WEBB, Alice Amanda

The Wickenburg Sun, Wickenburg, AZ November 1, 1984, p. 8 Former resident dies just short of 105 years old Alice Amanda Phipps Webb died only 28 days before her 105 birthday and came very near her goal of reaching 110 years old, which she set on her 100th birthday as celebrated in her home in Pittsburg, Calif. A resident of Arizona since 1930, Webb lived in Wickenburg for 26 years before moving to California where she spent her last five years living near her surviving daughters. Born May 25, 1879, the daughter of Joseph M. and Charity Bellis Phipps in Harrison County, Iowa, Webb was the mother of 15, the grandmother of 48, great-grandmother to 100, great-great-grandmother to 50 and four great-great-great-grandchildren at her 100th birthday. Webb died April 27 and was buried in Wickenburg on Oct. 25, where her late son-in-law Ray Bratton and daughter, Elizabeth, owned and operated the Rancho Bar Seven Restaurant and Lounge for many years. Surviving the Sioux and Cheyenne uprising led by Chief Sitting Bull, the Phipps family, including their five-year-old daughter. Alice, moved West in 1884 to the Indiana Territory which is now known as the states of Kansas and Oklahoma. Making the trip in a covered wagon across the Great Plains and settling near Cold Water, Kan., the Phipps were soon forced to move to the newly opened Oklahoma Territory because of a drought and an invasion by grasshoppers. Making their new home near the Cimmaron River, the Phipps, like other white settlers, were bothered by hostility from the reservation Indians. At age 12, Webb lost her mother and moved back with her father and her brothers and sisters to Iowa where he later remarried. Her father again moved the family West. This time they went by trail to Red River, N.M. where Webb, with an eighth grade education, was their first teacher in a little one-room schoolhouse. Marrying William Burns at 17, she became the mother of five daughters and one son and taught only part-time. She also taught English to Spanish speaking families and taught dress making. She became the mother of twins with her second husband, William Hudgins, but she was widowed again when he was killed in a dynamite blast in the Tom Boy Mine at Tuluridge, Colo. Still a young women, she married J. A. Bennett, with whom she had six daughters and one son. Moving herself and her children to Arizona in 1930, Webb was married two times later in life. In the early 1930’s, she operated the Yankee Kitchen in Pittsburg. At her 100th birthday, she attributed her long life to never smoking and drinking, working hard and praying. She was preceded in death by two sons, Bobby H. Phipps Burns, of California and Arthur Thomas Bennett, of Colorado; five daughters, Elizabeth Bratton, Martha Elner and Lila Riechel, of Wickenburg, Daisy Munchando, of California, and Hazel Tince, of Colorado and her son-in-law, Bratton. She is survived by eight daughters, Annie Williams, Bessie Burkhardt and Esther Peterson, of Colorado, Hortense Reynolds, Thirza Swetina and Ruby Estes, of California, Arthel Beckley, of Kansas and Ruth Mead, of Nevada and five generations of grandchildren.