Martha Richey Beatty

Martha Richey Beatty, 1829-1902
Patron of Education
 
Buried in Rosedale Cemetery, Section 119, Lot 11, Grave 2

(Grave marker photo courtesy of the PCA)

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In an era when bathing involved heating water on a hot stove, filling a bathtub and emptying it afterward, some Phoenix residents preferred to use the public baths at Frank Shirley’s barbershop…and that is where Martha Beatty met her end.
 
Martha Richey was born in Ohio in August, 1829. On May 3, 1851, she married Benjamin Beatty in La Salle, Illinois. The Beatties had no children, although Martha's will mentions an adopted daughter, Blanche,  who was in the household in 1870.
 
By 1880, the Beatties were living in Oskaloosa, Iowa, where Benjamin owned a grocery store. He must have died between then and 1884 for Mrs. Beatty's will, dated February 15, 1884, does not mention him.
 
Martha was living in Eddyville, Iowa, when she was diagnosed with tuberculosis. She determined to move to a more congenial climate and arrived in Phoenix around 1894. The 1900 federal census records Martha as a widow who owned her own home on East Jefferson Street, near the street car barns. One of her neighbors was a Mrs. S. J. Conley.
 
Since it would have been difficult for an elderly woman to heat water and fill a bathtub in her own kitchen, Mrs. Beatty took her baths at Frank Shirley's Tonsorial Parlor (barbershop) in the basement of Goodman's Drug Store. The Tonsorial Parlor rented curtained cubicles for bathing, as most private residences of the time did not yet have indoor plumbing. 
 
On August 9, 1902, Martha went to the bathhouse, having arranged with Mrs. Conley to meet her there at 1 PM. However, Mrs. Conley was delayed and did not arrive until 2 PM. Imagine her horror when she entered the cubicle only to find Mrs. Beatty lying on her side with her face completely under the surface of the water. Dr. Plath was sent for, but efforts to revive Martha failed. The coroner's jury convened the following day and found that Mrs. Beatty must have fainted on account of the hot water and drowned.
 
Martha Beatty's funeral took place on August 11, after which she was interred in Rosedale Cemetery. A petition for the probate of Mrs. Beatty's will was filed the next day. At the time of her death, her estate was valued at $3,292.50 (about $98,700 in 2019). She left only $5 of her estate to her heirs; the rest of it went to Lincoln University in Lincoln, Illinois.  
 
According to the newspaper reports, Mrs. Beatty had relatives in Lincoln who had refused to come to Phoenix and nurse her during her final illness, and it was for this reason that she decided to leave her property to the educational institution instead. The inscription on her monument reads, “A Patron of Education.”
 
© 2020 by Patricia Gault. Last revised March 2020.

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