John Proops, 1848-1896

Baker, Miner, Firefighter

Originally buried in A.O.U.W. Cemetery; moved to Beth Israel

(Image of 1900s firefighter generated with Bing AI​)

John Proops was born on January 17, 1848, in Bristol, England. After the death of his mother in 1856, his father moved the family to Charles Dickens’ London. Young John was apprenticed to a baker and, in 1867, he shipped out to Adelaide, Australia, as a baker.

Settled by English debtors and convicts in the 1700s, Australia was a wild ‘n' wooly outpost of the British Empire. From Adelaide on the southern coast, Proops walked to Melbourne, stopping to work at sheep and cattle stations along the way. From there, he went to Ballarat, where the discovery of gold had sparked a gold rush similar to the 1849 one in California. Later, Proops returned to Melbourne to work as a journeyman baker.

While in Melbourne, Proops met and married Hannah Franks on February 18, 1873. Their daughter Rose was born in 1874. Thereafter, Proops became the chief cook and baker at the Government Orphan Asylum at Randwick, near Sydney, where sons Harry and Charley were born.

In 1881, Proops moved his family to San Francisco and then to Tombstone, but misfortune dogged his steps. Only ten days after arriving there, his son Charley died of gastric fever. Proops opened a bakery in Tombstone, but it did not pay enough to support his family. After two years, he gave it up and turned to hauling freight from Kingston to Globe until his team of horses was stolen. Eventually, he found work at the new courthouse in Tombstone. 

In May 1887, Proops came to Phoenix in the course of delivering a load of furniture for Mr. B. A. Fickas from his house in Tombstone. He found employment first as a porter at the Commercial Hotel and then as the janitor of the city hall and gardener of the adjacent plaza.

Proops was said to have borne his previous financial misfortunes with a light heart and cheerful disposition. A sociable fellow, Proops joined the volunteer fire company, the Ancient Order of United Workmen (A.O.U.W.), and the Foresters.

It was in the performance of his duty as a firefighter that he contracted his final illness. On Friday, December 29 or 30, 1895, the volunteer company was called to a fire on East Madison Street. Thoroughly drenched by the hoses and going home in the morning cold, Proops took a chill that turned into pneumonia. He succumbed on January 6, 1896.

On the day of Proops’s funeral, the fire house lowered its flag to half-mast. His comrades from the fire company, the Foresters, and the Ancient Order of United Workmen turned out to bury him in Phoenix’s A.O.U.W. Cemetery...

…And there he remained until his widow Hannah died in 1903. She was one of the first to be buried in the newly-opened Beth Israel (Jewish) Cemetery at 35th Avenue and Van Buren, and their son Harry had his father’s remains moved there as well.

© 2024 by Donna L. Carr. Last revised 18 May 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!

Tobias Seelig, about 1850-1892
 
Dry Goods Merchant
 
Buried in Pioneer & Military Memorial Park,
exact location unknown.

(Stock image of men wearing Prince Albert suits,
​courtesy of MicroSoft clip art)

According to his various voter registrations, Tobias Seelig was born in Germany around 1850. The passenger list of the ship Humboldt shows that  he arrived at New York’s Castle Garden on August 18, 1865. Except for that, his entire life prior to 1878 is a blank.
 
Late in 1878, he appears to have opened a dry goods store in Modesto, California. The Mechanics Cash Store carried clothing, boots, and other fancy goods on a cash-only basis. The local newspaper listed some of the items available.
 
By 1880, Tobias’s younger brother Gabriel joined him in the Modesto dry goods store. Perhaps Gabriel took over the management of the Modesto store, for Tobias was in Phoenix by June 1882. He must have been naturalized, because he registered to vote in that year. After a stint as a clerk for the dry goods firm of Rosenthal & Kutner, he opened a cigar store in or near the Capitol Saloon. The cigar store burned down in 1886.
 
The Seeligs were Jewish. Jewish stores were essential to life in early Phoenix, and most were subsidiaries of stores founded in California during the Gold Rush days. Their proprietors could therefore count on financial backing from bankers in San Francisco as well as established sources of supply from the West Coast. Phoenix’s merchants were usually ‘Reform’ Jews with German surnames who kept their religious affiliations low-key and practiced them behind closed doors.
 
A Freemason, Seelig also participated in the Fire Brigade and joined the Knights of Pythias. He was generally well-liked and is said to have dressed stylishly. By 1891, he was even investing in local mining operations.
 
Misfortune caught up with him early in 1892, when the Knights of Pythias charged him with defalcation in his use of their funds. Deeply affected by the charge, Seelig took to drinking and apparently made plans to commit suicide. He told a friend that, when he died, he wanted to be laid out in his Prince Albert suit. On March 8, 1892, he carried out his plan in his rooming house, where he donned his suit and shot himself in the temple.
 
Compounding the tragedy was that his fellow Pythians had already taken up a collection of $600 to cover his debts and restore his good name.
 
Seelig was buried in a Phoenix cemetery. Since he owned some property, it is likely that he was interred somewhere in the Pioneer & Military Memorial Park. There is no marker.
 
© 2022 by Donna Carr. Last revised November 11, 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!
 

Louis Roth, about 1859-1894
 
Shopkeeper
 
Originally buried in IOOF; moved to Beth Israel

(Grave marker photo courtesy of Tim Kovacs)

Louis Roth, son of Yosef Avraham and his wife Tcharne, was born about 1859 in what is now Kovácsvágás, Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén, Hungary. He was later known as Louis, Lajos, or Leo.
 
After the Austrian Hapsburgs teamed up with Tsar Nicholas I of Russia to put down the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, Hungarian Jews lost the few civil rights they had enjoyed and became subject to the Russian military draft. Louis’s older brother Jacob was conscripted in this fashion, prompting their father to urge his other sons to emigrate as soon as possible.
 
Accordingly, Louis and Max, the next two oldest sons, came to America in 1879. Louis appears to have filed a declaration of intent to become a naturalized U.S. citizen under the name of Lewis Roth in Fairfield County, Ohio, on January 30, 1885. By 1888, Louis and his younger siblings had reunited in Los Angeles, where he had found work with the Kline Clothing Company and the Excelsior Clothing Company. The Roth family—Max, Rosa, Kelly, Mike and Isidor—ultimately became very involved in Los Angeles’s Hungarian Jewish community.
 
In January 1888, Louis’s financial position was stable enough for him to marry Miss Fannie Gerson. Unfortunately, the marriage did not last; they divorced just five months later.
 
By January 1891, Louis was in Phoenix, Arizona, operating his own cigar and confectionary shop on Washington Street, near the Monihon Building. It’s possible that he came to Arizona for his health, considering that he died of consumption on April 12, 1894.
 
Louis’s brother Max traveled to Phoenix to see him properly buried in the Independent Order of Odd Fellows Cemetery and to close out his business affairs. When Beth Israel Cemetery opened in 1903, the family had his remains moved there and a fine marble monument erected in his memory.
 
Fast forward to January 2019, when Tim Kovacs was visiting the Beth Israel Cemetery. While there, he happened upon a broken marker on which he recognized the place name KovacsVagas—a Hungarian village about 33 miles from where his own ancestors originated.
 
On February 9, 2021, Tim received a surprising message from Geri Roth Jacobson, Louis Roth’s great-niece. She had spent thirty years looking for a grave marker for her “Uncle Leo” in California, but to no avail. Only by luck had she come upon his memorial on Find A Grave.
 
Because Roth had originally been buried in the IOOF Cemetery, Geri appealed to the Pioneers’ Cemetery Association for help with repairs, and its preservation team responded. The restoration was a success and, on December 21, 2022, Geri and a contingent of relatives from California visited the grave for the first time ever to view the results.
 
© 2024 by Tim Kovacs and Donna L. Carr.  Last revised 4 May 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!