His Destination
Descriptions of the events which led up to the attack on the McComas family frequently state that their destination was Pyramid City. Similarly, they will include the information that the journey was necessitated by a telegram, received by McComas at Silver City, which urgently requested his presence at that place in his capacity as legal representative for the Pyramid Gold and Silver Mining and Reduction Company. These conclusions seem to have been drawn in the main from two sources: newspaper items published immediately after the incident, which refer to Pyramid City as his destination, and the long held misconception that McComas was indeed retained as attorney by the “Pyramid Company”.
Simmons states that the trip was necessitated by McComas having received a telegram indicating that his “professional services were needed by the Pyramid Mining and Milling Company [sic]…” (Page 100). He references the Albuquerque Review of April 5, 1883 which in fact says only that “Judge McComas had been sent for by a (i.e. unnamed) mining company to go to Pyramid City in a professional capacity.”
The second of these conclusions, that McComas was retained by that Company, we have proven to be false. We now revisit those newspaper reports.
The reports published in local and national newspapers in the days immediately following the incident attribute their information to two sources – telegraphic dispatches sent from either Silver City or Lordsburg. Modern accounts will very often cite the former, as these tend to name Pyramid City as being McComas’ destination and are therefore thought perhaps to be more accurate, matching neatly with the belief that McComas was associated in a professional capacity with the “Pyramid Company”. For example, the March 31, 1883, edition of Silver City’s Southwest Sentinel stated that “Judge McComas was on his way to Pyramid City, near Lordsburg.” The Silver City Enterprise of the previous day indicated that the reason for the trip was more social than professional, that is, to visit one of the judge’s older sons who, the newspaper claimed, was living at Pyramid City.
Certainly the earliest reports were confused and very often contradictory of each other, especially when newspapers further afield republished information from Grant County sources. A prime example was the paragraph published in the New York Times on March 30, 1883:
DENVER, March 29 – A special to the “Republican” from Silver City, New Mexico, says: “Judge McComas, of this city, formally of Illinois, while en route to Pyramid City with his wife and child, was killed by Apaches at Thompson Cañon, 25 miles north-east of here. His wife and child are prisoners.”
Clearly, although sent to Denver from Silver City, this report most probably originated at Lordsburg as evidenced by the given location of Thompson Cañon, which lies northeast of Lordsburg, but southwest of Silver City.
Anton Mazzanovich, another much cited source, writes that McComas was traveling to “Leitendorf, a small mining camp near Lordsburg”¹¹⁸, Leitendorf being the original name of Pyramid City.
Knowing now that McComas was not in the employ of the Pyramid Gold and Silver Mining and Reduction Company, but was instead, at the time of his death, representing James B. Price in a suit brought by Price against Amos Green and that Company, we have to approach with caution those reports that name Pyramid City – a company town established and christened by Amos Green himself¹¹⁹ – as being McComas’ destination.
Alongside those reports that McComas was going to Pyramid City, there are others which refer to Lordsburg; most of these reports are found in dispatches sent from Lordsburg itself. They appear not only in the Grant County newspapers, but also in Colorado, Missouri and California newspapers¹²⁰. At first this discrepancy may appear to be of little or no consequence, but the references to Lordsburg do seem to have been overlooked or even ignored, again perhaps for the reason that Pyramid City was a much better fit with the story of McComas being employed by the Pyramid Company.
There is other, circumstantial, evidence that Pyramid City may well have been McComas’ destination, though it must have been so for some reason other than to carry out legal work for the Greens’ mining company. On February 22, 1883, in the column headed “Pyramid Pointers”, dated Pyramid, February 19, mention is made of Judge McComas having spent “a few days” at that place¹²¹. On March 1st, the Silver City Enterprise reported his return to Silver City.
We should also bear in mind the fact that it was McComas, together with Amos Green and D. C. Leroy, who had incorporated the Leroy Silver Mining Company in April of 1880, raising the possibility that this was the un-named mining company referred to in newspaper reports at the time of McComas’ death, Amos Green indeed being at Pyramid City¹²². Certainly, there does seem to be at least some degree of confusion over what exactly his destination was.
Why He Undertook The Journey
Yet again we return to Simmons who ponders the reason for McComas being so urgently summoned away from Silver City:
” … whether this sudden summons pertained to some business unfinished…or to an entirely new matter is unknown.” (Page 100)
However, when we take into consideration Judge Warren Bristol’s March 22 ruling on Case No. 177, James B. Price vs. Amos Green, T. A. Green, and the Pyramid Gold and Silver Mining and Reduction Company, all becomes clear, and it is with certainty that we can say that it was this ruling which undoubtedly was the reason for McComas’ hurried departure from Silver City on March 27, 1883. He needed to consult with his client, or his client’s agent, on Bristol’s ruling – and his client was not based at Pyramid City.
The dispatches from Lordsburg also show us that, rather than being a response to a telegram from Lordsburg, McComas’ departure from Silver City was the result of communication initiated by him; communication which further suggests that it was to Lordsburg that he was going. Both the Colorado and the Missouri newspapers referred to above state that McComas had sent a telegram from Silver City to Lordsburg to inform his contacts there of the date of his arrival.¹²³
As the senior member of James B. Price’s New Mexico counsel, McComas would have been the first to have received notification of Judge Bristol’s ruling, and he would have needed to pass this information on to Price and/or his agent in Grant County. A meeting would have to be arranged to discuss the ruling and its implications, and what possible further action Price might now take.¹²⁴ Certainly this was the urgent business matter which precipitated McComas’ journey.
As to whom that agent might have been, there is no definitive information, consequently we enter into some degree of speculation. James B. Price had several long standing business associates in the Virginia Mining District. Orlando R. Smythe for example had been Price’s representative for, and general manager of, the National Mail and Transportation Company in New Mexico, although it is unclear whether he was still so at this time. Thomas L. Smith was a resident of Lordsburg and was associated with both Price and McComas through The New Mexico and Arizona Mining and Reduction Company, Smith having been company Secretary. Also present in the Virginia Mining District was James B. Price’s son, John E. Price, and it is known from various newspaper reports that Daniel Murphy had traveled there on several occasions; it was Murphy who would act as James B. Price’s agent at the filing of the appeal against Judge Bristol’s ruling in August of 1883, with Murphy posting the required bond, and John Ewing Price acting as one of his sureties.¹²⁵
One other possibility is that McComas had arranged to meet someone coming in by train from Missouri, James B. Price’s home state, possibly B. Gratz Brown who, along with Hamilton C. McComas and Andrew Sloan, were counsel for J. B. Price in his suit against The Pyramid Gold and Silver Mining and Reduction Company. Practicing in Missouri, Brown was – as McComas had been up until early 1882 – unauthorized to practice law in New Mexico Territory. Brown had a long standing association with the Price family in Missouri, acting as the family’s attorney for many years. It was his ineligibility to practice in New Mexico Territory which necessitated the engagement of local attorneys McComas and Sloan; a choice which probably resulted from the fact that Brown and McComas had worked together in St. Louis in the past. In the late 1870s, McComas and his then partner McKeighan, together with Brown and another attorney by the name of Woodson, had acted as counsel for the appellants in a case argued before the St. Louis Court of Appeals.¹²⁶
©2007-2025 Jim & Erica Parson
REFERENCES FOR THIS INSTALLMENT
¹¹⁸Mazzanovich, Anton. Killing of Judge McComas and Wife. Arizona Historical Review. Vol. 1. No. 3. October, 1928. Pages 74-79.
¹¹⁹New Southwest and Grant County Herald. April 15, 1882.
¹²⁰The Colorado Springs Daily Gazette, March 30, 1883, published a dispatch which had been received at San Francisco the previous day. The dispatch had been telegraphed from Lordsburg. The Sacramento Daily Union of March 30, 1883, published the same Lordsburg dispatch. The St. Louis Post Dispatch of March 30, 1883, although it contained several errors, stated that McComas was on his way to Lordsburg, and that the attack took place between the mining camp of Paschal and Lordsburg. The Post Dispatch had also received its information by telegraph. The Southwest Sentinel, March 31, 1883, refers to a letter written by Thomas S. Nickerson of Paschal, to John M. Wright (McComas’ law partner) of Silver City. The letter stated that McComas was on his way to Lordsburg.
¹²¹Silver City Enterprise. February 22, 1883.
¹²²The Albuquerque Review of April 5, 1883, stated that “Judge McComas had been sent for by a mining Company to go to Pyramid City in a professional capacity”. A letter written by Eugene F. Ware (Juniata McComas’ brother) which was published in the Fort Scott (Kansas) Daily Monitor on April 8, 1883, states that “Judge McComas received a telegram on Monday from Lordsburg.” [Simmons (1997). Page 220].
Note that neither of these two sources actually names the Pyramid Gold and Silver Mining and Reduction Company, the first referring only to “a mining Company.” In view of the fact that McComas was acting against Amos, T. A. Green and the Company in a suit initiated by James B. Price, it is plainly an impossibility that it would be this same Company which was in need of McComas’ professional services.
¹²³From the Colorado Springs Daily Gazette of March 30, 1883: “SAN FRANCISCO, March 29 – A Lordsburg dispatch says a messenger from Thompson canon, eighteen miles northeast, gives intelligence of the murder of Judge H. C. McComas of Silver City. McComas telegraphed yesterday from Silver City that himself, wife and child would arrive in this point last night.”
¹²⁴The Transcript Of Record for Case No. 177 shows that on August 9, 1883, Price’s Counsel filed for an appeal on Bristol’s ruling to the Territorial Supreme Court. On January 9, 1884, the case was dismissed at Price’s request, with no opinion having been written by the Supreme Court. Information courtesy of New Mexico Supreme Court Law Library.
¹²⁵In his business dealings James B. Price consistently associated himself with various members of both his immediate and extended family. We know for certain that John Ewing Price was one of his four sons from his first marriage, to Mary Murphy; it is probable that Daniel Murphy was related to her.
Orlando R. Smythe was related to James B. by marriage. Smythe’s wife was Mary Lawson, and the name Lawson appears frequently in the Price family genealogy. General Thomas Lawson Price was James B.’s cousin, and James’s second wife, Caroline V., was the widow of the General. Caroline V.’s maiden name was Long, and she was the sister of J. Ernest Long. Thus we can see that the mercantile firm of Smythe, Long and Price at Shakespeare was a family firm with direct links to the National Mail and Transportation Company.
¹²⁶Cases Argued And Determined In The St. Louis Court Of Appeals Of The State Of Missouri From December 18, 1877, To April 23, 1878. Vol. V. St. Louis: F. H. Thomas and Company (1879). Page 583.
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