Trinidad Swilling

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American Pioneer & Cemetery Research Project

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LIBRARY OF J.H. McCLINTOCK

Statement

MRS. TRINIDAD SHOEMAKER

(Formerly Mrs. Jack Swilling)

Taken at the residence of Mrs. Shoemaker, one mile West of Central Avenue, on the South side of Salt River, at 4:00 P.M. March 2d, 1923.

PRESENT: C.M. Gandy, J.D. Adams, and E.E. Johnson, Stenographer.

“My first house on the Agua Fria was made of rock, it was right there at the edge of the road, coming to Phoenix, and right close before you go down to the Agua Fria; there was a house on one side within a hundred feet of when you go down to the bank of the river; that was my house and my first house.

We lived at Gillette (sic) (correct spelling Gillett), too, I don’t know just when we moved there. We was in Gillette (sic) two years before Jack died. I have never been back up in that country where I first lived. When Mr. Swilling was in jail at Prescott I crossed there but did not stop. I have a child buried there; it was not a regular grave yard, there was only my child, a man that got killed and an Indian, I suppose he died on the ranch. Mr. Stephens had the ranch, and I had lots of trouble with Mrs. Stephens; she took everything and never gave me much there for my own cows. The boy (Indian) was working on the ranch, and so these are the three buried there. My child, a man named Tom and the India. Tom, I do not know his other name, was prospecting, he had trouble with another man about some burros and they got to fighting and one killed the other. I think also Col. Snively is buried in that grave yard, because Mr. Swilling went and got his bones when we were living in Gillette, and I think he buried him there. He used to live with us at the house (in Phoenix?). He was killed over by Wickenburg some place by the Indians, I don’t know the name of the place. (White Picacho Mountain). We know he was killed because his mule came back alone to Phoenix; he used to rid a mule. He lived next to my house on the way between Tempe and Phoenix, and he went prospecting there and the Indians come along and dilled him. My house was the other side of the old mill, there is a big house on the other side of the mill to the right; they say some part of the walls are there falling; it is on the side where they call it Acre City, and was where Col. Snively started from, and his horse came back to the place; Then Mr. Swilling got some men and went and looked for him and found him, and so he was buried there.

At that time Lord Dupper used to live up town; sometimes in one place and sometimes in another, on the ranches, he lived that way, he never had a place; he had lots of friends and would stay one wee, two weeks, and this is the way he lived, first on and then another. We just called him Lord, because he said he was, everybody called him Lord Dupper, never called him Dupper, only called him Lord, never called him anything else. He died in Phoenix. There was no name for the settlement at the mill; they had an election there and that was where they put the name Phoenix, they didn’t have any name before that, they found the name in the dictionary, looked in the dictionary and found Phoenix, and they put the name of Phoenix.

Jack and I were married in Tucson; we went to Walnut Grove from Tucson, Mr. Swilling had a claim there on the other side, that big mountain called Weaver; that was before I married him, but I knew Pauline Weaver because he was in the house where I lived in Walnut Grove. He used to live with another family, the two had a partner; when Jack and I went to Walnut Grove, Weaver had a ranch there; after that we left Walnut Grove, he couldn’t work the place because there was too much water, and he want to Wickenburg, and from Wickenburg he came here; that was when Jack dug the ditch; it was a big company.

I came from Hermosillo to Tucson, and from there I went every place; I was born in Hermosilla, and have never been back since I left; I don’t remember the year we move up to the Black Canyon, but it must have been about three or four years before he died; we went from Tucson to Walnut Grove and stayed there one year; and then went to Wickenburg and stayed there for quite a while, maybe two or three years, and then we moved to Phoenix; we must have been living at Gillette (sic) in 1877 because that is where they arrested him, and he died in 1878; he died about six months after he was arrested. I think it was less than a month before he was arrested that the brought Col. Snively’s remains; that is what he started off for. There was lots of trouble in Gillette for me, but he wanted to get the remains and he brought them. He was drinking very had at that time; I don’t think it was a month after he buried Col. Snively before he was arrested; I didn’t go to the burial, but it must be where my child is buried. I don’t know how far it was from the ranch, but we were living in Gillette when he took Col. Snively’s remains to where my child is and buried him in the same place, that is at the ranch at Agua Fria. He first brought the bones to Gillette, I saw the bones, and I used to have a Indian stone arrow head they got from the inside of the Colonel’s head; I had it for a long time, when I went to California someone broke into my trunk, they took everything, and I suppose that head was in the papers and looking at the papers it got lost, or I lost in out of the letters maybe. The arrow head was found inside of his skull. Col. Snively was an awful nice man, used to be nice at my place, where he stayed a long time. I don’t think he was the same Snively that was captured by the Government on the Santa Fe trail as an express robber and afterwards turned loose. This Col. Snively was a nice man. I don’t know which direction the cemetery is from the house, maybe it was East, but one side of the road there was the cemetery. I know that the river comes together there where I used to live, the Agua Fria and the Black Canyon, the road used to be there when I lived there, coming down from my place you go in the Agua Fria and then the Black Canyon comes together. When he went up to Prescott he would go in the Black Canyon until he got up on the mountain. When you down from my house you go down this Black Canyon and on top of the mountain from Black Canyon; you to up and look to the left and you can see the hole and not very far from the road, they used to call that Swilling road. It is not twenty feet from my place to where the Agua Fria and the Black Canyon come together. There was no other house when I was living there; there was no other house until you get to New River; that is the only house from where I lived on the Black Canyon, except a place they used to call Antelope.

We got water out of the Agua Fria; Mr. Swilling made a ditch and somebody told me I had a claim on it. Right in front we used to have a place where we had a crop of corn, pumpkins and watermelons, and that is where the ditch comes; he cut a ditch from the Agua Fria, and he cut the hill and brought the water to the house, but after he put the water in, the hill caved and covered the ditch so we never used it again. That is the ditch Mr. Swilling made and somebody told me I had a claim on it. I don’t know who it was, perhaps Capt. Hancock, he is the one that surveyed Phoenix.

Gillette was on the other side of the river and maybe five miles or more below the stone house; we had to cross the creek to go to Gillette. When Jack took Snively’s remains up to the ranch George Monroe was with him and another man named Sanders or something; George Monroe killed old man Lough. At a meeting Mrs. Gray claimed that she was the first white woman here and I claimed it was Mrs. Lough, because no woman was here before here except me; I don’t claim that, because I don’t claim to be white. Mrs. Swilling helped to bring Mrs. Lough because they were very poor; I was the first one here but they don’t call Mexicans white; I came from Sonora and they call me Mexican, but it was Mrs. Lough that came next; Mr. Swilling met him on the road, they has lost all they had, they used to have wagons and oxen, but all the oxen died and they had the cows and wagons, and the cows were very poor, so Mr. Swilling went to Globe and sent a wagon to help him to town, and then they mover here; then they moved up on the Verde. One time I went from here to Prescott, I think Mr. Swilling come the same way, but we passed in the night so I don’t know how it was there: nobody was there I think when I passed.

WebMaster: Neal Du Shane

070507

n.j.dushane@apcrp.org

MINOTTO |PICTURES | ROADS | JACK SWILLING | TEN DAY TRAMPS