Margarita Wall Chretin, 1882-1904
A Life Cut Short
 
Buried in Rosedale Cemetery, North Section

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

Margarita Wall was born February 14, 1882, most likely in Arizona. She was the first-born daughter of Fred Wall and Refugio Rebecca Ramirez. Fred Wall is thought to have been an immigrant from Ireland and sometime miner. A sister, Matilda, was born about four years later, after which her parents parted. Their mother remarried several times thereafter.
 
On February 15, 1904, Margarita (or Maggie, as she was known), wed Carlos Robledo Chretin in Phoenix, Arizona. Chretin’s unusual surname was due to the fact that his father, Jean-Marie Chretin, was a Frenchman who had married a Mexican woman.
 
Maggie was probably suffering from tuberculosis already at the time of her marriage. She gave birth to a male infant on December 2, 1904, and died only six days later, on December 8. She was buried in Rosedale Cemetery, with a three-piece marble monument marking her grave.
 
Maggie’s newborn son was originally named Fred John Chretin. Upon his mother’s death, he was given to his maternal grandmother, Refugio Rebecca Ramirez, who was already nursing an eight-month-old daughter named Ruby O’Leary. Baby Fred’s life was most likely saved because of this steady supply of breastmilk, which also imparted some degree of immunity to childhood illnesses. Fred and Ruby grew up together, and Fred always regarded her as his sister, even though she was actually his half-aunt. Being raised in his grandmother’s household, Fred adopted the surname of her then husband, Daniel O’Leary.
 
Margaret Chretin’s widower, Carlos Chretin, eventually remarried and had several more children with his second wife, Marta Hernandez. Both the Chretins and the O’Learys moved to Los Angeles around 1918.
 
© 2024 by Donna L. Carr. Last revised 15 November 2024.

This December, we will commemorate 12 pioneers from our historic cemetery who passed away during this month. Through this countdown, we honor their contributions to our community, reflect on the challenges they faced, and remember the impact they had during their time. While some of their stories are somber, they are an important part of our history, reminding us of the resilience and humanity of those who came before us.

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!
 

Tallman Jacob Trask, 1852-1894
Pioneer Grocer
 
Trask is buried in Porter Cemetery, Block 6, Space 6

(Stock image courtesy of Pinterest)

Tallman Jacob Trask was born 1852 in Vassalboro, Maine, one of eleven children born to William Chase Trask and his second wife, Sophia Winslow. By 1860, the Trask family had moved to Concord, Illinois.
 
When he was 17, Tallman, or T.J. as he was known, went to work for Abel Gum as a clerk in Gum’s dry goods store. T.J. roomed with the Gum family while he learned the ins-and-outs of the mercantile trade. 
 
Around 1876, young Trask traveled west to Pueblo, Colorado, where he became the head clerk in the grocery store of John D. Miller. It was there that he met Laura E. Cooper, whom he married in July of 1877. The couple had two children born between 1878 and 1879, but both died in infancy and were buried in the Odd Fellows section of the Pueblo Pioneer Cemetery.
 
In 1879, T.J. and Laura moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to start a new store with Lyman Putney, a business man from Lawrence, Kansas. The store, which specialized in wholesale groceries and exotic fruits from California, was located in downtown Albuquerque on Railroad Avenue, opposite the train depot. 
 
T.J. and Laura had a tumultuous relationship, with Laura spending much of her time with her family in Pueblo and Kansas. In the spring of 1884, T.J. filed for divorce on the grounds of desertion. It was granted in October of 1884.  In December of 1884, he married Lizzie Strother of Ohio, thought by some to have been “an adventuress." T.J. dissolved his business interests with his partner Lyman Putney and moved to Phoenix, Arizona, where he opened a store with his new brother-in-law, Emory Kays. 
 
Still later, in 1892, T.J. opened another store with Charles Kessler and T.J.’s brother Alonzo. Located on Washington between modern-day Central Ave and 1st Avenue in Phoenix, the Trask-Kessler wholesale grocery soon became one of the largest grocery stores in town.
 
As he prospered, T.J. took on many civic duties, becoming president of the Arizona Industrial Exposition Association and territorial fair. His most notable exhibits were a pagoda made from grains grown on his farm, and a display of hanging tea cups and saucers from his wholesale grocery store that spelled “Trask-Kessler." He also served as president of the Immigration Union, vice president of the Business Chamber of Commerce in Phoenix, and was on the board of the Phoenix and Prescott Toll Road Company. 
 
T.J. died on December 8, 1894, from an intestinal ailment which he had fought for eight months. He was laid to rest in Porter cemetery. His headstone is of an unusual Moorish design and describes him as an “upright businessman."
 
© 2017 by Valleri Wilson. Last revised 22 December 2017.

​This December, we will commemorate 12 pioneers from our historic cemetery who passed away during this month. Through this countdown, we honor their contributions to our community, reflect on the challenges they faced, and remember the impact they had during their time. While some of their stories are somber, they are an important part of our history, reminding us of the resilience and humanity of those who came before us.

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!

Reuben A. Hill, 1839-1905
A Better Soldier than Husband
 
Buried in Rosedale, North section, Block 168, Grave 7

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

Reuben A. Hill was born November 5, 1839, in Naples, Cumberland County, Maine. He was the son of John Hill and Rebecca Garland, farmers in the area. Farming did not seem to be in Reuben’s future, however. By 1860, he was already in San Francisco, California, working as a common laborer.
 
That changed with the outbreak of the Civil War, when Reuben Hill enlisted in the Union Army for a term of three years. On September 29, 1861, he mustered in at Camp Downey, near Oakland, California, as a third corporal in Co. I, 1st California Infantry. 
 
As part of the California Column commanded by Colonel James H. Carleton, Hill’s unit was posted to the New Mexico Territory, where it saw action against the Confederates at Picacho Peak, Arizona. Hill seems to have been an effective soldier. He was promoted to sergeant and then commissioned a captain in Co. K, 1st New Mexico Volunteers (New), at Fort Sumner, New Mexico Territory, Feb. 29, 1864. Captain Hill resigned at Fort Union, New Mexico Territory, on February 6, 1866. 
 
After the war, Hill returned to Maine where he married Vesta Marhon Whittier on January 19, 1865, presumably while on leave from his military duties. They remained married until January 1880, when Reuben divorced Vesta so that he could marry a widow, Jane Tyler Burrell Wilson.
 
Jane later alleged that Hill drank excessively and was abusive. By the time he moved out in 1894, he had spent all of Jane’s money. Destitute, Jane was forced to move in with her married daughter. Although Hill suggested that Jane divorce him, she did not do so—possibly because of the social stigma of being a divorced woman.
 
Reuben Hill then secured a loan from another widow, Olivia S. W. Payne, with which he purchased a hotel in Strafford, New Hampshire. He remained in New Hampshire until about 1902, when he sold the hotel and moved to Arizona to speculate in mines. Once in Phoenix, Hill was cagey about his past and intimated that he had traveled in Europe on a mission for the U. S. government’s secret service. 
 
On December 7, 1905, Reuben Hill died of a broken neck when thrown from his wagon near his mining property at Cave Creek, Arizona Territory. He was buried in Rosedale Cemetery, North section,  Block 168, Grave 7.
           
Hill’s widow Jane did not learn of his death until her son-in-law saw a notice published in a Boston newspaper. Since she was still legally married to Hill at the time of his death, she applied for and received a widow’s pension based on his Civil War service.
 
©2022 by the Pioneers’ Cemetery Association, Inc. Last revised 8 September 2022.

This December, we will commemorate 12 pioneers from our historic cemetery who passed away during this month. Through this countdown, we honor their contributions to our community, reflect on the challenges they faced, and remember the impact they had during their time. While some of their stories are somber, they are an important part of our history, reminding us of the resilience and humanity of those who came before us.

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!
 

Perlina Swetnam Osborn, 1821-1912
Arizona Pioneer
 
Buried in AOUW Cemetery, Block 17, Lot 4, Grave 2

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

Perlina Elizabeth Swetnam was born on January 21, 1821, in Lawrence County, Kentucky. The daughter of Neri Swetnam and Mildred Cross, she was the youngest of their nine children. As Perlina is an unusual name, she sometimes appears on the census as "Paulina."
 
In March 25, 1841, she married John Preston Osborn, a native of Claiborne County, Tennessee. By 1850, they were farming in Morgan County, Kentucky, and already had four children.
 
Around 1853, the Osborns relocated to Adams County, Iowa. The Civil War was in full swing by 1863 when they moved to Colorado, but they had their sights set on the newly created territory of Arizona. Early in 1864, the Osborns joined a party of emigrants traveling via Santa Fe to northern Arizona. They arrived in Prescott on July 6, 1864, with three or four ox teams and wagons loaded with flour, ham, and bacon which they sold to Prescott’s hungry miners. With flour selling at $1 a pound and bacon at $.75 a pound, they soon had enough capital to begin their family’s new life in Arizona. 
 
The Osborns built Osborn House, one of Prescott’s first hotels, which provided modest accommodations with a menu of pork and beans, bread and coffee. Perlina, by now expecting her tenth child, remained in Prescott to run it, while John Preston explored Del Rio and the Verde Valley and tried his hand at farming and ranching. Unfortunately, his attempts came to naught as the local Yavapai tribesmen repeatedly raided his livestock and crops.
 
The Osborns’ oldest children having reached marrying age, daughter Jenettie wed Joseph Thomas Barnum in 1865, and Louisa married an up-and-coming lawyer named John Alsap on June 6, 1866. However, the alliance was short-lived as she died barely a year later.
 
The Osborn's son, John Jr., along with his erstwhile brother-in-law, John Alsap, moved south to the Salt River Valley in 1869, and John Sr. and Perlina joined them in January 1870, establishing a homestead at what would become McDowell and Seventh Street.
 
Once again, the Osborns were among the first white families to settle in a pioneer town. John Preston, now in his sixties, became an influential citizen of the new town. Perlina was known for her nursing skills, and the Osborns hosted many a traveling minister during Phoenix’s early years.
 
When John Preston Osborn died on January 19, 1900, he was buried in the A.O.U.W. Cemetery. Around the time of Osborn's death, the street that ran along the south side of the Osborns' farm became known as Osborn Road, a tribute to this pioneer family. 
 
Perlina passed away on December 3, 1912, at the age of 91. 
 
© 2024 by Donna L. Carr. Last revised November 28, 2024.

This December, we will commemorate 12 pioneers from our historic cemetery who passed away during this month. Through this countdown, we honor their contributions to our community, reflect on the challenges they faced, and remember the impact they had during their time. While some of their stories are somber, they are an important part of our history, reminding us of the resilience and humanity of those who came before us.
​
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!

Sarah Maddox, 1890-1911
Lovelorn Schoolgirl
 
Buried in Rosedale Cemetery, exact location unknown

(Generic image created using Bing AI)

In 1911, Sarah Maddox was a student at the Phoenix Indian School. She was probably a member of the Hoopa tribe of northern California. According to her newspaper obituary, she was one of the school’s brightest students and had an interest in the dramatic arts. Although the sentimental newspaper article portrays her as being sixteen, other sources suggest that she was in fact about 21.
 
She may have been the daughter of John Wesley Maddux, a white man who owned a saloon in Happy Camp, California, and his first wife, a local Native American woman. John Wesley Maddux did have a daughter named Sarah, but little else is known about her.
 
While at school, Sarah apparently fell in love with a young man who was a member of the school’s baseball team. Being shy, she hoped to attract his attention by appearing on stage in the school’s dramatic productions. One such performance took place late in February, 1911, and all confirmed that she did an outstanding job. However, Sarah was bereft to learn that the object of her affections had not even been present to witness her triumph.
 
Feeling rejected, Sarah swallowed a caustic compound—possibly lye or mercury—and died about two weeks later from the painful effects. She was buried in Rosedale Cemetery.
 
It is not known whether the young baseball player ever knew of her interest in him.
 
© 2024 by Donna L. Carr. Last revised 27 November 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!

Alfred Scott, 1881-1906
Phoenix Indian School Student
 
Buried in Rosedale North

(Grave marker photos courtesy of Pioneers’ Cemetery Association, Inc.)

Alfred Scott was born about 1881 in California. His records at Phoenix Indian School list him as a ‘Mission’ Indian, probably Luiseño.
 
Opened in 1890, the Phoenix Indian School was intended to function as a residential industrial school and to teach Native American teens and young adults useful occupations such as carpentry, animal husbandry, and the domestic arts--sewing, cooking, nursing. In time, its dormitories housed a total of about 700 pupils from 35 different tribes, including some advanced students from other Western states.
 
The school was designed to be a self-sufficient as possible. Vegetables were raised in the gardens. Male students tended the cows in the dairy and made the furniture used in the classrooms and dormitories. Female students sewed school uniforms and practiced some native crafts such as basket-weaving.
 
In addition to classes in occupational skills, the school had an academic curriculum similar to that taught in the average high school of the time. Many of the teachers were themselves Native Americans from tribes elsewhere in the United States, on the theory that they would serve as relatable role models. The school newspaper was produced in the campus print shop, and the school’s military drill team, marching band, and football and baseball teams were highly regarded. Each fall, students participated in the annual territorial fair, exhibiting handicrafts and taking part in horse races and foot races.
 
Alfred Scott played left outfield on the school’s baseball team in 1901. In 1904, he gave a declamation entitled “The Road to Placerville”, from Mark Twain’s book Roughing it, at a literary night performance.
 
In 1905, Alfred married an Anglo schoolteacher, Mae Glase, in Los Angeles, California. They had met while Miss Glase was teaching at the Phoenix Indian School. After the wedding, the young couple moved to Fort McDowell, where Mae taught elementary school.
 
Tragically, Alfred was already suffering from tuberculosis and died less than a year later on 10 April 1906. He was buried in Rosedale Cemetery, and his widow had a red sandstone monument placed on his grave.
 
Mae Glase Scott eventually moved to Murray, Utah, where she was employed for 33 years as a schoolteacher and principal. She died in Seattle in 1951.
 
© 2021 by Donna Carr. Last revised 24 October 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!

Edna Hillman, 1891-1912
Maidu Schoolgirl
 
Buried in Rosedale Cemetery, exact location unknown

(Photo of a Maidu family, 1906, William Thunen, photographer)
LCCN 2020635536

Edna Hillman was born around 1891 in Greenville, California, to George and Maggie Hillman. She is known to have had two brothers. 
 
Government and school records describe Edna as a full-blood Digger Indian. That was a somewhat pejorative term applied to many tribes that lived in the Great Basin regions of Utah, Nevada, and northern California. The area around Greenville was home to the Maidu tribe, so it is likely that she was Maidu. 
 
The Maidu were hunter-gatherers who typically lived in dugouts and subsisted on acorns, game, seeds, and edible roots, hence the name. During the Gold Rush years, the Maidu were dispossessed of their lands and decimated by diseases to which they had no immunity.
 
Her parents having died, Edna was enrolled in a boarding school in California in 1897. She was a Methodist; it is not known whether that was by choice or because the school that took her in happened to be Methodist.
 
By all accounts, Edna was a good student. Since she was 19 and an orphan, she herself signed the permissions to attend Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania for five years. A Carlisle trade school education was the best available to Native Americans of the turn of the century. Edna’s classes would probably have focused on practical skills such as cooking, sewing, and nursing. 
 
When Edna arrived at Carlisle on October 9, 1910, she was 5 feet 1 inch tall and weighed 133 pounds. However, she entered the school’s hospital in August 1911, where she was diagnosed with tuberculosis. 
 
Her medical records show what she was fed. She was sometimes nauseous and often refused the milk and eggnog that was pressed upon her (many Native Americans are lactose-intolerant).
 
By November 1911, Edna was failing rapidly. Having no family left in California to care for her, she asked to be sent to a government sanitarium in Phoenix. She left the school on December 11 but, by the time she reached Phoenix, it was clear that she was too far gone to recover. She died on January 22, 1912, and was buried in Rosedale Cemetery.
 
©2021 Donna L. Carr. Last revised 2 June 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!

Emma Burrows French, ca. 1885-1911
San Carlos Mohave
 
Buried in City Loosley Cemetery, exact location unknown

(Stock photo of Mohave mother and child, ca. 1900

 Emma Burrows was born around 1885. She was a member of the San Carlos Mohave (Yuman) tribe. Her maiden name appears in the written record as Burrows, Burroughs, and Burris.
 
She graduated from the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania in 1906. On 7 August 1907, she married William French, a Salt River Maricopa who had been a student at the Phoenix Indian School. Witnesses to the marriage were William’s brother Clarence and a woman named Ossie Mollie.
 
Emma’s first child, a girl, was born 22 July 1908 but died 11 May 1909 of whooping cough and lobar pneumonia. The Frenches were living at 231 North 2nd Street at the time.
 
On 4 December 1909, Emma gave birth to a boy, William. However, he too died on 13 April 1911 of pulmonary tuberculosis. Both children were buried in Rosedale Cemetery in Phoenix. When little William expired, the family was residing at 918 East Jefferson Street in Phoenix.
 
By May 1911, Emma herself was in the last stages of pulmonary tuberculosis. She was taken to Fort McDowell, possibly for medical care, and died there on 14 May. She was buried in Rosedale, presumably near her children.
 
William French remained a widower for more than two years, after which he married Ada Quorah (Cora) and fathered seven more children.
 
© 2021 by Donna L. Carr.  Last revised 25 March 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!

Laura Long Cochran, 1871-1899 
Matron at Phoenix Indian School
 
Buried in Rosedale North, Lot L43

(Photo: The main building at Phoenix Indian School, 1900, courtesy of the Arizona Memory Project)

Laura Long was born on September 11, 1871, in Kansas. She was the daughter of Isaac Zane Long, a prominent member of the Wyandotte Nation, and Catherine McConnell. Her father Isaac is thought to have been a descendant of the famous frontiersman Isaac Zane and his Wyandotte wife Myeerah, whose interracial romance was romanticized in Zane Grey’s novel, Betty Zane. Born in Zanesfield, Ohio, Isaac went west when the remnants of the Wyandotte tribe were removed to reservations in Kansas around 1843.
 
Even though school records list Laura as being only one-sixteenth Wyandotte, she seems to have been regarded as Native American throughout her life. In 1891, she was working and going to school at the Quapaw-Wyandotte Indian School in Seneca, Kansas. Thereafter, she attended Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, from which she graduated in 1895. By 1896, she was employed as a matron at the Phoenix Indian School.
 
Opened in 1891, the Phoenix Indian School was intended to function as a residential industrial school, training Native American teens and young adults in useful occupations such as carpentry, animal husbandry, and the domestic arts--sewing, cooking, nursing. In time, its dormitories housed a total of about 700 pupils from 35 different tribes, including advanced students from other Western states. Like Laura, many of the teachers were themselves Native Americans from tribes elsewhere in the United States, on the theory that they would serve as relatable role models. 
 
On February 22, 1897, Laura Long married John Piper Cochran, a blacksmith at the Phoenix Indian School. John does not seem to have been Native American; he and his parents consistently listed themselves as white on the federal census. Laura and John had one son, John D. Cochran, born March 30, 1898, in Phoenix.
 
Laura died on January 8, 1899, of inflammation of the bowels and peritonitis (possibly a ruptured appendix).  After a Methodist funeral service attended by almost all the Indian School students, she was laid to rest in Rosedale North, Lot 43. 
 
Weeks later, her husband’s parents, William C. and Mary Cochran, came to Phoenix to take nine-month-old John back to Kansas with them. Following John P. Cochran’s remarriage in 1901, young John went to live with his father and his new stepmother.
 
© 2022 by Donna Carr. Last revised 8 October 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!

Lindley Hogue Orme, 1848-1900
Maricopa County Sheriff
 
Buried in IOOF Cemetery, Block 9, Lot 2, Grave 6

(Photos courtesy of the Pioneers’ Cemetery Association, Inc.)

The Orme family of Arizona has a long and distinguished history, making many of their descendants eligible for membership in the DAR and other patriotic societies.
 
Lindley Hogue Orme was born December 18/19, 1848, in Montgomery, Maryland. He was the fourth of eight children of Charles Henry Crabbe Orme and Deborah Brooke Pleasants.
 
When Lindley’s older brother, Charles Henry Crabbe Orme, enlisted in the 35th Virginia Cavalry (CSA) on March 1, 1863, Lindley accompanied him, although he was only about fourteen at the time. Military records say that the brothers served in White’s Battalion, known as “the Comanches." Lindley was a private in Company B, while Charles was in Company D.
 
When Richmond, Virginia, fell to the Union Army on April 2, 1865, Lindley was taken prisoner. A few weeks later, he signed his oath of allegiance and was released.
 
According to his obituary, Lindley and his brothers drove a flock of sheep to California at some point thereafter. Lindley then settled in Phoenix where he acquired three sections of land in central Phoenix and raised over 600 acres of grain. He is credited with bringing the first threshing machine to the Salt River Valley. 
 
Orme wed Mary Florence Greenhaw on March 15, 1876. Unfortunately, Mary Florence was suffering from tuberculosis, so she and Lindley had no children. She died on March 16, 1883. Lindley eventually married Mary A. Jeffries, with whom he had one son, Alfred.
 
Orme served as sheriff from 1880 to 1884. During this time, he was also appointed a deputy U. S. marshal—not bad for a former Confederate. Henry Garfias was one of his deputies. In April of 1883, a smallpox epidemic broke out in Maricopa County. As sheriff, Orme was directed to quarantine the afflicted families to prevent the spread of the disease. 
 
Water being essential to the future of Phoenix, Orme helped form the Agua Fria Water and Land Company in 1888.
           
In 1891 and 1893, Orme was again elected sheriff. The county was growing at such a rate, that a new courthouse and jail equipped with electric lights were needed. During Sheriff Orme's last term, he became something of a media celebrity when he foiled a plot by Dr. J. M. Rose to murder three members of a Williams family in Mesa.
 
Lindley Orme died 24 September 1900, at the age of 52, having been in poor health for some months prior. He was buried next to his first wife in the IOOF Cemetery. 
 
© 2013 by Patty Gault, Val Wilson, Donna L. Carr. Last revised 2 September 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!