The Ordeal Larcena Pennington

[Music] howdy folks I'm Hank Sheffer and welcome to another true life adventure right here with Marshall Trimble on Mysteries of the Superstition Mountains all right Larcena Pennington the ordeal the the ordeal of or larcena Pennington let's start out with the the Arizona's situation in Arizona in in during the time the Penningtons were here the Civil War when the Civil War broke out the army abandoned all of the military posts here in Arizona just took what they could and set him on fire and so the this this was interpreted by the Apache they knew there was something going on back east something big going on back east but they really interpreted as now now now it's our it's our place again and where they didn't have the soldiers to worry about they roamed they roamed and looted and pillaged it will and so it pretty dangerous in fact the safest place to be was Tucson behind the walls and people outside of Tucson either moved back to Sonora or California and just got out of here it was it was it just really a no-man's land for several years till the army came back and so the Penningtons though a little bit before that Eli Pennington was an interesting guy he was from Tennessee and into Louisiana and Texas and he moved to Texas about in the 1830s and settle in East Texas but he was a wayfarer and wandering he was a wandering soul and and he thought Texas were getting too crowded so he decided to and his family was growing he now had twelve kids eight girls and four boys and he decided to go out and check out the Brazos River Country so was out there and he sees you know some good country around the Brasil's so he comes back to East Texas and his wife julia has passed away so now he's a single father and he's got a huge family and he decides let's get a fresh start in California so they're going to go to California so they load him up all 12 kids and him and join a wagon train and head across Texas across New Mexico they come into Arizona on the old Butterfield Overland Stage Coach Road this is 1857 and they they cross that doubtful Canyon come down through Apache pass Dragoon Springs Benson cross the San Pedero river there and and then it turns south and go over down to Fort Buchanan which is down on Sonoita Creek and it's beautiful country it's one of the prettiest range countries in Arizona when they film the movie Oklahoma they thought this looks like Oklahoma and and it is just beautiful and there was only one problem watch out for these roaming Apache bands because they gave him to cut no quarter and but he decides it wants to stay there's the lay he starts a ranch along the Sonoita Creek and Larcena is his oldest daughter and she's 20 now and very pretty and she's um all the soldiers that were all the soldiers at the fort are just crazy about her but she takes a liking the one guy fellow named John page big strapping handsome guy but he was he was a hellion and he'd come in with a notorious gunfighter from Texas Jeff ache and in 1857 also and he's in Tucson well they fall in love and they get married in Christmas on Christmas Eve of 1859 and it's he we believe it's the first American All American wedding in the Old Pueblo he takes a job working for Bill Kirkland who is another pioneer Arizona and kirklands got a lumber mill and a ranch down on Kanoa and that's just south of Tucson a few miles on the way - on the way to Nogales and he's he takes larcena in the tutor his he has a ward child that this girl is let's see she's 8... 8 years old 8 year old Mercedes Kiadolls and her mother is a widow and Kirkland just took a liking to the kid and he's going to get her he's going to ever learn English and so Larcena is down at Kanoa and they were late and her husband John has gone up into the end of the Santa Rita Mountains where they where Kirkland has a lumber camp so anyway she's not in good health and she decides the mountain they're up into Santa ritas would be more healthy for her so she takes Mercedes and the loaded up in an ox cart and they go up Madera Canyon they don't know it but they're being watched by a band of just five Apache who have just wandered in from clear up north of the Gila River these are Tonto Apache and they're watching and they see him coming to the make a camp they move into a tent and the next morning her husband has gone up to the Pinery where they're cutting cutting timber and the other man that came with him his friend was Randall and he's out hunting deer and so she's just alone in the camp with a tent and the tent there with with little Mercedes well she's got her dog she's curled up on a fit on a bed resting and Mercedes is outside playing and all of a sudden the dog starts growling and and she hears Mercedes scream and so she reaches under the bed covers for a pistol but about that time camp the tent flap opens and in huh in comes this older Apache big fella and knocks the gun out of her hand and takes and then pulls her outside and there she sees four other Apache and they've got Mercedes little Mercedes and so they're holding them down they they just pillaged the place they they cut open bags of flour and scatter them on the ground just just regular trash just trash the camp they're real young and she said they were just kids except for the for the one man it was older and we believe he is the was the chief of the Aravaipa tribe up at Aravaipa Canyon a fellow by the name of Eskiminzin and it's kind of a scoundrel anyway but they they they do the damage that they want to and take take the stuff they want and and and they head out they go up in a northeasterly direction out of out of the Madera Canyon and she's a but she is a veteran frontier woman larcena is and she's now 22 but she knows what to do she starts tearing off pieces of her dress and leaving him along the trail and breaking twigs and they're so occupied with getting away they not they don't they don't even notice that she's leaving a trail for the follow for her husband to follow and but off they go and they meanwhile Randall comes back into the camp he sees has just been playing torn up and so he rushes back down to Kanoa and they get word down to Fort Buchanan for the we're the first United States dragoons are stationed and they send a party out her husband is going to organize a rescue party to go after him and so they're on that they're picking up the trail and it they follow the trail well they get way up on a high ridge and along the way you know they're they have a rearguard watching to see if they're being pursued and they get up on the they get up on a high ridge and little Mercedes hear him speaking Spanish she spoke Spanish and she hears him speaking that they're going to kill our Laracena and so they get him up on it they get up on the ridge they make Laracena take off her dress and she's wearing just now a shamisen petticoat and then they demand to take her shoes and and then they brought her up towards the edge of the canyon of the cliff and they jabber with a with the spear... Lance and and and then they push her off and she goes tumbling down the hill and and they're throwing rocks at her at the same time and and so she lands at the bottom and she hits a tree and she's kind of dazed by it all then one of them comes up and takes a rock and smashes her head and but when she comes to they're all gone and then she hears the but she badly badly injured she hears the search party come and she hears her dog barking and and the dog the dog knows she's down there but it's almost Twilight and so her husband nobody can see and she is unable to speak because she's so badly beaten and so she can't help call for help and they then they see footprints shoe prints and these Apache had been wearing high high high high rising moccasins and so see so the figure there's a laracena's tracks to follow her shoes that you want them was wearing her shoes and that's what throws them and so they go on and and she's she's now gone I'm gonna have to make it on her own somehow so but for about three days she just lies lie lies there waiting to get recovered taking it taking melted snow and whatever else she can find grass or whatever she fight on the ground to eat and she's battered pretty badly so she decides she looks off to the distance there towards Madrea Canyon and she realizes there was she gone about 12 miles that's gonna be her mark to go to work for she can't walk she's too badly beaten to walk so she has to crawl on her hands and knees and that's the only way she can travel but she knows she keeps that Clair funnel in view and she goes along and she's doing the best she can even melting snow take a melted snow for water whatever else what berries or whatever she could find along the way to eat and subsist on and finally she finds a place to bed down and she realizes she's in a bears den so she figures better get out of here so she crawls away she keeps crawling ever ever crawling towards Clair funnel Butte and she finally gets there and gets to the edge of the canyon that the ridge that looks down on the road to Madera Canyon and she sees an ox cart down there and but she can't yell so she takes part of her clothes and waves and makes a flag and waves and they don't see her so she's still got a ways to go and it's been two weeks now she's been out there two weeks and so she crawls down and she gets down to the road and then crawls up to where the lumber camp was and there's nobody there and so she's but she does she does see the ruins of where you know what was left she finds some of the flour that they scattered on the ground when they cut up on the flour Sacks and she she goes stick it takes him over to the creek and she soaks it and builds a little fire and she she's able to make a little bread pick herself a little bread to eat and she has some water from the creek and and the next morning she goes to sleep next morning she hears voices off in the distance and it's the it's the lumber camp and so she crawls and crawls over there and when she gets there's a man named Hampton is a black man from Texas and he's the cook and he hears a sound and he looks over there and he and at first he thinks it's an apparition he thinks it's somebody who's come back from the dead he got kind of spooked about it and he he says oh he but he he he gets closer and she says I'm Larcena Pennington or Larcena Page she's now Larcena Page she says I am Larcena Page so he picks her up and he carries her in they didn't even recognize her she had changed he was so emaciated and blistered their shoulders have been bare and blistered from the Sun and the nights were freezing cold and today's were blazing hot while she was crawling crawling all that way must like to say about 12 miles and and it took her they took her into the camp and they didn't think she was going to make it but somebody rushes into Kanoa and lets Kirkland know that Mrs. Page has been found and alive and and her husband's I'm getting ready to go on another search he would never gave up the Apache grapevine said that she was dead that she'd been killed but he refused to believe it and this is a great love story that you would think would go on and on and I would hope it would and but he comes back and they bring a doctor out and the doctor thinks she's not going to make it but he he believes she can and he knows his wife and so uh he puts her in a wagon ox cart and takes her to Tucson where she gets medical medical care and she pretty soon she's back to normal again well what about little Mercedes well the Apaches kept Mercedes for a while and the commander at Fort Buchanan now is is determined to get her back and so he starts out you know their their connections with Indian tribes around they're like we want kind of like if you remember from the searchers the other people who give you information and so Mercedes is believed to be a round Aravaipa Canyon and so so he starts negotiating with this Eskiminzin, Eskiminzin denies that he was the person that kidnapped her but he maybe can make arranged to have little Mercedes ransomed and it just happens that the Army has as twenty captives from a battle or in the Dragoon mountains Pinal Apaches and maybe maybe you can give us a one little girl for twenty captives and the major knew it was a it was a it was a major Steen it was it as a unequal trade but he wants the girl do you to go back the little girl back so so they they give him the captives back returned to captives and they've returned the little girl and he Kirkland gives them a horse to bring it take her back to Tucson and so she's returned to Tucson and they said ring the bells at st. Augustine and the whole town is celebrating the return of this little girl and and so she's back with her mother and her mother's just beside herself with you know and fast forward now a few years Mercedes grows up to be a beautiful young woman and she marries a man named Charlie Schibell, Charlie Schibell is later sheriff of Pima County and and he in fact when Wyatt Earp and the OK Corral and all this all this Cochise County war was going on Charlie Schibell was was the sheriff at that time so but anyway this was unfortunately while giving giving birth to her fourth child little Mercedes now 26 years old passes away that was in 1875 so she did not live to see her husband become sheriff of Pima County but anyway that was that was Mercedes story and larcena things didn't go too too well for the Penningtons and and the Pages two years later John Page is ambushed by Canyon de Oro and he's ambushed and killed and they buried him on the spot she never got to see the body or say goodbye and so now Larcena is a single woman again and she had she would soon give birth to a baby and she went back with her family they were down on the Santa Cruz River and with her dad and they're moving about because of the Apache is still you know it's the early 1860s and the Apaches are the Apaches ruled all up and down the Santa Cruz Valley and so they're moving a lot and he has to be away a lot and when he's away it's up to the girls to fight off fight them off with guns these girls these you can see these girls four four sisters taking him on well then then another sister dies of the mountain fever or the malaria and and then two boys die of an Apache attacks two of her brothers died Apache attacks and then her father Eli is killed in an Apache attack and so now they're five of them had now died either with malaria or Apache attacks and so a brother from Texas comes out and he rounds up his sisters he's going to hurt them all back to Texas he said this place is too dangerous and it was like gosh it wasn't until the 1870s well into the 1870s that it was really safe and so but Larcena I won't go she's staying at Tucson she's gonna stay here now this is this is where she wants to be so she two years later she marries again has four children she's now in her 30s and she has a productive life there in Tucson and lives until 1913 died did I believe it was 76 so she's an amazing this amazing story of survival and an amazing story of a woman just with it with a will to with a will to live and what she overcame but the other tragedy is what all her family you know they're her dad and and her brothers and her sisters and so but anyway she's the remaining Pennington but if you go to Tucson today there's this big Main Street they're called Pennington and it's named for the family thank you for watching this episode of mysteries of the Superstition Mountains [Musci]

Channel: Mysteries of the Superstition Mountains

Views: 29,628

Keywords: Charlie LeSueur, Superstition Mountains, The Lost Dutchman Mine, Superstition Mountain Museum, Opal Images, Arizona, History, Gold, Treasure, Tucson, Larcena pennington, Marshall Trimble, Hank Sheffer, Larry Hedrick, Charles Shibell, Mercades Shibell, raid, Indian wars, Apache, Earp, Old West, Kiddnap

Id: QCJ3Hb5M9kY

Length: 21min 15sec (1275 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 26 2020