Frank Albert Barnes, 1868-1903
Circus Seal Trainer
 
Buried in Rosedale Cemetery temporarily;
​removed to family plot in Akron, Ohio.

(Generic image created with Bing AI)

Frank Albert Barnes was born November 11, 1868, in Meadville, Pennsylvania, to James Barnes and Mary Jane Cain. James was an oilwell driller who had immigrated from England to work in Pennsylvania’s oil fields. By the 1890s, the family was in Akron, Ohio. They lived in a cottage near railroad tracks, from which the Barnes youngsters would have seen trains come and go every day. Frank’s younger brother James, Jr., became a locomotive engineer.
 
It is not known exactly how Frank Barnes joined the circus. In 1897, he was employed by the Barnum & Bailey Circus. Soon thereafter, he joined the Ringling Brothers Circus where he became a seal trainer and performer.
 
On the evening of October 4, 1903, Barnes suffered a fractured skull when he fell from a Ringling Brothers circus train as it was passing through Gila Bend, Arizona, at about 20 miles an hour. He had been riding on a flatcar, next to the cages of his flippered charges, when the accident occurred. It is presumed that he had fallen asleep. 
 
Train employees telegraphed ahead to the Circus’s ‘advance man,' Mr. Nagle, who was already in Phoenix making arrangements for the circus train’s arrival, and he had an ambulance waiting at the station. Barnes was conveyed at once to Sisters Hospital in Phoenix, but he died on October 7, never having regained consciousness.
 
Barnes’s funeral was conducted from the undertaking parlor of J. Bradley, with all expenses covered by the Ringling Brothers Circus. His body was temporarily interred in Rosedale Cemetery until the following spring, when the Circus had it transported back to Akron for burial in his family’s plot. It is a well-known fact that circus performers are a close-knit group and look after each other in death as in life. Barnes being something of a local celebrity, his demise was widely reported in Akron newspapers.
 
© 2025 by Donna L. Carr. Last revised 21 July 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!

​George Frank Breninger, 1865-1905
Naturalist
 
Buried in Masons Cemetery, exact location not known

(Generic image created using Bing AI)

George Frank Breninger was born in September 1865, probably in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. From age fifteen, he manifested an intense fascination with nature, collecting specimens, pelts and eggs. His collection of birds’ eggs was at one time considered the fourth largest in the country.
 
Breninger became an ornithologist and expert taxidermist, mounting many of his specimens himself. As a naturalist, he had traveled widely in the continental United States from the Rockies as far south as the Isthmus of Panama to locate and collect rare species. Some of his work was sent to the Smithsonian Museum and Field Columbian Museum in Chicago. Another of his collections was at Colorado State University. 
 
He married Margaret J. Hoag, daughter of Addison Hoag in Fort Collins, Colorado, on September 19, 1888. Although he and his wife had five children, only their oldest son, David Addison, had a somewhat normal lifespan. Juvenile diabetes seems to have run in the family, as son Walter and daughter May both died of it before insulin became available to treat it. Another child died in infancy, and daughter Luella Ruth died of scarlet fever in 1903.
 
The family moved to Phoenix around 1897. In 1900, Professor Breninger spent six months in the Rockies, collecting specimens for the Foote Mineral Museum in Philadelphia. He published several scholarly papers about birds.
 
In 1903, Professor Breninger traveled to Guatemala and Nicaragua for four months to secure 500 bird specimens for the Field Columbian Museum. The conditions of the trip were rather primitive and Breninger’s team was regarded with some suspicion by the locals, who feared they might be a filibustering expedition intent on destabilizing the Mexican government. Breninger collected many parrot specimens and even some ocelots. He also brought back an orchid plant. It survived the six-week journey back to Arizona and bloomed in 1904.
 
Breninger grew different varieties of crops on his farm to determine whether they could survive in desert conditions. His wife Margaret had a fine flower garden and sold cut flowers in season. It is not known whether they had a greenhouse for their more delicate plants, although there were greenhouses in Phoenix by 1913.
 
For years, Breninger was exposed to arsenic in the course of his taxidermy work. Although he knew it was detrimental to his health, such was his devotion to his nature studies that he accepted the risk. He suffered three strokes, with each one leaving him weaker. 
 
He died on December 2, 1905, at his home at 386 North Sixth Avenue. After a Christian Science funeral, he was buried in Masons Cemetery. 
 
© 2025 by Donna L. Carr. Last revised 17 July 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!

Robert Plumridge, 1845-1906
Gambler and Bookmaker
 
Buried in Rosedale, Section: R-N

Grave marker photo courtesy of Pioneers’ Cemetery Association

Robert Plumridge was born in December 1844 in New Zealand. This would have been barely three years after the local Maori chieftains signed a treaty and New Zealand was made a British colony. 
 
It is possible that Robert was the son of George Plumridge, born in England, and Catherine Norris, born in Ireland. The 1852 state census of California lists a boy by that name, living in the household of R. Watson and his wife Catherine. Watson, a hotel steward, might have been Robert’s stepfather.
 
Plumridge was working as a waiter in California when the Civil War began in 1861. On September 20, 1861, he enlisted at Coloma, El Dorado County, California, for a term of three years. He mustered in at Auburn, Placer County, on October 16 and was assigned to Company F, 4th California Infantry. The regiment never saw battle; instead, its soldiers were assigned as support personnel to posts along the west coast of the United States. By September of 1862, Plumridge was working in the bake house of a military hospital. At the expiration of his term of enlistment, he was discharged at Fort Yuma on September 20, 1864.
 
Fort Yuma was on the California side of the Colorado River, across from the Arizona Territory. Plumridge seems to have chosen Arizona over California, for he was recorded as voting in Prescott in 1876. In 1880, he was listed as managing a hotel in Tombstone.
 
On November 10, 1883, Plumridge wed Isabel Acedo in Tucson, Arizona (she also appears in several records as ‘Elizabeth’). Isabel was twenty years his junior. They settled in Phoenix, where they had five children.
 
Instead of employing his skills as a baker, Plumridge made his living in Phoenix as a gambler and bookmaker. According to his obituary, he was an ardent ‘sporting man’ and an authority on card games, horse races and boxing. Nevertheless, he had such a reputation for honesty and fair play that even those who lost their bets could not complain. He was employed for several years by the Capitol Saloon as a faro dealer, although he sometimes took time off to attend sporting events where money was likely to change hands.
 
On September 7, 1895, Plumridge applied for an invalid pension due to respiratory problems contracted during his service. He was awarded Pension #938,379.  
 
Plumridge died on June 19, 1906, of carcinoma of the bowels. Following an Episcopal funeral service, he was buried in Rosedale, Section: R-N.
 
Plumridge’s wife Elizabeth received widow’s pension #852,345, based on his military service. She died August 1, 1927, in Los Angeles, California.
 
© 2025 by Donna L. Carr. Last revised 30 June 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!

Robert John “Robin” Icke, 1858-1905
Ostrich wrangler
 
Buried in Porter Cemetery, Block 17

(Image courtesy of Microsoft Office clip art)

Robert John “Robin” Icke was born April 1858 in Attleborough, Warwickshire, England.
 
He married Fannie Townsend in England. However, their first child, John Henry Townsend Icke, was born April 1888 in Bathurst, Eastern Cape, South Africa, where Mr. Icke had gone to engage in ostrich farming. Ostrich feathers were in great demand for Victorian ladies’ millinery, and the huge birds were also raised for their meat.
 
The couple’s second child, Edith Winifred Icke, was born in July 1890 in Wellington, Shropshire, England. The 1891 census of England and Wales also recorded the Ickes in Wellington, where Mr. Icke was working as a commissions agent.
 
By about 1893, the Ickes were in Minneapolis, Minnesota, when Mr. Icke was hired by Josiah T. Harbert to manage his ostrich farm in south Phoenix. Perhaps the desert climate reminded the Ickes of South Africa, for they came to Arizona at once…and stayed. The United States federal census of 1900 records them living about three miles northwest of Phoenix.
 
Around this time, newspaper accounts suggest that Robin Icke was of unsound mind. He was committed to the insane asylum for a brief period in September of 1900.
 
In April 1901, Fannie Icke contracted typhoid fever. She died on April 13th. Because Mrs. Icke’s doctor had been sanguine about her chances of recovery, and because of her husband’s previous mental illness, an autopsy was ordered. It proved, however, that Mrs. Icke had indeed died of typhoid fever.
 
Fannie Icke was buried in Porter Cemetery, Block 17. Shortly thereafter, the two Icke children--John, 13, and Edith, 10—were sent back to England to be raised by Fannie’s married sister.
 
While the exact nature of Robert Icke’s mental illness is not known, the death of his wife and the loss of his children may well have pushed him over the edge. On March 2, 1905, he died of alcoholism in his room at the Commercial Hotel in Phoenix. He was buried next to his deceased wife in Porter Cemetery, B17.
 
© 2022 by Donna L. Carr. Last revised 15 April 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!
 

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!
 

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!