Florida Louise (Beavers) McNeely |
| Posted 2017-12-25 by Judy Wight Branson |
| Prescott Evening Courier, Prescott, Arizona Saturday, January 16, 1937, page 2, column 1 Fall Fatal To Mrs. M'Neely A Yavapai county resident for nearly 69 years, who was married in the wagon train that brought her to the only partly explored Arizona Territory from her native Georgia, died today, She was Mrs. Florida Louise McNeely, 87 years of age, who failed to survive the shock and other effects of a fall in her room at the Arizona Pioneers' Home Thursday morning while dressing, which resulted in a fractured thigh bone. Her death occurred at 12:15 o'clock this morning. In addition to the unusual and interesting circumstances of her marriage, Mrs. McNeely's life was marked by another unusual incident - the mysterious disappearance of her husband, Thomas, who set off one day from Prescott to stake out a claim in the Tombstone area, after learning of a big gold strike in that section. He never was heard from afterward. A few months later a prospector who knew him came through Prescott and told of having seen McNeely's mules loose on the desert and presumed, like everybody else, that the Indians had killed him. Mrs. McNeely was born in Lumpkin county, Georgia. Her father was James M. Beavers, her mother, before marriage, Catherine L. Wheeler. Father Beavers served in the Confederate army during the Civil war and if not all, at least some, of his sons did likewise. After the war which laid bare so much of the South, followed by hardships of every kind, many of the younger men and women set out on the torturesome trail for the West, egged on by stories of gold and free land, though no unmindful of the dangers that lay in their paths. In one of these wagon trains were Thomas McNeely and Florida Beavers. After their arrival in 1879 at Camp Verde, then an important army post, he engaged in freighting, which occupation he followed until he left that fateful day for Tombstone. In the meantime the family had come to this vicinity because of the army had been moved to old Fort Whipple. The McNeely's set up residence south of town. There are two surviving sons, Oliver H., a Santa Fe locomotive engineer, resident of 219 North Alarcon street, and Victor, Prescott tinsmith, were born. Another survivor is a granddaughter, Mrs. E. B. Jolly of Jerome. Mrs. Lillian McNeely, who is employed in the forest offices, is a daughter-in-law. Services of the Christian Science church will be conducted in the Lester Ruffner Funeral Home chapel Monday afternoon at 3:30 o'clock, followed by burial in Mountain View cemetery. Up until the time of Mrs. McNeely's accidental fall, Thursday, she maintained the keenest of memories of the incidents of her life. Her son, Oliver, when he visited her at the home the other day was told of some occasion that dated back 60 years. 'She spoke of it' he said, 'just as though it had happened yesterday.' |
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