 Ethel M. Kent, 1884-1901 Twice Unlucky Buried in Masons Cemetery, Block 18, Lot 3, Grave 2 (Grave marker photo courtesy of Pioneers’ Cemetery Association, Inc.) Ethel M. Kent was born August 1884 in Socorro County, New Mexico. Her parents were Alexander John Kent and Abigail Dudley. She had two older sisters and a brother. Alexander Kent was a quartz miner, and the family moved to Phoenix sometime after Ethel’s birth.
In 1900, when Ethel was sixteen years old, she was stricken with some kind of neurological disorder (possible seizures) resulting from pressure on the brain. Her doctors feared that it might be a brain tumor and decided to relieve the pressure by removing a 2-inch section of her skull, a procedure known as "trepanning." The delicate surgery was performed on July 20th by Dr. J. W. Thomas, assisted by three other physicians. For days thereafter, Ethel lay in a coma, and traffic outside her home was rerouted so that she could have absolute quiet. To everyone’s amazement, she made a full recovery and was once again able to resume normal activities, the hole in her skull covered by a silver plate. Frontier towns such as Phoenix had many saloons, where men frequently overindulged in strong drink. Like many young ladies of the time, Ethel belonged to the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U)., which advocated abstinence from alcohol. A year later, Ethel’s health was still a cause for concern, and she was unable to tolerate the summer heat in Phoenix. For that reason, the family sought relief in July, 1901, by going on a camping trip to Mr. Kent’s mining site in Yavapai County. A young man at the campsite, Bert Ohmerty, had carelessly left his loaded hunting rifle propped up against a rock. Apparently, Ethel stumbled against it and it discharged, blowing away half of her foot. The nearest medical help being in Congress, Arizona, she was bundled into a wagon for the three-hour journey. However, the incessant jolting, pain and loss of blood proved to be too much, and Ethel expired the next morning. Her body was returned to Phoenix for burial in Masons Cemetery. Bert Ohmerty, the man whose gun had injured Ethel, was plagued by guilt over her death. He committed suicide just a week later. ©2020 by Debe Branning. Last revised 26 January 2024. 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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 Josephine Buck, about 1875-1902 Sent to the Asylum Buried in IOOF Cemetery, Block 21, Lot 2, northeast corner of the southwest quadrant (Stock image courtesy of Broderbund Clip Art) Josephine Buck was born around 1875, probably in Neosho County, Kansas. She was one of at least nine children of Asahel Buck and his wife Mary Ann Hutchings. The Buck family had been in New York state since Colonial times. Asahel himself was a lawyer, educated in Albany, New York.
By 1880, the Buck family was living in Sedan, Chautauqua, Kansas. Christmas Eve, 1890, found them in Phoenix, where 15-year-old Josephine and her older sister Irene entertained friends with music and dancing at the Buck home on East Van Buren Street. In 1892, Asahel Buck, now known as Andrew, was practicing law from his office in the Cotton Building. Son William Hamilton Buck was a pressman for the Daily Herald newspaper, and daughter Irene Buck was a music teacher. Daughter Evaluna was married to Charles M. Rupp, carpenter. Josephine seems to have had a normal childhood. She was a member of the IOOF’s Rebekah Lodge, and her family certainly enjoyed a certain social standing in the city. However, it appears that around 1892, she began to manifest mental problems, possibly schizophrenia, which tends to become apparent during a patient’s late adolescence. Initially, she was cared for at home but, in April 1894, shortly after her sister Irene’s marriage to George Simms, Josephine became a patient at the insane asylum in Phoenix. Released from the asylum in early August, 1897, Josephine was scheduled to be conveyed to a private sanitarium in California. However, she got hold of a revolver and threatened to kill her mother with it. When the sheriff arrived to remove her from the family residence, she became violent and had to be physically restrained. She was recommitted to the asylum by order of a judge on August 31st. She was still a patient in the Arizona Insane Asylum in 1900, where she probably contracted the tuberculosis that caused her demise. Josephine Buck succumbed on June 23, 1902, at her family’s home on 4th Street and Polk. She was buried in the IOOF Cemetery, Block 21, Lot 2, northeast corner of the southwest quadrant. © 2022 by Donna L. Carr. Last revised 22 December 2022. 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!  L. D. Davis, about 1847-1899 "Little Yankee Devil" Buried in Rosedale Cemetery, exact location unknown. (Generic image created using Bing AI) L. D. Davis was born about 1847, possibly in New York state. Although his mother was originally from Maine, she married a Kentuckian and raised her son in the Bluegrass state.
When the Civil War broke out, the Davis family split along sectional lines. Davis's mother returned to Maine while his father joined the Confederacy. Having been raised in Kentucky, young Davis's sympathies lay with the South although, in speech and manner, he appeared to be thoroughly Northern. This made him invaluable to the Confederacy as a scout and spy. Davis too joined the Confederate army and served under General John Hunt Morgan, where he earned his soubriquet, "the Little Yankee Devil". At fifteen or sixteen, not only was he a fresh-faced youth, he may also have been small in stature. He could infiltrate Union camps, hire on to care for the officers’ horses, and pass unnoticed while gathering information about troop movements. He was with Morgan on the latter's ill-fated 1863 raid into Indiana and Ohio and, by his account, was the only Rebel soldier to avoid capture. After the war, L. D. continued to do what he did best—work with horses. He was much sought after by the racing set as a horse trainer and driver. Acquaintances described him as being of a quiet disposition, not speaking much about his background or family. In recent years, researchers have tried without success to pin down his identity; General Morgan’s command included several L. Davises about whom little is known. His name might have been L. R., Lewis, or Luther. L. D. is believed to have moved to Phoenix around 1895, possibly for his health. The November 15, 1895, issue of the Arizona Republican newspaper shows a man by that name registered as a guest at the Commercial Hotel. Thereafter, Davis found employment locally as a horse trainer. Davis died of tuberculosis on August 27, 1899, in his lodgings at 229 North Center Street. Since he had no known family, his funeral was a quiet affair. He was buried in Rosedale Cemetery, exact location unknown. Note: the term "Little Yankee Devil" usually refers to Johnny Clem, a Union drummer boy at the Battle of Shiloh and Chickamauga. However, it could have been applied to Davis as well. © 2025 by Donna L. Carr. Last revised 22 May 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!  Dr. Alfred A. H. Graham, about 1824-1895 Physician and Civil War Veteran Buried in Porter Cemetery, Block 43, Space H (Grave marker photo courtesy of the Pioneers’ Cemetery Association) Alfred Hamilton Graham was born about 1824 in Beattie’s Ford, Lincoln County, North Carolina, to John Davidson Graham and his first wife, Ann Elizabeth Connor.
Ann Elizabeth died in 1836 after bearing fourteen children. John Davidson Graham remarried but died in 1847. The federal census of 1850 shows Alfred living with his step-mother, Jane Elizabeth Johnston Graham, and three half-siblings. In 1853, Graham enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania. Two years later, he received his medical degree. From 1856 to 1857, he was an assistant surgeon at Blockley Hospital, Philadelphia. It is not known exactly when or why Graham came to be in Texas. However, by 1860 he was accompanying George Wythe Baylor’s Rangers as a field surgeon while the Rangers patrolled the western frontier of Texas to protect settlers from the Comanches. Graham was in Georgetown, Williamson County, Texas, when he married Mary Louise Mason on March 20, 1861. Their first son, Charles, was born in February of the following year. On March 15, 1862, Graham joined the Confederate Army, enlisting in Company F, 18th Texas Cavalry (Darnell’s Regiment) as ‘acting surgeon’. His unit was already fighting in the eastern United States as part of the Army of Tennessee when Vicksburg fell in July, 1863. As the war ground on, recordkeeping in the Confederate Army became rather spotty. No discharge papers for Graham have been found; however, owing to the fact that Graham’s wife gave birth to a daughter, Mary, on May 31, 1864, it seems likely that Graham was back home in Texas by September, 1863. The Grahams had two more sons in 1865 and 1868. After the War, Graham resumed his medical practice and also purchased land in Williamson County. An amateur archaeologist, he excavated and identified some cretaceous-period fossils and sent them to his alma mater in 1874. He is also said to have written and published a number of accounts and articles about his Civil War experiences. By 1880, Graham and his wife had also added three more children—Maggie, Mary Louise, and James—to the family. Graham continued to practice medicine in Bagdad and Lampasas, Texas, until about 1890. Graham was in Phoenix when he died of pneumonia on May 3, 1895. He may have come here in 1894 for his health. There is some disagreement over whether he died of consumption, pneumonia, heart failure, or all three. He was buried in Porter Cemetery under the auspices of the Odd Fellows, the Masons, and the Ex-Confederate Association. Graham’s widow Mary was still living in Houston, Texas in 1919. She died in Williamson County in September, 1923. A Graham family photo from 1881 is in the archives of the Pioneers’ Cemetery Association, Inc. © 2025 by Donna L. Carr. Last revised 21 May 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!  William Lindsey George, 1832-1897 Farmer and Contractor Buried in Porter Cemetery, Block 41, space B (Grave marker photo courtesy of the Pioneers’ Cemetery Association, Inc.) William Lindsey George was born April 29, 1832, in Shelby County, Kentucky, to James Whitefield George and Frances Booker, who were farmers. The Georges had a total of eleven children.
Shelby County was not far from Louisville and the Ohio River. Many of Kentucky’s agricultural products were floated down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers on flatboats to New Orleans. So, after faraway Texas became a state, the Georges moved there, settling in Guadalupe around 1854. William married Eliza LeGette in about 1858 and they soon had an infant son, James. The federal census of 1860 records the family farming in New Braunfels, Comal County, Texas. William’s parents and younger siblings lived on a ranch not far away. After the outbreak of the Civil War, William waited until March 26, 1862, when he enlisted in Seguin, Texas. He was assigned to Company K, 8th Texas Infantry, CSA, later under the command of Colonel Ireland. The 8th Texas Infantry served in East Texas throughout the war, so William was able to visit his family occasionally. His wife Eliza gave birth to son Henry in September, 1862, and to William Jr. in March 1864. At the end of the war, William was discharged with the rank of captain. Big events were taking place on the Great Plains as the Transcontinental Railroad pushed westward. By 1870, the entire George family had moved to Kansas City, where they worked as cattle traders. William even became (briefly) the president of a Kansas City bank. In 1886, the Georges moved to Arizona, where William ran a freighting business and became involved in building railroads, canals and reservoirs. He was one of the contractors who built the Gila Bend canal and the Agua Fria reservoir. As a prominent businessman, William maintained a keen interest in local politics and was several times asked to run for office. In 1888, he yielded to voters’ entreaties but bowed out rather than stoop to the kind of unethical behavior needed to get elected. Thereafter, he was elected to the County Board of Supervisors strictly on his merits. In August 1897, William experienced a couple of angina attacks. Although the attacks passed, his doctor advised him to send for his wife, who was in California. She arrived in Phoenix just five hours before William died early on the morning of August 20th. The funeral sermon was preached by Rev. W. E. Vaughan of the Methodist Episcopal church. A modest man, William had previously requested that there be no empty eulogies, but his friends and business associates attested to his honesty and moral uprightness. He was buried near his brother James Benjamin in Porter Cemetery, Block 41, space B. © 2025 by Donna L. Carr. Last revised 13 May 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!
 Joseph Mitchell Dorris, 1827-1904 Planter and Farmer Buried in Rosedale Cemetery, North section, Block 116 (Family monument photo courtesy of the Pioneers’ Cemetery Association, Inc.) Joseph Mitchell Dorris is believed to have been born April 4, 1826, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He was the oldest child of James Harvey Dorris and Martha Ann Embrey.
In 1834, the Dorris family had moved to Mississippi to take up land from which the indigenous Choctaws had been recently evicted. The 1850 federal census recorded James as farming in Carroll County. Joseph Mitchell Dorris wed Nancy Jane Powell on February 10, 1847. Over time, they became the parents of twelve children. By 1860, Joseph was living in nearby Choctaw County on a plantation adjoining that of his father, who by then owned over 700 acres and fifteen enslaved persons. Although a mature man of 34 when the Civil War began, Dorris joined Turner’s Battery, Company C, 1st Mississippi Light Artillery, CSA, with the rank of corporal on March 27, 1862. When Vicksburg fell to Union forces on July 4, 1863, the entire regiment was captured. After the soldiers were paroled, Company C was sent south to defend Mobile. In January 1864, Dorris was promoted to the rank of sergeant. He was absent without leave for a month between May and June 1864; apparently he went home, as his wife gave birth to another baby on March 29, 1865. Dorris was back with his unit in Mobile, Alabama, later in 1864. Following the War, Dorris returned to Choctaw County, where the census of 1870 listed him as a farmer. Sometime thereafter, the family moved to Montgomery County, where his wife Nancy died in about 1884. Around 1885 or 1886, Joseph’s son Elias moved west to Phoenix, Arizona. His reports were favorable enough that his siblings Caswell, Robert, and Joseph joined him two years later. Sarah and Veronica, their sisters who had both married Stovall men, also made the move around 1898. Dorris, a Mason and a Baptist, continued to live most of time in Kilmichael, Mississippi, with his older adult children. However, in 1901 he began spending his winters in Phoenix with the others. He died during one such visit on February 2, 1904, of old age and was buried in Rosedale Cemetery, North section, Block 116. © 2025 by Donna L. Carr. Last revised 17 April 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!  James Belton Braswell, 1835 to 1898 Served Under Both Flags (Buried in Porter Cemetery, Ex-Confederate Section, exact location not known) James Belton Braswell is believed to have been born 7 September 1835, in South Carolina. He received training as a brick mason and later worked as a building contractor.
When the Civil War broke out, he enlisted initially as a private in Company B, 26th Alabama Infantry (O’Neal’s Regiment), but in August 1862 he and his brother W. D. deserted. They were captured by the Union Army at Camp Davies, Mississippi, on 28 December 1863. Five months later, on 31 May 1864, they took a loyalty oath and served out the war in the U.S. Army. Braswell’s own account was much more colorful. As he was wont to relate in his later years, he and a comrade named R. A. Crowley were fighting in Georgia when they deserted for the first time. They were soon captured by their Confederate fellows. The South being by then desperate for soldiers, the pair was not executed but were allowed to return. After they made two more attempts to desert, the commanding officer ordered them to be shot at sunrise. As the condemned men sat in the guardhouse that night, Braswell persuaded Crowley to make one last break for it. This time they were successful. Before morning, they reached a dense swamp and made their way to Sherman’s lines, where they surrendered. James Braswell married his first wife, Mary Jane DuBose in Indiana in 1863. After the war, Braswell’s skills as a brick mason were undoubtedly in demand as new settlements sprang up out west. By 1870, the Braswells were living in Elk City, Kansas, and were the parents of three children. The Braswells’ next home was in Missouri, where three more children were born. Braswell’s wife Mary is presumed to have died around 1877 since, in 1878, Braswell married Virginia-born Sarah Elizabeth Hughes in Texas County, Missouri. They soon had another three children of their own. Around 1884, the Braswells moved to Arizona. Their last five children were born in Phoenix. When Braswell expired on 13 January 1898, bottles of laudanum and paregoric were found in his pockets. Thinking that he might have committed suicide, Justice Johnstone ordered an inquest. The cause of death was cleared up when Mrs. Braswell testified that he habitually carried them to relieve a persistent ear ache. Braswell was initially buried in the section of Porter Cemetery reserved for Union veterans of the Civil War. However, it was soon discovered that Mr. Braswell was “seated in the wrong pew," so a few days later, his coffin was taken up and reburied in the Confederate section of Porter. © Profile by Sue Wilcox. Last revised 14 April 2014. 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!  Rev. Hans Jurgen Ehlers, 1826 -1902 Presbyterian Minister Buried in Rosedale, exact location unknown (Image created using Bing Chatbot) Hans Jurgen Ehlers was born around 1826 in the Duchy of Holstein. It might have been the lure of gold that brought him to the United States, for he became a naturalized citizen on September 20, 1860, in Yreka, California.
The 1870 federal census of Yreka shows him engaged in mining and living with a woman named Olive. How Ehlers’ relationship with Olive ended is not known but, on November 30, 1879, he married Elizabeth Gorrsen in San Francisco. Initially, Ehlers was a Methodist, but eventually he became affiliated with the Presbyterian church. Ehlers seems not to have been a particularly successful (or devoted?) minister of the Gospel, as he apparently held other jobs during his lifetime. In 1880, Ehlers was recorded as preaching in Florence, Arizona. By 1886, he was living in Yuma, Arizona, where he served for a time as a chaplain at the territorial penitentiary there. The Ehlers family moved to Phoenix in October, 1889. In 1890, he was elected one of several school trustees in Maricopa County. On December 12, 1893, Ehlers filed final proof on a homestead. On July 7, 1896, the Ehlerses’ seven-year-old son, Joseph William, accidentally shot himself with a rifle. A doctor was summoned, but the boy died before he arrived. Little Joseph was probably buried in City Loosley Cemetery, it being the closest. Shortly thereafter, Ehlers and his wife quitclaimed their homestead to E. Irvine and moved into Phoenix. The Ehlerses’ oldest son Henry was a rebellious youth. By age 16, he had been involved in numerous petty thefts before being convicted of second-degree burglary. On November 20, 1898, he was sentenced to two years in the territorial prison at Yuma. Discharged at the end of his sentence, he evidently had not learned his lesson. He and an accomplice were believed to have robbed the New River and Goddard stage stations only a short time later. Ehlers then fled to California. He is said to have committed suicide in 1902 after murdering his wife. Rev. Ehlers was about 76 when he died in Phoenix of pneumonia. He was buried in Rosedale Cemetery, although there is no grave marker. No probate record has been found, so perhaps he had little to leave. Not long thereafter, his widow Elizabeth took their remaining two children and relocated to California. © 2025 by Patricia Gault and Donna L. Carr. Last revised 24 April 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!  Rev. L. Phillip Smithey, about 1855-1889 Methodist Missionary Buried in Masons Cemetery, Block 8, Lot 1, Grave 4 (Grave marker photo courtesy of the Pioneers’ Cemetery Association, Inc.) Louis Phillip Smithey was born on October 24, 1855 or 1857, in Jetersville, Amelia County, Virginia. He was a younger son of Royal Smithey and his wife Mary Ann Elizabeth Hubbard. On the eve of the Civil War, Royal was employed as an overseer for George W. Jones, a wealthy farmer in Nottoway County. After the war, he returned to farming.
Phil Smithey seems to have been in somewhat delicate health as a boy, but early in life he aspired to go into the ministry. His older brother William also became a minister. Following his father’s death in 1883, young Smithey enrolled in Vanderbilt University in Nashville. It was a Methodist Episcopal college, and Smithey took classes in the theological department. However, ill health impelled him to go west after a year. Moving to California, he served as a deacon in Azusa and Duarte. By 1887, his phthisis (tuberculosis) had advanced and he was suffering from pulmonary hemorrhages. Seeking a drier climate, Phil Smithey moved to Prescott, Arizona, in the fall of 1887 and engaged in missionary work in what was then a wide-open frontier town. Though uncompromising against sin, he was said to have been of a cheerful disposition and ever sympathetic towards others. Thanks to Arizona’s salubrious climate, he lived for another two years and gained a small but devoted following among the residents of Prescott. Nevertheless, his health, never robust, continued to decline. When death became imminent, some advised him to go home to his family in Virginia, but he insisted on remaining in Arizona. Smithey moved to Phoenix in August, 1889, and died two months later, on October 12. He was buried in the Masons Cemetery. © 2025 by Donna L. Carr. Last revised 24 March 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! |
