Jack Swilling

Jack Swilling
Jack Swilling in his only known photograph, date unknown.
Born	April 1, 1830 Anderson, South Carolina
Died	August 12, 1878 (aged 48) Yuma, Arizona
Allegiance	Confederate States of America
Service / branch	Confederate States Army
Years of service	1861-1862
Rank	First Lieutenant
Unit	Arizona Guards
Battles / wars	Apache Wars Bradshaw Mountains Expedition American Civil War Battle of Pinos Altos Battle of Stanwix Station

John W. "Jack" Swilling (April 1, 1830 – August 12, 1878) was an early pioneer in the Arizona Territory. He is commonly credited as one of the original founders of the city of Phoenix, Arizona. Swilling also played an important role in the opening of the central Arizona highlands to white settlement. His discoveries resulted in a gold rush to the region, and this in turn led to the establishment of Arizona’s first territorial capital at the mining town of Prescott.

Swilling was both a Confederate States Army minuteman and a civilian aid to the United States Army during the American Civil War. He worked in a variety of disciplines throughout his life, including as a teamster, prospector, mine and mill owner, and saloon and dance hall owner, as well as a canal builder, farmer, rancher, and public servant. All of this was accomplished while he suffered from periods of excruciating pain resulting from major injuries he suffered in 1854. He took morphine to assuage the pain, which led to dependency problems for the rest of his life.

Biography

Early life

John William "Jack" Swilling was born on April 1, 1830, at Red House Plantation, Anderson, South Carolina, to George Swilling and Margaret Farrar Swilling, the eighth of their 10 children. George Swilling was the son of the plantation manager, while Margaret Farrar was the owner’s daughter. Farrar's parents did not approve of the marriage, so the young couple eloped. It took three years for her parents to accept the match. In time, George Swilling became owner of the plantation. When Jack Swilling was 14, the family moved from South Carolina to Georgia. Three years later he and an older brother enlisted in a mounted battalion of Georgia volunteers for service during the Mexican–American War. After the war, the two young men returned to Georgia. Jack Swilling's whereabouts are unknown for a brief time afterwards, although he was reported in Georgia for the Christmas of 1849.

The next recorded events in his life are his marriage at Wetumpka, Alabama in 1852 to Mary Jane Gray and the birth of their daughter Elizabeth a year later. Swilling wrote in 1854 that he suffered serious injuries—a broken skull and a bullet lodged in his back—in unstated circumstances. Those injuries plagued him for the rest of his life and led to a dependency on drugs and alcohol. In 1856, on his 26th birthday, something happened to cause him to leave permanently for the West. There is more than a year’s break in the historical record, but Swilling apparently joined the Leach Wagon Road Company at Fort Smith, Arkansas as a teamster in the summer of 1857, probably staying with the slow-moving oxen-drawn wagon train until its arrival a year later at Mesilla, in Traditional Arizona, which was then part of the New Mexico Territory.

The years between Swilling’s arrival in Arizona in 1858 and the founding of Phoenix almost a decade later were active and varied ones. After his arrival in Arizona, Swilling moved to southern California, where he joined in a gold rush near Los Angeles. A few months later he was drawn back to Arizona by the gold rush at Gila City, where he also worked for the Butterfield Overland Mail Company.

Apache Wars and the American Civil War

He was elected captain of the Gila Rangers militia company that was formed to provide protection from Apache stock raids on the miners and the stage company. The Gila Rangers, with the support of warriors from the friendly Maricopa tribe, made a January 1860 expedition to the unexplored Bradshaw Mountains of central Arizona in pursuit of Apache raiders. The expedition resulted in some noteworthy discoveries: the existence of the Hassayampa River and traces of mineral riches, including gold, in an area that appeared well-suited for ranching and farming. However, the area was too remote and dangerous for settlers at the time.

Soon afterwards, the Gila City gold deposits ran out and Swilling followed his friend Colonel Jacob Snively to Pinos Altos, where he both mined and ran a saloon and dance hall. When the Union Army withdrew from the New Mexico Territory at the beginning of the Civil War, the men of Pinos Altos formed a militia company they named the Arizona Guards for defense against Apache attack. The secession of Confederate Arizona from the Union was officially declared in 1861, a territory which included all of the New Mexico Territory south of the 34th parallel. Swilling was elected second-in-command of the company, or First Lieutenant, and retained that rank when the Arizona Guards were absorbed into the Confederate Army. Swilling likely fought at the Battle of Pinos Altos, a Confederate victory and a battle which killed his commander, Captain Thomas J. Mastin (1839-1861).

After a time spent defending against Apaches and acting as the de facto police force for the area around Pinos Altos, Swilling led a portion of the Arizona Guards that reinforced the garrison of Tucson in 1862. He is believed to have commanded a party of rebels who burned Stanwix Station and skirmished with the Union Army's California Column there in March. He was also involved in the noted incident at White's Mill at Casa Blanca, Arizona when Union Captain James McCleave was captured.

Following the Union's capture of Tucson in May 1862, Swilling's company retreated and he became a civilian employee of the United States Army, first as a dispatch rider between General James Carleton’s California Column and Union forces up the Rio Grande, and later as a scout in an anti-Apache campaign. He was involved in the campaign to take Mesilla which ended with a Union takeover of Confederate Arizona's capital. Near the end of that employment, he encountered the Joseph R. Walker exploratory party near Pinos Altos when Swilling led the capture of the famous Apache chief Mangas Coloradas.

Further prospecting and marriage

Swilling's war ended there and he convinced Joseph Walker and his group that there was gold in the central highlands of the new Arizona Territory. He then guided them to where the first Yavapai County mining district was formed, just a few miles south of present-day Prescott, on May 10, 1863. The expedition called it the Pioneer Mining District, and the rules they adopted were the area’s first recorded laws.

Swilling left the Walker party shortly after the formation of the Pioneer Mining District and joined up with the exploratory party of Pauline Weaver and Abraham Harlow Peeples (1842-1892), which arrived in the area shortly after the Walker group. He made a small fortune from the unusual surface gold mine at Rich Hill between Wickenburg and Prescott. News of his successes spread eastward when two gold samples from Swilling’s claim sent to General James Henry Carleton were forwarded for presentation to President Abraham Lincoln.

Next, Swilling was briefly part owner of a flour mill in Tucson, apparently in partnership with his neighbor Charles T. Hayden. Quickly tiring of Tucson, he returned to Yavapai County where he prospected, owned gold mines and gold milling operations, and farmed. In addition he also was the mail contractor between Prescott and the Pima villages below the Salt River Valley on the Gila River. In the midst of all this activity, Jack Swilling married a young Mexican woman of Spanish heritage named Trinidad Mejia Escalante (1847-1925). They were married on April 11, 1864, at Tucson’s San Agustin Cathedral when Trinidad was about seventeen. Over the next fourteen years they had seven biological children, five girls and two boys, and adopted two Apache orphans, a boy and a girl.

Swilling Irrigation and Canal Company

Jack Swilling had the inspiration to form a canal company which would open the Salt River Valley to farming. On November 16, 1867, he formed the Swilling Irrigating and Canal Company at Wickenburg. Soon after, a small group of men headed by Jack Swilling started construction of the first modern-era irrigation canals in the Salt River Valley; other pioneers and travelers had seen and commented on ancient Hohokam canals in the area, but it was Swilling who organized the first successful modern irrigation project. The following summer, the first crops of wheat, barley and corn were harvested. He promoted the irrigation system, which was in part inspired by the ruins of the Hohokam canals. Swilling Irrigating and Canal Company started the small farming community of Phoenix that has since grown into one of the United States' largest metropolitan areas. Swilling claimed a quarter section south of what became Van Buren Street between 32nd and 36th Streets for his own farm. He built a nine-room, 4,700-square-foot (440 m²) home there. His farm was a local showplace, featuring an artificial pond with tame ducks, a vineyard and an orchard with a variety of fruit trees.

In the early days, Jack Swilling was one of the most prominent leaders of the Phoenix settlement. The first post office was established on June 15, 1868, in Swilling's homestead, with Swilling serving as the postmaster. He was also the first justice of the peace. He was involved in the planning and construction of additional canals, including the first ditch south of the Salt River in partnership with an old acquaintance and business partner, Charles T. Hayden, the founder of Tempe, Arizona and father of long-time Arizona Senator Carl T. Hayden.

Death

Once Phoenix was well-established and the so-called “original townsite” was located over three miles (5 km) to the west of his holdings, he lost interest and moved his growing family back to central Arizona. There he mined, farmed and ranched until he became a suspect in a stagecoach robbery near Wickenburg.

By the spring of 1878, he and his family were living in the small mining community of Gillett, around the area of Black Canyon City. His health was failing, and his drinking had become a problem. Trinidad Swilling suggested that he go on a trip to recover and rebury the remains of their old friend, Colonel Jacob Snively, who had been killed by Apaches in the Wickenburg Mountains near the peak called White Picacho. While Swilling and two companions were on this journey, three hooded men—one tall, one medium-size, and one short—robbed a stagecoach near Wickenburg. This description matched that of Swilling and his companions and they became suspects in the robbery.

Pima County Sheriff Wiley W. Standefer arrested Swilling and Andrew Kirby, but dropped the state charges so the federal courts could prosecute them and absorb the prosecution costs. Deputy U.S. Marshal Joseph W. Evans brought warrants for the two men to Prescott, where they were turned over to him, and Evans escorted them to the federal jail in Yuma. However, sanitary conditions inside the prison at Yuma were very poor and, combined with the August heat, aggravated Swilling's chronic ill health. He died in his cell on August 12 while awaiting a hearing. The real robbers—led by a man Swilling and others had publicly accused—were identified only after Swilling’s death.

Swilling was buried in a Yuma cemetery before his family could be notified. The location of his grave is unknown. After his death, Swilling’s reputation as a badman grew so fast that by the end of the 19th century a prominent Arizona historian described him as a “typical desperado.” By many accounts he was a joker and yarn spinner and while drinking he spread tall tales about his exploits to all who would listen. Friends remembered Jack Swilling as an honest, hard-working, and generous man always ready to help those in need of a meal or a place to sleep. He was known to put his own life at risk for others, literally riding to the rescue when help was needed in the face of Apache attack. In the end, his use of a combination of narcotics and liquor to relieve the pain caused by old injuries ruined Jack Swilling’s health and led indirectly to his death.

Further reading

• Bates, Albert R. (2008) Jack Swilling: Arizona’s Most Lied About Pioneer (Wheatmark Publishing Co., Tucson, AZ) ISBN 978-1-58736-965-0
• Sheridan, Thomas E. (1995) Arizona: A History (Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press) ISBN 0-8165-1515-8
• Wilson, R. Michael (2007) Tragic Jack: The True Story of Arizona Pioneer John William Swilling (TwoDot) ISBN 978-0762741519

External links

• Jack Swilling Exhibit, 1992 with historic documents and photos, at Salt River Project
• Swilling's cabin in Black Canyon City