By Fred Veil
(This is part one of a two part series. Second part is titled, "Flour and Grain Supplier Influenced Course of Early Arizona".)
Charles Henry Veil was typical of the early pioneers who settled the vast frontier known as the Arizona Territory in the mid to late 1800s. He was a first generation American, born in the East and a Civil War veteran. He came to Arizona not by choice but rather as a U.S. Army cavalry officer posted to the Territory after the War to help protect the settlers from the Apache Indians. When his Army career ended he chose to remain in the Territory, thus becoming one of the pioneers who contributed immensely to the early development of the Arizona Territory.
Veil grew up in West Central Pennsylvania, the son of a German immigrant who had established a tannery near Johnstown. His schooling was consistent with that of most rural children of the day, three months a year in a one-room log schoolhouse until approximately the age of 14, when he was put to work, initially in his father's tannery and then as an apprentice to a planer at a sawmill in a nearby town. In 1861, barely 19 years of age, Veil enlisted in the Union Army to "save the Union".
Fortune smiled on young Veil early in his military career. As a private in the Pennsylvania Volunteers, he attracted the attention of senior officers and was assigned staff duty as an "orderly" to Brigadier General Edward O. Ord and later to Major General John F. Reynolds. The latter was generally regarded by his contemporaries (and by Civil War historians as well) as one of the ablest general officers in the Union Army.
It was as a mounted orderly to Reynolds that the singular event which defined Veil's adult life occurred. On July 1, 1863, in the early hours of the pivotal battle at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, he was at Reynolds' side when the general was felled by a Minnie ball while personally moving troops into position to stem the Rebel's advance on McPherson's Ridge. Veil, reacting to the moment, and while under intense enemy fire bravely bore the general's body from the battlefield, only to discover that Reynolds had been killed. His actions did not go unnoticed. The general's youngest sister, Eleanor, impressed with young Veil and his heroic deed, obtained an audience with President Abraham Lincoln, and persuaded him to promote Veil to the officer ranks of the regular Army. In appreciation, she and her sisters also presented Veil with a gold watch inscribed as follows: "Presented to Orderly C. H. Veil by the Sisters of the late General John F. Reynolds USA Gettysburg July 1st 1863". The watch has been passed down through generations of the Veil family and is presently in the possession of this writer.
A freshly minted and decidedly inexperienced Second Lieutenant in the 1st Cavalry Regiment, Veil served throughout the remainder of the War under the command of General Philip Sheridan. He gained experience and maturity and served well, receiving brevet promotions to First Lieutenant and Captain for "conspicuous gallantry" at Todd's Tavern and Five Forks and to Major for "gallant and meritorious service during the War". Following Confederate General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Veil was ordered to Texas where he served briefly on General George Custer's staff, and then went on to California where his unit was being outfitted for duty in Arizona to "subdue the Apache Indians".
Veil first entered the Arizona Territory in 1866, having crossed the "Great American Desert" in command of Company "C" of the 1st Cavalry. He established a camp at Tucson which he named Camp Lowell in memory of Colonel Charles R. Lowell, his former brigade commander who was killed in action at Cedar Creek, Virginia in 1864. In January of 1867, he was ordered to move Company "C" to Camp Grant and take command of that post, and later that year to establish a camp at Tubac. Subsequently, he served at Camps Crittenden and McDowell. At one time or another, Veil was the commanding officer of each of those camps, except for McDowell which was the last post at which he served.
The principle duty of the army in Arizona Territory was to protect the settlers from the Apaches, not an easy task in the late 1860's, as the Army simply did not have adequate troops to protect the settlements, ranches, farms and mines that were springing up all over the Territory. In The Memoirs of Charles Henry Veil, A Soldier's Recollections of the Civil War and the Arizona Territory, Veil described numerous encounters with the Apaches, including an expedition he led in 1867 against a band of Apaches that had attacked a wagon train in the Santa Rita Mountains at a point about 30 miles from Tubac. When they found the wagon train, they discovered that the Indians had already departed, but not before they had chained 14 men to the wagons and burned them to death. Continuing in pursuit, Veil and his detachment came upon another wagon train just in time to run off the Apaches and save the men of the train from certain annihilation. This wagon train belonged to Elias "Old Man" Pennington, a well-known Arizona pioneer, who along with his son was murdered by the Apaches just a couple of years later.
On yet another occasion, in April 1869, Veil participated in a large expedition against the Apaches. In two separate engagements on Mt. Trumbell in the Pinal Mountains, the Army was able to rout a band of Apaches, killing 40 of them and capturing many others. In the official report of the expedition Veil and his command were commended for the "promptness of their charge [against the Apaches]".
Desertion was a major problem for the Army in the Arizona Territory. The reasons were many, but chief among them was that soldiers were paid about $13 a month, while laborers in the mining and logging camps were getting $90-100 a month. In his Army career, Veil had some success in running down deserters, including an occasion in 1870, when in pursuit of two deserters from Camp McDowell, he shot and killed them both near Morgan's Station on the Gila River. As a Military Court of Inquiry subsequently found, Veil acted in self-defense, as one of the deserters had fired on him at point blank range, missing only because Veil's horse, surprised at the sudden emergence of the deserters from the tall grass adjacent to the river, reared and turned on its hind legs just moments before the shot was fired. Veil recovered quickly from the surprise and got off a "snap shot" with his revolver. The .44 caliber ball passed through the body of one of the deserters and into the other, killing them both with a single shot.
Veil left the Army in February 1871, intending to return to his native Pennsylvania. However, a successful business venture at Prescott's Fort Whipple convinced him to remain in Arizona where he became one of the pioneers who settled the rugged and hostile land, which ultimately became our Country's 48th state.
(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)