Arivaca Pioneers : Gipsy Harper Clarke
January 28, 2009
In 1910 Gipsy Harper arrived in Arizona to teach school. A native of Texas, she had gone to Los Angeles to find work and had been recruited by Nonie Bernard, the owner of the Arivaca Ranch. After arriving by train in Tucson, she quickly took the required state examinations and was rewarded with an official certificate. A stage coach brought her to Arivaca, and the first person she met upon her arrival was a young man about her age, named Phil Clarke.
Arivaca was a company town in 1910, and the owner was the Arivaca Land and Cattle Company. Phil Clarke had hired on with them in 1907 and by 1910 they had him managing the store and holding the offices of Postmaster, Justice of the Peace and School Trustee. He was surprised to see Gipsy, for he thought he was responsible for hiring the teacher.
Since she was there already, he took it upon himself to find her a boarding house and help her get acquainted. We know what went on that first week from stories she wrote later. The following is her own account of one of the first conversations she had with Phil:
“‘Mr. Clarke, have you notified the children that school is to open Monday?’
‘They’ll know when they see the school door open if they don’t know from you bein’ here.’
He unlocked the school door and pushed it open and I looked at what was to be my domain for the next eight months.
There wasn’t a thing in that school but filthy, ink-stained, hand whittled desks, a huge rusty iron stove without a pipe, and the teacher’s table and a bell. Not a map, nor a chart, nor a globe. Even the black-board erasers, if there had ever been any, had been carried away.
‘Where is the equipment?’
‘How d’you mean–equipment?’
‘Does the territory furnish books, paper and pencils?’
‘What’re you talkin’ about? It pays the teacher. Ain’t that enough?’
‘Do you mean to tell me there won’t even be books? Do the children buy them for themselves?’
‘Of course they don’t.’
‘Perhaps if you’d order them and put them in the sote, some of the more ambitious parents would pay for them.’
‘Look here, I’ve got that whole Cattle Company and every person for twenty miles around telling me what to order for that store; I’m not going to have you tellin’ me to start a book store!’”
But Gipsy was a self confident person, and after taking a few days to get settled, she began her first school:
“First day of school I awoke with a thrill. Outside my window Biejo was carrying out beer bottles and humming ‘La Golondrina.’ Across the patio sunlight fell on the adobe wall and a guinea hen chattered noisily.
After breakfast Rita gave me a sack of rags, some washing soap and a broom to take to school. I wore a dark linen dress and carried a red checked gingham bungalow apron with long sleeves. Bungalow aprons buttoned down the back and completely covered the dress.
All the children came to school that first morning. Uncle Beanie (Bogan) had rounded up sixty-five of them. I rang the bell and wrote the names and ages in my register with the help of Anita, an older girl who spoke good English. Then we went to work. The boys got the water. There was no well, all of the water of the village being hauled by a barrel and burro from the creek or from a well a mile up the valley. I had learned the word ‘agua’ and when I spoke it, off the boys went. We scrubbed walls, windows, blackboards, desks and the floor. The boys raked the yard and piled the rocks on the arroyo bank. At noon I sent a note to Phil asking for chalk, paper and pencils and charged it to myself. The ones he promised had not arrived.
Probably a dozen children had some kind of a book and some had tablets and pencils. I had Anita tell them to ask their parents if they would buy books, and I gave each of them a slip with his requirements, after classifying them the best I could.
Many of them were acting when they pretended not to understand, for they had had good teachers and so had their parents before them. Uncle Beanie’s wife (Phebe Bogan), the finest teacher ever, had taught them.
I wrote the multiplication tables and a long list of words for spelling on one side board. After they were learned I covered the board with a sheet I had borrowed and had the children recite them. On another board I printed the reading lesson for the beginners. I passed paper and pencils to all, and when the work was finished I had every pencil collected. Then there was the singing lesson. We had fun over that. I wrote one verse of ‘America’ on the board, but as few could read it all, they memorized the words from my singing rather from the board.
That afternoon being mail day, I sent an order to Tucson for thirty readers–first, second, and third–and charged them to myself. I selected the art readers we had used as supplementary readers back home. They were expensive, but I thought the children would enjoy them. I hoped many would buy the regular books that were required on the course of study. Also I ordered crayolas and drawing paper for every child.
While I taught one section, the others had recess. Of course they made a terrific noise, threw rocks at the school and broke several windows, which made it necessary for me to keep them after school and discover who did it. All faces were blank and tongues dumb. Cipriano’s eyes were downcast. He must be the culprit. I wrote a letter to his father, saying that until Cipriano brought three dollars he could not return to school.
That night I took it up with Mr. Clarke. He laughed when I told him about the note I sent Cipriano’s father. The man was a cowboy and Cipriano made money hauling water and chopping wood, but why should he pay for windows? Why didn’t I whip him? That was my duty, controlling those boys. Why did I send them out without anybody over them if I didn’t expect something like that to happen.”
As it turns out, Cipriano does bring the three dollars and Gipsy stays on at Arivaca school. After three short months, she and Phil Clarke were married and set up housekeeping in the large house across the street from the store.
Phil Clarke: Pioneer Rancher
December 1, 2008
In the first half of the 20th century the Clarke Ranch, now known as the Montana Ranch and owned by the USFWS, anchored the headwaters of Arivaca valley. Phil and Gipsy Clarke were true pioneers who left home and family and came to Arivaca at a young age, where they met, married and established themselves with a homestead, ranch and store.
During the Depression in Arivaca
November 1, 2008
We are facing the Panic of 2008: an economic downturn, recession, maybe depression. Over the years there have been many of these, but the Great Depression sticks in one’s mind. The Crash of 1929, when on Black Thursday, October 24, a wave of selling began in which the stock market collapsed. Soon after, the worst of that was over, but the economic downturn which became the Great Depression lasted for years, and wasn’t really over until World War II brought about increased military spending. My parents remembered the Depression vividly. My mother, like many people in the 1920s, lost money when her bank failed, and she really didn’t have anything to lose—it was all she had been able to save while working in a menial job. She never forgot this as long as she lived. My father remembered sacks of “splits” or broken pinto beans, which sold for less than whole beans. Tony Prevor said that his family was already being careful with their money and it didn’t affect them as much as other people. Chicago was a big city, though, and you could buy day-old bread for pennies and milk for 7 cents a quart. People made do with the basics. But then, their expectations were different from ours.
S. Fred Noon, Attorney at Law
October 3, 2008
Samuel Frederick Noon was born in San Jose, California in 1879, but came with his family to Oro Blanco, AZ at the age of one. His parents were Dr. Adolphus and Emma Noon, who had come to the area because of mining interests and the potential for a new start in a growing state. Dr. Noon practiced medicine, raised cattle, and mined in the Oro Blanco-Nogales area until his death in 1931 at the age of 93.
Ramón Ahumada
September 1, 2008
The first Arizonan to be inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City was Arivaca’s own Ramón Ahumada. Although he had no children of his own, a generation of young men, too numerous to mention, proudly bear the name of Ramón, Ray or Raymond, in honor of the gentleman who managed the Arivaca Ranch for forty years.
Don and Carolyn Honnas: Ranching on the Pocahonnas
August 1, 2008
The Honnas family arrived in Arivaca in 1960, when they bought the Las Jarillas Ranch from Homer and Dottie Osborne. The Honnas family’s roots in Arizona go back to the late 1800s when Don’s grandmother Della and stepfather Peter Honnas arrived in the Sonoita area to do some homesteading. They had their own homestead, but also purchased others as they came up for sale by people who couldn’t make a go of it. Don’s father Cecil married Lottie Moore, who had been teaching at the Empire Ranch School in the late 1920s. Lottie’s mother, Nancy Moore, had come to Arizona about the turn of the century. Lottie was raised in Marana, where she was in the first graduating class of the high school there. Lottie and Cecil were serious ranchers who intended to make a go of it no matter what. Cecil sometimes had to work off the ranch while Lottie took care of the horses and cattle. But Lottie was also the mail carrier on the route to Greaterville. Lottie and Cecil had two boys, Ray and Don.
The Adventuresome Sykes Family
July 1, 2008
Is the adventurous engineer (naturalist, scientist) a lost calling? Today those types are few and far between. One such person was Godfrey Sykes, whose life story is worthy of a movie, and yes, it has been documented in a book.* Godfrey’s son, Gilbert, was the Nogales District Forest Ranger for many years, so he had a local connection to Arivaca.
JPS Brown—the Cowboy’s writer
June 1, 2008
If you have not yet met Joe Brown, there is still time. He is one of those local writers who made good. He is known country-wide as J.P.S. Brown (Joseph P. Brown) for his true-to-life stories about ranch life in Arizona and Mexico. He will open your eyes to real life on the Mexican border—both sides of it.
The Contzen Family
May 1, 2008
In considering the German influence on early Arizona history, another pioneer family comes to mind. Fritz Contzen was another of the 1850s settlers in Southern Arizona. Fritz was born in Germany in 1831, into an educated family. His father was the Chief Forester of the principality of Waldeck. (Germany was not yet a united country.) Fritz came with his older brother, Julius, and a group of Germans to help settle Texas in about 1848. The brothers joined the Texas Rangers to fight Comanches. They became separated when Julius met Herman Ehrenburg who was going to Arizona. After the Gadsden Treaty was signed, Fritz joined Major Emory’s boundary survey and served as an assistant to the surveyor, because he had been so educated in Germany. After completing the survey, Fritz met Pete Kitchen somewhere near present-day Nogales and he decided to settle here. On a trip to Hermosillo, Fritz found his brother Julius who was living in Tubutama and they joined up again. Arriving in Tucson, they found the presidio with Mexican troops, but soon the U. S. troops arrived to replace the Mexicans. The Contzens were here, with the very few other Americans, when the U. S. flag went up in Tucson. Just south of the San Xavier Mission, in 1856, Fritz and Julius established a ranch at the Punta de Agua (point of water, where the Santa Cruz River went underground.) On a trip to Hermosillo for supplies, the brothers were attacked by a band of Apaches, near Imuris. Some O’odham who had accompanied them went to Imuris for help. In the meantime, Fritz was shot through the knee and Julius received numerous flesh wounds, but they held out until help arrived. Julius eventually died of the wounds, two years later. This episode didn’t stop Fritz from traveling, however, because he accepted the dangers as just part of living here.
The German Vanguard in Southern Arizona
April 1, 2008
Sometimes it is good to take a different perspective on history, so as to see things in a new light. It may not be well known that the largest ethnic group (17%) in the United States claims German ancestry. So it is not surprising that persons with German origins were in the vanguard of exploration and development in the Pimería Alta or what we now call Southern Arizona and Northern Sonora.