I think that after having read the newspaper articles in the last post we are getting to know W. C. pretty well now. (If you haven't read the previous post, you should go back and do that now!) Since we don't see him again in the census records until 1920, it will be interesting to see what he was up to during his time in Scottsdale.
Before we get started, let's review what we already know about those years:
From the newspaper articles:
W. C. left Duncan for "Phoenix country" at the end of January 1912.
From the voter registrations:
In 1914, W. C. was living in Maricopa County, farming.
In 1916, he was ranching.
In 1918, he was living in Scottsdale and farming again.
By 1920 he had moved on to Laveen.
In addition to finding out what W. C. was doing in Scottsdale, I'm also hoping to discover when exactly he moved out to Laveen.
Just a reminder, you can click on the date in each heading to see and download the full page of the newspaper, click on the article itself to view larger/download, and visit the left-hand menu under Newspaper Links to get the links to the online edition the article came from.
Here we go!
1913
The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
18 Jul 1913
So, this article is from July of 1913, which is about a year and a half after W. C. left Duncan. We can see that he is farming cotton, since that is what he received second place for. ( I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that Buffalo Gap, Texas was big for cotton farming, so I guess he got his start there.)
I included the entire first section of the article for two reasons: first, so you can see what this type of event was like, and second, because at the end of the first column it tells us that the 1st prize winner for cotton had 103 boles on a single stalk, making it the obvious winner. (Hopefully W. C. didn't feel too bad not winning after seeing that!) Here is a picture of what Phoenix City Hall looked like around this time - the article says this is where the event took place. It must have been a grand spectacle!
If you notice, although some exhibitors have their city listed after their name, W. C. has none listed under the awards section, and in the list of exhibitors above, it just says "city." I am going to deduce that this means "Phoenix," since the event took place in Phoenix and also because the article says, "C. T. Hirst of this city..." So, I am also going to deduce that when W. C. first moved away from Duncan, he settled in Phoenix before moving to Scottsdale, where we found him on the 1918 voter registration list.
The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
7 Aug 1913
This article is just reporting again on the prize winners from the Farmer's Day fair. But check out what it says after W. C.'s name: "R. No. 1, Phoenix, Arizona." Oh, my deduction skills are quite good, aren't they? So now we know for sure that in 1913 W. C. was living in Phoenix, not Scottsdale. (I tried looking online to see if I could find out where Route 1 was at the time, but even though it seems like you can find everything on the internet, as soon as you search for something super specific like that you realize that it's just not true.)
You know, after I posted that article I got to thinking (I had to take a break from working on this blog, hence the time spent thinking): when I was on the Arizona State Archives website, I was looking for W. C. on the land ownership plat maps. I couldn't find him during this time. Probably because I was looking in the Scottsdale area. So I decided to look back at those maps in the Phoenix area, and guess what? I found him!
There he is, outlined in orange. (Okay, I'll be honest with you all. I would never have found this on my own. While searching online, I came across the transcript of a newspaper article (I couldn't view the actual article) saying there was a deed transfer to W. C. Cheatham, and it said it was section 15 of 1N 3E, so I knew where to go back and look.) Anyway, each section is one square mile, which has four parts of 160 acres. Since W. C.'s plat is about a quarter or so of one quarter of one section, that would mean he owned about 10 acres of land right there. Right there where, exactly? Well, since there are no street names, I had to use the clues on the map. The first clue was Wilson School, right in the upper right corner of section 15. The other clues were the Central Avenue Bridge, the Salt River, and the 'Insane Asylum.' So I was able to figure out that it was just south of what is now Sky Harbor Airport, basically in the floodplain of the river. If you want to see the entire map, click on the title below the picture and it will take you directly to the website where you can enlarge it and view it in high quality.
Remember how I said a while back that studying history is a circular pursuit? I think this is the perfect example. This post is supposed to be covering newspaper articles, but those led to new questions and answers, so here we are with something else. And guess what? For some reason I decided just now to look back at the voter registration from 1914. I didn't even notice before that for "Residence" it says "Wilson." This must be referring to the Wilson precinct (you know, because Wilson School is right there near his land. I don't think I would have known what to make of that if I hadn't seen this map). And, I know we are only in 1913 with the articles so far, but the 1916 voter registration just so happens to say "R #1, Phx." I didn't notice that when I was looking at that document before, because you actually have to look on the previous page to find it. It is such a good thing I am writing this blog!)
So I think it is safe to say that for sure, W. C. was living in Phoenix between 1913 and 1916, not in Scottsdale. Okay, then. Let's get back to the newspaper articles!
1914
The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
28 Jan 1914
Here is the article that I mentioned I had the transcript of. (I got the actual article when I went to the state archives.)
The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
22 Feb 1914
Yes, I know this article is very long, and W. C. doesn't show up until the end. This was actually an entire two page spread all about the Knights of Pythias, celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the order. I couldn't even clip the headline it was so enormous. I put the first part on there just in case any of you wanted to know a little more about W. C.'s club. (Notice that he is a member of the Phoenix lodge - it seems the evidence for him living in Phoenix is all over the place now!)
1915
The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
28 Jan 1915
So this is a pretty boring article, being the minutes from the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors from two months prior. The article actually took up two whole pages of the newspaper, so I clipped out and pieced together the relevant parts. Why are all of these parts relevent when W. C.'s name is only in the last portion? Well, the first two parts are to show you what the article was about. I originally clipped out just the last portion, and when I looked at it just now (about three weeks later), I had no idea what it was about. So I redid it. Annnnnnd, the article is about who the county paid for working during the elections in November of 1914. Notice that W. C. was a clerk of the elections for the Wilson Precinct, not the Scottsdale precinct. He was paid $14.00 (equivalent to about $350 today), which is more than twice the amount he was paid for doing the same thing in Greenlee county three years before.
1918
The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
8 Jan 1918
You'll notice that there is a gap of almost exactly three years between this article and the last one. I don't know exactly what W. C. was doing. Growing cotton and hanging out with his fellow Knights, I guess. Oh! I just remembered . . . .
Well, look there. W. C. bought some of his neighbor's land, so now he has about 25 acres right there in Phoenix. The map is dated July 1 at the bottom, so that tells us that he was still in Phoenix in the middle of 1917. So much for the whole moving from Duncan to Scottsdale to Laveen story.
Anyway, three years seems like a long time to just drop off the radar. I'm guessing that maybe there are newspaper articles out there, but I just didn't find them. I can tell you this, however:
In November of 1913, there was a deed filed in Greenlee County for land that W. C.'s son Shelton sold. By November of 1916, Shelton was in Phoenix, and by June of 1918, he shows up in Scottsdale. W. C.'s son Leonard shows up in Phoenix during September of 1916, and his son Elmer shows up there in December of 1917. (I will probably put all of those articles up when I am finished with W. C.) Anyway, I guess maybe he was spending his time farming and helping to get his sons moved over from Duncan and settled.
The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
15 Oct 1918
This article comes ten months after the previous one, so, once again, I'm guessing maybe I've just missed some articles. Or, I have to remind myself, the population of Phoenix was much, much larger than that of Duncan, so the newspaper is not going to be mentioning each resident as often as in a small town paper. Also, now that I think about it - there may be a couple of other reasons why we don't hear about him:
First, you'll notice that the case this article is about makes reference to the governor of Arizona's comments on the war. That would be World War I. I have articles showing his son's names on the draft roll for Maricopa County, so maybe W. C. was a bit preoccupied.
And second, you'll also notice that the article mentions the Spanish influenza epidemic. In case you didn't know, in 1918 there was a flu pandemic that infected a third of the world's population and killed 20 to 50 million people. In Arizona alone, it is estimated that there were 6000 deaths from the Spanish flu during that year (see an article about it here). In fact, the wife of W. C.'s son Elmer died of the influenza just two months after this article was published. I haven't casually perused all of the newspapers from 1918, but I would guess that maybe people were lying low and keeping to themselves as much as possible for the duration of the epidemic. The following references to the influenza outbreak were found in the same newspaper as this article:
Whew! The majority of the newspaper was devoted to the war, but as you can see, the influenza epidemic figured prominently. Out of the ten pages of this newspaper, there were about five stories total that weren't either advertisements or about the war or flu. The articles mention the closing of schools and places where people gather, so I guess nobody had much going on during that year.
1919
The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa, AZ)
27 Jan 1919
I don't know for sure that this is our Cheatham, but it seems likely that it is either W. C. or Shelton (or maybe both if they were living together - Shelton wasn't married yet), since they were both reported previously that they were ranchers. It is also possible that it could have been Elmer, I guess. What is certain, however, is that influenza was still a big problem.
(Update: I later found another article from Oct. 1918 reporting on the Scottsdale district that said Mr. Cheatham was going to move to the Six Points area (along Grand Ave in Phx.) and lease his ranch to Mr. Jones. That tells us that this Cheatham ranch was in Scottsdale, so it could be W. C. or Shelton, but I have a later document showing Elmer's address as being on Grand Ave, so that article had to be referring to him. Maybe they all lived on the ranch together, or there was more than one Cheatham ranch in Scottsdale.)
Well, that's about all I found for W. C.'s time in the Phoenix area. I have a couple more articles, but they are from, like, 1921, when he is already in Laveen, so I'm going to hold off on those for a bit. So, to review what we learned today:
After leaving Duncan at the very beginning of 1912, W. C. settled in Phoenix (not Scottsdale).
He owned land and farmed cotton, and was "ranching" as well.
He was still active in the Knights of Pythias.
Although he worked the 1914 election as a clerk, he did not run for a political seat like he did in Duncan.
W. C. still owned land in Phoenix in 1917.
W. C. was living in Scottsdale in the middle of 1918, but we don't know exactly when he moved there. (I did not find a single article placing him in Scottsdale, even though he registered to vote there in May of 1918.)
We still don't know exactly when W. C. moved on to Laveen.
In my next post, we are going to backtrack to New Mexico and see what we can find out about W. C.'s time there.
- Therese
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