Thomas A. Cochrane, about 1836-1894
 
Prospector
 
Buried in City Loosley Cemetery, Block 16, Lot 7, North 1/3

(Stock image of prospector courtesy of Broderbund Clip Art)
​

Thomas Augustus Cochrane was born in Canada around 1836 to parents who had immigrated to Canada from England. In about 1838, his widowed mother brought Thomas and his older sister Mary Ann to Jacksonville, Morgan County, Illinois.
 
According to his obituary, Cochrane went to California in 1849 when he was only 13 years old. He spent the rest of his life as a prospector and mining consultant. He never married.
 
City directories, census returns and voter registrations record his travels throughout California and Arizona. In 1864, he was a miner, living in San Francisco. By 1870, he was a miner in Tuolumne, California. He had moved to Pinal County, Arizona, by 1880.
 
Cochrane registered to vote in Maricopa County, Arizona, in 1886, although he continued to have business dealings in Globe. By this time, he was well regarded as a mining man.
 
In June, 1890, Cochrane and his business partner Frank Kirkland were selling shares in a mining corporation with gold mines located near Harqua Hala. One of the mines, the Golden Eagle, had been ‘jumped’ by M. H. Horn, and the partners along with Columbus Gray had to get an injunction to make Horn leave.
 
Cochrane returned from a trip East in August 1890, after which he was planning to go to Baker City, Oregon, to superintend operations at a new mine there. He was said to be a man of great skill and integrity.
 
Early in 1893, T. A. Cochrane made a prospecting trip into the Bradshaw Mountains. In May, he was a member of the coroner’s jury convened to determine the cause of Tessie Murray’s (Letitia Rice’s) death.
 
Just a few days before his death, Cochrane was exhibiting a gold nugget the size of a hen’s egg, which he said was taken from a digging on the Hassayampa River north of Wickenburg.
 
Thomas A. Cochrane died in his room at a Phoenix boarding house on September 18, 1894, of what was almost certainly a heart attack. Captain Calderwood took up a collection for his funeral expenses, which his sister in Illinois reimbursed shortly thereafter. Cochrane was buried in City Loosley Cemetery, Block 16, Lot 7, Space N 1/3.
 
© 2022 by Donna L. Carr. Last revised 18 May 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!
 

Jerry Neville, about 1848-1900

Mine Owner
 
Buried in Rosedale Cemetery, Block 50, Grave 7

(Photo courtesy of Pioneers’ Cemetery Association, Inc.​)

Based solely on GAR insignia on his grave marker, it is thought that Jerry Neville is the same person as the Canada-born Jerry Nevill who enlisted in the Union army at Dowagiac, Michigan, on December 22, 1863. Although he swore that he was over 18 years old when he enlisted, the inscription on his grave marker suggests that he might have been younger. For a bounty of $300, he signed up to serve for three years and was assigned to Company D, 6th Michigan Heavy Artillery. He was discharged in New Orleans on August 20, 1865. Thereafter, he seems to have gone into the mining business out West, perhaps logical given that he would have been familiar with gunpowder and explosives.
 
According to the federal census, Jerry Neville was in Silver City, New Mexico, in 1880. However, he was also registered to vote in Pima County, Arizona. He and his partner, Norman H. Chapin, operated in the southeastern part of the state, where they owned copper mines called "The Pride of the West" and "The Smuggler" near Harshaw, Arizona.
 
On October 3, 1891, Chapin married Maria Barron in Nogales, Arizona. A little over five years later, Neville married Maria’s younger sister, Refugia Barron, recently arrived from Mexico, on May 2, 1897. This made Chapin and Neville brothers-in-law as well as business partners.
 
The Nevilles had a son George, born July 15, 1899, in Los Angeles. Possibly they had a daughter named Ygnacia as well, but she may have died young, as she does not appear in the censuses of 1900 or 1910.
 
By 1899, Jerry Neville had contracted phthisis (tuberculosis) and was no longer able to attend to his mines. The "Pride of the West" was reportedly sold to Gee & Wilfley of Denver for $120,000.
 
Toward the end of 1899, Neville was staying at Washington Camp in Santa Cruz County when he took a turn for the worse and came to Phoenix for medical treatment. He died on January 4, 1900, in Sisters Hospital in Phoenix and was buried in Rosedale Cemetery.
 
His brother-in-law, Norman H. Chapin, came to Phoenix to settle Neville’s business affairs, but only a few short weeks later, he was stricken with pneumonia and died on January 10, 1900. He was buried in the Independent Order of Odd Fellows Cemetery.
 
The 1900 federal census, conducted later that year, found the widowed sisters, Maria and Refugia, living together in Harshaw. On August 29, 1901, Refugia remarried. Her new husband, Oscar Keefe Franklin, then adopted little George and was named as his legal guardian.
 
There is no evidence that Jerry Neville ever received an invalid pension for his Civil War service or was a patient at the military hospital in Sawtelle, California. Likewise, Refugia and her son George seem not to have applied for survivors pensions. It has been conjectured that they were sufficiently well off not to need such benefits.
 
© 2022 by Donna L. Carr. Last revised 27 February 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!
 

John McCasey, about 1819-1895
 
Civil War Vet and Mining Engineer
 
Buried in Porter Cemetery, Block 38, Grave H

(Grave marker photo courtesy of the
​Pioneers’ Cemetery Association, Inc.)

John McCasey was born between 1819 and 1825 in Ireland. At some point, he immigrated to the United States and settled in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. He seems to have had a rather good education, enabling him to work as a machinist, mining engineer, and metallurgist throughout his life.
 
At the outbreak of the Civil War, McCasey enlisted as a private in Company E, 8th Pennsylvania Infantry, on April 18, 1861. He and Cornelia Connolly were married before a priest on June 4, 1861, in Scranton, Pennsylvania. 
 
McCasey was soon promoted to the rank of captain in Company K, 110th Pennsylvania Infantry. However, he resigned his commission on July 29, 1861, stating that ill health made him unfit to perform his duties. He returned home to recuperate, where his and Cornelia’s first child, William Francis, was born on August 12 of the following year.
 
McCasey reenlisted briefly on July 1, 1863, in Company B, 41st Pennsylvania Emergency Militia, an ad hoc unit raised to defend the state from the Confederate advance toward Gettysburg. He was discharged on August 3, 1863.
 
Following the Civil War, McCasey found work as a machinist. He and Cornelia, or Lillie as she was called, had eight children, although only four lived to adulthood.
 
The 1880 federal census of Jersey City, New Jersey, lists McCasey as a ‘silver miner’. Shortly after his oldest son turned 21, McCasey moved to Arizona, while his wife Cornelia remained in Pennsylvania to raise the rest of their children.
 
McCasey found work as a mining engineer in the vicinity of the Harqua Hala Mine near Yuma. In 1889, he wrote a detailed description of the ores and other minerals to be found there. In 1891, he discovered a significant onyx deposit north of Cave Creek, Arizona. 
 
John McCasey moved to Mesa, Arizona, and set up an assay office there in 1893. After transferring his GAR membership to the John Wren Owen GAR Post, he filed for and received Invalid Pension #865,681. He seems to have lost touch with his friends back East, as his whereabouts were not known until one of his old Army companions tracked him down through the GAR.
 
McCasey died February 23, 1895, having been hospitalized for about three months with pulmonary tuberculosis.  He was buried in Porter Cemetery. 
 
His widow Cornelia filed for and received a Civil War Widow’s pension, #471,053. She was living in the Bronx, New York City, when she died on June 29, 1919.
 
© 2023 by Donna L. Carr. Last revised 22 December 2023.

​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!

Robert E. Lee Brown, 1865-1902
 
Mining Engineer and Adventurer
 
Buried in Rosedale North, Block 130

(Grave marker and photo courtesy of the
​Pioneers’ Cemetery Association, Inc.)

R. E. L. Brown may be one of the most unique characters in the Pioneer & Military Memorial Park, both for his colorful life--and the speed with which he was forgotten after his demise.
 
Born May 31, 1865, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Laurence and Martha Brown, he trained as a mining engineer, then went out west to locate promising mines.
 
In 1889, Brown was surveying potential mining claims in Washington state. During a violent labor strike in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, in 1892, he started a newspaper called The Barbarian, which took the side of the mine owners versus the unionized miners. This earned him the nickname “Barbarian Brown." Threatened with death during the strike, he caused a cannon to be wheeled into the street outside his office.
 
Much as he enjoyed the furor his newspaper editorials provoked, Brown remained first and foremost a mining engineer. He speculated in mines and was well regarded internationally for his expertise. Seeking new adventures, Brown journeyed to South Africa in hopes of securing some promising claims during a land rush in Witfontein in 1895. Competition was fierce for the best claims, but Brown hit upon a method that could outrun the swiftest horse: a heliograph! He set up heliograph stations by which he could transmit confirmation almost instantaneously to his confederates in the field who were waiting to stake his claims.
 
On July 19, 1895, the day of the land rush, twelve thousand miners were gathered in Doornkop to register their permits. But Brown had devised a plan to ensure that he would be first in line. A fan of American football, he recruited a group of rough men from local bars to form a “flying wedge” to cut through the crowd. The ruse worked; however, the Pretoria government initially refused to honor his claims. Brown sued the Boer government and eventually won a huge judgment, the exact value of which has never been ascertained.
 
Having worn out his welcome in South Africa, the brash engineer returned to North America where, on September 26, 1898, he wed Maud Higgins in Victoria, British Columbia. 
 
Brown was in London in 1901 when he apparently contracted tuberculosis. In late 1902, he traveled to Phoenix in a private train car with his wife, his personal physician, and a nurse. Unfortunately, he had left it too late; he died on October 3, 1902, scarcely a week after his arrival. Despite his fame and fortune, his death rated only a few lines in the local newspaper, and he was buried under a simple wooden headboard in Rosedale Cemetery.  
 
One can only speculate as to why Brown’s remains were not shipped back East and why a more elaborate headstone was never erected over his grave.
 
© 2020 by Donna L. Carr. Last revised 16 October 2020.

​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!