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Georgie Digs!
I want to first add a few of Annie Forbach’s memories of how it was along Aravaipa Creek as she was growing up where her family, the James Brandenburgs, had settled in 1888. She wrote that great numbers of people came to the Aravaipa for camping and to enjoy the cool climate, as well as the fresh fruit, vegetables, and melons during the summers, and that the creek was a good attraction for everyone to wade, bathe, swim, and fish. She also wrote that before she went away to college, her mother and she kept boarders through the summers in their nine-room house.
Annie also wrote that her family’s fruit produce was marketed in Hayden, and the fruit was delivered to the depot in Winkelman and shipped by train to Kelvin and Ray. Also, that Henness, Giffin, and Leonard had stores in Winkelman, Kelvin, and Ray. The Brandenburgs had previously done business in Mammoth, or Dudleyville which was just a store and post office, after which they went to Winkelman for their shopping and mail. Annie wrote that they always passed the ruins of old Camp Grant, and the walls were not very tall, no roof, only the door and window openings, but evidence was all around the buildings of the past. Sometimes old cartridge shells or soldier uniform buttons were found.
Annie wrote that after she was a teacher in Winkelman for the second time, she had a teacher friend, Ruby, who taught at a small mining camp, Chilito, about 15 miles from Winkelman, and Ruby had about 30 pupils in her school, all grades and mostly Mexican children. Chilito also had a post office and store. Annie also mentioned Mr. Chittendon, the manager of the mine and camp, who kept the men working at the mine and supervised the ore hauling to the mill at Hayden. She wrote that the ore was brought from the mine by numbers of pack burros that carried the ore in pack boxes and transported the ore to a loading platform where it was loaded on the wagons and taken by team to Hayden.
How things had changed! They had changed for Annie, too! She wrote that during her last year of teaching in Hayden she had met her future husband, Albert Forbach, who then was working in the Wells Fargo Express Office at the Hayden Depot, and they were married on May 19, 1918. It was from their son, Alvin Forbach, that I was so fortunate to be given copies of the memoirs of each Annie and her mother, Caldonia Ann Brandenburg.
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