A Stroll Through the Past: 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