Trinidad Swilling Shumaker, the First Lady of Phoenix history


If you've never heard of Trinidad Swilling, even if you're interested in Phoenix history, it's not surprising. She was a Mexican woman with an adopted Apache son who was married to an ex-Confederate soldier, named Jack Swilling. And she was the First Lady of Phoenix history.

If you've heard of Jack Swilling, you know that he is considered to be the founder of the city of Phoenix Arizona. And as I learned more about him, I started to want to learn more about his wife, Trini.

Phoenix history books tend to turn their backs on Mexicans, Indians, and Confederates. So even getting the briefest description of the Swilling family is difficult to find. But I'm a pretty stubborn researcher, and a couple of years ago I set out to find Trinidad. And then I went to pay my respects.

I'm a volunteer for the Pioneers' Cemetery Association in Phoenix, not because I know anything about cemeteries, but because I collect old photos of Phoenix, and I'm interested in the people who lived there. Their mission is, of course, preservation of historic cemeteries in Arizona, and mine is time-traveling. So we're a good team.

Time travel with me. When Trini died in 1925, the Cross Cut Canal had been an open ditch since 1913, and was where some of the poorest people in town lived. If you walk along the Cross Cut Park nowadays, along 48th Street, that's where it was. Where exactly Trini lived, I'm not exactly sure, but she is buried in the St. Francis Cemetery, which is north of McDowell.

Her marker says "Trinidad Swilling Shumaker", and her two husbands, Jack Swilling and Henry Shumaker, are not with her. Jack died in Yuma, and Henry committed suicide, and I understand that meant that he was not allowed to be buried there. I really don't know how that works, it's just been explained to me.

Trinidad Swilling Shumaker in the 1920s


Jack Swilling and his adopted son


Thank you to my patrons on Patreon who help support History Adventuring! If you like these blog posts, and would like to make suggestions for future ones, please become a patron.

Become a Patron!

Comments

  1. UnknownAugust 30, 2015 at 5:28 PM

    Do you suppose the 'Apache Boy" in the Jack Swilling photo is Trinidad's son? I've seen that photo a million times and have wondered who he was for decades. Now it makes sense... I'm taking a friend of mine to visit Trinidad's grave. Thanks for Sharing!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Rambling in the EggMarch 5, 2019 at 9:07 AM

    Great to see a photograph of Trinidad! Thanks.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more