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Published: January 15th 2013
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LARCENA AND MERCEDES TAKEN FROM HERE
The site is at mouth of Madera Canyon near where the visitor center parking lot is. Take Continental Rd east from Green Valley and follow the signs. LARCENA
Larcena Pennington was a Tennessee girl born on June 10, 1837 who toddled off with her folks, Elias and Julia, and three siblings to Honey Grove, Texas in 1839. Her folks continued to populate the prairie with a new child every couple of years until 1854 when they finally stopped at an even dozen. It was one child too many. Julia took sick and died of complications in 1855. Among her family members Larcena was known as “Tid”. It was a nickname bestowed by a younger sibling that could not wrap his tongue around the word “sister”. Elias pulled up stakes in Honey Grove after Julia died and moved out to Jack County, TX, and then in the spring of 1857 he decided to move clear out to California. Tid came down gravely ill with malaria at the San Pedro River in southeast Arizona and had to be taken for some doctoring at nearby Fort Buchanan. It would be as far towards California as the weary travelers got. WhileTid gradually recovered her dad started up a little truck patch along Sonoita Creek to sell produce to the Army. The Pennington’s, all 13 of them, settled
LARCENA
Go east from Helvetia until you find this hillside. You will need a stout 4wd vehicle with good clearance. This location was taken from a picture found in book written by Robert Forbes in 1919. Forbes was Larcena's son-in-law by one the Scott daudghters. The actual site where Larcena was abandoned is close to the ridgeline in the background. into the local community of civilian farmers and Larcena met John Page. The happy couple married on Christmas Eve of 1859 in Tucson. John was a freighter and had work hauling sawed boards for William Kirkland from the Big Rock Mill in Madera Canyon to wherever the lumber was sold. Kirkland was a bachelor, but had taken on a little girl by the name of Mercedes Sais Quiroz as a ward. Larcena was teaching Mercedes to read while living in Tucson, but malaria reared its ugly head again and Larcena took to her bed once more. John figured that she might recover more easily in the cleaner air up at the log camp. He loaded up some provisions in his wagon along with his sick wife and the little girl and freighted them all down to the Canoa Ranch to obtain permission from Kirkland to take the girls up to the log camp and pick up orders for delivery of more lumber. John’s partner, William Randall joined them there and on March 15, 1860 they started towards Madera Canyon reaching the mouth of the canyon that evening where they decided to stop. The trail up the canyon was poor place
BIG ROCK
The sawmill was located near this rock about a mile and half above the mouth of Madera Canyon. Nothing remains of the sawmill except for the big rock. to take a wagon after dark. Next morning, March 16, John hiked up to the log camp to see if the lumber was ready; it was only about a mile and a half, and Randall wandered off to shoot a deer for camp meat. Larcena and Mercedes were left alone and taken captive by Tonto Apaches. They did not have much sympathy for Larcena’s illness and kept prodding her along with their lances. The going was slow for her captors all day long. By late afternoon exhaustion had set in with her and when a scout came up to report that pursuit was not far behind the Apaches had to give her up. They jabbed her a final time with the lance, threw her over a cliff, chunked some rocks at her, stole her shoes and left her for dead in a snow bank behind a tree. The rescuers passed her by as daylight began to fail. They continued to follow the tracks made by her shoes unaware that she was no longer wearing them. Mercedes was small enough to be carried when she got tired. Larcena remained in the snow bank for a couple of days drifting in and out consciousness, and the snow probably saved her life. When she came back to her senses she ate some snow to quench a ravenous thirst, got her bearings from Huerfano Peak visible in the distance, and started back towards the log camp barefooted. In her weakened condition she could only make a short distance each day; grazing on what she could find to eat along the way. In early April, quite badly scuffed up she finally made it back, but full recovery would take several months. She was a tough old desert chicken to have survived an ordeal like that. Mercedes was ransomed back from the Apaches a few weeks later by Captain Richard S. Ewell using funds supplied by Kirkland. The following January John Page got his wife pregnant and then foolishly got himself ambushed and killed in February hauling some freight up to Camp Grant. Larcena gave birth to a little girl that she named Mary in September of 1861. The two of them went back to live with the Pennington family on one hardscrabble outfit after another for the next few years. Her sister Ann died of malaria at Sopori Ranch in 1867. Her brother, Jim, was killed by Apaches in 1868 and is buried beside his sister at the little cemetery at Sopori Ranch. In June of 1869 Apaches killed the father, Elias, and the brother, Green, on Sonoita Creek. By December of 1869 the surviving siblings decided to finally move on to California, but Sister Laura got sick and died in Tucson before they got underway. When the Pennington family left Arizona they returned to Texas. Larcena and Mary stayed in Tucson and in 1870 Larcena married William Fisher Scott. Whatever the Pennington Family saw of frontier life in Arizona they paid for with their blood. They were truly remarkable local pioneers. Larcena died in 1907 and is buried at Evergreen Cemetery, beside her daughter, Mary. Mercedes Quiroz eventually married Sheriff Charlie Shibell, but she died early too. Mercedes is buried in Holy Hope Cemetery not far from the grave of Johnny Behan, who once served as a deputy sheriff for Charlie as did Wyatt Earp. In downtown Tucson Pennington Avenue is named in honor of the Pennington Family. It borders the south wall of the Presidio. The street runs through the hole left where the adobe was dug for the presidio wall; ironically a sawmill once occupied that hole. Scott Street in Downtown Tucson was named in honor of Larcena’s husband. The photos show the site where Larcena and Mercedes were taken captive, the hilltop near where Larcena was left for dead, and the big rock in Madera Canyon where the sawmill once stood.
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