 Edgar R. Laplante, about 1888-1944 Internationally known Con Artist Buried in Cementerio Lindo, exact location unknown (Archival photo by Turner Studios, 1918, courtesy of the Library of Congress) Edgar Laplante, a.k.a. Chief White Elk, a.k.a. Dr. White Eagle, a.k.a. Ray Tewanna, was a charming, internationally-known con artist who routinely assumed a Native American persona.
He was born around 1888 in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to a Canadian immigrant couple. In 1917, he was working as a barker for a silent movie theater on Coney Island. Perhaps the attention that his Native American regalia and somber mien attracted led him to reinvent himself as "Chief White Elk." By 1918, Chief White Elk was the toast of Salt Lake City, Utah, giving patriotic speeches to raise funds for World War I Liberty bonds. On March 13, 1918, he married Bertha Thompson, a half-Klamath model and aspiring actress from Eureka, California. The federal census of 1920 recorded the couple living in Portland, Oregon. Shortly thereafter, however, Laplante appears to have deserted Bertha to go on a whistle-stop tour of Canada. Laplante’s next port of call was London, where he passed himself off as a Cherokee chieftain (from Canada!) and expressed a desire to meet personally with King George V. Finding himself short of cash, Laplante began calling himself Prince Ray Tewanna and married an English widow, Ethel Elizabeth Holmes, ignoring the fact that he was still married to Bertha. Laplante soon left his new wife to visit France and Italy. Taking up lodgings in Paris, he walked the arts districts wearing his Native American costume. Although his French was of the French-Canadian variety, Laplante had no trouble charming the Parisians. Next, Laplante moved on to Italy, where he made the acquaintance of Countess Melania Khevenhüller-Metsch. The countess seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of Italian lira, and Laplante was happy to help her spend it. His sympathy for the poor made him the darling of Italy’s Fascist Party, and he was photographed several times with Mussolini’s Black Shirts. However, in 1925, Laplante was unmasked and sentenced to a prison term in Italy for defrauding the countess. By the time he was free to return to the United States, he was so broke that he had to accept work as a waiter in order to pay for his steamship passage. Back in the U.S., Laplante didn’t change his shtick; he simply took to touring rural areas, trusting that he would be unknown there. A 1931 newspaper article from Tuscaloosa proved that he had resumed his "Chief White Elk" persona. Found walking along a California highway in 1939, he claimed to be a spokesman for an Aleutian tribe on his way to Washington, D.C. By the time of his death in 1944, Laplante was living at Schmidt’s Haven of Rest in Phoenix, Arizona. His death certificate lists him as "Edward La Plante (Dr. White Eagle)," a Native American born near Gila Bend, Arizona. An indigent, he was buried at public expense in the Maricopa County Cemetery. Edgar Laplante's cenotaph is in Cementerio Lindo. ©2022 by Donna L. Carr. Last revised 29 March 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!
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 Saloma E. Newland, about 1838–1898 Telegraph Operator and Lady Prospector Buried in City/Loosley Cemetery, exact location unknown. There is no grave marker. (Stock image courtesy of Broderbund Clip Art) Saloma first appears in the public record in 1864, when she was listed as Mrs. J. B. Larcombe, an agent of the Florence Sewing Machine Company. It looks as though she was living in Virginia City, Nevada Territory—a raw, frontier town at the time.
Her name appears next in the notice of her 1870 divorce from Joseph Blount Larcombe, published in the San Francisco Examiner. The decree was granted based on the grounds that the plaintiff had not provided the defendant with the common necessities of life for two years. Evidently, Saloma had been supporting herself for several years prior to her divorce as an agent for the Florence Sewing Machine Company, which had a factory in San Francisco. Between 1866 to 1877, Saloma had also been employed by the Western Union Telegraph Company, working her way up to manager of the telegraph office in San Francisco’s newly-opened Palace Hotel. Joseph’s and Saloma’s daughter, Flora, had been born about 1858 in Ohio. Saloma had income sufficient to send her to the Young Ladies Seminary in Benicia, California, the predecessor of Mills College in Oakland. It was a smart move. On March 6, 1875, Flora married Barry Baldwin in Martinez, California. In 1877, Saloma left California for Tucson, Arizona, to learn about geology and prospecting. Less than a year later, she was recorded as buying and selling shares in the Little Amicus mine and the Saloma mine. A newspaper reporter caught up with her about this time and found her operating a hotel in Watsonville. Shortly thereafter, she married a miner named Thomas Jefferson Newland. Newland had a chronic respiratory condition, so Saloma did the actual prospecting and brought the ores to him so he could judge whether her find looked promising. Together, they filed on several mining claims in Yavapai and Gila Counties. Thomas Newland died on December 12, 1896, but Saloma, having developed a fondness for the Arizona wilderness, 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 the mother-in-law of United States Marshal Barry Baldwin (Flora’s husband). Saloma Larcombe Newland died of cancer December 31, 1898, at Sister’s Hospital in Phoenix. She was buried in City/Loosley Cemetery in Phoenix, possibly near her husband. © 2020 by Val Wilson. Last revised 3 May 2020. To obtain a copy of the sources used for this article, please contact the PCA to make a suggested donation. 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 McCarty, 1855-1901 Arizona Game and Fish Commissioner Buried in Masons Cemetery, Block 17, Lot 3, Grave 8 (Photo courtesy of Patricia Powers, great-granddaughter) On June 6, 1901 John McCarty set off from his remote camp near Clear Creek on Arizona’s Mogollon Rim to hunt for some rare pigeons and four dozen tassel-eared squirrels. He was never seen alive again. A few months later a body was discovered and identified as McCarty’s, but was it really his?
Little is known about McCarty’s past. Census records suggest that he was born around 1855 in Scott, Virginia, to James and Mary McCarty. At any rate, he was in Arizona when he began to advertise as a professional hunter around 1890. For the next ten years, newspapers related his adventures as he roamed the Territory, hunting bears, mountain lions and other livestock predators. He also collected rare animal specimens for museums and universities. Because of his extensive knowledge of the territory and its wildlife, he was appointed Fish and Game Commissioner in the fall of 1898. On April 15, 1900, he married Lillie S. Sparks, then aged sixteen. McCarty left his young wife, pregnant with their first child, with her grandparents when he set off on his last hunting trip a little over a year later. Shortly before he departed, he had taken out six separate life insurance policies that totaled $27,000, nearly $750,000 in today’s currency. When McCarty did not return from his hunting trip on the Mogollon Rim east of Pine, his partner, J. K. Day, went to search the area. Week after week, the search turned up nothing. Finally, on August 19, a body was found. Near it lay McCarty’s shotgun with a burst barrel. It was surmised that McCarty had been stalking a bear. Apparently, the barrel of the gun had burst when he fired, likely disabling him and leaving him at the mercy of the angry bear. The body was taken to Flagstaff, where an inquest ruled McCarty’s death accidental. His associates had his body transported to Phoenix for burial in the Masonic Cemetery. Hardly was McCarty in his grave before the insurance companies refused to honor the policies he had bought, alleging fraud. They claimed that McCarty was still alive somewhere and that his friends had connived to plant a body that they then ‘found’ and identified as his. As legal guardian for her granddaughter Lillie and Lillie’s posthumous infant son, Mrs. Susannah Cosgray sued the insurance companies for payment. Having failed to produce McCarty alive, they finally paid the claims. Nevertheless, rumors persisted for years that McCarty was still alive. Was his insurance buying spree part of an elaborate and successful fraud? Or, since he was engaged in a dangerous profession, was he simply making provision for his young wife and unborn child? The debate continues to this day. © 2018 by Derek Horn. Last revised 17 November 2021. 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!  W. H. “Red” Nelson, 1860-1895 Traveling hot-air balloonist Buried in City Loosley Cemetery, exact location unknown (Image generated using Bing AI) W. H. Nelson was said to have been born in York, Pennsylvania, around 1860. At some point, he became a parachutist whose act involved jumping from a hot-air balloon. How he came to his risky occupation is not known, but he and his partner, Otto Burke, a.k.a. Lochbaum, had been touring the West Coast with a carnival show.
Red and Burke billed themselves as “aeronauts.” Their act depended upon a balloon which, when inflated, was fifty feet high and about thirty feet in diameter. On August 1, 1895, they were booked to perform in Phoenix at a vacant lot on Jackson and Center Streets, where a merry-go-round had also been set up. Coincidentally, this was the same lot where evangelists from the Salvation Army had been preaching in a tent nightly for about a year. Many bought tickets to see the ascent that afternoon. The huge balloon was inflated and, when the ground ropes were untied, it rose about thirty feet in the air. Unfortunately, the balloon sprang a leak and collapsed; Burke received minor injuries in the fall. The balloon was mended and inflated a second time at 7:15 PM. This time, “Red” Nelson was to make the ascent, as his partner was on crutches. It seems likely that Nelson was tired from having worked on the balloon in the hot August afternoon but felt he had to perform, as the crowd had become restive and were muttering about the act being a fraud. When the balloon had ascended several hundred feet into the air, Nelson jumped. His parachute opened properly but, in the gathering dusk, Nelson may have miscalculated his distance from the ground and detached the trapeze bar from the parachute too soon. The Thalheimer family was having supper when they heard a terrific crash on the roof, then something rolled off the roof into the back yard. Nelson was found unconscious, his right hand still clutching the trapeze bar. No one could say just how far Nelson had fallen, but it must have been from a considerable height. Although the attending physician ascertained that only Nelson’s shoulder was broken, he was badly bruised over half of his body and had sustained several deep cuts to his face. He lingered for almost two days, never regaining consciousness but being heard to murmur in his delirium, "Give me a clear fall and I'll make it all right" and "No, I can't hold on; I'm too tired." When Nelson vomited blood, it became clear that he had suffered irreparable internal injuries. He expired on August 3rd and was buried on August 6th in City/Loosley Cemetery. He had no known relatives, and the exact location of his grave has been lost. The tragic demise of the aeronaut had a sobering effect on the citizenry. Pious folk murmured that the accident was divine retribution for using the Salvation Army’s meeting place for entertainment purposes…and poor “Red” Nelson had paid the price. © 2023 by Donna L. Carr. Last revised 27 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! |