91 Facts About James Reavis

James Addison Reavis, later using the name James Addison Peralta-Reavis, the so-called Baron of Arizona, was an American forger and fraudster.

James Reavis is best known in association with the Peralta land grant, known as the Barony of Arizona, a pair of fraudulent land claims, which if certified, would have granted him ownership of over 18,600 square miles of land in central Arizona Territory and western New Mexico Territory.

James Reavis used this provision by manufacturing a fictional claim and then generating a collection of documents demonstrating how the claim came into his possession.

When serious challenges to this claim developed, James Reavis developed a second claim by marrying the purported last surviving lineal descendant of the original claim recipient.

James Reavis obtained legal and political support from Roscoe Conkling, Robert G Ingersoll, and James Broadhead.

The suit, in turn, prompted the US government to perform a detailed investigation that fully exposed the forgeries James Reavis had planted in a variety of locations.

James Reavis's father was a Welshman who had emigrated to the United States in the early 1820s.

James Reavis's mother was of Scottish and Spanish descent and proud of her Spanish heritage.

James Reavis received little formal education, but his mother read Spanish Romantic literature to him, and he developed a grandiose and eloquent writing pattern.

When his fellow soldiers noticed the frequency and manner by which he obtained his passes, James Reavis began selling forged passes to them.

When some of his superiors became suspicious of James Reavis, he obtained leave supposedly to get married, but instead used it to surrender to Union forces.

James Reavis returned to St Louis, Missouri, near the end of 1866.

James Reavis then discovered that the skills he learned forging army passes allowed him to adjust real-estate paperwork and correct imperfect property titles.

James Reavis was able to produce a yellowed and fading 18th-document that all previous searches had failed to notice.

James Reavis came to the real estate agent upon the recommendation of Colonel Byser, a previous customer of Reavis's, seeking assistance with a real estate purchase.

James Reavis was short of funds at the time of his arrival, so offered to sell a half interest in the claim to the local stable owner, James D Monihon.

James Reavis suggested Willing leave the documents to allow him time to inspect them.

James Reavis used this time and association with Gitt to learn about Mexican and Spanish land documents.

James Reavis developed a friendship with Willing's wife, Mary Ann, whom the young real estate agent regarded as a second mother.

In California, James Reavis visited Florin Massol, a Sacramento merchant with whom Willing had left papers assigning mining rights within the Peralta grant as collateral against a loan.

James Reavis married Ada Pope of Montevallo on May 5,1874.

The couple had known each other since the days when James Reavis' family operated their store.

James Reavis learned of his partner's death upon his arrival in San Francisco.

James Reavis had expected a bundle of correspondence awaiting his arrival, but instead found only two letters.

In poor health from the journey and low on funds, James Reavis worked as a schoolteacher in Downey, California, during 1875 and 1876.

James Reavis then worked as a journalist in Northern California, serving as a correspondent for The San Francisco Examiner and San Francisco Call with occasional work for a New York City paper.

James Reavis was able to observe the operation of the Public Land Commission.

James Reavis' first visit to Arizona Territory came with a May 1880 trip to Phoenix.

James Reavis decided to change this and fixed the location of the grant.

James Reavis's first step was a July 1881 visit to the family of Florin Massol, where he obtained a release of the mining rights that Willing had signed over, in exchange for a contract to pay US$3000 plus interest to Massol on the condition that the Peralta grant be confirmed.

James Reavis cultivated friendships with the archivists in both cities, relationships that enabled him to gain easy access to the materials he was interested in inspecting.

James Reavis then traveled to see Mary Ann Willing, who was then living in Kentucky.

James Reavis was appointed, a royal inspector, in 1742 and sent on a secret mission to Guadalajara in New Spain.

James Reavis was buried in Guadalajara on February 2,1824.

James Reavis brought in craftsmen to build a mansion of redwood and red brick on the site, complete with servant quarters, stables, storage sheds, and a protective stone wall surrounding the site.

James Reavis opened negotiations with James M Barney, owner of the Silver King Mining Company.

When word spread that both the Southern Pacific Railroad and Silver King Mine had agreed to terms with James Reavis, concern turned to panic.

The initial target of the expansion was Tom Weedin, editor of the Florence Enterprise, whom James Reavis approached in January 1884.

The newspaper editor refused James Reavis's offer and instead published an editorial calling for creation of a committee to raise funds to hire a lawyer to fight the Peralta grant in court.

Shortly thereafter, Anti-James Reavis committees were established in Florence, Globe, Phoenix, and Tempe.

Questions into his finances were answered vaguely, with James Reavis claiming he would need to consult his "agents" to determine most details.

James Reavis claimed to have heard rumors of a Peralta descendant as early as his 1875 arrival in California.

James Reavis did not meet the heiress, though, until 1877.

At that time, James Reavis visited her in Knights Landing, California, where she worked as a house servant, and proposed marriage.

James Reavis then traveled with his wife, who was presented as his ward, to New York.

Mr J Addison Reavis is the gentleman who is pushing the claim and his is a man of remarkable energy and persistence.

James Reavis went to Tucson to file a new claim on behalf of his wife, Dona Sophia Micaela Maso Reavis y Peralta de la Cordoba, third Baroness of Arizona.

James Reavis posted a US$10,000 deposit to assure an official survey of the grant.

James Reavis married Dona Juana Laura Ibarra, a member of a prominent Guadalajara family, in 1822.

James Reavis remembered the young girl speaking of an inheritance that was to come to her.

James Reavis put this new knowledge to work and began offering investment opportunities involving development of Arizona Territory.

James Reavis formed three corporations in rapid succession in 1887, each bearing the name Casa Grande Improvement Company.

James Reavis planned to develop the land of the grant by building roads, railways, dams, irrigation canals, telegraph lines, and other improvements, while simultaneously engaging in leasing water rights, selling livestock, and performing other activities.

James Reavis adopted the boy and named him Fenton after her husband's father.

In Mexico, James Reavis became a patron of various charities, opening a home for the blind and a hospital.

James Reavis had enlisted the aid of Secretary of the Interior John Willock Noble and US Senator Francis Cockrell in his lobbying efforts.

Southern Pacific Railroad attorney Harvey S Brown served as Reavis' lead counsel, while Robert G Ingersoll and James Broadhead assisted in preparing the case.

James Reavis viewed this birth as further proof of Sophia being a twin.

James Reavis went to Santa Fe, New Mexico Territory, to file his final complaint in February 1893.

James Reavis searched bundles for several days without success, the archivist assigned to assist him believing the documents he was searching for did not exist.

James Reavis then requested access to case 77, drawer 3,31.

When James Reavis later returned to the archive, the prescribed measures had been put into place.

James Reavis left Seville before an arrest could be made, and influential friends in Madrid had suppressed any further investigation.

James Reavis's examination had found that while the coversheet appeared to be authentic, the only mention of Don Miguel de Peralta was located on a piece of yellowed tissue paper pasted to the paper.

James Reavis declared the five sheets of paper contained inside the cover to be forgeries due to their style of writing not being consistent with the handwriting in use at the time and the seals being glued to the paper instead of impressed by a metal seal as was the custom at the time of the document.

James Reavis began with the will of Miguel de Peralta, where the only mentions of the name occurred over erasures.

At that time, a telegraph arrived from James Reavis asking for a continuance till June 10,1895.

James Reavis first appeared in court on Monday June 10,1895.

James Reavis's first act was to ask for a continuance so that he could locate new legal representation.

James Reavis was finally granted a one-day continuance so he could prepare to represent himself.

When cross-examined by Reynolds, James Reavis employed a tactic of providing excessive and irrelevant details within his answers.

Later in the day, James Reavis was questioned about his discovery of documents within the San Xavier record books, his 1883 trip to the archives in Mexico, and his trip to Spain.

Wednesday morning's session began with James Reavis being questioned about his marriage contract to his wife, moved to details on his discovery of the "Inicial Monument", and was followed by questions about his financial transactions with the Southern Pacific Railroad and Silver King mine.

When questioned about the boundaries of the grant, James Reavis testified that he had found a copy of a map in the Mexico City archives, but the archivist had refused to make him a copy, as the map was surrounded by papers the archivist considered to be of a questionable nature.

The young priest had been convinced to lend the birth and death registers to James Reavis, but had failed to inform James Reavis that the church kept a separate index that was organized by last name and updated annually.

James Reavis was granted a request to be excused from the court during this phase of the trial.

James Reavis's testimony showed the first and last leaves of the document to be genuine documents from the indicated period, but that the pages in between were all forgeries.

Local newspapers had reported that Mrs James Reavis had arrived from Denver on Friday afternoon and the courtroom was packed with spectators looking to see the third baroness.

James Reavis was unable to provide any details about the claim papers.

James Reavis used the opportunity to introduce a bill of 52 objections.

James Reavis would have had to forge over 200 Spanish documents and signatures.

James Reavis was imprisoned from July 18,1896, to April 18,1898, earning a three-month sentence reduction for good behavior.

Unsuccessful in finding any investors, James Reavis moved to Denver for a time to live with his wife and sons.

James Reavis wandered from place to place advocating his vision for a large-scale irrigation system within Arizona.

In 1900, James Reavis began the magazine Peralta James Reavis Real Life Illustrated, in which he promised to provide the complete inside story of the Peralta fraud.

In June 1902, James Reavis's wife filed for divorce on grounds of nonsupport.

James Reavis died in Denver on November 20,1914, and was buried in a pauper's grave.

James Reavis was even featured in an official tour book.

James Reavis' exploits have been dramatized, and highly fictionalized, in motion pictures and on television.

James Reavis' life served as the basis for The Baron of Arizona, a 1950 movie in which Vincent Price played the title role.

The mansion that James Reavis built in Arizola was rediscovered by the National Park Service in 1953 following years of use as a barn by a local farmer.