In the Church history of Graham Ward is found additional data concerning
the early Gila Valley settlement. It is told that, "the settlers of
Brigham City on the Little Colorado, getting discouraged because of
frequent failures of crops and poor prospects, sent explorers out to look
for new locations. Two went to the San Juan country in Utah, two to the
Salt River Valley and three, George Lake, Andrew Anderson and George
Skinner, to the Gila River." The journey was via Fort Apache, the arrival
at Smithville being in the latter part of November, 1880. At the Graham
settlement there was purchase of a water ditch and a quit-claim deed to
four quarter-sections of land that had been farmed by non-Mormons. The
record recites, "it was merely a rustlers' ranch, possessed by
horsethieves and speculators who had a small house on it, for which the
brethren paid about $1800, in cows valued at $35 per head."
Lake remained in the valley. Anderson and Skinner returned in December to
Brigham City, where the authorities of the United Order accepted the
purchase. Anderson and Skinner started again for the Gila, accompanied by
their families, by Moses M. Curtis and William Hawkins and their families
and a number of unmarried men, taking with them seed grain, farming
implements, cows, sheep and other animals. Transportation was by ox
teams. Christmas Day was spent at St. Joseph on the Little Colorado and
New Year at Showlow, arrival on the Gila being in January. Lake, in the
meantime, had been joined by Jorgen Jorgensen and Jerome J. Adams, the
two who had been sent to the Salt River Valley.
The new arrivals at once set at work, clearing their lands and putting in
grain, raising good crops. The manual labor, of the hardest sort, was
performed under the conditions of the United Order and on a diet
principally of bread and beans. The sheep band was turned over to the
Church, as profits of the Order, and the wheat and other products were
divided according to the number of families and the number of persons. A
stockade fort was built, but the homes for months consisted of sheds or
tents and even of the wagons. In 1884, on the newly-surveyed townsite of
Graham, was built a meeting house, called the "factory house," with
mesquite posts and dirt roof and with walls only of heavy unbleached
muslin, which appears to have been called "factory."
One of the early settlements of the Gila Valley is Matthews (successively
Matthewsville, Fairview and Glenbar), founded in December, 1880, by
Joseph Matthews and family, from Round Valley, and Wm. R. Waddill. In
1881 they built a stockade and though no local Indian depredations were
known, in that year the Matthews settlers moved to Pima for better
protection. A townsite was selected by the Stake President September 17,
1886, but was not occupied. A resident of note was the first district
school teacher, John F. Nash, who came with his father to Arizona in
1874, first settling in Williamson Valley near Prescott. He arrived in
the valley in 1881, the progress of the family toward Texas stopped on
the Gila by the stealing of a band of Nash horses by "rustlers."