Our New Governor

Our New Governor R. C. Stanford Takes Over Duties as Fifth Chief Executive of Baby State

IT WAS HOT trudging down the stage-road and the way was long. Tired feet in scuffed cowboy boots did not trod lightly on the rocky and torn byway where the rumbling frontier stages rolled twice daily. There was no pleasure in watching the team of six horses and the swaying and creaking stage go by, hesitating slightly to mutely question if the awkward youth cared to ride-or more exactly if he wished to ride and had the means. Ambition, restlessness and poverty, sent that tall and slender youth walking over the road from Jerome to Globe in 1898. Tired of working on the railroad between Prescott and Jerome and also dissatisfied with the work of a cowboy that he had known all his 19 years, Rawghlie Clement Stanford had shaken the dust of the Verde Valley from his jeans and started-like a Horatio Alger, Jr. hero to Globe and new worlds to conquer.

Because his dollars were few and hardearned, he walked to Globe. There he found employment as a mucker in the Old Dominion mine and cast the bedroll he carried over the mountains on a rough bunk and became one of the 'boys' in a drafty mining camp dormitory. The pay was mediocre, the work bad and the food course and plentiful. But mining soon lost its glamour and the ex-cowboy told a flock of 'white lies' and sailed to the Philippines as a soldier in the United States army.

Young Stanford did not tell all the truth when he enlisted to fight the Spanish enemy. He was too young for regular enlistment but the austre seriousness and sincerity of the rugged youth was the convincing element that led to his acceptance as a soldier. Before he sailed for the Islands in the Far East, Stanford reflected of the life he was putting behind and pondered, seriously, over what lay ahead. Always he looked back for the guidance of experience before plunging into the new job, and this time he recalled: Texas. In October of 1879 Stanford was born in Buffalo Gap, in Taylor County, Texas, the son of frontier parents, Mr. and Mrs. Monroe A. Stanford, who left their Texas home when Rawghlie was only two and trekked westward to the newer territory of Arizona. They traveled by covered wagon, with oxen pulling their wagon and all their possessions. In Arizona they settled in the Fort McDowell district.

Indians were plentiful around Fort McDowell. The Fort had been established to keep close touch on the redskins and young Stanford grew up with the children of the Indians that resided close to the Fort. No kiddy-cars for the youngsters in those days, but the boys had their scrawny ponies and they, with the assistance of old bucks who had done

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