Not Quite Finished After All:

William Calvin Cheatham, part 18


This post was supposed to be wrapping up W. C. with a timeline summarizing what we have discovered about his life, but . . . I've been spending the past several days looking up new documents instead of reading through my posts and making a timeline.

Why have I been doing this?  Well, I want my timeline to be neat and tidy - I don't want it to be saying "sometime after something" or "circa something" or "at least by something."  I really hate that!

So, the whole moving to Laveen question must have been subconsciously bothering me, because a few days ago when my alarm went off at 5:00 a.m., my first though was I can't believe I have to get up already and my second thought was, hey wait a minute - if there is an index to deeds for Graham and Greenlee counties, wouldn't there also be one for Maricopa county?  Maybe that will help me find out when they moved?  (I know, it was really weird that the thought just popped into my head like 30 seconds after I woke up!)

Anyway, I got up, and I looked online, and sure enough, I found that the FamilySearch website had the index and deed books (up through 1921) on microfilm and I was like Woohoo!  Answers!  So easy!  But really, when has W. C. ever made things easy in my research?  This was no exception, because it only took finding three deeds before things started to get crazy!

I first searched for the name Cheatham on the Grantee list.

Here is the first one that I found:

Warranty Deed, Baycroft to W. C. Cheatham, 1913

(N 1/2 of S 1/2 of NW 1/4 of SW 1/4 of Section 15, T1N R3E)

This is actually for that land in Phoenix near the current location of Sky Harbor Airport.  It was the first land W. C. purchased after leaving Duncan.  (If you remember, I put that up in my post here.)

I had to double check the map to see if this was the right amount of land:

Maricopa County Land Ownership Plat Map, 1914

(Section 15, T1N R3E)

So, if we work backwards with the description, this IS in the SW 1/4 of section 15, it IS in the NW 1/4 of that portion, it IS in the S 1/2 of that portion, and it IS in the N 1/2 of that portion.  So, yep.  The two match exactly.

W. C. paid $2,200 (almost $57,000 today, but real estate seems to have been much less expensive back then) for the land and water rights (which included the ditch rights).

The next deed I looked at was this:

Quit-Claim Deed, G. Goggins to W. C. Cheatham, 1919

(NE 1/4 of SW 1/4 of Section 9, T1S R2E)

This is dated February 1, 1919.  Woohoo!  That pushes our definitive date earlier!  Let's check the map and see if it matches what he had in 1923.

Maricopa County Land Ownership Plat Map, 1923

(Section 9, T1S R2E)

This shows W. C. owning the NE 1/4 of the NW 1/4 of Section 9.  The deed above is for the NE 1/4 of the SW 1/4.  So, not the same.  The section the deed describes is the one labeled H. D. Hunts.  Of course, this map is from more than three years later so that's time for things to change.

The next deed I found was from 1916.  If you recall, the 1917 map for Phoenix showed that W. C. had acquired more land in the same area:

So I assumed that the 1916 deed was for this new tract of land, because this is all the index shows us:

 I read the property description on the deed and said . . .

Warranty Deed, S. Hudgins to W. C. Cheatham, 1916

(NE 1/4 of SW 1/4 of Section 9, T1S R2E)

Wait a minute.  This is in Laveen.  And it is dated 1916, which is a problem.  And it's a deed for the same exact parcel of land as in the deed I just looked at, that he bought later, in 1919, which is another problem!

Let's tackle the first problem.  This shows W. C. purchasing the land in Laveen on October 28, 1916.  But the land ownership plat maps show that W. C. owned land in Phoenix during this time. (I don't know how likely it would be for him to have been farming both at the same time.)  In 1914, W. C. registered to vote in the Wilson district in Phoenix, which is where his land was located.  In May of 1916, he registered to vote again in Phoenix, this time with a location shown as "Rt. 1, Phx."  (I double-checked the voter registrations just to make sure this wasn't Laveen, and discovered that as early as 1914 Laveen was listed as "Laveen.")  Then, in May of 1918, W. C. registered to vote in Scottsdale.  Also, look at this:

The Coconino Sun
(Flagstaff, Coconino County, AZ)
11 Jan 1918

W. C. applied for a brand while living in Scottsdale in 1918.  So even though he owned land in Laveen, I don't think he was actually living there yet in 1916.

And the second problem?  How did W. C. get the same piece of land from two different people more than two years apart?   Well, I never did find anything suggesting that W.C. sold the land which then somehow made its way back to him.  So who knows?

 And then I found this:

Quit-Claim Deed, G. Goggins to Shelton C. Cheatham, 1919

(NW 1/4 of NE 1/4 of Section 17, T1S R2E)

This deed transfers land rights from Goggins to Shelton Cheatham on January 27, 1919.  This was less than a week after he sold land to W. C.

And here is that location on the 1923 map (owned by A. D. by then):

Maricopa County Land Ownership Plat Map, 1923

(Section 17, T1S R2E)

Then I found this:

Quit-Claim Deed, G. Barney & Wife to G. Goggins, 1919

(NW 1/4 of NE 1/4 of Section 17, T1S R2E)

That land that George Goggins quit-claimed to Shelton?  Well, Barney had just quit-claimed it to George Goggins twelve days prior.  But we're not finished yet:

Warranty Deed, W. C. Cheatham & Wife to George Barney, 1919

(N 1/2 of S 1/2 of NW 1/4 of SW 1/4 of Section 15, T1N R3E)

In the middle of all those other land transfers, W. C. sold his Phoenix property to George Barney!  (But just the original section - I never did find any evidence for W. C. buying or selling the second tract!)

At this point, I was beginning to think that those crazy old-timers were just transferring land around in circles, in order to avoid actually paying any real money (most of these say the only payment was "ten dollars" or "ten dollars and other valuable considerations,"  which is what people still write on quit-claim deeds today, although the ten dollars was worth considerably more back then - about $150.)  This totally seems like the kind of thing W. C. would figure out how to do, doesn't it?

But then I realized that, given the difference between a warranty deed and a quit-claim deed, there might be another reason involved.  Here is a bit of Deeds 101 for those of you who don't know what the difference is:

A warranty deed provides a guarantee that the land being sold has a clear title, with no liens or mortgages, etc., and that the seller owns the land fully and thus can transfer the actual property in its entirety.  (Although, some of these deeds state that there is a mortgage debt that will be assumed by the buyer - most with no other money changing hands.)

A quit-claim deed actually only transfers the seller's interest in the property, which simply means that the seller relinquishes any claims to it.  There is no guarantee that the seller actually owns the property and thus has the right to sell it., which means there is no guarantee that the buyer will actually gain ownership of it.    If the seller is a joint owner, it only transfers the portion of the property that they own - the other owner maintains their rights to their portion/interest. Quit-claim deeds are generally used when one wants to add a name to a deed without an actual sale (as in the case of a spouse), when a quick transfer of property without a traditional sale is desired, or in order to clear up title questions - a "possible" owner can quit-claim their interests to create a clear title for a new owner.

So maybe at least part of these roundabout exchanges were for the purpose of creating clear titles.

There are actually a lot more deeds that I came across when trying to sort out the chain of ownership.  I never did get it completely figured out, possibly because some of the deed were never even recorded (W. C. sat on the 1916 deed for more than two years, barely recording it when most of these property transfers took place!)

Here is pretty much what the mess looked like:

1913
May 15 - W. C. Cheatham gets land in Section 15 (Phoenix) from K. Baycroft.  (Warranty)

1916
Oct. 28 - W. C. Cheatham gets land in Section 9 (Laveen) from S. Hudgins.  (Warranty)

1918
Mar. 20 - G. Goggins gets land in Section 17 (Laveen) from G. Barney.  (Quit-claim)

1919
Jan. 15 - G. Goggins gets land in Section 17 from G. Barney.  (Q-C)
Jan. 23 - G. Barney gets land in Section 15 (Phx) from W. C. Cheatham.  (W)
Jan. 25 - J. Hunts gets land in section 9 from W. C. Cheatham.  (W)
Jan. 27 - S. C. Cheatham gets land in Section 17 from G. Goggins.  (Q-C)
Feb. 1 - W. C. Cheatham gets land in Section 9 from G. Goggins.  (Q-C)
Mar. 1 - Archer gets 1 acre on NW corner of Section 9 from W. Laveen. (W)
Nov. 11 -  H. D. Hunts gets land in Section 9 from J. Hunts. (W)
Dec. 5 - E. A. Robinson gets 1 acre on NW corner of Section 9 from Roberts. (W)
Dec. 25 - A. D. & S. C. Cheatham get 1 acre on NW corner of Section 9 from Archer. (W)*

1920
Jan. 2 - W. C. Cheatham gets land in Section 17 (Laveen) from Williams. (W)**
Jan. 20 - W. C. gets land in Section 9 (Laveen) from Roberts. (W)
Jan. 20 - S. C. Cheatham gets land in Section 9 (Laveen) from Roberts. (W)
Jan 20 - W. Auckly gets land in Section 17 from W. C. Cheatham. (W)
June 29 - A. D. Cheatham gets land in Section 17 from S. C. Cheatham. (W)***
Nov. 15 - A. D. & S. C. Cheatham get 1 acre on NW corner of section 9 from Robinson. (W)

* This is where their store sat.
** W. C. obtained this land from Delila and her husband, Marven Williams.
*** This is the 40 acre tract west of the 40 acres at the corner of 51st & Elliot.

I color coded the descriptions, because different parts of each section were trading hands and it was getting way too confusing!  Some of these, like the portion in yellow, follow a neat progression of ownership.  Others, not so much.  Here are maps of the two sections in Laveen, with the tracts of land color coded to match the entries above:


The maps have the 1923 owners written on them, so we can see that the end results of this flurry of transactions in 1919 and 1920 remained for several years to come.  In fact, it seems that our Cheathams were finished with the land deals for awhile, because, even though the index goes up through 1921, I didn't find any transactions for that year.

So, did we answer the question that started this whole investigation?  Well, yes and no.  We don't have a definite answer, but we do have a much better idea.  I think we can now be pretty certain that W. C. was living in Laveen by January of 1919.  Although he did not purchase the piece of land he would eventually build his houses on until February, he had already made two land transactions in January.  As for whether he lived there in 1916 or not, I still think it is unlikely.   It is quite possible that he was already there by the end of 1918, though, for two reasons:

First, he didn't just drive up one day and sign a deed.  There would obviously have been some negotiations beforehand.  And second, remember how the Laveen Centennial History said he was there in 1918?  Remember how that and our family history said he lived first on the north side of Dobbins road?  Well, I didn't find anything at all suggesting that he ever owned land on the north side of Dobbins, so the only logical explanation is that he was renting/leasing a house and (maybe) land on that side of the road, which means he could have been there before he bought his new tract of land in February of 1919, because if he didn't actually move there until after he bought his new piece of land, he would have only needed a place to stay for as long as it took him to build his new house on his new land on the south side of the road, so probably nobody would even remember that he had lived on the north side first.  Does all that make sense?

If anyone is interested in looking at any of the deeds mentioned above, here they are:

Warranty Deed: Baycroft to W. C. Cheatham 1913	Warranty Deed: Hudgins to W. C. Cheatham 1916	Quit-Claim Deed: Barney to Goggins 1918	Quit-Claim Deed: Barney to Goggins 1919	Warranty Deed: W. C. Cheatham to Barney 1919
Warranty Deed: W. C. Cheatham to J. Hunts 1919	Quit-Claim Deed: Goggins to S. C. Cheatham 1919	Quit-Claim Deed: Goggins to W. C. Cheatham 1919	Warranty Deed: W. Laveen to  Archer 1919	Warranty Deed: J. Hunts to H. D. Hunts 1919
Warranty Deed: Roberts to  Robinson (pg.1) 1919	Warranty Deed: Roberts to Robinson (pg.2) 1919	Warranty Deed: Archer to A. D. & S. C. Cheatham 1919	Warranty Deed: Williams to W. C. Cheatham 1920	Warranty Deed: Roberts to W. C. Cheatham 1920
Warranty Deed: Roberts to S. C. Cheatham 1920	Warranty Deed: W. C. Cheatham to Auckly 1920	Warranty Deed: S. C. Cheatham to A. D. Cheatham 1920	Warranty Deed: Robinson to A. D. & S. C. Cheatham (pg.1) 1920	Warranty Deed: Robinson to A. D. & S. C. Cheatham (pg.2) 1920

Okay!  I think I am finally finished finding new stuff for W. C.!  Next time, we'll wrap him up for sure!

                                                                                                                                            - Therese

Living in Laveen:

William Calvin Cheatham, part 17

We are finally almost finished with W. C.!  Today we are going to look at the time he spent living in Laveen, most of which probably won't be much of a surprise to anyone.  Before we get started, though, let's do a quick review of his timeline for Maricopa County (as much for my benefit as yours - it seems like ages since we talked about that, and it is hard for me to keep all of the facts straight when dealing with so much information!)

1912
W. C. and family left Duncan at the end of January and moved to Phoenix.

1914 - 1917
W. C. remained in Phoenix, living near the current location of Sky Harbor Airport.  He was farming (cotton) and/or ranching during those years.  He seems to have been still active in the Knights of Pythias as well.

1918
W. C. was living in Scottsdale and ranching.

1919
W. C. probably moved to Laveen at some point during this year.  (See note below.)

1920
We know for sure that W. C. was living in Laveen by January 31st of this year (according to the census), but it is not clear exactly how long he had been there.  He must have moved there some time before November of 1919, since I have a newspaper article saying that that was when his son Dee moved down from Duncan.  Since the family story is that they bought the Laveen store together, W. C. should have already been there.


While looking back at my earlier post about Maricopa County (if you don't remember and want to look back at it, you can find it here), I noticed that I mentioned that all of W. C.'s sons except Dee arrived there in 1916 and 1917. (At that point all I had to go off of was voter registrations and a few newspaper articles.)  But in my later post about Duncan (the one just prior to this one), I showed at the very end that those same sons actually moved either just before or at the same time as W. C., at the turn of 1911/1912.  When I realized the discrepancy a couple of days ago, I did some checking through all of the documents I've collected, and this is what I came up with:  It appears that all three sons moved to the Phoenix area around the same time as W. C.  Shelton seems to have done the Phoenix - Scottsdale - Laveen thing along with his father (with a several month stint away after he was drafted in 1918).  Leonard got married in 1916, moved to Missouri some time after the end of 1917, and then moved back to Laveen at the end of 1923.  Elmer moved back to Duncan some time in 1919 (after the death of his first wife), before moving to Laveen at the beginning of 1923 (with his second wife).  And let's not forget about Delila.  She ended up marrying a man who farmed in Laveen as well.  (In case you are wondering, I got these time frames from marriage records, voter registrations, census records, and newspaper articles.)

Most of this information is actually in the family history, but the timeline is often unclear or even a bit muddled.  I included it in this post about W. C. for two reasons:  first, I wanted to correct the mistaken assumptions that I made at an earlier point in my research, and second, I just wanted to show you that W. C. still had his children around him for most of the time he was living in Maricopa County.  I am finding that it is nearly impossible to do this one person at a time, because everyone's story is intertwined, so there is just going to have to be some overlap (which means some repeating of information when I actually post about W. C.'s kids)!

Okay.  On to the articles.  Oh, wait.  I don't actually have any articles from 1920, but I do have some other stuff, so I'll put those up first.

First of all, do you remember this?

Laveen School Census, March 13, 1920

I showed this to you when I very first started researching W. C.  I noticed that he and Mary were listed as the guardians of a seven year old child, Calvin.  I assumed that the boy must have been Shelton's son, because he and Shelton were living with W. C. when the census was taken in February, and the boy is listed as W. C.'s grandson.  Of course, it was easy for me to make this assumption, because those generations of the family are far enough removed from me that, not only did I never meet any of those people, but I didn't really hear too many stories about any of them either.  It turns out that Calvin was not Shelton's son, but Elmer's, which many of you might have already known.  The family history tells us that Elmer's baby daughter was given over to the care of Dee and Lula when her mother died, but it never mentions that W. C. was given custody of Elmer's son.  I never would have discovered this had I not taken the time to look at a relative of the ancestor I was researching, who just so happens to not even be in my direct line.  He's like my great grand uncle or something.  

So here I am correcting myself again, which just goes to show how we should never just collect a whole bunch of random stuff without putting all of the pieces together to get the whole story.  It also shows how we can misinterpret pieces of the story, and only find out the truth when other pieces are found.  (Which also means that, if some of the pieces remain lost to us, our version of events might not be accurate!)  Annnd, it also shows exactly why genealogical research is so time consuming, because if you don't look into the sibling of every ancestor in every generation, it is likely that you will miss something very important!  

So anyway, during 1920, W. C. had one of his sons, and the son of one of his other sons living with him.  What else do we know about 1920?  

The voter registration shows that he reported his occupation as "General Store."

The 1920 census, however, just says he was a farmer.  Maybe they weren't allowed to put more than one occupation.  

Then, we have all of the oral histories.  The family story is very vague on dates, but it says that W. C. bought the store in partnership with Dee and Shelton.  It says he lived on the north side of 47th Avenue and Dobbins, but then a few paragraphs later it says he and Shell had 40 acres on the southwest corner of the same intersection, and that this is where he built those two houses - one for himself and Mary, and one for Shelton and his new wife. (They married three weeks after the census was taken!)  

The Laveen Centennial History, compiled by Betty Accomazzo, tells us that W. C. and Shell lived on 80 acres on the south side of Dobbins road, stretching from 47th to 51st Ave, and that they farmed cotton, worked in the store, and raised beef cattle.  In another section, it clears up the land question by saying that W. C. first lived on the north side of Dobbins, and later moved to the south side.

It also tells us that W. C. moved to Laveen in 1918, and that school records show that he was the clerk of the school board that year.  Now, here's the interesting thing, though.  I referred to the centennial history as an oral history, even though it is a written document, because the family stories in it were pretty much compiled by having a family member tell the story.  All of the stories about W. C.'s children and then about Dee's children are all sort of the same but with slight variations.  Kind of like when you are playing 'telephone,' you know?  So the section about W. C. says he was on the school board in 1918, but later in the book it shows a transcription of the school board/employee records all the way back to 1912.  And guess what?  W. C. wasn't on the school board until the 1920-1921 school year.  (The 1918 date came from an oral history segment, which makes it less reliable than an actual document.)  Here is the page from the state publication:

Arizona Educational Directory, 1920-1921

So this makes me think that the family was new enough in the area by the time the 1919-1920 board was elected that he didn't put himself up for the position.  (I wonder what month that would have happened?)  Could he have moved to Laveen in 1918?  I suppose so, but it would have had to be later than May 15th, because that is when he registered to vote in Scottsdale.  And I would guess that he wouldn't have bothered to register there if he knew he was just going to be moving soon, so I think it is likely that it was at least the end of 1918, and maybe 1919 before he moved.

So, all that's left for 1920 is the census.  As everyone from my generation and older knows, there wasn't a whole lot going on in Laveen, even well past the time period we are talking about here.  It was more of a loose community, not a real town:

1920 U. S. Federal Census
Laveen, Maricopa County, Arizona

Farmers:  93  (Five were dairy farmers, one was a "farmer/stockman," and the rest were doing "general" farming.)
Farm Laborers:  198 (These were about half wage-earners - these were primarily Mexican, and some as young as 12 yrs. old - and half indicated that they worked on a "home farm" - these were mostly people born in other states).
Teachers:  3
Carpenters:  2
Well Digger:  1
Retail Merchant:  1 (This was A. D. Cheatham)
Sales Clerk:  2  (I'm guessing these were employees at the Cheatham store!)

That's it.  There were a total of 191 households, so a lot of people, really, but that was about it - people and farms.

Now for the newspaper articles!  Most of these came from the microfilm at the state archives, so there are no full page or internet links for you.  I also want to point out that I've managed to stumble upon a considerable number of articles from this newspaper where the search tool missed the name Cheatham (no surprise there!), so I'm sure there are a few articles about W. C. that I didn't find. (Maybe some day I'll actually have time to read through the papers from cover to cover - ha!)

1921

The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
28 Mar 1921

So W. C. wasn't only on the school board, but he was also elected as president of the local branch of the farm bureau.


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
1 Apr 1921

Here we see that W. C. was also elected to the Laveen committee of the new Arizona Pima Cotton Growers cooperative.  If you recall, the purpose of a farmer's cooperative was to sell everyone's crops together in an attempt to get better prices.


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
6 Apr 1921

Okay, so in addition to serving as president of the farm bureau and being on the committee of the cotton grower's cooperative, W. C. was also serving on the council of the Salt River Water User's Association.  Oh, and also he was clerk of the school board!  (I'm a bit surprised he doesn't seem to have pushed to establish a Knights of Pythias lodge in Laveen as well!)


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
11 Apr 1921

This article tells us a bit more about the cotton grower's association.  Even though it is long, it is actually pretty interesting, so you should actually read it.


1922

The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
1 Jan 1922

And here is an article telling us more about what W. C. was doing with the Salt River Valley Water User's Association.  (While proofreading this post, I noticed that I somehow didn't clip the entire article - you can find it here if you're really that interested!)


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
1 Jan 1922

And this one tells us more about the Farm Bureau. 


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
26 May 1922

So, here we see W. C. taking a prominent roll in the school graduation ceremony, which implies that he was still on the school board.  (The second star is actually about W. C.'s wife, but I wanted to call your attention to it because we will be seeing the Morrow relatives a lot in the future.)

And here is our confirmation that W. C. was still on the school board:

Arizona Educational Directory, 1921-1922

I would like to point out that both this record and the one above only list the clerk of the school board.  This suggests that the clerk was either the most important member of the board, or even that there wasn't really a 'board' at all at that point in time, given the small size of most school districts.  (I notice the words 'school board' are never mentioned in either of these.)  I think maybe the clerk could have been the one person in charge of paying the principal and teachers and making sure things were done the way they were supposed to be.  Kind of like the district superintendent and all of the subordinate departments at the district level would do today.  Which would explain why W. C. was presenting the diplomas.  

The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
20 Dec 1922

The title of this article only applies to the first paragraph (this is really just the Laveen happenings column).  But the first paragraph is relevant, since W. C.'s position as president of the farm bureau may have been up for grabs.  The next section tells about how the Woman's club had a fundraising event to raise money for their building fund, and W. C. served as auctioneer.  (By the way, that $110 would be worth almost $1,650 today.)

1923

The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
5 Jan 1923

Well, it looks like W. C.'s position in the farm bureau was up for grabs, but he was elected president again.  

Apparently the farm bureau was a government agency, and the presidents of the local bureaus were the directors, because W. C. is listed in the Arizona Blue Book, which is a roster of the state's government officials:

(I snapped these photos from the original book at the Arizona State Archives.)


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa  County, AZ)
31 Jan 1923

The article I showed you before told us that the Woman's club auction was raising money for their building fund.  This tells us that they wanted to build a clubhouse, and 'Cheatham brothers' donated land for the building site.  From what I've seen in all the articles I've collected, "Cheatham Brothers" is usually used in reference to a partnership of A. D. and Shelton, or in reference to the Cheatham store, of which W. C. was (or at least had been at the beginning) a partner.  The land just east of the school was in Shelton's name by the middle of 1923 (see map below).  The clubhouse building that they built was later given to the school and moved onto the west side of the school grounds.  It was the auditorium (upper level) and cafeteria (basement) for many years, before being turned into the home economics and wood shop building in the 1980's.  (It was later pretty much abandoned, but it has been placed on the historic register and restored.)

1923 Maricopa County, Arizona 
Land Ownership Plat Map  (T1S R2E)

This is a cropped close-up of the actual map.  If you want to see the whole thing, you can click on the title, which will take you to the Arizona Memory Project website where you can zoom in without losing quality.

The dark line at the top of the picture is Baseline Road, and the dark line segment below that which says "Paved Road" is what is now Dobbins Road.  (It appears to have been called "Laveen Road" during the period of time we are talking about today.)  I've highlighted all of the areas where the Cheatham family (including Delila's husband) owned land that year.  (W. C. = blue, Shelton = green, A. D. = orange, Marven Williams = pink)  Each of those sections looks like a square quarter mile.  The little tiny orange box on Dobbins Road was the location of the Cheatham Bros. store, and if you look closely you can see that it was in A. D. Cheatham's name.  The little area cut out of Shelton's section next to it was the Laveen School grounds.  Elmer moved to Laveen in January of 1923 and Leonard arrived at the end of November, but apparently neither owned land when this map was made.

If you remember, the oral histories say that W. C. first lived on land at 47th Ave. north of Dobbins - I'm guessing that he was leasing the land from Mr. Laveen or Mr. McReynolds (depending on which side of the intersection), because it wouldn't make sense for him to have bought the property (back in 1919 or so when he arrived) and then four years later sold it to someone who was one of the original settlers in the area.

The original un-cropped version says this is a corrected map (as of August 1st) - you can see how many names were crossed out and changed - land must have been trading hands fast back then!  (Oh, and in case this cropped version has you confused, the entirety of the foothills were called the Salt River Range back then - I cut off the part with the rest of the name.)

And speaking of Cheatham Brothers, here is a photo of the store:

(If you would like a copy of the photo without the label, you can download it here.)

Do you see the sign to the right of the door that says "STAGE"?  (If you enlarge and sharpen the picture, you can see that it says "to Phoenix" at the bottom.)  I read in the newspaper that the mail came by stage.  Maybe people could ride to and from the city as well.  I also read an article (I can't figure out where it is now!) that said there was a box out front of the store where people could put whatever they wanted to be included in the 'Laveen Notes' section of the Arizona Republican newspaper.

Okay.  Time out.  I am going to backtrack for a minute.  I was just looking through the Laveen Centennial History to see if there was anything about the Woman's Club and their building, and I came across a page that was listing the names from the school census from back before 1920.  I noticed that W. C.'s name was on there for 1919, which was a record I have not found.  So I went and did some searching, and look:

Laveen School Census, 1919

Here we see W. C. having custody of Elmer's two older children. (Calvin probably wasn't old enough to enter school yet in 1919, and the 1920 census shows that the older children were back with their father in Duncan by that year.)  The cover of the record says that those were the children enrolled in Laveen School as of June 30, 1919, but it looks like Laveen School always let out by the middle of May so the census would have been conducted some time before that.  (Some of the other districts' documents have a handwritten date as early as April, but of course I am rarely so lucky with the records I actually need!)  Anyway, that means the end of the 1918-1919 school year.  The children's mother died in December of 1918, so W. C. probably took custody shortly thereafter, but we don't know if he was in Laveen yet at that point.  So, now we know that he was there by at least June, and actually probably earlier, because it wouldn't make sense for him to enroll the kids in school if they moved there when there were only a few weeks left, right?  We keep pushing back the timeline for when we know for sure he was there, so maybe we'll eventually come up with some proof that tells us whether it was 1918 or 1919!


Alright.  Back to the newspaper!


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
13 February 1923

I'm not sure why the Laveen poultrymen were having their thing on W. C.'s ranch, but hey, maybe he raised chickens too.  The Marvin Williams mentioned here was Delila's husband.  


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
22 Feb 1923

It's starting to look like being clerk of the school district was a pretty big thing, huh?  I'm guessing that the principal back then was just in charge of the teachers and discipline, and W. C. / the school board took care of everything else.

And speaking of the school board, if you want to see the 1923 Arizona Educational Directory listing W. C. as the clerk of the school district again, you can find it here.


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)

This is a bit weird, because it is basically saying the same thing as the article from January (above), only this one says "we expect to begin our..." which means it was written by someone from the women's club.  I guess that is the reason for the redundancy. 


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
14 May 1923

The majority of this article is about some big shindig - "one of the best entertainments ever held at Laveen," according to the article.  It appeared to be highly entertaining.  Heck, I was even entertained just reading about it!  The Mr. Cheatham that was part of the orchestra would have been Elmer - he played the fiddle.

The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
3 June 1923

This is just a more detailed recap of the end of the school year program mentioned at the beginning of the previous article.


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
12 June 1923

This article is actually kind of funny.  The Phoenix Rotary Club invited all of the local farm bureau presidents to talk about "The Farmer's Opinion of the City Man."  Boy, would I like to have heard what they had to say on the subject!


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
15 June 1923

Just more reporting on the farm bureau meeting.

The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
16 June 1923

Hey, look what I found - an article telling us what those farmers had to say!  It's long, but it's interesting. It looks like either W. C. didn't actually show up, or they left his name out of the article.  

The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
3 Nov 1923

Okay, so I forgot to stick a star on this one, which is especially bad because the article doesn't even get W. C.'s name right!  In the second paragraph is has him as "J. C."  I'll bet he hated it when the newspaper did that!  The topic for his presentation was "commodity organization" (yawn!).

The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
11 Nov 1923

Once again, nothing really new, but just thought I'd give you everything I have.


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
27 Nov 1923

It looks like not only was W. C. helping the Woman's Club by serving as auctioneer for their fundraiser, but that he was on their building committee as well.


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
5 Dec 1923

Hmmm.  It appears that everyone except Delila was there. . . maybe they went to her in-laws.


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
11 Dec 1923

Just another fundraiser for the community building with W. C. serving as auctioneer.  That $150 would be just over $2000 today, so I'd agree that it was a very successful fundraiser.


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
29 Dec 1923

Here we see that W. C. had decided to resign from the school board.  If you look back at his death certificate, it says that he had been suffering from chronic appendicitis for 2 to 3 years before his death in May of 1926, so he would have been periodically suffering with flare-ups by this point.  (Crazy thing, though - Shelton had had his appendix removed almost exactly one year before this, so you have to wonder why W. C. didn't just have his out as well.)

Oh, and I put this whole section up here so you could read the first paragraph about the Woman's Club "Stunt Day" - too funny!


1924

The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
25 Jan 1924

I don't know if this article is referring to W. C.'s land or Shelton's.  (Or maybe both of their sections were considered to be one ranch.) There appears to be some confusion over the actual location of the gin (partly caused by an article I will share shortly).  I've been told that the gin was on the north side of Dobbins, but the Cheathams didn't own land on the north side at this point.  I suppose it could be that they were (still) leasing the land on the north side of the road and farming it, so it could have been considered the Cheatham ranch even though title wasn't in their name.  

Also, when I was growing up, the only cotton gin I knew about in Laveen was up on 51st Avenue north of Baseline.  I'm guessing that maybe this one was built first - do any of you know?


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
1 February 1924

So, the community house this is referring to is, of course, the Women's Club building for which W. C. was helping raise money.


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
28 Feb 1924

I guess for some reason they decided to build on the site donated by W. O Moore (just east of W. C.'s land on the other side of 47th Ave.) instead.  The price of $3,200, is equivalent to just over $47,500 today.


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
14 Mar 1924

I'm not sure how often the Laveen section was printed in the paper, but I'm guessing W. C. and Mary left a few days before this was reported.  According to his death certificate, Mary's father, Fred Brookreson started ailing on March 9th, and he died on March 14th.  He was buried the next day.  Interestingly, W. C. was listed as the informant on his death certificate. (I'm planning to put that up in a later post.) 


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
24 Mar 1924

Okay, so I'm not sure exactly what these guys were candidates for (there was no beginning to this article that I could see).  Also, it's interesting that W. C. resigned from the school board due to old age but then ran for something else.  Maybe he was just paring down his responsibilities.


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
30 Mar 1924

Ah.  So he was running for the water user's association again.  I read that the term for councilmen was three years, which would make sense, because he was on the council in 1921.


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
30 Mar 1924

This article is about the completion of the community building in Laveen.  It mentions that all of the money for the project was raised from members of the Laveen community, which to me is amazing, considering how most of the people there were either farmers or farm workers, neither of which would have had a whole lot of money in those days (did you read that article up there about the farmers' complaints?).  This article says that A. D. Cheatham was on the building committee, but the article I shared before said that W. C. was the one on the committee.  So, either one of the articles was incorrect, or A. D. took over for his father at some point.


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
2 April 1924

Alright.  I know this one is long, and I know that the print is small (if you open it you can enlarge it), but somebody besides myself needs to read it because it has me thoroughly confused.  The article from March 30 said that W. C. was running for the water user's association, but this one says that his son, S. C. (Shelton) was running.  Not only that, but at first it says that S. C. was the current governor of the district, and that he was running for the same position again against Fred Galusha, but then it says that he and Fred were running for the council, and Mr. Lassen was running for governor.  (I don't think I read this wrong - it is really just mixed-up reporting, right?)


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
11 Apr 1924

I guess they stayed in Buffalo Gap for almost a month, then.


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
17 Apr 1924

Was it the "Cheatham gin" because it was on Cheatham land, or did they own/run it?


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
29 Apr 1924

Here is a nice advertisement listing the Cheatham Brothers store as a seller of gasoline (over on the left-hand column).  I am starting to wonder if W. C. was just a silent partner - he reported his occupation as "general store" on the voter registration, but the store was always referred to as Cheatham 'Brothers.' 


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
1 May 1924

Okay, so this is just about the clubhouse and not about Cheathams at all.  I just put it up here so I could point out that this building was a huge part of Laveen's history - not only did the whole community pitch in to raise the funds, but the buidling was used for all kinds of community events:  weekly dances, plays, the annual husband's party, and school commencements.  (And that's just what I've seen in newspaper articles through the first two years after it was built!)


Here is a photo of W. C. and Mary (sitting on the front porch of their house, probably).

William Calvin & Mary (Brookreson) Cheatham

I don't have an exact date for the photo, but W. C. was looking pretty old, wasn't he?  And although he was always lean, if you look closely he seems a bit frail, so I'm guessing it was taken some time in the last couple of years of his life.

1925

The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
8 Mar 1925

So this also is not an article about W. C., but it is about that mysterious "Cheatham gin" I mentioned.  This shows Shelton selling a portion of his land to Independent Ginners.  This is the section where it says the two acres were:

Section 9 is outlined in red.  The article says two acres were sold in the northwest 1/4 section.  Both Shelton and W. C. owned land in this section, but the article says the two acres were sold by Shelton.  So this suggest that, at some point, either before or after Independent Ginners bought the property, there was a gin in the 1/4 mile section on the SW corner of 51st and Dobbins.  I'm guessing the gin was either built by the Cheathams and bought by the ginning company, or it was originally built by the ginning company on land leased from the Cheathams (either of which would explain the name).  Of course, I suppose it is possible that they first had a gin on the north side of the road and then built another one on the south side (because I'd hate to tell anyone that their memory is going!).


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
7 July 1925

Oh, how fun!  The 1920's seem like a different world to someone of my generation, but I guess some things don't change.  I can just picture them in their 1920's bathing suits on the beach!

In case you have trouble with your imagination, or just don't know what swim attire looked like in the twenties, here are a couple of photos:

(I highly recommend that you check out the Vintage Dancer webpage about this topic - it is where I found these photos and it is VERY entertaining!)


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
27 Aug 1925

Wow.  They were in California for almost two months!  You can see at the beginning that W. C. and Mary returned with their grandson, Roy.  If you look down to the last section, it says that Roy's parents and siblings would be returning three days later, because they were making the trip "overland."  From what I've read in other places, I think this means that W. C. took a train, and Shelton drove by car.


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
10 Sep 1925

I suppose this could have been W. C.'s or Shelton's old house.  It's interesting that it says "north of the schoolhouse."  Does that mean it was on the south side of the road, but north of the school building, or on the north side of the road?  I haven't come across anything else saying that there was a Cheatham house at this location - although the oral histories say that W. C. lived on the north side of Dobbins when he first moved to Laveen, that was supposedly a bit further east.


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
19 Sep 1925

Awwwww.  This just shows everybody getting together for Dee's surprise birthday party.  (Notice the typo of "E. L." for E. V. - the same mistake was on W. C.'s death certificate.


1926

The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
4 Feb 1926

Just another visit from Mary (Brookreson) Cheatham's sister.


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
11 Feb 1926

Another birthday party, and another typo (this time "A. O." for A. D.).


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
29 Apr 1926

Once again, whether this was on W. C.'s land or Shelton's, I couldn't tell you.  It does mean, though, that either there were two different houses on Cheatham land no longer occupied by the Cheathams themselves, or that the previous article about the Lacy's moving in was the same house and one of the articles has a typo on the location.  Or, I guess it could be that there were additional houses built on the property for farmhands (the 1920 census did say that W. C. had employees). 


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
29 Apr 1926

You would all be amazed how many articles like this were in the newspaper.  Just wait until I do the post about W. C.'s kids - you'll think all anybody ever did was go visiting!


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
6 May 1926

This is another article with a typo. When it says "M. C. Cheatham," it is really talking about W. C.   Once again, I'm not sure how often Mrs. Baird's piece appeared in the paper, but W. C. had already passed away by the time this paper was printed.


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
7 May 1926

W. C.'s death and funeral announcement was barely published on the morning of the funeral.  I guess that's what happens when a person is buried less than 48 hours after they pass away.


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
9 May 1926

I noticed a lot of this type of thing when I was reading through the Abilene newspapers.  Do people still do this, or is it one of those nice bits of etiquette that has managed to fall by the wayside?


The Arizona Republican
(Phoenix, Maricopa County, AZ)
13 May 1926

I like that this adds a bit more personal information than was included in the death announcement published the week before.  But knowing everything I know about him now, it sure seems to be lacking.  I thought it was strange that it says he was active in the church when there wasn't a Presbyterian church in Laveen, but then I saw an article from 1922 saying that Presbyterian services were held every Sunday evening at the school.


And now, here is the land ownership map for 1926, dated August 1, which would be about two months after W. C. passed away.

1926 Maricopa County, Arizona 

Land Ownership Plat Map (T1S R2E)

You'll notice that W. C.'s land was still in his name - his probate case wouldn't be completed until June of 1928.  Also, Shelton and Dee had acquired some new and different parcels of land - the one marked "C. D. & S. C." is a typo (the 1929 map says "A. D. and S. C.")


And that is pretty much all I have for W. C. Cheatham.

Holy Moly!  This post took forever!  That was like 50 newspaper articles, not to mention the other extra stuff!  If I had cut this into two different posts, you all wouldn't have had to wait so long for it, but I think we are all getting a little antsy to be moving on, so I tried to not stretch it out any further.  Next time I will wrap up with a summary of W. C.'s life, and then we'll look at some other ancestors.  See you then!


                                                                                                                                            - Therese