By Bob Ross

My family has been a part of Arizona and Yavapai County for six generations beginning in the covered wagon days of 1876 to the present, covering one hundred and thirty-five years from my great-grandparents to my grandchildren.

In 1876, great-grandparents Harrison and Marina Reeves’ wagon and six others resolutely set out from Kansas on the arduous two-month journey to Prescott, Arizona Territory. Along the way, because of fear and discouragement, four wagons turned back. The Reeves, two other wagons and two riders pressed ahead on the Santa Fe Trail and then on the Beale Wagon Road to Peach Springs where they rested a while, then on into Prescott and waiting friends. The Reeves’ wagon held their possessions and five daughters, from 18 years down to 3 years of age.

Later, in writing about the trip, the girls recalled that they sometimes couldn’t build a fire at night and had to maintain silence while the men stood guard in the darkness and the women and children huddled inside the wagons. If they camped where there was no water supply, it would break their father’s heart to be unable to give their two horses, Ned and George, an adequate drink. The horses would try to pull the plug out of the water barrel on the side of the wagon with their teeth. It was a sad thing to witness.

Ellie was the youngest on the journey. Even at three years of age she had memories to write about later. When she was seventy-three years old, in 1946, she wrote about their excitement as they finally arrived in Prescott: "….young gentlemen friends of my father’s came out on horseback to meet us, and accompanied us on to Prescott. We were all happy indeed to at last reach our destination and were not in the least disappointed when we took our first look at the thriving little town of Prescott, nestling there, so beautifully located, with mountains, rocks, and tall pines all around…beautiful Thumb Butte to the west….and Old Granite Mountain north was such a thrill, everything so different from the plains of Kansas. Prescott was new then; also everyone seemed full of life and determination."

The Reeves family owned a successful cattle ranch at Camp Wood, north of Prescott, for several years. Great-grandma Reeves fostered an appreciation for books and music in her daughters. A family story I’ve heard through the years is that one of the older girls once went to a dance with Wyatt Earp. I don’t know the details, but it may have been when Wyatt was visiting his brother Virgil who, at that time, operated a saw mill in the vicinity of Thumb Butte.

The next to youngest daughter on the trip from Kansas in 1876 was eight-year-old Viola who later became my grandmother. As a young woman, she was a school teacher at Camp Wood and met Frank Baldwin at dances and potluck dinners. In 1886, at age 22, Frank had arrived in Prescott by rail from Springfield, Missouri with the words of newspaper editor Horace Greeley echoing in his ears, "Go west young man, and grow up with the country." For a while, Frank was the manager of the Bennett family’s 50,000-acre cattle spread, the Cienega Ranch north of Walnut Creek and Camp Wood. He wrote to his daughters later about being able to ride all day in the late 1880s and never come to a fence or have to open a gate. He told of driving cattle from the ranch to Phoenix by way of the Williamson Valley Road to Prescott, then down to the desert west of Phoenix. It took four days to run 40-50 head of cattle from the ranch to Prescott (about 50 miles) and even longer from Prescott to Phoenix. It was hard work but he had fond memories of his cowboy years.

In January of 1896, Frank Baldwin and Viola Reeves, my grandparents, were married in Prescott. Frank went to work in the Yavapai County recorder’s office where he would often exchange greetings with Buckey O’Neill at the courthouse. Frank and Viola lived on Garden Street, one block west of Grove Avenue and just north of Gurley Street. Their children would be the third generation in Yavapai County.

In Part 2 next week, the Baldwins move in 1903 with their two young daughters to the railroad town of Jerome Junction, now a ghost town between Chino Valley and Jerome.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(citn184pc) Reuse only by permission.
This is what Prescott looked like when Harrison and Marina Reeves arrived with their five daughters by covered wagon in 1876. The first courthouse was built in Prescott in 1878 and is not on this photo.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(bura2010p) Reuse only by permission.
The Reeves had a successful cattle ranch at Camp Wood, north of Prescott, seen here c. 1890.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(po1074p) Reuse only by permission.
Ellen "Ellie" Reeves, a teenager shown here in the late 1880s, wrote her memoirs in 1946 and began by telling of the arrival in Prescott with her parents and four sisters in a covered wagon in 1876.