St. David was named by Alexander F. Macdonald in honor of David W.
Patten, a martyr of the Church, who died at the hands of the same mob
that killed Joseph Smith. Its first mail was received at Tres Alamos,
sixteen miles down the river. A postoffice was established in 1882,
Joseph McRae in charge. When the Southern Pacific came through, Benson
was established, nine miles to the northward. Tombstone lies sixteen
miles to the southeast.
In May, 1880, the present St. David townsite was laid out. John Smith
Merrill built the first house. The following year an adobe schoolhouse
was built, this used for public gatherings until shaken down by an
earthquake, May 3, 1887, happily while the children were at recess. Much
damage was done in the town.
The settlement had little or no trouble with Indians, though for nine
years Apache bands scouted and murdered in the nearby mountains and
committed depredations within the San Pedro Valley, both to the northward
and southward.
Early in 1879 John Campbell, a new member, from Texas, built a sawmill,
in the Huachuca Mountains, that furnished a diversity of industry, from
it much lumber being shipped to Tombstone.
Macdonald was a southern extension of the St. David community on the San
Pedro, established in 1882 by Henry J. Horne, Jonathan Hoopes and others,
and named in honor of Alexander F. Macdonald, then president of the
Maricopa Stake. It was of slow growth, owing to claims upon the lands as
constituting a part of the San Juan de las Boquillas y Nogales grant,
later rejected. In 1913, nine miles west of St. David, was established
the community of Miramonte.