Lieutenant Walter G. Scott-McCord's Regiment

Today I am revisiting/updating one of my very first posts.  What a wonderful, fulfilling ADVENTURE this has been!!  Recall (or look back through the posts to the "Forgotten Regiment") that I had found a commemorative poster in the Museum for a Company of Soldiers who served in the Spanish-American War.

I was immediately curious as to why it would be in our little museum.  I was dismayed at the awful state of deterioration, and thus took photos in a preservation effort.  But I also had to to find out more.  What was this all about (and why in the heck didn't I listen in my History classes growing up!?!)

As I began researching the first thing I discovered is mentioned in my first post - and that is about Governor Myron McCord who resigned as Territorial Governor of Arizona to lead an all volunteer regiment in the war.

Governor Myron McCord of Arizona Territory

This is a whole story in itself!  But the goal of this particular "research adventure" was to find out what this Company had to do with St. Johns, and/or what it might have done in St. Johns/Apache County.  As I was perusing historical Arizona newspapers to find information on McCord and his regiment - I hit the jackpot when I came across the following little snippet of news in the Arizona Weekly Journal-Miner of 1898:

6 July 1898-AZ Weekly Journal-Miner

And there was the connection!  "Second company--C.E.Donaldson, of Prescott, captain;  F. C. Hochderfer, of Flagstaff, and Walter G. Scott, of St. Johns, lieutenants."

I could hardly contain my excitement at this discovery!  My research veered off in this new direction - who the heck is Walter G. Scott - not one of the 'usual' historical names I'd heard or become familiar with in connection to St. Johns/Apache County?!

I'd probably not heard of him because he did not stay permanently in St. Johns, and has no descendants here.  So through the mists of time his name has become somewhat lost.  He was only in St. Johns a short 10-year period from 1889 - 1899 - but MY how involved he was, and what a contributor to local history, and the early days of St. Johns.

Walter G. Scott marriage info from Ancestry Library Edition

To my dismay I have not yet been able to find a photo of him (but will not give up on THAT!)  My blog posts will show my love of photographs and visual representations.  But I have found out so much about him.  I share some of it here:

Prior to coming to St. Johns he lived in the Prescott, Arizona area where he worked for the "Arizona Weekly Journal-Miner" newspaper.  He married his bride Mary C. McClellan there in 1888.




Sometime in 1889 they moved to St. Johns.  Where they opened (and Mrs. Scott ran for 7 years 1889-1896)  a little hotel named "Scott House" - what most people probably DON'T know - is that the "Barth Hotel" in St. Johns - was FIRST the "Scott House!!  (Although the building was always owned by Solomon Barth)

11 Jan 1896 - St. Johns Herald News

Prior to being the Barth Hotel (as in this photo) it was the Scott House

4 July 1896-St. Johns Herald

Just some of the roles I have found that Walter Scott played in Apache County are:

• Notary Public
• Immigration Commissioner
• Court Commissioner
• Newspaper Editor for a time of the St. Johns Herald
• Captain of a National Guard Unit in St. Johns
• Attorney
• District Attorney

 

28 July 1892-The St. Johns Herald

He was friends with Isaac Barth and there was a group of local men who sure enjoyed their fishing trips to the Black River!  Found several snippets about fishing trips to Black River.

TO BE CONTINUED....