Life in Old Tucson, 1854-1864. By Frank C. Lockwood. Published
by the Tucson Civic Committee. Los Angeles (The Ward
Richie Press), 1943. Pp. xx, 255.

Dr. Frank C. Lockwood, dean of Arizona historians, has
never been a mere purveyor of dates and footnotes. He says that
he likes to study "the deeds and experiences of individual
men and women" rather than "cold chronicles." For that reason
all his books, including the present one, concentrate on history
as it was lived by particular people. In this case he presents
life sketches of nineteen of the pioneers of Tucson to illustrate
the founding and development of the city.

To hold his book together Dr. Lockwood introduces a central
figure, Atanacia Santa Cruz, a friend of his who actually lived
in Tucson from 1850 to 1934. Naturally she knew the pioneers
very well, and the idea of seeing them and their doings through
her eyes is an engaging one. The device breaks down, however,
when the author gets well into his subject. Fortunately the
stories themselves are so rich in human interest and so well
told that the reader doesn't mind.

Tucson "was always a place of arrival and departure." Fur-
thermore, up to 1850 "Tucson in the interior and Santa Fe
and El Paso to the eastward were more important communities
than Los Angeles and San Francisco." The men who built Tucson
from a frontier hamlet into a city had more than their share
of color and individuality. It would be hard to find a group
of more varied backgrounds and ideas, but they all had courage
and they insisted on being themselves. Mark Aldrich, the
first American to arrive, was a merchant from New York who
conducted his business with Yankee efficiency and dignity. His
opposite was Pete Kitchen, a rough-hewn character who kept
up a feudal estate, fought the Apaches to a standstill, and died
poor when the old, heroic way of life was gone. Charles D.
Poston was a cosmopolitan at home in Paris and Washington
who came in with "a seasoned band of frontiersmen he had picked
up in San Antonio, Texas," and a million dollars with which to
organize a mining company. The rest of the figures in the book
seldom fall below these in interest.

Dr. Lockwood is no debunker of the pioneer character. He
recognizes the weaknesses of his men and women, but he likes
to think that frontier conditions produced people like Peter
R. Brady, who was "fearless, resolute, resourceful, companion-
able . . . honest, humane, devoted to the civic welfare" -- a
man who "exemplified in a high degree the qualities we most
admire in the American frontiersman."

The Tucson Civic Committee is responsible for the publication
of the book, and there is no price indicated on the dust jacket.
Apparently for once a community has had the impulse to en-
courage a competent historian to tell its story as a gesture of
patriotism and pride without too much thought about money.

College of Mines and Metallurgy

C. L. Sonnichsen

How to cite:
"Life in Old Tucson, 1854-1864", Volume 48, Number 1, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v048/n1/review_DIVL2148.html
[Accessed Mon Nov 23 17:02:44 CST 2009]