as casualties in
the vendetta between the cattle-ranching Grahams and the sheep-raising Tewksbury’s and their
friends.
Two Graham brothers died in an ambush. The surviving
brother, Tom Graham, left Pleasant Valley in 1887 and moved to Tempe to homestead a farm near the city. He
was shot in the back and killed in 1892 while hauling grain to the Tempe Flour
Mill. Some witnesses identified Ed Tewksbury as his slayer.
Ed Tewksbury was tried two times for Tom Graham's murder.
The first trial resulted in a hung jury. The second trial ended in conviction.
Because of a legal technicality the verdict was deferred and in 1895 the case
was dismissed.
On his return to Globe, Tewksbury
married the former Brawley Lopez. But he was in failing health as a result of
illness contracted during the three years he spent in jails in Phoenix
and Tucson. Ed
Tewksbury died in 1904. The community of Globe held a dance, and the proceeds
were turned over to his widow and four children.
One of the bloodiest features of Arizona's history was the Pleasant Valley
War or Tonto Basin War. It began with
the driving southward from near Flagstaff
of several bands of
sheep, reputed to have been the property of the Daggs
brothers. Theretofore, the Rim of the
Mogollons had been considered the "dead line" south of which no sheep
might come. There were allegations at
the time that the Tewksbury
brothers had been employed to take care of any trouble that might materialize
over the running of sheep out of bounds.
At first there seemed to be little active opposition, but early in 1885
a Mexican sheepherder was killed. The
opposition centered around the Graham family to which gathered a considerable
number of cowboys and cattlemen.
Tom Graham later told how at first he tried to use a form of
moral persuasion. Not wishing to kill
anyone, there would be a wait till the sheepherder began the preparation of his
evening meal and then, from the darkness Graham would drop a bullet through the
frying pan or coffee pot. This
intimation out of the night usually was effective in inducing the herder to
forget his hunger and to move his band very early the next morning.
Several old residents of the Tonto Basin
section decided that twenty-nine men had been killed in the war and that twenty
two graves of men of the graham faction could be found in the vicinity of the
old Stinson ranch. Only four of the Tewksbury’s died, but the
most awful feature of all was the manner of the death of two of them. John Tewksbury and one Jacobs had brought in
bands of sheep "on shares."
Both were ambushed near the former's home and killed. Their bodies, in sight of the house were left
to be devoured by hogs, while members of the Tewksbury family were kept away by a shower
of bullets from a hillside on which the Grahams watched. Finally Deputy Sheriff John Meadows entered
the valley, to bury what was left, defiant of the wrath of the Grahams. The Tewksbury’s
were half bloods, their mother a California Indian and it is probably their
actions thereafter were based upon the Indian code of revenge. Few were left of
the Blevins family of the Graham faction.
The men shot at Holbrook by Sheriff Owens were active
Grahamites. The elder Blevins was killed
in the hills near the Houdon ranch and a skeleton found in after years is
assumed to have been his. Al Rose was killed
at the Houdon ranch by a party of a dozen Tewksbury’s
as he was leaving the house in the early morning. The favorite mode of assassination was from
ambush on the side of a trail.
One of the last episodes was the hanging of three of the
Graham faction, Scott, Stott and Wilson, on the Rim of the Mogollons by a large
party of Tewksbury’s. The three had been charged, possibly
correctly, with wounding a Tewksbury
partisan named Laufer and summary retribution was administered by hanging them
on pine trees, hauled up by hand, with ropes brought for the purpose.
John Graham and Charles Blevins were shot from their horses
in the fall of 1886 by a posse from Prescott,
headed by Sheriff William Mulvenon, as the riders were approaching under the
impression that the officers had departed from a mountain store in which the
visitors still were in hiding. Both were
mortally wounded. Mulvenon made several
trips into the Basin. There was a bloody
battle at the Newton
ranch, which had been burned and abandoned.
Two cowboys, John Paine and Hamilton Blevins, had been killed at the Newton ranch, while
William Graham had been ambushed and killed on the Payson Trail. George Newton, formerly a Globe jeweler, was
drowned in Salt River, while on his way to his
ranch and it was thought at the time he had been shot from his horse, though
this is not now believed. His body never
was found, though his widow offered a reward of $10,000 for its recovery. Sheriff O'Neill of Yavapai County
led a posse into the valley but most of the damage had then been done.
Resident in the vicinity was J.W. Ellison, one of the
leading citizens of the basin. He states
that at first the Grahams had the sympathy of the settlers, all of whom owned
cattle and appreciated the danger to their range from the incursion of
locust-like wandering sheep bands. But
the fighting soon became too warm for any save those immediately
interested, for the factions hunted each other as wild
beasts might have been hunted. Mr.
Ellison frankly states that he saw as little of the trouble as he could and is
pleased that
he managed to avoid being drawn into the controversy.
In the end the Tewksbury’s
were victorious, with a death list of only four. One of the fleeing grahams was Charlie
Duchet, a fighter from the plains. He
had celebrity from an affray in which he and an enemy were provided with Bowie
knives and were locked together in a dark room.
It was Duchet who emerged but permanently crippled by awful slashes on
his hands and arms.
The end of the war was the killing of Tom Graham. His clan about all gone, in 1892 he had fled
from Tonto Basin
and had established himself and his young wife on a farm southwest of Tempe. He had harvested his first crop of grain and
was hauling a load of barley to town.
When about opposite the Double Butte school house he was shot from
ambush and his body fell backward upon the grain. The deep was witnessed by two young women,
named Gregg and Cummings, who positively identified Ed Tewksbury as one of the
murderers. A.J. Steneel, a Winslow
cowboy, later declared that he had met
Tewksbury, riding hard on the
Reno Road
on his way back to Pleasant
Valley, 120 miles, whence
a strong alibi later was produced. Tewksbury and one of his
henchmen, John Rhodes, were arrested and charged with the crime. Rhodes was
discharged at a preliminary hearing before a Phoenix Justice of the Peace,
after a dramatic attempt on his
life by Graham's widow.
She tried to draw from her reticule her husband's heavy revolver, but
the hammer of the weapon caught, giving time for her disarmament.
Tewksbury
was found guilty of murder in the first degree, although well defended. His
attorneys, however, found that his plea of "not guilty" had not been
entered on the record of the District Court and so the verdict was set
aside. There was a second trial, at Tucson, on change of venue at an expense probably of
$20,000 to Maricopa
County, resulting in a
hung jury. Over 100 witnesses had been
called. Then the case was dismissed. Tewksbury died in Globe in
1904 where for a while he had served as a peace officer.
Soon after the Graham murder, a lad named Yost was
assassinated while traveling through Reno
Pass, on the Tonto Basin
road. There was general belief at the
time
that the murder had been committed by the Apache Kid, but it
was considered significant that Yost had been connected with the Graham
faction.
![](Tewksbury_Jacobs_Master_files/image006.jpg)
James McBride beside grave/s of John Tewksbury and
William Jacobs
Photograph c. 1997
![](Tewksbury_Jacobs_Master_files/image021.jpg)
Dick Pierce beside grave/s of John Tewksbury and
William Jacobs. C. 1997
Photo Courtesy: Jim McBride
![](Tewksbury_Jacobs_Master_files/image022.jpg)
Looking toward cabin. C. 1997
Photo Courtesy: Jim McBride
![](Tewksbury_Jacobs_Master_files/image012.jpg)
Grave site of John Tewksbury and William Jacobs. Photo
taken in 1997
Photo Courtesy: Jim McBride
![](Tewksbury_Jacobs_Master_files/image023.jpg)
Looking toward cabin – in front of graves. Can’t see
the current ranch or the old ranch. C. 1997
Photograph courtesy: Jim McBride
![](Tewksbury_Jacobs_Master_files/image024.jpg)
Walking to and from the grave we could see the current
ranch house.
The old ranch house is out of site behind what you see
here.
Photo Courtesy: Jim McBride
![](Tewksbury_Jacobs_Master_files/image018.jpg)
Roof from near grave, roof is of newer ranch house.
The old ranch house is around behind the hill and cannot be seen from the
graves. Water tank on top of the hill, old ranch to the right at bottom of
hill. Photo Courtesy Jim McBride. C. 1997
By: Richard Pierce
This was the
largest feud ever in the USA
. . . Hatfield/McCoy was well known and documented deaths could run only 10-12.
The Lincoln County
war in New Mexico
was only another 10-12 people dead. The Johnson County War in Wyoming was only 5-7 dead.
The Graham/Tewksbury feud happened in what was and is a remote area of a
remote state and the documented dead is 21 as I see it. Others talk 30-50
but without documentation . . . I can document 21.
The area over
around Young, Arizona
aka Pleasant Valley is still remote even today. The road in from the north is
25 miles of dirt road, from the south is 45 miles of dirt road . . . although
there is some paving around some private homes in the area.
The Young, Arizona residents are or
did vote on getting all the road from the north paved. Old timer say no, new
guys say yes . . . we will see!
![](Tewksbury_Jacobs_Master_files/image008.jpg)
Map Courtesy: Dick Pierce
ADDITONAL REFERENCES
1) Barnes,
Will Croft, Apaches and Longhorns
Reprint: The University of Arizona
Press, Tucson, Arizona,1988
2) Hanchett,
Jr., Leland J., Arizona's
Graham/Tewksbury Feud
Pine Rim Publishing, Phoenix, Arizona,
1993
3) Dedera,
Don, A Little War of Our Own: The Pleasant Valley Feud Revisited.
Northland Press, Copyright © 1988
Don Dedera
4) Forrest,
Earle R., Arizona's Dark and Bloody Ground
The University
of Arizona Press, Tucson, Arizona
These are the books about the feud directly . . .
Forrest wrote in the 1930's and had contact with many of those involved.
Will Croft Barnes lived it and wrote exaggerated fiction
style, why I don't know, the "style" of the time was the dime
novel and I guess larger that life was in order. A shame as far as I
am concerned . . . Will Croft Barnes knew so much and wrote so well and
could not bring himself to tell the straight story, at all.
Zane Grey also wrote of the feud, but that was pure fiction.
Amelia Bean also wrote a fictional account and the shame is
that they are serving as references to others.
Drusilla Butler married George Hazelton in 1938 and his
family was nearly involved in the feud but they moved to Liberty(west
of Phoenix) an
farmed. The rumors and stories abounded amongst the family members so Drusilla
wrote them down and had it typed up and it ended up in the archives
of the Arizona Historical Society in Tucson. Many reference some of her ramblings,
but the least bit of research proves they are just gross family stories handed
down with no first hand knowledge of the feud.
Such is the world of history!
Be careful out there.
Additional Information: http://www.pleasantvalleywar.com/index.html
American Pioneer &
Cemetery Research Project
Internet Presentation
Version 090207
All rights reserved, ©
2007 APCRP
WebMaster: Neal Du
Shane
n.j.dushane@apcrp.org
HOME | BOOSTER | CEMETERIES | EDUCATION
| GHOST TOWNS
| HEADSTONE
MINOTTO
| PICTURES
| ROADS
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| TEN DAY TRAMPS