Hillsboro Declared Disaster Area - 1972

President Richard Nixon declared Hillsboro, New Mexico, a disaster area in September 1972.  Click here to learn why.

Two Hillsboro youths wade Percha Creek near the NM 152 bridge, built in 1972. The flood of 1972 destroyed the former bridge and much property, and killed four people. It was the third major flood to hit Hillsboro. The others occurred in 1887 and 1914.

Kingston Plat 1887

The General Land Office surveyed the Kingston townsite in 1887. The town was five years old. The resulting map illustrates where commerce was centered--and no surprises, on Main Street.


The plat shows the position of mining claims that coincide with the townsite, that is, the mining interests beneath the town. The smelter site was on the north edge of town.

Kingston, 1887.

The map has another value in showing us today the siting of two businesses, the Printing Office and Photo Gallery, located next door to one another on the west end of town on the north side of Main. Look for lines surveyor's lines and notation that run northwesterly. The gallery was most likely owned by the prodigious photographer J.C. Burge. A good many of his images are archived at the New Mexico History Museum and viewable online.

A couple of curiosities come to the fore looking at the town plat, and the another map of the entire 36-square-mile township map. One, the townsite is rather small; it's only 240 acres. Something else of note, the buildings are few.

T

The township map dated 1889, shows more of the mining claims beyond Kingston. Moreover, it shows outlying ranches, mail and stage roads, and the slaughter house east of Kingston probably where Toppy Johnson infamously "laundered" stolen beef. This map also shows the reservoir site west of Kingston.

If you would like to see the maps in their entirety, click on these links.
Kingston's 240-acre townsite plat map, 1887.
Kingston township map, 1889.
--Craig Springer

An Unmarked Grave in Hillsboro, New Mexico: A lesser know Kimball Story

By Mark B. Thompson III

Richard Kimball is one of those early “immigrants” beloved by genealogists—not such an early arrival so as to make the “elite” but early enough to be interesting; not famous but with enough history and descendants to make it worth the effort to chronicle the Kimball family. For example, the 1287 page “History of the Kimball Family In America” was first published in Boston in 1897. With the recent genealogy boom and the growth of the internet, you will find one online genealogy tracing the family back to a Thomas Kimball, spelling of the surname disputed, born in Suffolk in 1370. Moving forward, one of his descendants, Heber C. Kimball, was Brigham Young’s “right hand man.” Heber Kimball is buried under an attractive monument in a downtown Salt Lake City cemetery. The resting place in Hillsboro, New Mexico for Heber’s second cousin once removed is not so impressive. 

Kimball cousins: Ninette Stocker Miller (l) with a lady believed to be her mother, Tamezin Kimball Stocker Dodge, on the east porch of the Miller home in Hillsboro, NM ca. 1905. George Miller Collection, Black Range Museum.

When Richard Kimball and his family sailed from Ipswich in Suffolk on The Elizabeth in April of 1634, England was already feeling the tension which would lead to civil war and regicide.  By requiring adults leaving England to sign an Oath of Allegiance to the crown and acknowledgment of the Supremacy of the Church of England, today’s genealogists were provided with a public record documenting the departure.  The 1897 history does get to the generation of Heber Kimball, and his second cousin, Russell Freeman Kimball, both born early in the 19^th Century. They were a part of that generation which grew up feeling the tug of the American West, and while that makes for interesting stories, it also makes more detective work. Heber Kimball first went from his home in Vermont to New York.  Russell Kimball left his New Hampshire home for Illinois. Heber’s journey to Salt Lake City is well documented; Russell’s story, and that of his daughter, Tamezin, has not, for obvious reasons, received much attention.

Heber Kimball's final resting place, Salt Lake City, UT.

The Kimball family history only followed Russell Freeman Kimball through his marriage to Eliza Ann Austin in Elgin, Illinois in 1839. Land records show he owned property in rural Kane County, west of Elgin, in 1843. (Just in case you were wondering, the Illinois town where Joseph Smith met his death is a few counties to the southwest of Kane County and we have no evidence that Russell knew his second cousin, Heber.) I will try not to belabor the “detective story” but, again, genealogist will recognize the effort to “corroborate” a family story. Following the peripatetic Russell Kimball, both geographically and in the public record, raised as many questions as answers. 

The 1850 federal census for Brooklyn, McHenry County, Illinois, north of Kane County, includes a “Russel Kimble,” birthplace New Hampshire and occupation “Gold Seeker,” married to Eliza, with a child born in Illinois about 1842, the presumed birth year of daughter Tamezin. But the census did not have a full name for that child, only a “T” and, even worse, it indicated the child was a male. (Name experts believe that the name Tamezin, with several possible spellings, was a female version of Thomas.) It turns out that Eliza gave him his occupation title, perhaps with no lack of sarcasm, and a Russell F. Kimball, birthplace New Hampshire, occupation “carpenter,” is also enumerated in 1850 in a “boarding house” in Coloma, El Dorado County, California. Gold Seeker indeed! By the time of the 1860 census, Russell and Eliza had moved on to Goodhue County, Minnesota, southeast of St. Paul. They are listed with four children, but no “T” or Tamezin. Eliza died before the 1865 Minnesota census, and Russell would eventually move with son Artemus to Denver in Rock County, Minnesota, in the southwest part of the state.

This dapper fellow is believed to by H.D. Stocker, lawyer, mine owner, and father of Ninette Stocker and Harriett Galles. This photo was taken on the Miller porch ca. 1895. George Miller Collection, Black Range Museum.

According to her application for a Veterans Widow’s pension, Tamezin had married Henry D. Stocker of McHenry County, Illinois in November of 1859 in Lake City, Minnesota, which probably indicates that she had moved with her parents to Minnesota in the late 1850s. We find Henry and Tamezin enumerated in June of 1860 in the federal census for McHenry, McHenry County, Illinois. She is indexed online as 18 year old “Tenason Sticker” born in Illinois but fortunately she and Henry “Sticker” were joined by a Sarah Kimball, probably a cousin, to give us confidence in concluding that it  was “our” Stockers. Their first child, Harriett (“Hattie”), was born in May of 1861 in McHenry. Henry joined the Illinois volunteers and was commissioned a First Lt. with the 16^th Cavalry in May of 1863. He was wounded and then captured at the battle of Jonesville, Virginia in January of 1864. He eventually escaped and was mustered out in October of 1864.

Although Henry Stocker had started practicing law in McHenry before the war, the Stockers are found in the June 1865 Minnesota census in Lake City, Minnesota, again as “Sticker,” something like “Thomas” for Tamizen, but also with “Hattie.”  Their second daughter, Ninette (“Nettie”), who would become a fixture in Hillsboro, New Mexico, was born in Minnesota in 1866,  but, shortly thereafter, things apparently got “interesting” because Henry eventually left Tamezin, Harriett and Ninette and married the widow, Hepzibah “Heppie” (Jackson) Grant. The 1870 federal census shows Tamezin and Henry with separate households in Lake City, Minnesota.  Henry and Heppie’s household included both Hattie and a five year old Franklin Grant. The “Tamison” Stocker household also included a Hattie Stocker as well as Nettie Stocker and a Nellie Kimball. Tamezin had no evidence of a divorce from Henry, which turned out to be both bad news and good news. It meant she may have been a bigamist by virtue of a second marriage, but, as we shall see, she was still potentially eligible for a Civil War widow’s pension.  

Cupid's cavorting, 1891: The Miller's would come to Hillsboro two years later.

In about 1875, Tamezin married Wesley O. Dodge and in the 1880 census she is found with Wesley and 14 year old “Nettie” in Red Wing, Minnesota, which is just up the road from Lake City in Goodhue County. (By 1880, her father Russell Kimball and her brother Artemus had moved from Goodhue County to Rock County in southwestern Minnesota. I believe Russell Kimball died in the 1880s.) We know little about Wesley Dodge, but the census of 1880 lists his occupation as “bookkeeper.” The Dodges are enumerated in the June 1885 Minnesota census in Red Wing, along with 19 year old “Nettie.” On Friday, June 28, 1891, The St. Paul Daily Globe reported that the wedding of Ninette Stocker and George T. Miller had taken place on Wednesday at the home of W.O. Dodge and wife on Clinton Avenue in Minneapolis. Henry Stocker and (second) family had also moved to Minneapolis, probably about 1887, and they lived on Nicollet Ave. At least by the 1895 Minnesota census, “Hattie” along with husband Nicholas Galles, had a home on Harriet Ave. in Minneapolis.  All of these homes were in close proximity to each other in an area east of Lake Harriet in the south part of Minneapolis.

Geroge T. and Ninette Stocker Miller on the back porch of the Hillsboro home ca 1905. George Miller Collection, Black Range Museum.

Once again things get “interesting” for Tamezin (Kimball) (Stocker) Dodge. In the federal census of 1900 she is found in the Nicholas Galles household on Harriet Street in Minneapolis.  She indicates that she is married, and has been for 25 years, whereas Wesley is enumerated at a separate address in Minneapolis and indicates that he is “single.” Just before the June 1900 enumeration of the federal census, Henry Stocker has been laid to rest in the Hillside Cemetery in Minneapolis, having died on May 23, 1900, in Prescott, Arizona. Although the Minneapolis newspapers said he had spent the “past two winters” in Prescott, we know that in fact he was practicing law in Prescott, having apparently left his second wife, “Heppie,” in Minneapolis. Although obituaries for Stocker mention his son Henry Jr. and his son-in-law, Nicholas Galles, there is no mention of either of his wives, both of whom were then living in Minneapolis.  

In 1902, Nicholas and Harriett Galles moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico, leaving Minneapolis and ending whatever presence they still had in Hillsboro, New Mexico. Ninette and George T. Miller had followed the Galles to Hillsboro in the early 1890s, having built the “Miller House” now featured in Linda Harris’s “Houses in Time: A Tour Through New Mexico History.” Although we know she spent some time with daughter Harriett in Las Cruces, for example, having been confirmed in the Episcopal Church of St. James, Mesilla Park in 1916, apparently Tamezin would live out her life with daughter Ninette in Hillsboro. Those twenty something years in Hillsboro appear to be the most stable of her eighty plus years on this earth.

Death Certificate: Tamezin Kimball Stocker Dodge.

Tamezin would, however, suffer one more indignity resulting from her “checkered” marital experiences. In 1910 she began the process of an application for a pension as the widow of Civil War veteran, Henry D. Stocker. You can imagine the twists and turns this application process took over approximately 15 years. She had no documentary evidence of her marriage to Henry, having to rely on an affidavit of a friend in McHenry, Illinois that the friend “knew them as husband and wife.” As it turned out, there was no evidence of a divorce, so, but for her second marriage, she could claim that she was Stocker’s widow at his death in 1900. What about the marriage to Wesley Dodge? She indicated in one statement that he had walked out on her in 1891, even before Ninette’s marriage in Minneapolis. The government’s response:  but are you not still married to Dodge? She then was able to prove by the affidavit of the attending physician that Wesley Dodge had died in Minneapolis on June 24, 1923.  Hmm.  The government kept asking for more information, undoubtedly because these things did not tie together neatly. 

Final resting place: Tamezin Kimball Stocker Dodge lies in the Hillsboro Community Cemetery in an unmarked grave. Photo Patti Nunn

In 1926 she abandoned the quest for a pension.  Tamezin died on January 8, 1927, in Hillsboro.  The official death certificate indicates a burial in Hillsboro, but there is no physical evidence of such at the Hillsboro Community Cemetery.

Panic of 1893

By Brandon Dupont, Ph.D.
While it was later eclipsed by the 1907 financial crisis and the Great Depression, the Panic of 1893 remains one of the most severe financial crises in American history. Its impact on Sierra County, New Mexico was lasting. Silver mining towns, like Kingston, were all but abandoned in short order.

This 1895 poster for the Broadway melodrama, The War of Wealth, depicted the national economic crisis, and the run on banks that effected lasting change at Kingston and silver mines in the West.  Library of Congress.

The panic, and the economic depression that followed through the year 1897, had wide-ranging effects on the national economy, including an unemployment rate that remained stubbornly above 10 percent for five consecutive years. Its impact goes beyond just the widespread bank runs and the negative effects of high, persistent unemployment; perhaps more importantly, the crisis brought the decades-long debate over the bimetallic standard to the forefront, culminating most colorfully in William Jennings Bryan’s 1896 presidential campaign. Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech ended with a flourish:  "Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."

Named for U.S. Mint engraver,
George Morgan, the Morgan Dollar was
common currency in 1890. U.S. Mint.

Since bimetallism was an important factor in 1893, as evident in Bryan’s speech, a quick review should be helpful. Starting with the first Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, the U.S. economy had been on a bimetallic standard. Under that standard, U.S. currency was equivalent to a certain quantity of gold and a certain quantity of silver; initially, the prices were set such that 15 ounces of silver were equivalent to 1 ounce of gold. Because of deviations between this official price and the world market price, only one of the two metals would circulate in the American economy at any given time. From Hamilton’s 1792 coinage act until 1834, silver was in circulation because gold was undervalued at its official price; therefore, it made economic sense to export gold coins to Europe, exchange them there for silver, then import that silver back into the U.S. This all changed in 1834 when the official ratio was changed to 16 ounces of silver per 1 ounce of gold, which then made gold overvalued so that it slowly began to replace silver, which was either hoarded or exported. Starting in 1834, the U.S. moved to a currency system where gold was the circulating coin. Silver dollars remained largely out of circulation from 1836 until the 1873 coinage act. 

At first, the 1873 act seemed only to legally recognize the demonetization of silver dollars; after all, they had not been used since 1834. Even the representatives of the silver interests in Congress did not object to the legislation. But in a curious twist of history, what was thought to be mere legislative housekeeping quickly became a highly politically charged issue. Silver prices had started to fall in 1872, but the decline accelerated shortly after the 1873 legislation mostly because of increased silver supplies from new mines in the American West. Because of the falling silver prices, U.S. silver producers had an incentive to bring silver to the U.S. mint for coinage. They did just that only to discover that they were legally barred from having silver coined by the 1873 legislation, which they quickly dubbed the “crime of ’73.” 

Kingston came to life in fall of 1882. Its roughly 1,200 residents circa 1890 were tucked in the narrow Middle Percha Creek canyon captured on a glass-plate negative here by photographer J.C. Burge. Photo Black Range Museum

By 1878, the silver interests were successful in getting Congress to pass the first of two significant silver purchase laws, the Bland-Allison Act, but the pro-silver interests were not satisfied because that legislation did not provide for unlimited coinage of silver. The second significant Congressional action did not come until the 1890 Sherman Silver Purchase Act. This legislation also failed to provide for unlimited silver coinage but it did increase the amount of silver purchased every month by the U.S. government, and by then, silver mining was in full-swing in Kingston and Lake Valley, New Mexico.

All of this led to considerable uncertainty by the early 1890s as to whether the U.S. economy could remain on the gold standard. Adding to the problems, the Treasury’s gold reserves had fallen to dangerously low levels by 1893; this was exacerbated by news that the Treasury would stop redeeming the notes issued under the 1890 act in gold if the reserves fell below $100 million. 

Lots of flags waved in Kingston at the patriotic event circa 1890. Only the Percha Bank building remains today, and is a beautiful museum.  The bank incorporated in 1886 by President McKinley pal, Jefferson Raynolds, and boasted holding $30,000 in cash in 1890. J.C. Burge photo courtesy Black Range Museum.

These long-running issues of gold versus silver certainly played a role in the 1893 crisis but there were many other contributing factors. Important among them were significant distress in western agricultural markets caused by declining crop yields and falling agricultural prices. Another factor in the depression was the slowdown in railroad construction that had peaked in the railroad boom of 1880s. Moreover, American exports to Europe had dropped as European economies struggled. 

The Percha Bank building stands on the left, looking west, in 1919. The Panic of 1893 devastated silver mining towns throughout the West. Kingston produced $6.2 million in mineral wealth, mostly silver, according to a 1904 report. Photo courtesy Black Range Museum.

The crisis culminated in the summer of 1893 with widespread bank runs. Of course, this was long before the introduction of federal deposit insurance (that does not arrive until 1933), so any risk that a depositor’s bank would fail tended to immediately lead that depositor to withdraw funds from the bank. Bank runs, wherein large numbers of depositors did just this, spread rapidly and, while they occurred nationwide, they were concentrated in the western states. In total, nearly 500 banks in the U.S. suspended their operations at least for a time to weather the storm. The economy officially went into recession in January 1893, a few months prior to the waves of bank runs that hit that summer. The affect was felt locally -- Kingston being a silver town was abandoned and never rebounded. After a brief economic recovery in late 1894 and into 1895, the economy plunged back into recession by the end of 1895 and would not officially climb out of recession until the summer of 1897. 

A legacy of the 1893 crisis remains with us today: the National Monetary Commission, whose work and recommendations led to the formation of the Federal Reserve System in 1914, noted in its report on financial crises that, while the causes of crises were varied, the method of handling them was simple. There should be, the report concluded, a reserve of lending power because the ability to increase loans from a central reserve to meet the demands of depositors “would have allayed every panic since the establishment of the national banking system [in 1864].”  Locally, the hillsides around Kingston are pocked with the work of expectant silver prospectors in what they left behind.

Happy Independence Day

Hillsboro has been known to throw a good party on the Fourth of July, and today will no doubt be the same. Here's a look at few images captured early in the 20th Century.

This 1919 Deming Headlight makes an invitation to Luna County residents to come visit. See bottom-right column. Courtesy Patti Nunn

Without a rodeo arena, cars parked along the Percha afforded a place to watch cowboys put on a show, in 1920. Courtesy Patti Nunn

Who needs fireworks when you have this? This image was taken moments apart from the previous image. Courtesy Patti Nunn

Near the present-day post office, folks gathered round to watch a drilling contest--miners competing bust rock faster than the other guy. Courtesy Patti Nunn

Hillsboro from the Air

Who ever it was that said a picture is worth a thousand words had never seen an aerial photograph.

These two images seem to have been taken on the same flight, judging from the sequence numbers in the bottom-left corner -- numbers 415 and 418. So where are those images in between -- 416 and 417?  And are there similar images of Kingston or Lake Valley?

The photographer and the dates of these images are unknown. Unfortunately, the text in the bottom-left corner is covered up in this copy, provided by the Gila National Forest - Black Range District.

Here's what we do know from the images: there are no bridges. The roads are not paved. The smelter is gone, but the slag pile, presently bisected by NM 152 mere feet from the bridge is visible in the top image. It's the dark fan-shaped figure along the south edge of the road that actually loops slightly around the dense material.

The Hillsboro High School is present in these images, and so is the Sierra County Courthouse. And the courthouse looks intact. That would roughly place these image between 1922 and 1939. So who took these photos, and why -- for what purpose? It's pure supposition, but these could be reconnaissance photos for a Depression-era New Deal agency, the Soil Conservation Service, today's Natural Resource Conservation Service, a part of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. Or perhaps the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the agency that operates the dams on the Rio Grande to the east, took these images related to flood control? Do take note of the building in the middle of the creek toward the bottom of the first image. Had it been built before Percha Creek evulsed to leave in "midstream?"

No matter who clicked the shutter, or paid for the flight, the subject matter is beautiful, illustrative -- and instructive -- about what once was and what is Hillsboro. -- Craig Springer

Wicked Kingston

Funds were being collected to build this Kingston church in 1888, by the Methodist Episcopal Mission Society. Photo courtesy Matti Nunn Harrison

Kingston's church is long gone, as are so many other buildings thrown up in a hurry in the 1880s boom town. The church, made of stone, would seem to have some permanency. Yet it did not stand the near-abandonment of Kingston after the Panic of 1893.

An 1888 publication of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church titled, The Gospel in All Lands, has some interesting things to say about Kingston. "If I could take the reader along our way on the main street to a school-house for evening service, he would see the typical mining town in all of its wickedness." The writer remarks on the behaviors of people he sees in Kingston, and how the church building is being funded.

Something else is worth noting, the reported population size of Kingston on page 61. It's far below the oft-reported 7,000 souls alleged to have lived there.  You'll have to see it for yourself. -- Craig Springer

Courthouse de-construction

A worker on the roof is tearing down the Sierra County Courthouse, after voters chose to move the county seat to Hot Springs (now Truth or Consequences) New Mexico. But it didn't happen without resistance.

Gov. George Curry thwarted a previous attempt to move the seat from Hillsboro to Cutter, so that a few folks could sell land, as he put it, in his autobiography.

Photo UNM Center for Southwest Research, William Kelehler Collection

Historic Sierra County Courthouse

This stately building was the site of the infamous Henry Fountain murder trial, 1899, involving prominent citizens of New Mexico, some of whom would later rise to national prominence.

The Hillsboro Historical Society seeks to buy the courthouse ruin to stabilize the effects of gravity, and potentially restore what's left.