Jesse Washington Ellison

By Philip Smith

In November of 2016, Phil will be seventy-seven years old. He has always been a Renaissance man.

He completed his masters in music education in 1963, and his first job was teaching vocal music in Globe High School, Globe, Arizona. There he met one Slim Glenn Reynolds Ellison, an older cowboy and rancher. They camped for decades in the high country of Arizona. Slim introduced Phil to the history of the Ellison family. The book begins with one Jesse Washington Ellison, born when Texas was still a part of Mexico. Jesses life and descendants are followed in the book. It is as much a scrapbook, collection of interviews, historical photos, and recollections than anything else. It is not written in the historically definitive form.

Over a forty-year period, Phil also has been an archeologist (field archeologist with the University of Arizona), excavated with the University of Oklahoma and OSU, and lectured in the field of historic archeology. Eight seasons were spent on Dripping Springs, a Salado site, which was published by UTEPs press.

He served four fire seasons in the USFS in Arizona and California. His book about these years of activity is available through Amazon.com. Fire in the Forest describes his fire experiences.

He also taught choral music for years in many high schools and colleges. He is also a composer of over two hundred pieces. He has been performed by the Phoenix and Arizona State University orchestras and also read by Alexander Shriner in the Mormon Temple. He continues to compose.

Phil resides in Claremore, Oklahoma, with his wife of thirty-eight years, Nanette Wyckoff Smith.

He may be reached at [e-mail].

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524509927

Philip Smith

Philip Smith is a lifelong history enthusiast, and has carried his interest through an undergraduate degree at Lincoln College, Oxford, and into his career as an editor, where he specializes in military history and tabletop wargaming. Born in Derby, he now lives and works in Oxford.

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Copyright © 2016 by philip smith.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016909866

   ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-5245-0994-1

      Softcover   978-1-5245-0993-4

      eBook   978-1-5245-0992-7

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Rev. date: 09/08/2016

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I first met Cibicue Slim (Glenn Reynolds) Ellison when I moved to my first teaching job from Denton, Texas to Globe, Arizona. I had finished a Masters’s degree in choral music at NTSU, and had hired a Chicago agent to find me a job in Arizona. Which he did almost immediately. For a kid from East St. Louis, Illinois, Globe resembled a wilderness. No groves of trees, streets that run almost vertical, and no soil, but lots of cacti. Very humble houses adjacent to very large homes.

Slim and I camped out for decades. His ancient GMC weighted down with a gigantic rock in the pickup bed, hauled us everywhere in the high country of Gila County. He was a five star cowboy cook like his dad. Outdoors meals were highly predictable. Handmade cowboy biscuits in a Dutch oven, thick steaks, beans sometimes and peaches in a can, cowboy coffee (prepared by grabbing a handful of raw coffee and tossing it into a boiling coffee pot – not forgetting the green stick in the pot). The stick kept the black goo from boiling over.

Slim showed me the historic places of his time on earth, spent largely in the area east of Young between Cherry and Canyon Creeks. I saw where the Tewksbury cabin had been when the hogs ate the men after they were shot (the forest service sign is in the wrong place).

Slim and I took the twisted roads and trails to where he and his brother hand build cabins about 10 miles apart. Buster’s was located on Campbell Creek and was constructed by hand, Slim’s was built from riven lumber with a rock foundation. The windows were scraped off glass photo plates. Both were built around 1929 when the government opened up the land for homesteaders.

The Gentry Cabins (named after Emmett Gentry, husband of Gentry, an Apache woman from Canyon Creek), located on the road to the Q Ranch, was where Sam Houston Kyle had died of spinal meningitis, the town doctor took too long on horseback to get there. In September of 1887, Marshall Trimbles’ book, Arizona Adventures, states, It was about this time that Martin (Emmett) Gentry took his sheep and left his ranch on the outskirts of Pleasant Valley. Charlie Starr moved onto the vacated Gentry Ranch early in 1888. Emmet was hung date unknown – apparently he was caught on a borrowed house somewhere in the Winslow area according to Slim Ellison’s book, More tales from Slim Ellison. Emmett’s live in Apache woman was simply called Gentry. Gentry bore Emmett a girl, and when the girl was eleven, Slim came upon a large group of apache women camped out. Gentry saw Slim and yelled out, Slim, Hi yo! She had stayed at the Q Ranch many times with her daughter Nanaleen, which means girl in the Apache language.

The remains of Buster’s (Travis Edward) cabin still stands, at least the foundational hand cut and hewn logs, in a place that is really overgrown and difficult to find. Slim’s place was re-used. Only some scattered, small stream rocks and the flowers are visible after almost a full century. The well Slim dug and proved dry is still there and part of the hand strung fence. After ninety years fighting the weather, the daffodils still bloom every year.

The old home ranch of the Flying V (for Vosberg) is no more. One of the Tewksburys built the main cabin. Slim and his wife Julia lived in it and worked for a time. One half of it was removed and taken to the recreated pioneer village north of Phoenix on the highway to Flagstaff. The rest burned except for the remaining rock fireplace. There was a picturesque pond out of which Walnut Creek began and flowed at one time. The forest service tore out the small dam and destroyed the pond.

Access to the Flying V home ranch is a sometimes thing. The small sand wash which takes you straight to it is often full of fallen trees from a recent storm. And there are places where you cannot proceed without an excellent four wheel drive, a good double-bitted axe and chain saw. It is a sad thing to see what remains of what was so much life and work in another time.

THE MOGOLLON RIM

The breathtaking Mogollon Rim (pronounced muggy-own) is a dominant, uplifted geologic feature, sharply dividing Arizona’s plateau country (Colorado Plateau) to the north from the basin/range and desert of the south.

A 1991 guidebook to the area describes it well:

For 200 miles, the Mogollon Rim cuts across north-central [eastern]Arizona; a bold, rugged escarpment that rises as much as 800 feet above the desert shrub of the Tonto Basin* [previously known as Pleasant Valley]. The Mogollon Rim is an area whose history is a rich kaleidoscope of prehistoric peoples [Mogollons and others], Apaches and Yavapais, miners and prospectors, soldiers, cattlemen and sheepmen, outlaws, bloody feuds, great aspirations, and shattered dreams.

This same 25-year-old guidebook cautions us with words that ring even more true today: the Rim country is a beautiful but fragile land. Enjoy it but treat it with the respect it deserves.

*Visitor’s Guide Mogollon Rim, Southwest Natural & Cultural Heritage Association, 1991, pg.1.

POPULATION HISTORY (or the BACKSTORY)

Many literary works exist that describe the prehistory and history of Arizona. For now, suffice it to say that early nomadic hunters of wooly mammoths, camels and horses were present until those animals were hunted to extinction. In addition, there were later peoples who lived in simple architectural construction and with bow and arrow introduction, irrigated corn growing, and pottery making, they prospered. From 300AD to 1450, the indigenous peoples of the area had distinct hierarchies, traded with other populations, and built pit houses and ceremonial kivas, then pueblos which amazingly housed over 1000 people just below the Rim.

However, an archeological question exists that remains unanswered today. Near the end of the 14th century, and over the course of a few short generations, the people living on the area of the Mogollon Rim simply vanished. Theories abound – drought, war, depletion of resources, famine; and although relics exist, they leave no clue as to the reason for abandonment of the area by these great numbers of people.

It is unknown how long the Mogollon Rim area remained abandoned, but when the first Spanish conquistador, Coronado, passed through its eastern end in 1540, it was unpopulated. Despoblado these Spaniards noted on their map, it was not such for long. For the next 100 years, two major groups of people came to the Rim country: Apaches from the east and Yavapai from the northwest. These groups were both hunters and gatherers, and they intermingled. But they were also fierce and warlike. So for a period of about 150 years the Rim country was largely avoided by explorers, and considered terra incognita. Maps of the time were inscribed with APACHERIA over a wide swath of the area.

Following the Mexican-American War (1848), the United States (was ceded) the former Mexican and Spanish lands in the Southwest. Surveys were authorized, but the area was still largely avoided as dangerous and wild.

Despite the perceived or real danger, the lure of the wild American frontier was strong for young, brave, rugged individualists who heard of land, free for the taking, and who longed for adventure.

Noted historian Frederick Jackson Turner later postulated that the migration to the unknown frontier was a driving force in America’s innovation and democratic ideals *, and the Arizona Territory was a strong magnet for those wanting freedom from lingering European traditions, and who were willing to accept frontier violence and rough justice for their new western Americanism.

With the California Gold Rush fueling the desire for fortune hunters to travel west, and the subsequent discovery of gold in Wickenberg and Prescott in the 1860s, it wasn’t long before the prospectors and pioneers encountered the Apaches and Yavapai. The ensuing conflicts brought the military into action, but the military solution to the Indian problem was to simply kill them or confine them. Bloody battles ensued for two decades (1865-1886), and led to the establishment of outposts such as Fort McDowell, Fort Verde, Camp Reno, Fort Apache and Camp San Carlos. Indian reservations were formed, the most notable (to this story) being White Mountain Indian Reservation directly below the Mogollon Rim and adjacent to Pleasant Valley (now Tonto Basin, including the town of Young, AZ). It was on this reservation that was built Fort Ord (1870), later to become Fort Apache, near the present-day town of White River.

General George Crook, one of the most able and fairest military commanders to serve in Arizona, had a rough road cut up and along the Mogollon Rim in 1872, connecting Fort Verde in Prescott with Fort Apache. Portions of this road are still in service today as FR300 in the Sitgreaves National Forest. General Crook also recruited 50 White Mountain Apaches to serve in the U. S. military as scouts. These scouts played a significant role in future military action.

During the late 1870s, the next major migration into the Mogollon Rim area occurred when cattlemen from Texas (with overgrazed pastures) heard of the lush grass below the Rim in the Tonto Basin; and the establishment of the military camps, forts and reservations had created a ready market for their beef, with both soldiers and Indians to feed.

The major battle in the Mogollon Rim area was in 1882, north of Payson, and was called the Battle of Big Dry Wash. A band of Apaches (including women and children) who had previously escaped from Cibeque on the White Mountain Indian Reservation, and who had raided properties on their way north, were annihilated by U. S. Army Calvary led by Apache scouts.

While relocated Texas beeves grazed in the Tonto Basin, sometimes large herds of sheep grazed on the plateau above the Rim. The infamous Pleasant Valley War or Graham-Tewksbury feud (1886-1892) included an incident over sheepherders grazing on an area cattlemen claimed as theirs, however the feud started in a dispute over purportedly stolen horses.

JESSE’S BEGINNINGS

Thus begins the amazing story of an early Arizona pioneer and his progeny, and their difficult but decidedly memorable experiences and family life in the Arizona Territory before Arizona even became a state. His lifelong adventures created a legacy which continues through subsequent generations, even as this story is written. The story is centered on the relocation to, and founding of the Q Ranch located between Cherry and Canyon creeks, in what was known (in late 1800s) as Pleasant Valley, and which was situated in what was a broad grassy valley south of the sharp, beautiful, rocky cliffs known as the Mogollon Rim in north central/eastern Arizona. This story is of the colorful family who built their lives on and around this ranch.

Notwithstanding past genealogy, this story really begins with the birth of one Jesse Washington Ellison (called Jesse in this book) on September 22, 1841, in Boonville, TX (named for a nephew of Daniel Boone) in what is now Brazos County, Texas. Although founded in 1841 (the year Jesse was born), Boonville’s doom was spelled when in 1866, the railroad was built, but which sadly bypassed the small town. Boonville is now a ghost town which is close to present-day Bryan, Texas. Jesse’s life began when Texas had declared its independence from Mexico, and was the Republic of Texas, but it wasn’t until 1848 that Texas became a state.

It was in McClennan County that Jesse joined Harrison’s Texas Rangers as a private at the age of twenty.

On September 22, 1841, five years after the battle of San Jacinto, Jesse Washington was born in Boonville, Texas near what is now Bryan. Jesse often recalled the poverty of his youth, but his father (also Jesse) had done exceedingly well from 1836 to his death in 1847. He had remarkable success with cattle and farming (McClintocks history). When he passed, he owned five thousand acres of land. In 1840, two years after Jesse srs. death, the estate was divided. He died in Boonville, March 15, 1847, leaving his wife (Isabella Stuart) a widow. Six years later, they moved to McClennan County when jesse wass twelve.

It was in McClennan County that Jesse joined Harrison’s Texas Rangers as a private at the age of twenty.

Lawrence Sullivan Ross, Jesse’s commander in the Rangers had organized a force of 135 warriors of the friendly tribes on the Brazos each group under a captain of its own tribe, all of whom were under his command. Jesse’s ranger experiences lasted only a few short months for in August of 1861, Colonel B. Warren Stone of Dallas issued a call inviting the formation of Companies. The following September companies were organized, one of them the Sixth Regiment of Texas Cavalry which Jesse joined. He was mustered into the service of the Confederate States of America at Camp