b'and his band caught the mule and brought it to the McNaryNewt was a painter in Prescott. He left for work one camp. The story goes on that the Indians were hungry andmorning then changed his mind and returned home. As wanted beef. McNary told them to cut out a steer. Geronimohe walked up the steps, through the screen door he saw replied two. McNary agreed. The two steers were butcheredhis wife, Billie, and Alfred Jack Chartz, having breakfast on the spot and packed onto Indian horses. According to thetogether. Newt had warned Chartz many times in the story, Geronimo turned the mule over to McNary, thanked himpast to stay away from his wife. Newt once told Chartz for the beef, and told him no Apache would ever harm him orat a Wickenburg dance, If I ever catch you at my house, his family. Years later, as this tradition has it, Apaches campedIll shoot you. This time without warning, Newt drew his on the mesa above the McNary home in Walnut Grove andgun and shot through the screen door, mortally wounding helped McNary work the land.Chartz. Chartz was taken to Prescott by townsfolk, where he soon died from his wound. McNary paid the Indians in food. They remained until the old pioneer died. This story was told by one of McNarysA deputy arrived at the scene and asked Newt if he had granddaughters, Eili. She remembers her grandfatherskilled Chartz. He said Jackson replied, I dont know and death. She was sitting on his lap at the time. Eili spent herI dont give a damn. Jacksons defense attorneys called the youth in Walnut Grove. She knew many of the pioneers inkilling justified, saying a mans home is his castle and he this historic place along the Hassayampa and rememberedhas a right to protect his wife and children from harm. The the warm community they created there. jury debated the case for four and a half hours, the returned a verdict of not guilty. It was a sensational trial, the talk of A Lynching, a Murder Prescott at the time. Eili tells in her writings of a morning when she went to drive the milk cows home. She came upon two bodies danglingIn the Grove, it was a killing that touched the entire close-knit from a cedar tree. Forgetting the cows, she ran home tocommunity. Jack Chartz had married a daughter of Mollie report her grisly find. She found the yard filled with men onPierce, Gladys, and was still married when Newt Jackson horseback and was told to get in the house and keep quiet. caught him taking breakfast with his wife Billie. Witnesses at the trial were from the pioneer families of Walnut Grove or The lynchings are still the best-kept secret of Walnut Grove.well-known citizens of the Grove at the time. Grant Carter As Eili tells it, the victims were sheepherders who hadwas called. So was Cort Carter and his wife, Harvey Carter169 E Wickenburg Waybroken a long time understanding with the cattlemen.and Charlie Carter along with Dutch Shott, Roland Mosher,Wickenburg, AZ 85390They were not to take their sheep to the east side of theBill Simon, H.W. Cole, and M.N. Hamburg. There were few Hassayampa. When these two violated that agreement,in the Grove untouched by this tragedy. 928-684-6123the cattlemen held an inquest, and the men were lynched.Opens at 11:00am DAILYThe cattlemen rode their horses out of Eilis yard after sheAn Injustice?reported the incident and went to the scene of the hangings,The Pierce family also had a tragedy involving old William cut the men down, and buried them under the cedar tree.Pierces youngest son, Larkin, brother of William Charles. Eili remembers sheep being scattered everywhere, some ofAfter narrowly escaping being charged as an accessory them shot. She found a lamb separated from its mother andin the killing of Manuel Loterio by Keyes in 1889, Lark brought it home for a pet. ran afoul of the law again in 1896. Lark was charged with stealing a heifer from a cattle partnership that ran cows in The lynchings came after the murder of Pete Veeder, whothe Walnut Grove area. For some reason his indictment by had a saloon about a mile from the McNary place. Her unclethe grand jury in Prescott was swift. He was indicted for Charlie, a mail rider, stopped by the saloon one day to see ifgrand larceny and tired on that charge. At his trial, Lark, for there was any mail to pick up. He found the door wide openunknown reasons, pleaded guilty without a lawyer putting and bloody handprints on the wall. Charlie got on his horseup a defense. The judge sentenced him to two and one-half and rode off to spread the alarm. He hadnt gone far whenyears in Yuma Territorial Prison, a very severe sentence he found the body of Pete Veeder. There was a rope aroundconsidering the crime.his body and he was tied to a willow tree. It appeared Veeder had been dragged for some distance. The town folk ofPierce descendants in the Grove know little about Lark Walnut Grove held an inquest. Veeder was wrapped in abut one, who would have been his great-niece, remembers blanket and buried behind the saloon. Eili says that until thebeing introduced to a man named Lark when she was about saloon was torn down, the children used to go there to lookeight years old. She remembers that he was always around at the bloody handprints the killers left on the wall. Whenthe barn at her grandfathers house and seemed to live in the the boards creaked and branches scraped the roof in thebarn. She was not told he was her great uncle. wind the children were sure it was Pete Veeders ghost.Reading of Larks short trial and severe sentence today over The Jacksons the theft of one cow triggers suspicion that somehow this George Jackson was one ofmay have been a cut deal and injustice was committed. We Yavapai Countys earliestprobably will never know but the stiff sentence handed pioneers, coming to thedown by the judge certainly would have raised eyebrows grove in about 1864.today. Then and now, defendants receive far less of a Jacksons wife had twosentence at times for killings than Lark Pierce did for grand children from a previouslarceny. The theft of one cow, most likely worth less than marriage, George and Jane$50 at prices of the day, by the son of a man who ran 1200 Oswald. Jane was the firsthead. Something was very wrong there.postmaster in Walnut Grove, taking the post about 1872.The Way it WasEili McNary Campbells writings about her youth in Walnut Steve Jackson was theGrove take one back to a time when this community of youngest of the Jacksonranchers and miners was filled with warmth, compassion, children. He ran a freightand community spirit. Living there until she married, Eili line from Phoenix to Prescott and from Prescott to Yuma.remembers the Grove as a paradise, filled with wildlife, Eili says it was always open house at the Jackson place,flowing rivers and streams, and neighbors who helped each also known as the Smoketree Ranch. She said many peopleother at every chance and always had the welcome mat out.found jobs and a place to live at the Jacksons. Steve Jackson and his wife had four children die in childhood. George,When the cemetery needed a fence, a dance was held at the his older brother, was burned to death in a fire at the ranch.school and box lunches were sold to raise money. When Steve himself, in later years, was killed in a traffic accidentsomeone died, Vet Watterman would build a pine box and on the white spar (Hwy 89) near Wilhoit.his sister, Mrs. Moore, would make a beautiful lining for the interior. Eili says it was a work of love for Mrs. Moore, Steves son, Newt Jackson, was involved in 1928 in onewho was both a friend and a neighbor to the person who of the most publicized killings in Walnut Groves history.had passed. ArizonaRealCountry.com July 2020 21'