Anson Safford

Anson Safford

Anson Pacely Killen Safford (born February 14, 1830 in Hyde Park , Lamoille County , Vermont , †  December 15, 1891 in Tarpon Springs , Florida ) was an American politician and governor of the Arizona Territory from 1869 to 1877 .

Early years

At the age of eight, Safford and his parents moved to Crete , Illinois . The family ran a farm there. Anson Safford only visited the schools in his home country sporadically. He later acquired most of the knowledge himself. His parents died in 1848 and 1849, respectively. Anson then joined the California gold rush in 1850 . There he secured a claim from which he got between $ 5 and $ 20 a day.

Political rise

At that time he was a member of the Democratic Party , for which he unsuccessfully applied for a seat in the House of Representatives of California in 1854 . In the years 1857 and 1859 he was elected to this body after all. After his parliamentary term, he moved to San Francisco . During the Civil War , Safford switched to the Republican Party . From 1862 he was based in Nevada . There he held some local political offices. In November 1863 he was chairman of his party's regional convention in Nevada. After a two-year educational trip to Europe , Safford returned to Nevada. There he turned down a nomination for the US House of Representatives . Instead, he was appointed head of land surveying in the area by President Andrew Johnson in 1867 .

Territorial Governor of Arizona

In April 1869, at the request of a congressional delegation and many prominent people in the Arizona Territory, President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Safford as the new Territorial Governor of that area. He held this office between July 9, 1869 and April 5, 1877. During this time, the territory was still ravaged by Indians and marauding criminal gangs. The streets were unsafe and had to be secured by voluntary militias. Stricter laws and the building of a prison should deter criminals. Nevertheless, his successor John Philo Hoyt still had to struggle with these problems. In addition, there was a controversy between the military and the civilian population and a contrast between the population in the north and the south of the territory.

While Safford could not boast any resounding success in combating violence, he managed to organize the school system in his area. With the help of a new income tax, schools were built and teachers recruited. At the end of his tenure in 1877, Safford was able to announce that of 2955 children in his territory, 1450 could read and write. That was only 49 percent, but compared to the time before he took office, this was a significant increase.

Another résumé

After his governorship, Safford set up a bank with branches in Tucson and Tombstone . He also became president of the Tombstone Gold and Siver Milling and Mining Company . In 1880 he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention , where James A. Garfield was nominated as a candidate for president. He later sold all of his shares in the West for about $ 140,000 and moved to Philadelphia , and later to New York City . In 1882 he helped build the city of Tarpon Springs in Florida. In 1889 he was again under discussion as Territorial Governor in Arizona. But in the end he was no longer appointed to this office. Anson Safford died in Tarbon Springs in 1891. He was married three times. The divorce from his first wife, Jenny Tracy, made headlines in Arizona in 1873.

Web links

• Anson Safford in the database of Find a Grave (English)