Tombstone "Epitaph Only Survivor"

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 TOMBSTONE EPITAPH NEWSPAPER, APRIL 27, 1944...

On this, it's 64th Anniversary, The Epitaph In Fond Memory, Delves Into Retrospect

EPITAPH ONLY SURVIVOR MANY STRENUOUS NEWSPAPER WARS...

by the late Joe Chisholm

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I think I got out, the first news sheet in Bisbee. Billy Hattich, who then owned the Tombstone Epitaph, and had been identified with it from childhood, conceived the idea of making it a two-camp paper. So I started the Bisbee end of the Epitaph in '95.

Later Allie Howe got out a paper known as the Orb. It was printed on a Vaughn press, a contraption that looks and acts like a carpet beater and about ten times more clumsy than a Washington hand press. Its plant was on O.K. Street in Chiruahua Town.

About the same time Bill Nash started the Bisbee Miner. That sublimited dishrag had about the most varied and stormiest career of any of the public opinion molders of the Mule Mountains. After Bill Nash had thundered through its columns for a while the erratic but dynamic D. W. Semple got it. He was a stormy petrel if ever there was one in newspaperdom. Semple had a newspaper also in Tombstone. He called it the Tombstone American. He and I had a run in about that time, and for a while he had me scared up.

INTERVIEWING PRESIDENT

Maj. George H.  Kelly  had sent me up to Grand Canyon in 1903 to interview President Roosevelt. I got my story on the wires at the head of Bright Angel Trail, four columns of it, and felt rather pleased with myself. But when I got back as far as Phoenix, I ran into the Tombstone American and it had a Grand Canyon Roosevelt interview spread all over its page one. There I was, scooped to a frazzle! Semple would have me look sick, too. If he hadn't made one mistake.He had interviewed Roosevelt and published the Grand Canyon spread one day before the national boss had got there. But you've got to hand it to Semple for enterprise. His last stand in Arizona was at Globe, where he flourished for a few months. He was last heard of in a mushroom camp in Nevada. 

Cyclone Bill was one of the most picturesque newspaper men of the Mules. Way back in 1880 Paymaster  Mag. Wham of the U.S. Army had been held up over near Fort Thomas by a bunch of wild hombres, and the payroll of about $20,000 lifted.  Several Mormons of the Gila Valley were accused of the holdup and wounding of several soldiers of the paymasters guard. Cyclone Bill was made one of the defendants. Ben Goodrich and Marcus Smith, however, got the boys off after a stormy trial.   When Cyclone Bill - nobody ever seemed to know his real name - had broken into the newspaper ranks we used to jolly him a lot about his criminal record and try to get him to write a story of the paymaster holdup. But Bill couldn't be induced to give up that gem of a story.

ALEY GREAT HUMORISTS

Frank Aley, however, was the one great humorist of Mule Mountain journalism. Like Mark Twain, the whimsical style and droll yarns of that dry genius kept everyone in that country sniggering. Sometimes, too, he contrived to put his weird yarns across so cleverly he fooled his readers, made them think his wild chronicles were true narratives.

Tombstone had got the start on Bisbee in the late 70's and 80's. Bisbee, high up among the peaks, was at a big disadvantage in the beginning. Tombstone's papers were as enterprising, well edited, and natually in that environment as fearless as any newspaper in the world. There was reason for their excellence. Tombstone set down there on the arroyo-creased greasewood flats against the foothills of the Mules, aloof from all its parent civilization, developed an elan, a spirit of self-dependence, that resulted in a culture wholly its own. It was a rebirth a generation after of the golden days of Forty-nine on San Francisco Bay. Had its booming prosperity not been so brief undoubtedly it would have given birth to a literature of its own, as the brilliant city by the Golden Gate had done.

A. E. Fay, Thomas Tully, John P. Clum, Charles D. Reppy, Thomas R. Sorin, Patrick Hamilton, Harry Ellington Brook (Los Angeles Times), O'Brien Moore, William O'Neill, John O. Dunbar, Harry Wood, Dick Rule - among other editors who recorded the wild events of the turbulent metropolis of the Southwest were men of scholary expression, broad vision, Homeric humor.

I have before me a scrapebook containing clippings from the Tombstone Epitaph of May 10, 1883. One of them tells of a fierce raid, murders in the copper camp in the depths of the mountain range against whose base Tombstone rests. Its opening paragraph reads: "The Bisbee robbery, with its attendant horrors, continues to be the all-absorbing theme among all classes of citizens. The boldness with which the outrage was planned and the audacity and reckless disregard of human life in its execution, find no parellel in the history of this county, and probably not in that of the territory." That's not a quotation from a carefully written editorial, but the beginning of a two-column news article, mostly made up from scraps of information coming into the newspaper office as excited arrivals came in from Bisbee or its neighborhood. In the two columns there is not a single typographical error!

The newspaper was shot off the press daily in one of the wildest towns, if not the wildest town, in the world; seething with hourly rumors of new strikes in the big mines of the camp, reports of sensational ore discoveries at Silver King, Harqua Hala, the Quijotoas, Total Wreck and all the other sizzling boom camps of that frontier; excited by daily news of Apache massacre in the hills, bloody battles between gunmen in the towns, of stages being held up between them.

FOUR DAILY PAPERS HERE

And there were three other dailes just as live as the Epitaph, just as well written, each of the four everyday striving to scoop the others and beat their editions to the throbbing Tombstone streets.

" I leave it to the reader to compare that newspaper efficiency of 1883 out there beyond civilization's edge with some of the illy-written typographical horrors that give us our daily news today!"

And don't let anybody get the impression that those raring editors of the country with the hair on were any pink tea hombres. They were regular curly wolves themselves, ready to back up their editorial announcements with anything from fists to sixguns. 

The Nugget got out its first issue in the fall of "79, with A. E. Fay and Thomas Tully as its publishers. It was such a success from the jump that in May of the following year, John P. Clum, Charles D. Reppy and Thomas R. Sorin had the Epitaph on the roaring streets of Tombstone.

CLUM NAMED THE EPITAPH

Antiquarians, historians and just plain romances have given many versions of how the historic Tombstone Epitaph got its name. The two most popular versions are that John Hays Hammond, the celebrated mining engineer, while being banqueted at the famous old Can Can restaurant of Tombstone, suggested that name for the newspaper that soon was to be issued; and that Ed Schieffelin, Tombstone's discover, proposed the name.

The real fact is that John P. Clum, one of the papers founders, christened it. Ed Schieffelin had given the name Tombstone to his first mining location in the district, and Clum, being not only a man of education but one of good taste, naturally thought of Epitaph as the most appropriate title for a Tombstone newspaper. I once asked him about it. He said he did not recall that anyone suggested the name to him.

In those virile days there never was any neutral ground for a newspaper. If the editor wasn't lambasting the living daylight out of something all the time he was considered a mollycoddle. The Nugget was for Sheriff Johnny Behan and the cowboys. Therefore the Epitaph was against them first rattle out of the box, and for the Earps, Holliday and that bunch.

SHOOTING UP THE EPITAPH

In the beginning the Epitaph was published in a tent. Everything started in tents in those border towns. It censured the practice then in vogue of shooting up the town. "Curly Bill, Buckskin Sam, Jack Mitchell and some more of those proud men of the open spaces considered themselves deeply affronted by that unkind comment, and from then on the Epitaph boys were plumb out of luck in that tent when the rustlers would ride up Fremont St., letting daylight through the newspaper plant." Soon as the blasting began the entire force, got behind the presses, and otherwise protect themselves from the bombardment. But as soon as the fireworks were over the gang would roll another smoke and get back on the job grinding out news and molding public opinion.

When the stormy bunch of pioneers in Tombstone, Bisbee, Charleston and thereabouts cut loose from Pima County and called the new shire Cochise. The newspapers started a war over the first county election that was worse than a reunion of bobcats.

In those bold days discussion of such colorless themes as general issues was unknown. The editors discussed the candidates, and from that proceeded to discussing each other, their allaround meanness, their lurid pasts if any, moral turpitude, ancestries.

By that time John Dunbar had horned in on the free-for-all with the Daily Republican, fiery Pat Hamilton with the Daily Independence, and what those rip-snorting quill-drivers didn't have to say about each other couldn't be found lying around loose.

EDITORIAL DUELLISTS

Finally, stung to fury, Pat Hamilton challenged Sam Purdy of the Epitaph and Dunbar of the Republican to mortal combat, no weapons barred. Dunbar said he had trouble enough dodging the camp's regular cutthoats, let alone shooting it out with other fool editors, but Purdy said that gun-fighting couldn't be any worse that what he had been going through in that holy terror of a county campaign and told Pat Hamilton that he was his huckleberry. So with seconds, doctors, shooting irons, and a bunch of ardent partisans who were betting their heads off on the event, they racked down the road toward Charleston to settle the vital issues before the county.

"When they arrived at the dualing grounds, the seconds, Ned MacGowan for Purdy and Billy Morgan for Pat Hamilton, got into a red-hot argument all of their own. The ferocious Ned wanted the matter settled completely with shotguns, but Billy said he'd never heard of such a fool proposition. He pointed out that any bum could wing a fellow with a slatter gun. He wanted the element of good shooting as well as luck to get a play, especially so as he had a hefty bet on Pat, and how could you expect to decide the bets if the principals were both all blowed to hell at the first volley?

SECOND DUEL IN OFFING

With six-shooters or Winchesters it would be a high-class sporting event. With shotguns it would be just a low-down uninteresting massacre, not even worth the trip down the Charleston road, let alone all this high-toned ranneykaboo of doctors and seconds and admiring spectators. MacGowen and Morgan after a spell got so heated up with their argument that they challenged each other and there they were with two duels on the program. Pretty soon most of the spectators got in the argument and for a while it looked as if a general battle was the only out possibe. But Doc Goodfellow and some of the cooler heads said they'd all better pull back to Tombstone and have a drink and look up the authorities on dueling, as they should have done in the very beginning. Then with everything laid out according to Hoyle they could come back and shoot it out without all the darn fool misunderstanding.

It was a warm morning by then and the boys were all sweating pretty freely from the heavy arguing, as they decided to take Doc's advise about going back after another drink before finishing up the two duels. Then when they got back to town and got a few more drinks hoisted, the doctors balked. Said they were out too much valuable time already for one day, and if the bloodthirsty editors and seconds still wanted to fix each other up the way the Good Lord probably intended, why they'd simply have to wait until the next morning.

Before the evening was over, and they hoisted several more lifesavers, the two warlike editors got better aquainted, found out that they were victims of mutual misunderstanding after all, and that probably that old rascal of a John Dunbar was the hombre who should be shown up. So by the time they had doped out the double-barreled attack they would slam at him in their next issues, that duel was completely ruined.

MARVEL OF THE WORLD

Tombstone was for a time the marvel of the financial world because of its tremendous output of bullion. Vast sums from outside sources seeking investment there maintained its reputation as the greatest mining community in the West. And not only could the click of faro chips and jingling of gold coins be heard there during every hour of the day and night, the presses could be heard whirring just as steadily.

"At one tome Tombstone had seven or eight publications, dailies and weeklies. And that in a camp that never had a population much over 12,000, and which in the beginning was 300 miles from a railroad."

The boiling metropolis of the Southwest at one time was rated one of the greatest newspaper fields in the Union, had more dailies than San Francisco. From every standpoint of the compass the intrepid trio of printer-editors swarmed into the outpost in the heart of Apacheland.

They were real newspaper men, that unsung band of old-time printers, conquerors of new worlds, deep thinkers and gifted writers. No country journalism marked the seething '80s in that wonderful town.

(End Note: The Epitaph takes a bow as the only survivor of those hectic newspaper wars on this, its sixth-fourth anniversary!)

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On February 17, 1944, the Tombstone Epitaph wrote the following about the original Tombstone Epitaph building (Gird Block) on Fremont Street...          "A few years ago a carpenter acquired the historic old buildings in a bad state of repair and he dismantled it to recover the heavy timbers and lumber. Today a pile of adobe and refuse marks the site"

April 27, 1944 Tombstone Epitaph......."Report has been received in Tombstone of the death of John Hanninger, in his late eighties, who died a few days ago in Prescott, this state.  Decedent was a resident of Tombstone in the early days, leaving here about 1910. He was a butcher by trade and once was employed by C. L. Cummings. Later he owned and operated the famous Can Can restaurant in this city. Mr. Hanninger was a member of King Solomon Lodge No. 5, A.F. & A.M. of Tombstone at the time of his death."

April 27, 1944 Tombstone Epitaph......."Resident of This County For 64 Years; Died in Bisbee Last Saturday...Last rites for George Dunn, pioneer resident of Cochise County and son of  one of Bisbee's founders, who died on Thursday of last week, were held Tuesday afternoon at 4 o'clock at Elks Home, Bisbee, with the lodge in charge. Dunn was found dead at his resident and death was attributed to heart disease. Dunn, who had seen the Indian chief Geronimo, shortly after his surrender to Gen. Nelson A. Miles, was a former trading post operator and army packer. He prospected for many years in the Huachuca Mountains. he also resided at Bowie for many years. His father, Jack Dunn, staked the first mining claim in the Bisbee district, but later turned it over to George Warren, after whom the Warren District was named, because of an army regulation which forbade soldiers to hold mining claims. The elder Dunn was an army scout at the time he ran across his first ore."

Rest in Peace All......

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