Description

John “Blinkey” Howard (b. 1820 – d. 1903) was born January 26, 1820 in Loose County of Kent, Village of Maidstone, England. He was the son of Mark and Nancy Ann Bees Howard, both natives of England. He later moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan where, at an early age, he served as post-master. At age 30, he was in the mercantile business as a silk merchant in New York City. He traveled extensively in Europe.

Howard was a Nebraska pioneer where he acted as private secretary of the governor as well as serving as district judge of the Supreme Court, in Omaha, Nebraska. From Nebraska, he went to Pueblo, Colorado where he was elected probate judge and held other positions of public trust. His first wife, Rebecca Howard, deserted him in Denver, Colorado. From Pueblo, he came to Arizona in 1864 as a member of Governor John Noble Goodwin’s party of civil officers who first organized the territorial government of Arizona.

Fort Misery was Howard's pioneer cabin in Prescott, Arizona. Fort Misery is Arizona’s oldest known log cabin; it is located on the grounds of the Sharlot Hall Museum, in Prescott. In an Arizona Miner article in 1877, he is referenced as the attorney for the Peck Mine. On March 14, 1892 (or March 15), he married Flora Darby, daughter of Joseph M. Darby at the Hotel Burke in Prescott, Arizona. (She is also known as Florence (Darby) Howard.) Justice Henry W. Fleury presided. Judge Howard was a pioneer member of the Prescott bar, and was elected mayor of Prescott January 3, 1888 and was reelected in each of the four succeeding years, and again in 1894. With his wife, he moved to Converse, Indiana in 1899, where his father-in-law, Joseph M. Darby, lived. He died February 18, 1903 at Joseph Darby’s home and is buried in the I.O.O.F. cemetery in Converse. Mrs. Flora (Darby) Howard, died January 29, 1907 at age 58.