November 2018 22 Nellie continued from page 20 Three years later Fanny died of tuberculosis and Nellie became the sole spiritual and financial support for her nieces and nephews. A Woman Men Followed In 1883, word of a gold strike in Baja swept through Tombstone. Nellie organized a prospecting party to head for the desert region near the Mission Santa Gertrudis. She recruited 21 men for the expedition, including lawyer Mark Smith and Oriental Saloon owner Milt Joyce. The party traveled by train to Guaymas and sailed across the Gulf of California before heading over the nearly waterless desert of the Baja interior. There were not alone. The Cashman party was but one of many that followed the rumors of the strike into the searing heat and waterless Baja desert, only to find the so-called gold strike was but a trace of the mineral. After almost perishing in the Baja desert that had killed many who dared to travel it during its history, the Cashman party returned to Tombstone empty-handed. None of the men in Nellie’s party complained of her leadership, despite the fact that they like others had spent a lot of time and money pursuing a false report. Thwarts Hangin Circus The following year, five captured Bisbee store robbers were scheduled to hang in Tombstone. After exiting the Bisbee store the holdup men began shooting and a bullet hit and killed a woman who owned a restaurant across the street who had come out to see what the excitement was about. Like many official hangings in the Territory, invitations were sent out to Tombstone citizens and bleachers were erected to handle the overflow crowd expected for the spectacle. This situation sparked the activist in Nellie Cashman. Two of the men facing the gallows were Irish and she found the circus nature of the planned executions disgusting. Justice of the Peace George Washington Swain, a former miner, his wife Martha and their children had just moved into a house next to the courthouse in Tombstone that was built two years earlier. Mrs. Swain recalled years later when Nellie Cashman headed a bunch of miners who marched on the courthouse and destroyed the bleachers set up for what was expected to be an overflow crowd. She recalled that on March 28, 1864, the day of the executions, that the overflow crowd came anyway despite the destruction of the bleachers. She said she had eager spectators hanging from trees in her yard and clambering all over the roof of her house. She said so many men were on the roof of the house her husband feared it would collapse and had to hire a couple of special policemen to clear the roof of spectators and keep them off. Mrs. Swain said the five men appeared cheerful until they were taken from their cells to the gallows. She recalled that all that day she and her children could hear the men singing in their cells and laughing. They even yelled greetings to her baby from their cell window. The five had been tried before her husband. During the trial, it was learned that a saloon keeper named Heath had masterminded the holdup of the Bisbee store but did not participate. Heath was arrested and jailed in Tombstone to await trial. Mrs. Swain recalled standing on the steps of her front porch with her frightened children clinging to her skirt as a mob of vigilantes stormed the jail and dragged Heath out of his cell and to a telegraph pole on a road out of town, where they lynched him. Friend Of E.B. Gage E. B Gage was the superintendent of Grand Central Mining Company in Tombstone in late 1884 when a bitter dispute developed with the miners. Gage later would become a major executive in the Congress mine and a valued associate of Frank Murphy who developed the Congress and several major mines in the Bradshaws of Yavapai County. At the Grand Central in 1884, Gage became the target of the rage of miners in a labor dispute with the company and the miners were planning to lynch him. Colorful But Untrue Nellie is said in Tombstone lore to have heard of the plot and is said to have taken a buggy to Gage’s home and spirited him away before the angry miners could grab him. There is some problem with this tale. Records show Gage was out of town when the plot was made against him and in his place Charles Leach, foreman of the Grand Central managed to keep the labor dispute from exploding into major violence. There are many tales about Nellie Cashman that were created after she left Tombstone in 1887 that do not check out with the historical record but manage to make the story of Tombstone a bit more colorful than it actually was. The Harqua Hala One of the most famous gold strikes in the late 1880’s in Arizona Territory was in the Harqua Hala mountains some 50 miles to the west of the famed Congress mine. Nellie Cashman appeared in the Harqua Hala gold camp in 1888. She bought supplies for the camp in Phoenix and sold them to the miners and operated a boarding house there for a few months. These activities supported Nellie’s mining efforts at the Harqua Hala, where she owned one of the better claims. Nellie prospected the Harqua Hala mountains intensely and became closely associated with Mike Sullivan, one of the original discoverers of the rich prospect. So close in fact that it was reported she almost married Sullivan. Nellie Cashman’s name was the by-line on several stories about the Harqua Hala strike that appeared in Phoenix and Tucson newspapers in 1889. She had learned how to promote her interest through Nellie was always giving much of what she made to charity or to hungry miners who came into her restaurant to eat without money to pay. She helped to finance Tombstone’s first hospital and its first Roman Catholic Church.