Rose Gregory

Rose Gregory, circa 1852-1898
Benevolent "Madam"
 
Buried in Rosedale Cemetery, Space 99

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

---

Born in England, Rose Gregory and her extended family came to the United States in 1870 aboard the ship Manhattan as part of the Mormon migration to Utah. After the family settled in Salt Lake City, Rose bore a daughter around 1871. Three years later, Rose apparently asked her married sister Mary Ann in California to raise her.
 
Unmarried women had few options for earning a living in the Wild West. Rose chose to enter the "oldest profession" and began calling herself Minnie Powers, possibly to protect her families’ reputation. 
 
In May, 1879, Rose arrived by train to the often rowdy town of Tucson. Soon she was living with two other women who listed their occupation on the 1880 census as "courtesans." Such women typically catered to the desires of wealthier men.
 
Rose moved to Phoenix in 1886, whereupon she opened a "ladies’ boarding house" called The Powers on the southwest corner of Van Buren and Montezuma Streets (1st Street today). Contemporaries described Rose as a beautiful and kindhearted woman who occasionally grubstaked miners and cowboys who were down on their luck. Some of the women she took in undoubtedly plied their trade at her establishment. It soon became apparent that Rose was operating a brothel.
 
Her more respectable neighbors were not pleased. One of her creditors foreclosed on her original property, forcing Rose to move to a site on Adams Street, which she owned with some of her "girls." Now and then, their activities drew the attention of the police, as in 1893 when one of Rose’s girls, Letitia Rice (a.k.a. Tessie Murray), died of burns received when a kerosene lamp ignited her clothing.
 
By 1896, community pressure had forced Rose to move even further south to 720 Railroad Avenue (7th Street and Jackson), where she opened the Villa Road House Saloon. She was 42 by then, and much reduced in circumstances. 
 
Her fate was sealed when she began a relationship with her barkeep, William Belcher. Belcher was violently jealous of Rose’s men "friends" and given to drunken outbursts which sometimes landed him in jail. On the morning of September 17, 1898, Belcher obtained a .44-caliber pistol and went to the Villa Road House Saloon, where he found Rose in bed, asleep. He shot her twice, then turned the gun on himself, falling across Rose on the bed. Their bodies were discovered later that day.
 
Rose was buried in the southwest corner of Rosedale Cemetery in a casket lined with copper and adorned with silver plated handles and a plaque that read “At Rest." Though her grave went unmarked for many years, a wrought-iron cross now adorns it.
 
© 2017 by Patricia Gault. Last revised 1 March 2017.

​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!