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Published: January 4th 2019
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WARD HOME
Ruins are located on the Hwy 82 right f way a few miles southwest of Patagonia. You can easily see them from the road. MICKEY FREE General Crook’s chief of scouts, Al Sieber, called him half Mexican, half Irish, and all sumbitch. His real name was Felix and he burst onto the scene in 1848 down in Mexico as the red haired son of Jesusa Martinez and an Irish dad. His dad was a deserter from an outfit of renegade Irish mercenaries who fought for Mexico in the Mexican War. He was on his hurried way to America and did not tarry long with Jesusa. She then fell in with a rooster named Santiago Tellez, who gave her another son named Santiago, but would not marry her. Felix took his name anyway. Eventually Jesusa and her two sons took up with a fellow named John Ward. John was an American who had built a ranch on Sonoita Creek a few miles below Fort Buchanan. His intention was to sell cattle to the army, but to supplement his income he built a shop on his ranch and employed a blacksmith and a wheelwright. John was also a glass blower. In his spare time John gave Jesusa a daughter they named Josefa. Somewhere along the line Felix lost an eye. It was gouged out in a
WARD RANCH
The adobes on the right are remnants of the house. The adobes on the left are remnants of the shop. deer hunting accident. Things rolled merrily along for them all until the morning of January 27, 1861 when a surly band of Pinal Apaches raided the ranch, stole John’s cattle and abducted Felix. John was away from the ranch that morning, but when he returned he went to the soldier fort and reported the incident to the commanding officer, LTC Pitcairn Morrison, and demanded military intervention in the recovery of his cattle and the boy. The next morning Lt George Bascom, commanding Company C, 7
th Infantry set off in pursuit. He discovered a trail heading eastward down Babocomari Creek toward the San Pedro River. On that flimsy evidence alone the army jumped to the conclusion that the culprits were Chiricahua Apaches known to be residing near the Apache Pass Stage Station. Bascom jauntily marched his troops out there taking along John Ward as interpreter. They set up camp at the base of a hill near the station and requested a parley with the Apache leader, Cochise. The talks began just after lunchtime on February 6, 1861 in Bascom’s tent. Cochise had shown up with his wife and kids, and with his brother, Coyuntera, who spoke better Mexican. The wife and
WARD'S SHOP
Those are thick walls. They might be what remains of the blacksmith's forge. At the time of the raid the hired wheelwright was enfeebled by malaria. He witnessed the abduction. kids were given lunch and kept under guard in a separate tent. Bascom demanded of Cochise the return of the cattle and the child. Cochise denied having taken them, but offered to try and locate them and arrange for their return if given ten days to do so. Ward called Cochise a thief and a liar and told him he was being held hostage. At that point the deliberations broke down. Cochise jumped up and slashed through the bindings on the tent door and made his escape past a startled sentry. Coyuntera was right behind him, but tripped over a guy rope, fell to the ground and was bayoneted in the liver by the guard. Ward was right behind Coyuntera and fired his pistol at Cochise as he was going around the hill. Bascom just sat in wonderment about what had just happened. The family was taken hostage. Twenty-five years of bloody warfare ensued. The Bascom Affair, as it came to be known, happened just as the American Civil War was fetching loose. The army started a war with the Apache, and then pulled out of Arizona. Without the army the settlement along Sonoita Creek lost their livelihood and fled in panic. John Ward settled in Tucson as a glass blower. He died there in 1867. Jesusa took her kids back to Mexico. There was no need for the formality of a divorce. Felix was traded by the Pinal to the Coyotero and grew to manhood as a warrior among them. In 1872 when the Cochise War ended Felix joined the army as a scout at Camp Verde. Soldiers there, who could read, started in calling him Mickey Free, after a character in a book that was popular among them. For the rest of his life he used that name. Mickey served in the army as an interpreter and scout until he retired at Fort Apache in 1893. He had a little pension and lived as a gentleman farmer until he died in 1914 leaving 4 widows and two children. The pictures show all that remains of the Ward Ranch adobes. It is where the Apache War began.
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