GREAT EXPECTATIONS Chapter Four

I suppose the luckiest moment in the history of Phoenix, Arizona occurred when the first settlers decided to reject the suggestion of its founder,  Jack Swilling,  that they should name the new town “Stonewall”, after the Confederate General "Stonewall Jackson".  Instead they listened to the more educated voice of Phillip Darrell Duppa, an Englishman who had been versed in the classics. 

Phillip (above) liked to call himself “Lord Duppa”,  a  title delivered with a self depreciating grin, which really sold it. The limey  had the romantic idea that the ugly little adobe town founded between the White Tank Mountains and the Salt River was a place of rebirth, a spot where new life could rise from the ashes of the old, like the mythical Phoenix Bird. And that appealed to the survivors of the Civil War, from both sides. On the other hand it was really bad luck for the town when James Reavis stepped off the California stagecoach in Phoenix, to raise the Peralta Land Grant from its ashes.

Phoenix was not legally a town yet when Reavis arrived in April of 1880. That would happen in February of the following year.  But already the place had almost 2,500 citizens, a couple of churches, a school on Center Street, 16 saloons, four dance halls, a bank and a telegraph connection to the outside world. And Huntington and Cooke's  railroad was already reaching out from San Diego, although it had not reached Phoenix yet. But publicly James Reavis showed no interest in any of that. 

He told people he was a subscription agent for the San Francisco Examiner, but he sold very few subscriptions. He read the local paper, he listened when people talked , and he gauged the spirit of the place. 

He even traveled the 15 miles out to where the seasonal Salt River and the perennial Gila Rivers met, and clambered about over the hills for an hour or so. On his return to town, he boarded the stagecoach for the terrible one hundred mile journey north, into the mountains, to the territorial capital of Prescott.

Repeated conflagrations had forced this mining town of less than 2,000 to begin building in brick, including a new court house (above).  It was in that building in May of 1880 that James Reavis presented a letter from George’s Willing's widow, granting him authority to act in her name and take possession of the bill of sale for the Peralta land grant. And once he had this bill of sale in his hand, James caught the next coach bound for San Francisco.

Once back in the city by the bay,  Reavis now oversaw an English translation of  the Royal Credula -  “The King's Debt” - the fake land grant supposedly made by the Spanish King. This had of course originally been written in English, by Reavis' conspirators back in St. Louis. But now Reavis had actually seen the land, and could make minor changes in the translation to reflect the actual terrain.  

After discussions with Huntington and Crocker, James Reavis decided to expand the size of the grant, placing its very center at the confluence of the Salt and Gila rivers,. which he had visited on his day trip. Contained within the grant now were the towns of Phoenix, Tempe and Casa Granda.  Reavis added a helpful note from the powerful Inquisition of New Spain, dated 1757 (above),  assuring the Viceroy there was no impediment to the grant,...

...and a statement from the lucky recipient, Don Miguel de Peralta, himself, dated 1758, which defined the western boundary so as to reach 50 miles eastward  to Silver City, New Mexico territory, to include the Silver King Mine, whose deposits under Chloride Flats produced $10,000 out of every ton of ore pried from it's tunnels. Preparing this new old paperwork took the entire winter of 1880-81.

In July of 1881 Reavis finally made it to Sacramento, to repay Florin Massaol and get his hands on the mineral rights which George Willing had pawned back in 1874.  In the end, however, Massaol was so impressed by the people backing Reavis, the old forger got what he wanted for only the cost of a railroad ticket. All Reavis had to do was sign yet another promissory note, agreeing to pay Massol $3,000 if and when the Peralta grant was confirmed by an American court. In exchange Massaol signed over power of attorney on the mineral rights to Reavis  That's all Reavis wanted, anyway. It as not as if he had any intention of ever digging for gold or silver himself.

Reavis then boarded a train for Washington, D.C., seeking the record book of the Mission San Xavier del Bac, located just south of Phoenix, Arizona, and a benchmark used for the grant. 

The book had been the territories' contribution to the Centennial Exposition (above) in Philadelphia in 1876. After the exhibition had closed, the book,  along with other exhibits, had been moved to Washington, D.C..  It was still there, and Reavis was permitted access to the book because of his contacts with wealthy Californians.  Had the book still been in Arizona such “friends” might have been a source of suspicion, but in far off Washington the other rule about museum curators came into play - they never miss an opportunity to impress a potential wealthy patron. Reavis was allowed to spend several days in private,  going over the book. In September he continued his odyssey in Mexico City, and then on to Guadalajara..

In both Mexican cities James Reavis bonded with the archivists, the librarians and probate clerks in charge of the documents and records he needed. He told them he was a correspondent for San Francisco newspapers, looking for stories about the roots of California families, and probably paid them for small “favors” he received. And when he returned to California in late November of 1881, he had photographs of the documents, as well as typed translations and certified copies, all paid for by his wealthy investors. 

Six months later he was in Lexington, Kentucky (above), agreeing to pay George Willing's widow, May Ann, $50,000 for the free and clear ownership of the Peralta grant – 50% more than George had paid for it in 1863 – a transaction which, in reality, had never taken place. The monies to be paid once the Federal Government recognized the validity of the grant.

This proves again the central rule of capitalism, which is that everything has a value, defined as what people are willing to pay for what they want. And in most capitalist endeavors, the first step is to create the want. And that is what James Reavis was about to do.

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GREAT EXPECTATIONS Chapter Three

 

I doubt most Americans remember James Gadsden (above) . In 1840 this ex-army officer became president and primary shareholder in the South Carolina Rail Road Company.  He had big dreams of a southern transcontinental railroad, beginning in Charleston and driving across Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, all the way to the Pacific Ocean. There were only three things that stood in his way. 

First, his railroad was only 135 miles long and went no further west than the Georgia border (north). Second, it was over $3 million in debt ($64 million today). And third, in 1840 everything west of Texas belonged to Mexico. But Mr. Gadsden was not willing to concede defeat before even starting. And because he was not, James Addison Reavis would have a golden opportunity to become one of the richest thieves in America – call it another unforeseen consequence.

By 1840 there were two routes under consideration for the first transcontinental railroad. The central route, favored by the business interests in New York and Chicago. It started in Missouri and followed the trail blazed by wagon trains already heading to the newly discovered California gold fields. The route favored by Mr, Gadsden and most southern politicians, started in either South Carolina or Georgia. However, the southerners could not decide between themselves on how to finance the work.  And Gadsden was too arrogant to form a consensus from his own allies. The only thing the southerners could agree upon was that they would not allow the central route to be used. So as long as the south had a veto, any transcontinental railroad would remain a dream.

The Mexican War (1846-1848) had given America a vast new empire north of the Rio Grande River, comprising what would be the states of  Texas, California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico.  But even this conquest failed to supply an acceptable route for a southern transcontinental railroad. And the "Compromise of 1850" made things even worse. In exchange for relieving Texas of its huge public debt, Texas came in as a slave state and California was admitted as a “free” state. After that, no matter who built the transcontinental railroad or where they built it - and they couldn't sidetrack into Mexico, because slavery had been outlawed there since the 1845  -   the end of the line would now be a  “free state”.  

Desperate to lure the Golden State back to the slavery side, even it it required cutting it in half, in 1851 the argumentative Gadsden (above) offered to supply 1,200 new settlers, if California would also admit “not less than two thousand...African domestics” into southern California. The ploy fooled nobody, and the proposal never got out of committee in the California legislature.  Defeated again, Gadsden decided to salvage what small part of the plan he still had some control over.

If he couldn't find a way around the Mexican border beyond Texas, Gadsden decided to move the border. With assistance from Mississippi's Jefferson Davis, who at the time was President Franklin Pierce's Secretary of War, Gadsden won appointment as an agent of the United States Government, authorized to buy a southern railroad route. Now, again, the one thing James Gadsden did not have were negotiating skills, and the minute he arrived in Mexico City and opened his mouth,  he offended the entire nation of Mexico. But Gadsden was in luck, because at the time (1853), the entire Mexican government consisted of one ego maniac, General Antonio Lopez de la Santa Ana.

This was Santa Anna's sixth go around as President-slash- dictator of Mexico. He is remembered in America for his capture of the Alamo, and killing “Davy” Crockett. But in Mexico he is remembered because he never seemed to learn from his mistakes, which constantly seems to have surprised the Mexican people. Every time a crises occurred, they turned to Santa Ana,  and he kept responding by looting the country and then burning it down to destroy the evidence. Typically, in 1853, Mexico was broke, and unable to pay her army. So no matter how many ways James Gadsden insulted him, and he did find many ways of doing that, Santa Anna could not walk away from the negotiating table,  because Gadsden was offering cash money.

The resulting Gadsden Purchase acquired 30,000 square miles of fertile farmland, harsh desserts  and valuable mineral deposits, and a railroad route over the lower end of the Rocky Mountains, all for  the bargain basement price of $15 million – about thirty-three cents an acre. From the American point of view it was a great deal. From the Mexican point of view, it was rape. But really, nobody actually involved in the deal got what they wanted. The generals Santa Ana paid off with the cash were so offended by the deal, they overthrew Santa Anna again, and sent him into retirement for the sixth and final time. 

James Gadsden had so exhausted himself offending the Mexicans, he died the day after Christmas, 1858, and so missed the start of the American Civil War. But when the south went into rebellion in 1861 the north was free to finally build the transcontinental railroad via the central route  - which they finished in 1869. And when Gadsden's dream of the southern transcontinental would finally be built in 1881, it would profit the same western men who had built the original central route out of California -  Collis Potter Huntington and Charles Crocker.

Crocker (above) was a 49'er from Indiana, who made his first fortune selling shovels to miners in Sacramento. Then he went into banking, and he was one of Big Four who formed the Central Pacific Railroad, the western end of the transcontinental. In fact "Charles Crocker and Company" was the prime contractor on the Central Pacific Railroad. Of course the shareholders in "Croker and Company" were the same men who owned the Southern Pacific. This is known as the "heads I win, tails you lose" school of finance. By 1877, the big Hoosier had so much money, he was running out of things to buy. And at that fortuitous moment, who should Croker meet but a slightly sleazy newspaper man named James Addison Reavis.

Reavis told Croker the story of the Peralta land grant. Of course he probably did not mention that the land grant was a myth. Probably. But Crocker and a few other select California investors were willing to fund more research into the claim. Did they ever believe in the validity of the grant? They would have smiled at that question, and regarded it as unimportant. The only thing that matters in the world of Capitalism, is what you can afford to prove in court.  And James Reavis could now afford to research the heck out of the Peralta land grants. And this old forger figured he stood a pretty good chance of finding every single document he went looking for. In fact, he could guarantee it.

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GREAT EXPECTATIONS Chapter Two

I reject the idea that people are born evil. Lord knows we often do evil. But then consider the level of cruelty required to spend ten years patiently inflating the dreams of a lonely and abandoned young woman (above), before smashing her psyche into a billion pieces on the anvil of your own ambition, almost as an afterthought in a plot to steal the modern equivalent of $116 million.  Now, that is evil.

Evil's name was James Addison Reavis (above) and he was the second son of a Missouri store owner. He  was half Welsh, one quarter Scots and one quarter Mexican. James grew up fluent in both Spanish and English. And, as any young creature entering the world, his initial survival depended on the skills nature had provided him and his ambition. In James' case, nature had made Missouri a border state, torn between Union loyalties and Southern sympathies. 

When civil war broke out in 1861 the 18 year old James volunteered for military service in a Confederate regiment, where he  discovered he had a facility for forging his commanding officer's signature. He supplemented his army pay by selling passes to his fellow soldiers, until the officers grew suspicious. 

Before things got to too hot, James (above) wrote himself a pass and changed sides, enlisting in the Union Army. Because the Federal side was paying bounties for recruits. After the war James returned home with confidence in his own survival skills, and, oddly, having added the Portuguese language to his skill set.

James Reavis now fell in with a group of organized criminals - real estate agents. They put his skill with a pen to work again, creating the missing link in many a legal ownership trail. And it was as a real estate agent, aptly  named George Willing, who introduced James to his life's work.  That was not Willing's intent, of course.  

The scam Willing was running had been born in the treaty which ended the Mexican/American war of 1846 to 1848.  The United States annexed all or parts of the future states of New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah and California. 

To avoid rebellion in these new territories the U.S. government pledge to respect all land titles and contracts signed under Mexican law, including the original Spanish land grants. And that is where George Willing came into our story, in 1871, with a fake bill of sale from a one time Mexican citizen. 

Willing claimed that in October of 1864, while working on a mining claim in Black Canyon, Arizona Territory (above) - about 50 miles north of Phoenix -  he had bought the mineral rights for a poorly defined section of land from a Miguel Peralta (Spanish for "high rock" or mountain) in exchange for $20,000 in gold, some mining equipment and some mules.

Willing had forged a written the bill of sale (above) in pencil, supposedly on the only piece of paper in the mining camp. But he could not record the sale until three years later, in Prescott, Arizona, the territorial capital. Of course by then, the claim had proven profitable to somebody else. 

This type of challenge to an existing claim was called “a floater” and was not unusual in mining districts. Because of this it was was popular with scam artists, because the real mine owners would often settle the suit out of court by paying for a "quick claim",  just to avoid the expense of proving the claim false at lengthy trial. And it turned out there were several established mines already working the land which Willing was now claiming title to. 

But so familiar were the local miners with this particular scam that George Willing's filing quickly resulted in threats of tar and feathers. So George had retreated from Prescott, first to Sacramento, California, where he had used the fake bill of sale to secure a loan, which paid his way home to St. Louis, Missouri. His intention, once there, was to continue to pursue his claim, but this time in a safer venue - the Federal courts.

In Missouri over the next two years, James Reavis and George Willing spent many hours discussing how best to secure the backing they required. They teamed up with a lawyer named William Gitt, who was an expert, of a sorts, in old Spanish land claims, including one out of Guadalajara, Mexico dating back to 1847. Mr. Gitt had been forced to abandon that particular case after a Mexican bench warrant had been issued for his arrest for fraud.  And as they invested more time an effort in constructing their fraud, they enlarged his claim.  

Gitt lectured James and George about the intricacies of Mexican and Spanish land law. And in January of 1874, on Gitt's advice, James and George formed a legal partnership. Then, they separated. George Willing took the paperwork they had “discovered” (meaning created) by rail and horseback back to Prescott, Arizona, to re-file his claim on the mines in Black Canyon. James Reavis took a train to New York City, where he boarded a ship, bound for San Francisco.

Step one in the plan was for James to meet up with a Sacramento, California (above), merchant named Florin Massol.  Massol was the dupe who had loaned Willing money years earlier. The collateral Willing offered to guarantee the loan were the fraudulent mining rights on the mythical Miguel Peralta land grant. Paying back the loan would provide a seemingly valid paper trail. 

Step two was for James to travel on to Prescott, Arizona (above) later that summer with the mineral rights now free and clear, and appearing unconnected to George's earlier filling for the same imaginary Peralta grant.  The idea was that two seemingly unconnected individuals filing separate claims on the Peralta grant would increase the pressure on the mine owners to settle the suits even quicker. But upon arriving in San Francisco, James received a startling letter from an Arizona Sheriff.

The letter was addressed to the only name found in George Willing's address book -  James Reeves, care of general delivery, San Francisco. According to the sheriff, George Willing had safely arrived in Prescott in March of 1874, and had immediately filed his claim at the Yavapai County Court house. Willing had then checked into a hotel (above), eaten a hearty dinner and retired to his room  In the morning, he was found dead. George Willing was willing no more. 

The sheriff offered no cause of death. Maybe it had been a heart attack, or maybe someone remembered George Willing from his earlier adventures in questionable mining claims. The sheriff was only interested in preforming his civic duty, and finding someone to pay the undertaker. And with that shocking news, the partnership was dissolved and whatever plans had been assembled to profit from the mythical Peralta land grant, died with George.

James Reeves was in a terrible fix. He was not interested in paying for poor George's funeral. He wasn't even happy about being connected in public with George's claim. But, according to the sheriff's letter, the papers James had forged to support George's claim on the mining lands, were still on file at the Yavapai County Court house. James Reavis could not pursue his claim without those papers. But, if George's death had not been accident, Prescott, Arizona might not be the safest place right now. James Reavis needed time to think. So, on 5 May 1874, he got married.

The lucky lady was Ada Pope. After a short honeymoon, James went looking for work and Ada never saw him again. Six years later the unfortunate lady finally filed for divorce. In the meantime, James had found a job as a school teacher in the tiny Southern California farming town of Downey (above). 

After two quiet years laying low in Downey,  James returned to San Francisco (above), where he became a newspaper correspondent for "The Examiner" and "The Call", specializing in covering the Public Land Commission.  

From this position James made himself familiar to the most powerful men in the city, including two  who had just built the Southern Pacific line, the western half of the transcontinental railroad, Collis Huntington and Charles Crocker (above) - two of the biggest crooks in American history.. By now a plan had formed in James' mind, a way to re-assemble the pieces of his search for wealth and security.

It would be a great gamble. But then America had been built on gambles, usually with other people's money. And that was just what James Addison Reavis was going to  do - use other people's money to steal a fortune for himself. 

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