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CHAPTER XII.

SALT RIVER VALLEY PROGRESS (Continued).

GRAY-FIRST

NARRATIVE OF MRS. MARY A. GRAY

WHITE WOMAN IN VALLEY-DARRELL
DUPPA THOMAS THOMPSON HUNTER
BRINGS IN FIRST HERD OF CATTLE-REMINIS-
CENCES EARLY SETTLERS DESCRIPTION OF
PIMA AND MARICOPA SQUAWS GATHERING
WOOD-ALFILERILA FLATS-CATERPILLARS—
BIOGRAPHY OF THOMAS THOMPSON HUNTER-
MORE EARLY SETTLERS LATER VISIT-NOTES
DOMESTICATION OF INDIANS EARLY MAR-
RIAGES IN VALLEY-CAPTAIN WILLIAM A.
HANCOCK, BIOGRAPHY-HON. JOHN T. AL-
SAP, BIOGRAPHY-SIMON NOVINGER, BIOG-

RAPHY.

Columbus H. Gray and Mary A. Gray, his wife, were the first permanent settlers on the north side of the Salt River Valley. C. H. Gray, or "Lum" Gray, as he was known, was a very active citizen during his life. At one time he was a member of the legislature, and he was always, more or less, a miner and prospector. Careless in money matters; a man of strong passions, true to his friends and vindictive to his enemies, naturally he had close friends and bitter enemies. His widow is a typical pioneer woman, and has resided in one place on their ranch just south of Phoenix for nearly fifty years. At the time of his death, Mr. Gray was interested in mining properties about ten miles

[graphic][merged small]

west of Ehrenberg, in California. The following interview with Mrs. Gray gives much first hand information in regard to the settlement of Phoenix and the Salt River Valley:

"We came into the valley on the 18th of August, 1868. I was about the first white woman in the valley. The Adams family arrived on their way to California when we came here. Sheriff Jeff Adams was a little boy then. Another family named Rowe came in here. We came and settled. The others were only camping here. They went off, and then some of them came back. I have been a constant resident on this ranch for forty-eight years since the 18th of August, 1868, and am now left alone. I am seventy-one years old.

"I have seen many changes in this valley. Mr. Gray helped take out the canal which was a part of the old Swilling Ditch. When we came in 1868, they had taken out a little water; it ran for two or three miles. They had planted some corn, beans, pumpkins, and anything they could get to plant. That was in 1868, the first crops raised here. It was mostly men in the valley then. There were no families. Swilling's wife was in Tucson. I was the first white woman to settle in the valley and stay here. I remember that when I went to court to give my evidence in the water rights case, I was in a hurry to get away, but the judge called me back and asked me if I was in the same place, and when I said that I was, he said that I was about the only one that was.

"The first church established here was the South Methodist Church. The first minister

that came into this valley to preach was McKean. Groves came next. When Groves came they had no church, and he preached in different places. He preached in our house for one thing; that was when we lived in the old adobe. I think it was about 1870 or 1871-'70 I guess.

"My husband and myself came in 1868 across the plains, the railroad didn't come until 1869. We were on our way to Northern California, where Mr. Gray had mined when a boy. If we had had an idea that the Central railroad would have been through to California in another year, we would have waited until it was completed. In 1878, when I went home over the northern route, the Southern Pacific had got to Yuma; there we met the train from here.

"I don't remember any of the old settlers who remain, if any do. They were kind of loose; there is none of them that stayed any length of time. Irvine was about the first, and the Osborns came in 1869. They kept dropping in.

"We went broke in the dry year of 1891-92. Mr. Gray had over fifty head of stock die, and we couldn't get water enough to irrigate two acres that dry year. We had a wind mill pump and a hand pump in the well. We first got water about twenty-one or twenty-two feet down, but that year we had to keep adding pipe until we got down about forty feet.

"Mr. Gray started to build a building for the Masonic Hall, on Jefferson and First Streets, and then sold it to the Goldwaters. Goldwater afterwards told me that 'Fools build and wise men occupy.' He told me they should have

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