History

On a moonlit night in the summer of 1965, Wayne Winters hoped he would see a ghost in the desert south of Tombstone. That day he had driven to a barren hill and set up camp near the crumbling ruin of an adobe cabin that Frederick Brunckow had built more than 100 years earlier.

Like others who have been both bemused and frustrated in attempts to separate Arizona's past from a variety of entertaining myths, Winters had heard that Brunckow's place was haunted. At the time, Winters was editor of the Tombstone Epitaph, and though hardly the sort of person to be taken in by reports of restless phantoms, he was not going to dismiss such stories without first checking them out himself. Which is why he climbed into his truck and headed some 7.5 miles south of Tombstone on the Charleston Road

MEN DIED AND THEIR SPIRITS

through a hilly landscape of high-desert scrub where long-eared jack-rabbits far out-number the hu-man population. He was going to visit what remained of the adobe house built by the youthful mining engineer around 1857. Brunckow and Milton Duffield, a former U.S. marshal, were among the first to die violently - though many years apart at the place that later was called Brunckow Mine (and sometimes "Bronco Mine"). As long ago as 1881, Patrick Hamilton visited the Brunckow site and wrote, in Prescott's Arizona Democrat: "The graves lie thick around the place. Prospectors and miners avoid the spot as they would the plague, and many of them will tell you that the unquiet spirits of the departed ones are wont to revisit the glimpses of the moon and wander about the scene which witnessed their untimely taking off."

By the time Hamilton wrote his article about "the dark and bloody history" of Brunckow's mine, 21 people had been killed there. (Seventeen of these deaths occurred prior to 1880, and no written record is available as to who the men were or how they met their end.) In retrospect, it seems odd that a series of such dark events would begin with someone as young and gregarious as Frederick Brunckow.

According to all accounts, Brunckow was a well-educated mining engineer who had left his native Germany when he was about 20 years old. In a brief autobiography written in 1859, he says without elaboration that, "Circumstances forced me to emigrate to the United States."

HAUNT THE BRUNCKOW CABIN

Charles D. Poston, one of the founders of the Sonora Mining and Exploring Co., (See Arizona Highways, August, '88) where Brunckow eventually was employed as a mining engineer, provided a little more information when he wrote Brunckow's eulogy: "Frederick Brunckow was born in Berlin, Prussia, about 1830, of Russian father and German mother. He received a classical education at the University of Westphalia... at Frieberg, Saxony. With the enthusiastic students of GermanPrussia, he engaged in the revolution of 1848 and upon failure of those aspirations emigrated to the United States in 1850."

Brunckow arrived in New York, made his way to the Mississippi River, and worked his way south as a deckhand on a steamboat. In 1856, when Poston contacted him, he was working near New Braunfels, Texas, earning $2.50 a week plus board making shingles. In his 1859 report to the stockholders of the mining company, Brunckow noted that he joined Poston's expedition in 1856 "to explore and open the mines of Arizona." He arrived in Tucson in August of that year. From Tucson, the miners headed south to what remained of the old community of Tubac. After apologizing for his imperfect English, Brunckow wrote: "We took possession of the deserted mining town Tubac and commenced to erect permanent quarters. Disease and malarias fever (sic) soon appeared among us, and without any medical aid, without any physician, 50 miles distant from the little town of Tucson, from where our provisions were brought by mules, surrounded by hostile Indian tribes, we suffered a great deal.."

According to Poston, Brunckow was well-liked, not only because he brought a great deal of expertise to the work at hand, but because he was an avid hunter, a good cook, and an amiable raconteur. The discovery and development of an ore body, however, appeared to be his main interest. By 1859, Poston says, Brunckow was developing his own mine about seven or eight miles south of what later would become the Tombstone Mining District.

But Brunckow never lived to see the silver boom that precipitated the settlement of Tombstone. When he started his mining operation just east of the San Pedro River, Brunckow enlisted two partners, James Williams, a machinist, and William M. Williams, who was general superintendent. A newspaper article from 1860 says the Williamses were cousins; a more recent article says they were

HAUNT THE BRUNCKOW CABIN

brothers. They employed John C. Moss, a former high-school chemistry teacher from St. Louis, as an assayer, as well as a German cook and several Mexican laborers.

Paula Mitchell Marks, in her book, And Die in the West, provides this account of what happened next: "In the summer of 1860, William Williams traveled to the Army's Fort Buchanan [a military post some 35 miles west of the mine] to get supplies and returned to discover the buildings which housed the men in ominous darkness.

"He entered one, groping for matches, and found instead a body lying in a pool of blood. Stumbling across a second body, he decided to go to the fort for aid.

"The detachment of soldiers that returned with him found James Williams, Moss, and Brunckow murdered, the last at the bottom of a mining shaft with a rock drill through his body.

‘THE SOLDIERS FOUND BRUNKOW MURDERED AT THE BOTTOM OF A MINING SHAFT WITH A ROCK DRILL THROUGH HIS BODY....’ "The Mexican laborers had killed the men, packed up everything of value they could find, and headed for the border with the unwilling cook in tow."

Thompson M. Turner, who wrote articles from Arizona Territory for the San Francisco Bulletin and the St. Louis Republican, published an account of the murders in the St. Louis newspaper on August 16, 1860. Turner also was a lawyer and acted as secretary during the formal inquiry that immediately followed the murders.

In his article, written on July 29, he said 11 laborers murdered the three men on Monday, July 23.

Turner reported that, "W.M. Williams returned to the mine on [the following] Thursday night, arriving there about twelve o'clock. Upon arriving at the houses, Mr. Williams was about to enter the storeroom when he discovered the dead body of his cousin within a few feet of the door. He tried to strike a light but had only two matches and could find no candles. After looking in vain for traces of the other parties, he resolved to return to the post and secure assistance." Williams returned with an escort of 21 soldiers.

"The bodies of all the murdered men were found much mutilated, however, by wolves and so changed by decomposition as to be recognized only by their clothing. All the bodies had been robbed. They were buried as decently as circumstances would admit," Turner wrote.

The murders sent a shock wave through the sparsely settled mining region in southern Arizona.

On August 7, people from throughout the area gathered in Tubac and adopted a resolution demanding that the governor of Sonora "extend all proper efforts to bring the murderers to justice and restore the stolen property."

Nine of the 11 men involved in the murders were captured in Mexico, Turner reported, and the governor of Sonora "promises they shall be shot upon conviction."

Fourteen years after the murder of Brunckow and his partners, more bloodshed was reported at the mine when Joseph Holmes and the one-time Marshal Milton Duffield got into a fight over ownership of the property. Duffield tried to evict Holmes.

As a result, Marks writes in her book, "Holmes responded by shooting him in the head, and the former law officer joined Brunckow in a burial site on the San Pedro."

Holmes surrendered to officials, claimed he shot Duffield in self-defense, and was sentenced to three years in the territorial prison after being convicted of manslaughter.

Duffield had been the first United States marshal of Arizona Territory. He was appointed by President Lincoln in 1863 and served until 1866. Six months after his appointment expired, he bought the Brunckow property.

Duffield's death, on June 5, 1874, evidently was not a cause for widespread mourning. An editorial in the Arizona Citizen eight days after the shooting said: "He [Duffield] very frequently marched through the streets like an insane person, threatening violence to all those who had offended him. It is claimed by some good men that he had redeeming qualities. Such may be the case, but we are free to confess that we could never find them. . . .

"But his stormy life has ended, and he has gone to that unknown land whence none return. May his ashes rest in peace, and may his Maker deal more kindly and gently with him than he was disposed to deal with his fellow men."

In the 1960s, when Nell Murbarger was doing research for her book, Ghosts of the Adobe Walls, she visited the Brunckow ruin and stopped to talk to a woman living about a quarter mile from the abandoned mine. The woman had heard all the stories about a succession of violent deaths on the property and, she said, sometimes at night "it seems I can hear them . . . ."

Murbarger waited, and the woman continued: "It seems to come from the sky. It's like the most beautiful music anyone ever heard. Like a heavenly chorus - high and thin, and miles away. Sometimes it sounds like white folks singing; other times, it's more like Apaches chanting. . . . When I tell folks about it . . . they say I've lived on the desert too long."

Tombstone Epitaph Editor Wayne Winters never encountered a ghost that summer night in 1965 when he camped near Brunckow's house, but when the dawn arrived, he found a rattlesnake had curled up alongside his bedroll. He later recalled, "Either the critter was looking for a warm spot or he, too, wanted an interview with the ghost of Brunckow or Marshal Duffield."