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Chapter 8: The Lunt familyBosses also knew poverty, hardship and biasBy Carmen DuarteThe Arizona Daily Star
My relatives were among those who lined up before sunrise behind grower Heaton Lunt's wooden house to work in the onion and potato fields. ``They were there for that dollar a day,'' recalls Wilbur Lunt. Wilbur was born in 1929 on his father's ranch in Virden. ``My father was real liberal at hiring,'' he said. ``He hired a lot more people than he needed to because he understood their needs. He was having a hard time, too, but he knew poverty.'' Like most of the farm owners in the Upper Gila, the Lunts are Mormons - members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Mormons settled in the Gila River Valley in the late 1890s, two decades after my family had founded San Antonio, N.M.
Two years earlier, 21 Mormon families had purchased more than 800 acres from a group of Iowa businessmen for $50,000. The Iowa entrepreneurs had formed the Gila Ranch Co., and the company's president was Earnest W. Virden. The town, then known as Richmond, became Virden. To my family, it must have seemed unfair that the Mormons could just walk in, gain access to capital and take over the valley. But the Lunts' family history, which mirrored that of other Mormon settlers, is filled with some of the same hardships and discrimination as my family's. It is another tale of strong religious faith and survival. They, too, moved easily between the United States and Mexico. They have lived in both worlds for more than a century. As early as 1862, Congress passed an anti-bigamy law, directed at the Mormons. It was not initially enforced, and Mormon settlements prospered and multiplied, spreading across the mountain West. Settlers and the politicians they elected on the Western frontier began to resent the Mormons' economic and political power as it spread from Utah into Idaho, Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico.
Federal marshals and local sheriffs began enforcing the law. In a famous Arizona episode, David King Udall, grandfather of the late Rep. Morris K. Udall, was indicted for polygamy and perjury in 1885. Udall was imprisoned on the perjury charge for five months before being pardoned by President Grover Cleveland. The Arizona Weekly Journal in nearby Prescott praised his conviction and added: ``We hail with pleasure the dawn of the day when honest individual settlement of our productive valleys shall be protected by the law against the intrigues and grasping designs of the polygamist hordes of Mormonism, sent out from Utah to occupy, control and contaminate our beautiful territory.'' As such attacks increased and the church itself began reconsidering its blessing of plural marriages, hundreds of polygamous families fled to Mexico.
Henry's wife, Sarah, 29, who helped run the Lunt Hotel and Stage Stop in Cedar City, provided much of the muscle on the journey, even though she was pregnant and had four sons, 8, 6, 4 and 2, to care for on the trek. Later, Henry sent for a second wife and their five older children to help with the journey and the settlement in Mexico. Wilbur Lunt tells me the story on a hot, humid August afternoon in the kitchen of the home his father built in Duncan in 1948. I had stopped by in the morning to get a feel for the life of the patrones who employed my family. Wilbur talked for a while about farming, and then he began to tell me his family story. His wife, Marian, served us lunch as he talked on. Night fell, but Wilbur kept me mesmerized with his well-rehearsed saga. Wilbur's religion encourages the study of family genealogy and history. He first heard the tale from his father. He has researched details of it, and he tells it regularly. For this story, his recollections are supplemented by Henry Lunt's biography, researched by York Jones and written by Evelyn K. Jones: ``They traveled by wagon, crossing the Colorado River at Lee's Ferry. The travel took months, and years for some families. It took my grandfather two years to arrive because he stopped to make a living along the way,'' Wilbur begins. ``The trip was devastating, and it put my grandfather in poverty. He'd stop in towns, and other Mormon families supplied the Lunts with housing and land to farm so they could eat and earn a meager living.
``The family continued their journey on down to Deming, N.M., and crossed over into Palomas, Chihuahua, and on down to a Mormon colony called Colonia Díaz,'' says Wilbur. Mormon missionaries had begun preaching and establishing settlements in Mexico in 1874, and Colonia Díaz was founded in 1884. When the Lunt family arrived in Chihuahua a few days before Christmas 1889, according to Jones, their caravan included 51 people, 12 wagons, 26 horses, two mules, 19 head of cattle and a dozen chickens. In Chihuahua, they joined 477 other families in six Mormon colonies. In one of those colonies, Colonia Juarez, was a school with five teachers and 400 pupils. The Lunts celebrated Christmas and New Year's at Colonia Díaz and continued on to Colonia Pacheco, climbing into the forests of the Sierra Madre on dangerous trails. They arrived on Jan. 29, 1890, and settled among the loggers and cattle ranchers, 7,000 feet above sea level in a land of pine trees, canyons and mesas. ``My mother's father, William Wallace Haws, was the founder of Colonia Pacheco, and (my) grandfather, Henry Lunt, helped establish it with his families building log houses, a school and church. Orchards and gardens were also planted,'' says Wilbur. ``It was poverty situations because it was hard to make a livelihood. They had a small acreage of land cleared, and they near starved to death the first winter because the crops froze. Years also brought droughts, but my grandmother was a great innovator and she had cornmeal. Henry Lunt shared his last cornmeal with the starving people. ``One man came and offered a cow for cornmeal, but he wouldn't take the cow. He gave him half his cornmeal, not knowing what he was going to do for the next day,'' says Wilbur. The family prayed, and by nightfall received loads of flour from church members in Mesa, in the Arizona Territory.
In 1897, Sarah Lunt bought the Spencer Ranch in Corrales, about two miles south of Colonia Pacheco, and she and her sons left their log cabin for a frame house. Henry, who had developed cancer on his right cheek, remained in the log cabin with two wives, Ellen and Annie. Annie became nursemaid to Henry, washing his sore with warm water, treating it with carbolic acid and castor oil. Ellen and Henry had no children together, but Sarah left her young son, Owen, with Ellen, who loved him and schooled him. On the ranch in Corrales, Sarah and the older boys raised cattle and sheep. Sarah spun wool into yarn and knitted the family socks for the winter. They also began a cheese-making business. Each year the Mormons sent President Porfirio Díaz boxes of fruit and vegetables, including Sarah's cheese, in thanks for letting them live and practice their religion in Mexico. In 1899, Sarah and her boys were picking potatoes, which the boys took by wagon and sold at the San Pedro mines, when they spotted smoke. Their house was on fire.
The homeless family quickly built a shed onto the cheese house. Sarah cooked outdoors in a tepee, and the boys slept in the barn. Faced with disaster, Sarah enlisted her sons in an ambitious building project - a two-story brick house that would have room to put up travelers. Her sons worked at the lumber mill and brick kiln in return for building supplies. More than two years later, Sarah and the boys had completed a house with nine rooms, porches, hallways, a veranda, chimneys, fireplaces, closets and pantries. Sarah had planned room for Ellen, Annie and Henry, but Henry died of cancer in 1902. He left four wives and 26 children, who would eventually produce 179 grandchildren. Henry was buried in the cemetery at Colonia Pacheco. A year later, Ellen died and joined him there. Meanwhile, a railroad line was built to nearby Colonia Dublan, and railroad operators began advertising hunting trips in the Sierra Madre and stays at the ``Lunt Hotel.'' ``Sarah's hotel became known by travelers, and word spread. She took in famous people - senators and mayors from the United States - who came on hunting trips,'' says Wilbur. ``Older uncles organized hunting parties, and that's one way the family made a living. There was turkey, deer, antelope and bear in the high country. There also was fishing.'' The hunting expeditions became famous, attracting businessmen and politicians from across Mexico, and European visitors as well. It was not unusual to have a baron or a duke in the house. Sarah became the perfect hostess, costumed in a red dress trimmed with black velvet. She ran the hotel, the boys worked on nearby farms and the family prospered. She shared food with the children of widows and women whose husbands had returned to their other families back in the States. Sarah took in five children from three families, including a Mexican boy who witnessed his father's death during an Indian raid. She raised them as her own until they married. In 1910, political unrest surfaced against Díaz, who, during 35 years as president, welcomed foreign investors and established Mexico's credit, built railroads and drilled oil wells. But most Mexicans grew poorer and more disillusioned with their government as Díaz and top government officials grew richer. The cry for revolution was sounded Nov. 20, 1910. Francisco I. Madero headed the bloody rebellion. The rebels had no trouble finding support among the poor for a fair share of the wealth and a democratic government. Rebel bands captured much of northern Chihuahua, which had the only north-south railroad in the nation. The rebels seized Ciudad Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso. The Mormon colonies were in danger. Anti-American feeling was growing in Mexico, and the rebels were eyeing the colonias as a source of weapons, food and horses. The Lunts, in their mountain retreat, were initially untouched by the turmoil. In 1910, at age 22, Wilbur's father, Heaton, married Chloe Haws in a log cabin near the Lunt Hotel. The family continued farming but began hearing more and more reports of rebel raids on the colonias. In 1912, church leaders advised the women, children and elderly to leave.
The people were crammed into cattle cars and were not given water during the one-day trip. A bribe of guns and ammunition bought them safe passage. ``People from El Paso came in automobiles to pick up families,'' says Wilbur. ``For 90 percent of these people, it was their first ride in an automobile. They were taken to a location prepared by the government. It was an old lumberyard. Families occupied lumber cubicles. The government set up tent cities and helped care for the people,'' says Wilbur. Some families left immediately to join relatives or friends. The others lived in the tents for years, enduring the stares of passing townspeople, feeling like animals in cages. They barely survived. Jobs were scarce and El Paso was filling up with refugees - Mormons and Mexicans, fleeing the increasingly bloody war. Shortly after the women, children and elderly left, church leaders in Salt Lake City ordered the men to leave as well. The men gathered at Colonia Juarez and headed for Hachita, N.M., on horseback. ``During the trip, they rode horses and were shot at on a couple of occasions,'' says Wilbur. ``Men hid their weapons, and many did not have saddles. They threw a blanket over their workhorse. The cowboys helped the farmers survive. This was the rainy season, big cloudbursts. ``There were some devilish messes on this exodus because of the weather. After they arrived in Hachita, they boarded the train to go meet their families in El Paso's tent city. ``Men found themselves penniless and unable to find jobs. ``Some of them immediately went back to Mexico because the authorities didn't tell them, `Don't go back.' '' The Lunts remained in El Paso. Sarah moved the family out of the tent city into apartments and took in boarders.
Wilbur's father tried to find work using his team of horses and rode to Silver City, N.M., but he struck out. The days passed and the hunger worsened. Then Heaton heard about a group of men planning to go back into Chihuahua to bring out their cattle. He persuaded his brother-in-law Bill Haws to make the trip with them. ``Each man was responsible for finding his way back across the line and boarding the train. Heaton and Bill hid guns in their pants. The train they got on was loaded with federal soldiers - it was a troop train. The guns were biting them. ``When the train stopped, so folks could run to the bathroom - the bushes - `We ran to readjust that gun,' '' Wilbur's father told him, whenever he recounted the story. The men made it to Colonia Pacheco and rounded up their cattle. Rebels had taken over the Lunt Hotel and made it their headquarters. It would be burned and then dynamited within the year. It took the men 10 days to round up about 700 head - they did it quietly, hiding in the cane and corn fields from the rebels. On the eve of their dangerous gamble to drive the cattle past the rebels to the relative safety of a federal garrison at Mata Ortiz, Heaton and his 12 companions knelt around their campfire and prayed. Success would mean survival for their starving families across the border. The next morning, fog shrouded the mountains, making it difficult to drive cattle but also difficult for the rebels to follow. By the time the fog lifted, the cowboys were close enough to the federales that the rebels backed off. Heaton and the group continued moving the cattle to Casas Grandes, where the animals were shipped by train to El Paso.
Heaton found occasional work in El Paso. He used his team of horses to build streets. He worked on survey crews. But the jobs were not steady, and residents of El Paso tired of the refugees' presence. Heaton and Chloe briefly returned to Mexico, but they fled back to El Paso after a scary encounter with a rebel faction. Mexico was no longer safe, and things were tense on the U.S. side of the border. Pancho Villa and his troops seized Ciudad Juarez. Heaton crossed into Juarez one day and witnessed Villa's execution of his opponents. Wilbur said his father took him into Juarez one day in 1938, showed him the bullet holes and told him the story: ``The men were lined up and executed by the soldiers. Bullet holes sprayed the Catholic church's walls. The bodies were thrown on a wagon and hauled out of town and dumped into an old well. ``There were so many of them that the blood was running through the cracks of the wagon, down onto the running gears. It was just red, red with dripping blood. Several trips were made as the wagon shuttled bodies from the town to the well.'' Despite his bloody reputation, many of the poor supported Villa. But Villa became the principal villain of the revolution in the United States after he executed 16 U.S. citizens at Santa Isabel and then staged a raid on Columbus, N.M., on March 9, 1916. The United States sent the Army to pursue Villa into Mexico. The ``punitive expedition'' needed guides. ``There were five young men, my father was one of them, who volunteered to be a guide to take the army of men into Mexico,'' says Wilbur Lunt. ``My dad and (Gen. John J.) Pershing were on the trail of Villa for the most part. ``Gen. George S. Patton was a lieutenant at the time. He became great friends with my dad. He used to like to camp with him and exchange stories. ``Of course, at that time, my father had no idea in the world that Patton would become the most famous general of all times.'' Patton gave Heaton's brother, Edgerton, a pearl-handled six-shooter after Edgerton risked his life in a shootout between rebels and U.S. soldiers at the Rubio Ranch in San Miguelito. It is reported that Patton told Edgerton: ``Any son of a bitch that would stand between two lines of fire, like you did, needs a gun.'' Pancho Villa was never captured by the U.S. troops. But the mission ended the cross-border raids. The troops were withdrawn. They were needed for World War I. Heaton returned to his family in El Paso on Feb. 5, 1917. He went to work for a survey crew along the Rio Grande and when that job ended, he traveled to Virden, where his brothers, Ed and Broughton, had bought land. Heaton joined in the venture and purchased 20 acres. The family packed its possessions, shipping some by train. Chloe was pregnant with their third child, so she also traveled by train. It was a one-day trip on the iron horse. Heaton and their son, Virl, 5, made the six-day, 200-mile journey by wagon. They stayed with Ed and his family. Chloe gave birth to a boy that April. Two weeks later, Heaton moved Chloe and the boys to their first home, a one-room adobe structure with a tent for a roof. Five of the eight Lunt brothers eventually purchased farms in the Gila River valley near Duncan. Sarah Lunt, fearless as ever, moved back to Mexico in the summer of 1918, settling at the ranch in Corrales with two of her eight sons. She died on Dec. 27, 1921, at age 63, and was buried in her adopted country alongside her husband, Henry, and his first wife, Ellen. In Virden, the Lunt brothers' families multiplied and the area became known as ``Luntville.'' Heaton sold his original 20 acres in Virden for more land in Duncan - nearly 100 acres. As he had in Chihuahua, he hired Mexicans to work alongside him and his sons. Over the decades, Heaton and Chloe prospered and purchased several hundred acres. The Lunt families eventually bought about 1,300 acres - just about all the land on the Arizona stretch of the Gila River, to Duncan proper. Today, the Lunts also run a dairy, which was established by Heaton's brother, George. Since the 1950s, it has been operated by Broughton's sons and grandsons. Wilbur Lunt, 70, continues to farm along the Gila. He is in the fields most days when the sun comes up, and he works until it goes down. Unless, of course, someone should happen by and ask him to tell his family's story.
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Ch. 1: Field of death
Ch. 18: The New Deal
Ch. 24: Cotton pickers and copper miners Ch. 27: The family doubles its size
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``Colonia Pacheco numbered 1,000 people. The exodus back to the U.S. numbered into the thousands from a number of colonias,'' says Wilbur.
