 Thomas Jefferson Newland, 1830 – 1896 Prospector Buried in City/Loosley Cemetery, exact location unknown. There is no grave marker. (Generic image created using Bing AI) Thomas Newland was born in 1830 in Tennessee, possibly to James Newland and Nancy Hazelrig. James and Nancy had a number of children, including sons named Archibald and Thomas. In 1850, this family was living in Crawford County, Arkansas, and these sons would have been old enough to be excited by news of the California Gold Rush.
1860 found a Thomas J. Newland and an Arch Newland farming in Pacific Township, Humboldt County, California. It seems likely that "Arch" was Thomas’s brother Archibald. Arch married in 1866 and thereafter moved to Idaho. In 1870, Thomas J. Newland was recorded as a miner living in a boarding house in Pioche City, Nevada. Sharing his room was an F. M. Newland, possibly another relative. Sometime in the 1870s, Thomas began to suffer from a chronic respiratory condition. It might have been asthma or silicosis, or perhaps it was a precursor to something like pulmonary tuberculosis. At any rate, he found that living in the desert as a prospector ameliorated his symptoms. In 1876, he was in Mohave County, Arizona Territory, when he registered to vote. Amazingly, Newland met a woman who shared his fondness for wide open spaces—a hardy divorcee named Saloma Larcombe. They were married on September 19, 1878, at her home in Globe, Arizona. Together, they worked several mining claims--the Defiance, the Pioneer, and the Saloma Mines—in Gila, Pinal and Yavapai Counties. At one point, they had a cattle ranch near Eagle Creek, but gave up on it in 1882 after the local Apaches massacred their neighbors. Although living in a remote campsite without the usual amenities could not have been easy, it was the lifestyle they preferred. As Thomas’s health declined, Saloma did the actual prospecting and brought the ores to her husband so he could judge whether her find looked promising. On December 12, 1896, Thomas died in Phoenix of what the doctor opined was chronic pneumonia, although it was probably something related to his previous respiratory ailment. He was buried in City/Loosley Cemetery. Saloma carried on by herself, living in a little camp near the Model mine in Yavapai County. In 1897, a reporter from the The San Francisco Call interviewed her and was surprised to find her well-educated, well-mannered and connected by marriage to a prominent family in California. She died of cancer on December 31, 1898, at Sister’s Hospital in Phoenix and was also buried in City/Loosley Cemetery, possibly near her husband. © 2025 by Donna L. Carr. Last revised 15 August 2025. If you would like assistance researching our interred, you can find more information on our website. You can contact us at [email protected] at any time. Thank you for your interest to preserve the history of Arizona's pioneers!
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