By Fred Veil

(This is the second part of a two part series.  First part is titled, "A Soldier's Recollections of the Civil War and Arizona".)

Charles Veil's service in the Army ended abruptly in February 1871, when he was involuntarily mustered out of the service pursuant to an Act of Congress mandating a general reduction in the size and strength of the Army. Upon his discharge, Veil traveled to Prescott where by chance he happened upon a business opportunity that enabled him to make an easy $5000 (not an insubstantial amount of money in those days) by brokering the sale of some grain to Ft. Whipple.

This transaction caused Veil to decide to remain in Arizona, rather than returning to his home in Pennsylvania as he had originally planned, thus setting the stage for his life as an Arizona pioneer and businessman. 

It was not long after Veil decided to remain in Arizona that he accepted an offer to join with W.B Hellings, the sutler (civilian merchant for the military) at Camp McDowell, in a business venture. Hellings had some contracts to supply the government with hay and grain and was also in the process of constructing a steam-driven flourmill in the Salt River Valley. Built at a cost of about $70,000, the mill turned out to be very lucrative for its owners, at times turning profits of as much as $30-40,000 per month. Initially, Veil handled the Prescott end of the business through an entity known as "Hellings and Veil", but in October 1872 he became a full partner in "Hellings and Company" and relocated to east Phoenix to run the mill and the general store they had established there. 

In 1873, Hellings and Company obtained a contract to supply flour and grains to the newly established indian reservation situated near Camp Verde. At that time, the only existing wagon route from the mill in east Phoenix to the Reservation was via Wickenburg, Skull Valley and Prescott - a prohibitively expensive ten-day trip for heavy freight wagons. Thus, in the latter part of that year, Hellings and Company constructed the Black Canyon Wagon Road, thus reducing by one half both the distance and travel time from the Salt River Valley to Prescott and Camp Verde. In the late 1870s, after others improved the road so that it could accommodate buckboard and stagecoach travel, the Black Canyon Road became the main route of travel between the Salt River Valley and Prescott. 

Travel within Arizona in the early 1870s was very dangerous, as the Indians, especially the Apaches, remained hostile to the ever-increasing encroachment of the white settlers on their native lands. In his Memoirs of Charles Henry Veil, Veil described several occasions in which he narrowly missed certain death while traveling within the Territory, including one in early 1873 in connection with a trip to Prescott. In those days it was considered safer to make that trip at night and rest during the day at stopover points in Wickenburg and Skull Valley. On this occasion, Veil got a late start from the mill and when daylight broke he was still 15 miles from Wickenburg. Shortly thereafter, he encountered two frontiersmen, Gus Swain and John McDonald, who were hauling freight to Wickenburg. Veil rode with them for a while, but becoming increasingly uneasy about traveling in daylight, he moved on with his lighter and faster wagon. After his arrival in Prescott two days later, he learned from the driver of the stage that came in behind him that Swain and McDonald had been killed by Indians not a quarter of a mile from where Veil left them. 

Indians were not the only dangers in frontier Arizona. In 1872 or 1873, Veil had an encounter with Jack Swilling, a man who while important to the early development of the Salt River Valley (he built the irrigation ditches which opened the Valley to agricultural development), also had a well-earned reputation for violence, especially when he was drunk, which was often. On this occasion, Veil, unarmed, faced down a drunken and well-armed Swilling on the streets of east Phoenix, disarmed him and sent him home with a bottle of sherry to "sober up on". 

Swilling was not the only person of import with whom Veil was acquainted during his years in the Territory. In fact, the list of those with whom he established relationships reads like a "who's who" of the Arizona Territory, and includes Hiram Stevens (business leader and Territorial Delegate to the U.S. Congress), Sam Hughes (Stevens' business partner and a Tucson civic leader who was generally considered to be the "dean" of Arizona pioneers), Alexander Brodie (Arizona Roughrider and 15th Territorial Governor), John Irwin (9th Territorial Governor), Buckey O'Neill (Roughrider and Mayor of Prescott), Tom Jeffords (famed Indian scout) and Cochise (Chief of the Chiricahua Apaches). 

Veil's contact with Cochise and Jeffords was a singular encounter occasioned by Veil's delivery of 500 barrels of flour to the Chiricahua Reservation in the Spring of 1874 and during which he shared his whisky and a meal of "bacon, beans, bread and coffee" with them. Veil may have been the last white man other than Jeffords, then the Chiricahua Indian Agent, to see Cochise alive, as the renowned Apache Chief died just a few months after Veil's visit. 

Veil went east in October 1874 where he met and married Emma Bertlett of Pennsylvania. They returned to Arizona in December 1875 and early the following year Veil acquired, apparently as the result of a legal dispute with Hellings, the mill and land holdings of Hellings and Company. He continued to operate the mill as the Salt River Flouring Mill until the spring of 1880, when increased competition caused prices to reduce so drastically that he shut it down and sold the property. The mill burned to the ground in 1891. 

The Veils spent the summer of 1876 in Prescott due to the ill health of Emma. It is likely that this is when they adopted their daughter Nettie, who according to the 1880 census was born in Prescott to parents of Polish nationality. No record has been found of Nettie's biological parents. 

Following the demise of the flourmill, Veil continued to farm his large land-holdings in east Phoenix, which at one time encompassed fertile farmland one mile wide by three miles long (located along Van Buren between 24th and 40th Streets). He was apparently somewhat successful, as the Prescott Courier noted on May 12, 1891 that Veil's farms gave Salt River Valley "name and fame for agricultural production". 

In September 1881 as a consequence of an Apache uprising stemming from an incident at Cibicue Creek which resulted in the death of a popular Apache medicine man, Veil raised a militia unit known as the "Phoenix Rangers" and was appointed Captain by Acting Governor John Gosper. A lieutenant under his command was a young man who would become well known in Prescott, William O. "Buckey" O'Neill. The uprising was quickly suppressed and the Rangers saw no action. 

Emma Veil died in February 1891 and in June of that year, Veil returned East to place Nettie, then 15 years of age, in a "suitable educational institute". While there he disposed of his Arizona property. He settled in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania where he worked as Deputy Sheriff for Tioga County, an insurance agent and forest ranger. He died on January 1, 1910. No records of Nettie, subsequent to her arrival in Pennsylvania, have been discovered. 

(Fred Veil, Sheriff of the Prescott Corral of Westerners, will be presenting the story of Charles Veil in its entirety on April 15 for the Skull Valley Historical Society. For details, call the Harrises at 442-3658) 



Photograph credit: (from author) 
Charles Veil made an impression in the Civil War before coming out West in 1866. He made quite an impression in the Arizona Territory too - first as a flour and grain supplier and then as a major agricultural landholder in the Valley. Twenty-five years after his arrival, Veil returned to Pennsylvania.