By Tom Collins
It was December 28, 1872, and more than one hundred Yavapai - aged grandparents, mothers, children, and several braves - had taken refuge in a cave in the Salt River Canyon in Maricopa County. At dawn, General Crook's 5th Cavalry let loose a hail of bullets that ricocheted off the walls and ceiling of the cave. The Yavapai fought back, but to no avail. After several hours, some 75 Indians lay lifeless on the floor of the cave. The rest were captured and packed off to a reservation. Today the battle is known as the Skeleton Cave Massacre.
A young 1st lieutenant, Earl Denison Thomas, numbered among the cavalrymen who served with distinction on that day, commanding Pima scouts. Born in Woodstock in McHenry County, Illinois in 1847 to General Edwin Eldredge Thomas and Naomi Ruth Patterson Thomas, Earl served in the Civil War from private to sergeant major of the 8th Illinois Cavalry and took part in hard battles with the Army of the Potomac when he was in his teens. He was then appointed to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and graduated in 1869. That same year, he married his hometown sweetheart, Clara Medora Church, and joined the 5th Cavalry at Fort McPherson, Nebraska. Clara may have remained in Woodstock rather than face the hardships of life on the Frontier. The following year, on June 8, 1870, Thomas won a brevet for leading a detachment in pursuit of Indians who had plundered a camp and killed three people near the fort.
Thomas reached Camp McDowell, Arizona Territory in August 1871, joining General George Crook's forces and participating in a number of actions in Crook's offensive operations between 1872 and 1874. By late 1872 he was stationed at Fort Whipple in Prescott, Arizona Territory. It is conceivable that he played a significant role in the razing of the "tumble down assembly of unbarked pine logs" that had been the barracks at the original 1864 Fort Whipple as well as in the construction of the fine new barracks, officers' quarters, and headquarters buildings that replaced them in 1872. In addition to serving in the battle of Skeleton Cave, which earned him a brevet for "gallant service," he also took part in an action near Four Peaks and one on Pinto Creek, and others in northwestern Arizona at Music Mountain and in the Cerbat Mountains against the Hualapai.
Earl and Clara's daughter, George Crook Thomas - an unfortunate, even if distinguished, name for a girl - was born in Woodstock, Illinois, on April 15, 1875. Some time after that, Clara and her infant daughter joined Earl at Fort Whipple, where Earl was an aide to General August V. Kautz, the new commander of the Department of Arizona. Earl also served as engineer officer and sometimes as quartermaster, laying out several important military roads. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was the construction of the road between Prescott and Skull Valley in 1875. Ex-Delegate McCormick had procured the funding from Congress for the project, and Gen. Kautz placed Thomas in charge of over 100 soldiers and Prescott civilians who labored for months to complete the task. The 'Arizona Weekly Miner' reported on September 17, 1875, that the road would boost area commerce, "a splendid convenience, not only to freighters of Government supplies but the goods of merchants and for ranchers to bring their produce to market,"and shorten the mail route "some three or four hours." When this project was completed, Thomas set to work on a road from Prescott to Camp McDowell. A skilled cartographer, he created beautifully detailed maps of Fort Whipple, Camp McDowell, and Camp Apache while serving under Kautz. He also published an invaluable booklet entitled 'Table of Distances from and to Different Points in Arizona' (1877). His map of Whipple rests today in the Sharlot Hall Museum Archives.
A little known fact about Lieut. Thomas and Clara is that while they were at Fort Whipple they acted in amateur theatricals under the direction of Fannie Kautz, the General's talented young wife. To the best of our knowledge, he made his debut on January 27, 1877, as the young lover, Frederick, in J.B. Buckstone's hilarious one-act farce, 'The Dead Shot,' playing opposite Fannie herself as the heroine, Louisa. Louisa's father, Captain Cannon, is compelling her to choose between two undesirable suitors he has selected for her. Louisa scares both of them off, pretending to be a wild, willful shrew, with the help of her clever maid Chatter (played by Clara Thomas). The dead shot is Mr. Timid, who duels with Frederick over Louisa. Unbeknownst to Timid, the guns have been emptied of their rounds. Frederick pretends that he has been mortally wounded, obtaining the captain's consent to marry Louisa before he dies. Thus the wily young lovers defeat the captain's plans. Thomas also played a sententious lawyer in the afterpiece, 'A Regular Fix!' The plays opened to a rave review.
This production took place in Fort Whipple's brand new theatre, which had been designed by Col. James Porter Martin and built within the old Headquarters building. As chief engineer, Lieut. Thomas would no doubt have supervised a good deal of the construction. The stage was small - only 32 feet wide and 23 feet deep, with a twelve-foot ceiling - but it was ingeniously raked at an incline towards the audience, so that every part of the action was visible to the audience. Six large chandeliers lighted the seating area, which accommodated about 230 people. Later, in June 1877, Lieut. Thomas almost stole the show in the supporting role of Sam Gerridge, the bluntly outspoken beau of the heroine's dizzy sister Polly (Clara Thomas) in Tom Robertson's' Caste.' The 'Miner' reported that Lieut. Thomas assisted "in a commendable manner in the cachination department," while Clara "immediately became a favorite with the audience. She was lively and at the same time displayed sufficient depth of feeling to show that chambermaid parts are not the only ones to which she may be adapted" (June 8).
In July 1877, the Thomases suffered a tragic loss. Clara, a few months pregnant, had a miscarriage and became dangerously ill. She recovered, but the Thomases alienated the Post Surgeon, Dr. James Cheston Worthington, by consulting a woman doctor in town, Frances Mary Murray, while under his care and without his knowledge: a breach of professional etiquette that he would not stand. Worthington subsequently refused to treat the Thomases or Col. Martin and his wife Alice, who had also consulted Mrs. Murray. Col. Martin retaliated with a warning that Worthington would be transferred in three months, and, in the doctor's opinion, he and Thomas got General Kautz and the Medical Director to "carry out his threat" (Letter by Worthington, Sept. 9, 1877).
Lieut. Thomas' last theatrical performance took place in February 1878, when he undertook the minor role of Sergeant Jones in Tom Robertson's military comedy, 'Ours.' Despite the fine acting of Col. Martin and Fannie Kautz in the lead roles, the show was not entirely successful. According to Gen. Kautz, the theatre was too small for a play that depended so heavily upon the scenic effect. Fannie was so disappointed that she vowed never to stage a play again: a moot point, since General Sherman transferred the Kautzes to Angel Island in San Francisco Bay shortly after the performance. The Kautzes left Prescott in March 1878, and Lieut. Thomas in turn was transferred to Fort Washakie, Wyoming.
A popular figure at Fort Whipple - active in the Fort's glittering social life and valiant in battle - Lieut. Earl Denison Thomas left behind a host of admirers. When the Spanish American War broke out, he served in Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippine Islands. He was made a Brigadier General in 1907 and was placed in charge of operations on the Arizona and New Mexico border with Mexico during the battles of 1910. He retired in January 1911 and moved to Laurel, Maryland. After a long and eventful life, he died in February 1921, survived by his devoted wife Clara.
(Tom Collins is a volunteer at Sharlot Hall Museum and author of the newly release book 'Star-Struck Settlers in the Sun-Kissed Land: The Amateur Theatre in Territorial Prescott, 1868-1903,' which can be purchased in the Sharlot Hall Museum Store in the historic Bashford House.)
NOTE: Please join the Prescott Corral of Westerners and Sharlot Hall Museum at the Western History Symposium Saturday, October 13 from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. at Sharlot Hall Museum. The event is free to the public and will feature presentations from several prominent western historians on a variety of topics.
Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(po1486p)
Reuse only by permission.
Lieutenant Earl Dennison Thomas, Ft. Whipple, Arizona Territory, 1877.