Arizona Legends and Lore

by Dorothy Daniels Anderson

  About ten days later, a United States marshal arrived in town with what appeared to be a posse of nine well-known gunmen. Marshal Evans had an order from the chief justice of the territory to hand over only the prisoner, Redfield, to be transported to Phoenix. The citizens in Florence felt certain that this was the beginning of a strategy to affect the release of Redfield. They wanted both prisoners kept in Florence for the trial. Sheriff Doran had a decision to make. Should he hand over the rancher, thereby breaking his word to the populace of Florence or should he refuse to honor the warrant from the chief justice?

  Doran refused to obey the court order. The United States marshal threatened to take the prisoners by force. Doran summoned the citizens of the town to help him guard the jail and assist in holding the prisoners. The leading citizens of the town entered the jail at Doran’s request and there the sheriff was astounded to find both prisoners hanging from the rafters of their cells, quite dead, their bodies still warm.

  As an officer of the law, Doran was in a very difficult situation. He had refused to honor the warrant presented to him by a United States marshal and somehow he had not maintained careful enough security over the prisoners, and some unknown person or persons, doubtful of his ability to retain the prisoners, had taken the law into their own hands. He was twice an accessory in thwarting the law.

  Major A. J. Doran had to think quickly. There was no time for the slightest hesitancy. He immediately went to the United States marshal and told him that he had reconsidered his former refusal and was now willing to release Redfield into his custody. He then conducted Marshal Evans into the jail, and opened the door to the two cells to reveal the men still hanging there lifeless. When Marshal Evans saw what had happened, he angrily said he would not take a dead Redfield back to Chief Justice Pinney.

  Doran turned to the marshal. “Go back to the chief justice. Tell him that I originally refused to honor the warrant. Tell him everything that occurred, but would you write on the court order that I did offer to deliver the body?” Marshall Evans finally agreed to write the proffered offer on the warrant. As an officer of the court, Doran knew that his action was an attempt to utilize a fine point in the upholding of the law. He did not think that he would be successful, but he could come up with no alternative plan.

  For awhile Florence and the county settled into a peaceful lull. Then the citation arrived. Judge Pinney ordered Sheriff Doran to appear in Phoenix to show cause why he should not be punished for contempt of court. Major Doran prepared well for his interview. When he appeared before the chief justice, he showed the written confession of the robber as well as all the evidence he had carefully amassed concerning the robberies and Redfield’s involvements in the crimes. The judge studied the documents before him for a long time. Then he turned to the Major “Mr. Sheriff, go home and attend to your duties,” he said, “When I want you for contempt of court I will send for you.” 1

  Maj. A.J. Doran (Courtesy Arizona Historical Society Library, Tucson)

  This experience caused Major Doran to rethink his commitment to the post of sheriff and he decided not to run for the office again. But his experiences with robbers and stagecoaches were far from over. Over the years Major Doran did a lot of traveling in the territory. The need to travel was done mostly in his capacity as a territorial official. He was elected to the territorial legislature five times and served in many leadership positions in Arizona. On October 5, 1895, Major Doran found himself the only passenger on the stage going from Florence to Casa Grande.

  Suddenly, in the middle of the trip, one lone highwayman wearing a bandana over the bottom half of his face galloped up to the moving stagecoach and pointed a pistol at the driver’s head.

  “Stop this coach or die,” he said in a harsh voice. The coachman reined in the horses to a halt.

  Then the robber rode to the side of the stage, yanked open the door and pointed his pistol at Doran. “Throw up your hands and get out.”

  Major Doran did as he was told. The robber got off his horse and began to wave his gun erratically. While cussing furiously, he told Doran to hand over his money. Now the major was a man who did not get rattled easily. He had a $10 gold piece in his pocket and four half-dollars, which was a lot of money in those days. As cool as a cucumber, he reached into his pocket with a certain calm deliberation and brought out only the four half-dollars.

  “You’ve got more money than that,” said the robber as he grabbed the silver. “Give me the rest of your money or you die.”

  Doran looked at him coolly, noticing the agitated movements, the heavy-muscled body, the thick shock of black hair. “I gave you everything I have. There’s nothing more to get.”

  The robber hesitated, giving Doran a piercing look, then he gruffly ordered the major to get back into the coach. While Doran was doing this, the robber noticed Doran’s valise on the floor of the stage. “Hand over the valise,” he said.

  “No,” answered Doran. “My valise has no money, only papers which I need.”

  “Don’t argue with me,” said the bandit, still pacing back and forth, restlessly handling the large revolver with jerking movements. “Open it.”

  Again Doran refused. The robber swore at the major but soon turned to the stagecoach driver. “Hand me your money.”

  The driver did as he was told. “Now,” said the robber, “throw down the mail sack.” Again the driver did as he was told.

  Turning to Doran, the robber said, “Come out here and open this sack. Come quick or I’ll blow your head off.”

  The Major stepped quickly and quietly away from the stage. “I can’t open it,” he said, “I don’t have the key. These United States mail sacks are always locked with keys.”

  “So cut it open,” growled the robber.

  “I have a knife,” said Doran turning coolly toward the bandit, “but it’s against the law to open the United States mail with a knife and I don’t intend to end up in jail.” His attitude of indifference angered the bandit who pointed his gun at Doran, announcing that he would blow his brains out if he did not do as he was told.

  Doran immediately changed his tune and started to rip open the sack, dumping the letters and small packages on the ground.

  “Hell,” said the robber, “I don’t see any money here.”

  “Oh, there’s money there all right,” replied the Major and then as the bandit stepped closer to look, Doran made a grab for his gun, yelling to the driver to help. What happened next was a fierce life-and-death conflict between Doran and the robber as each fought for the gun. At one point, the gun went off, frightening the horses so that the driver had to struggle to keep them from running away. After about 20 minutes, the robber, who was much stronger than Doran, threw him to the ground.

  Moving away from the fallen Doran, the robber turned and said, “Now I am going to kill you.”

  Lying in the dirt, Doran had no chance to protect himself, yet he coolly turned to the bandit and said, “It’s up to you, you can kill me if you want to.” For a few seconds, the steely eyes of Doran held the angry ones of the bandit and then something unexpected happened. The robber turned, and swearing mightily, mounted his horse and left.

  When the robber did not return, Doran and the driver piled the mail back into the torn bag and proceeded to Casa Grande. There they informed the authorities of what had happened. A posse was formed and the robber, a man named Francisco Reina, was captured the next day and brought to trial in Florence.

  The bandit turned out to be a member of a wealthy and highly respected family living in Sonora, Mexico. He had argued with his family, left home, and traveling to Arizona he had come on hard times. At the time of the robbery, Reina was without food or money.

  At his trial, the jury found Reina guilty of the stagecoach robbery and another one which had occurred during the previous year. The judge and jury, tired of the constant robberies that plagued Arizona, sentenced Reina to life imprisonment on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Harbor.

  Before th
e prisoner was to be taken to California, he asked to meet with Major Doran. He wanted to meet with the man who was so brave as to court death in the face of a gun. During their conversation Reina told Doran that, while he was strongly tempted to kill him, he did not want to become a murderer in addition to his crimes of robbery.

  Arizona Pioneers' Home, Prescott (Courtesy Sharlot Hall Museum Archives)

  Some 10 years later, Doran still remembered Reina and inquired of the warden about the prisoner. He was informed that he had been transferred to a less high security prison at San Quentin and that he was a model prisoner. Doran felt that Reina did not deserve a life sentence. But what could he do? At that time the major was in Washington, D.C. on governmental business and had an opportunity to tell President Teddy Roosevelt the story of the robbery and ask him what action he might be able to take in the case to alleviate the harshness of the sentence. President Roosevelt sent applications of pardon to the judge who had tried Reina as well as to the United States attorney who had prosecuted him. The applications were a request for a recommendation in the situation and stated that the President would act only upon their agreement. Eventually, Reina’s sentence was commuted to 12 years in prison.

  After his release, Doran met Francisco Reina and the two men had dinner together in Los Angeles, where they talked over their fight in the desert. Reina returned to Mexico and eventually became a lieutenant-colonel in the federal army of Mexico.

  Major Doran lived for many years in Pinal County. He built the old and the new courthouses there as well as the school. In his later years, he helped create, by legislative decree, a pioneer’s home to be located in Prescott. He eventually was commissioned to build the home, and became its first superintendent. Doran resided there up to the time of his death.

  From the moment Major Jim Doran entered Arizona as a military man, his adopted land tested his mettle to the fullest. His life was as rich as any metal ore found in Arizona.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Abramowitz, Jack, American History, Fifth Edition, Follett Publishing Company, Chicago, 1970.

  Arizona Weekly Enterprise, Florence, Several articles describing the robbery of the Florence-Globe stage; The visit of Marshal Evans and the Redfields hanging; Friday, August 10, 1883; August 18, 1883; Saturday, September 8, 1883.

  Doran, A. J., “Interesting Reminiscences,” Arizona Historical Review, A Quarterly, Volume I, Number 3, Published by the Arizona State Historian, Phoenix, Arizona, October 1928, pages 54–61.

  Miller, Joseph, Editor, “Major Doran Gets A Pardon,” based on newspaper articles from the Prescott Journal Miner, 1907, and the Graham County Bulletin, 1895, Arizona Cavalcade, the Turbulent Times, Hastings House Publishers, New York, 1962.

  Wagoner, Jay J., Arizona’s Heritage, Peregrine Smith, Inc., Santa Barbara and Salt Lake City, 1977.

  Williams, Governor Jack, “Return of a Lost Soldier,” From the Ground Up, Stories of Arizona’s Mines and Early Mineral Discoveries, Phelps-Dodge Corporation, Douglas, Arizona, 1981.

  Hattie, the Ice-Maker’s Daughter

  She was a woman who believed in upholding principles in an age when women were supposed to be yielding, compromising and quiet. In Arizona it was occasionally acceptable for a bright woman during the late 1800s and early 1900s to be educated and capable. But it was always necessary to present a public picture of submission and quietude. A woman of vision who broke those unspoken rules with radical and far-reaching concepts was nearly always rejected and isolated regardless of social standing or wealth.

  Hattie Lount Mosher was born in 1865. Her father, Samuel Lount, was a pioneer from Canada who came up with an original idea. Inventors are always the observers of life. They are the people who see a phenomenon that the rest of us may register, but their curiosity encourages them to explore further, often with revolutionary results. Samuel Lount was such a man.

  Before 1851, if you wanted ice to chill your summer drink, you had to go to an iceman who cut blocks of ice from frozen ponds in the winter and stored the ice in sawdust until the heat of summer. Samuel, who had a curious turn of mind, noticed that ammonia gas mixed with salt water brine produced ice. Would this not be a more consistent and easier method in the long run for producing ice? With inventive skill, Samuel created our country’s first ice-making machine.

  Certain that his invention was a winner, Samuel was surprised when people did not come clamoring to his door to buy his machine. The businessmen and merchants, the housewives and hotel keepers looked at him askance. “Why,” they all said, “should we buy your new-fangled invention when the good Lord gives us free supplies of ice every winter?” Try as he might, Samuel got nowhere in attempting to persuade the icemen that his was a plan of the future.

  Samuel Lount had a problem. Was there anywhere in the country where people would be interested in buying his machine? Was there anywhere in the United States where there was no ice in the winter which could be stored for summer use? If such a place existed, the people there would want his ice-machine. Was the newly-opened Southwest the solution to his questions and his problem?

  In the early 1870s, packing up his machine and supplies, his wife, little Hattie and her brother, the Lounts moved from Michigan to Phoenix, Arizona. With a year-round summer climate, he felt certain that people would be delighted to buy his ice. Samuel built a small plant and began personally to take his ice around in a wheelbarrow trying to sell it himself. Everyone in Phoenix liked the idea of being able to get ice, but the cost of five cents a pound made it quite an expensive item for the time. Not too many people were willing to buy. Persevering in selling his product, it soon became fashionable and desirable to have ice in lemonade, ice to help preserve meat and milk, and ice to make that tasty treat, ice cream.

  Samuel Lount started making money. He then expanded his business and began making and selling ice-producing machines all over the Southwest, from Globe to Tucson, from Mexico to San Francisco. In time, Samuel became a well-to-do man. With the money coming in from his ice-making business, he started buying real estate in the center of Phoenix at a time when a city block on Central Avenue was going for $400 a block. Samuel became one of the richest men in all of Arizona. By this time, in 1881, Hattie was 16 years old and her brother, William, was 18.

  Pretty Hattie had been given all the advantages that were available to a young girl in those early days in the emerging town of Phoenix in the Arizona territory. She was one of the first young women in the entire city to possess the luxury of a bicycle. Her wealthy and indulgent father gave her the freedom to explore everything and to learn anything that interested her. Hattie took music lessons. She learned to paint. She designed and painted the Lount logo on her father’s new ice wagons. Hattie not only indulged in genteel activities that were deemed appropriate for a young woman, she also helped her father in his business. She meticulously kept the books for her father’s company. She even participated in his business dealings.

  Hattie Lount Mosher (Courtesy Arizona Historical Society, Central Division, Phoenix)

  It was then that her contemporaries began to notice her principled ways. In business circles, it was somewhat accepted. Hattie was honest and thorough. In social circles, many thought her too stubborn for a woman, too insistent on her own opinions. This behavior was frowned upon and criticized by some. After all, women were supposed to be yielding. The art of compromise was a nice woman’s way; gentle manipulation was acceptable and even expected, but never standing stubbornly by one’s convictions.

  Samuel loved his feisty, capable daughter. He was proud of her accomplishments, her ability to carry on a thoughtful, intelligent, challenging conversation. He would allow no attempt to rein in her streak of independence. Hadn’t he gone against the accepted opinions and practices of the times and hadn’t he won? His daughter would do the same; as long as he was alive she could try anything, do anything, and think anything she wanted.

  In 1884, Hattie, now nineteen, met the handsome man-about-town, Charles Mosher, a jo
urnalist and editor of a local newspaper. Highly verbal, Charlie found himself amused and challenged by the sparkling vivacity of Hattie Lount. Their courtship glittered with excitement. Their wedding turned out to be Arizona’s major social event of the year.

  Everything was given to the newlyweds to insure their happiness. Hattie’s parents built the couple a lovely home. The Moshers were the couple to know and invite in the social circles of Phoenix. In time, a darling daughter was born and named Julia after Hattie’s grandmother. But the glowing romance of the marriage soon lost its luster. Some felt that Charles Mosher could not handle commitments. Others, less kind, said Hattie proved to be more than he had bargained for. One day he simply disappeared.

  Disappointed, but still assured in her own sense of self, Hattie received a divorce on the grounds of desertion, and also had the marriage annulled. Desertion was one of the few acceptable legal actions for divorce available to people at the time.

  Hattie devoted herself to the raising of her daughter. When Julia grew old enough to travel, Hattie moved to Colorado where she became involved in the women’s movement and also worked on the staff of the Denver Post newspaper. She continued in these activities for the next few years until her father died. Samuel Lount left his son, William, the ice business. He left Hattie all the real estate interests that he had acquired. Hattie Lount Mosher was now a very wealthy young woman. She had wealth enough to fulfill any dream, any fantasy. She decided to take Julia and make the grand tour of Europe.