Edgefield advertiser. [volume] (Edgefield, S.C.) 1836-current, 1899-07-26
GREATEST OF F0RGERs.
A CONFIDENCE GAME LASTING A
QUARTER OF A CENTURY.

AudacIous Swindler-Eooied Lawyers.
James Addison Reavis, the king OF
forgers, the most ingenious and auda-
cious swindler ever known in the
United States, who played brilliant
game with u, 500, 600 acres of land as
the stake and lost, who fooled the
ablest lawyers and the sharpest fnan-
ciers in the country, more recently
known as convict No. 946 in the Now
Mexican penitentiary, has lately been
released from confinement, writes w.
E. Curtis to the Chicago Record from
Santa Fe, New Mexico. He served
the term of two years for which he
was sentenced for forgery, less his
good behavior allowance, and has
gone to Denver, where his handsome
Mexican wife has been living-the
daughter of an ordinary Arizona
ranchero-who appeared in her hus-
bands schemes as ''Her Exellentlssl-
mo Dona Sofia Loreto Miceala de Per-
alta Reavis, nee Maso y Silva de Per-
alta de la Cordoba, etc., etc. Her
real name was Sofa Maso, and she
was born in 1852 on ranch near the
San Bernardino mountains. Her
mother was common Mexican wom-
an who could not read or write and
her. father was quite as ignorant. Yet
upon her beauty and natural accom-
plishments Reavis built up romance
that brought him more than half q
million dollars, but failed to carry
through the most audacious conspiracy
j that has been conceived during the
present generation at least.
He worked at it with extraordinary
patience and skill for more than 25
years. He not only forged royal
grant bearing the signature of the
king of Spain and his ministers, but
also series of wills, large bunch of
deeds, records of probate and other
legal proceedings, baptismal and mar
rage certificates, and, what was much
more difficult and daring, he invented
long line of distinguished ancestors
for his peon wife, connected them by
ties of kinship with the royal house
of Spain, secured a full set of their
portraits, both in oil and on ivory
miniatures, wrote their biographies,
supplied from his own brain CORE
spondence that had passed between
them and distinguished personages of
their time, and surrounded them with
such complete and perfect evidence of
existence that men like Roscoe Conk-
ling, ex-senator Edmunds, Thomas F.
Bayard, Robert G. Ingersoll, Bourk
Cochran and others were completely
humbugged and accepted his fiction for
facts.
John w. Mackay, G. P. Hunting
ton, the late Leland Stanford, Charles
Crocker and other famous fnanciers
furnished him money to carry on his
crime, the cabinet ministers of Spain
and Mexico gave him their sanction
and assistance, and even -prelates of
the Catholic church bore testimony to
the honesty and responsibility of the
swindler and his bogus wife. In all the
annals of crime there cannot be found
a more complete and comprehensive
conspiracy, and it cost the govern
ment of the United States nearly
$3.50, 900 and several years of labor by
the department of justice to expose
the fraud and send Reavis to prison
for two years.
Reavis was the son of farmer in
Henry county, Missouri, who went
into the Confederate army during the
civil war and thereafter led life of
adventure for several years in North,
Central aud South America He was
o sailor and soldier, q clerk aid
bookkeeper, street car conductor, an
insurance agent, drummer, and,
finally, real estate agent in ST.,
Louis. There lie made the acquaint-
ance of man named Willing, who
hired him to investigate the genuine
ness of on old Spanish grant for
small + iece of property in Arizona. In
this inquiry Reayis learned the meth
ods and the laws of the old Spanish
occupation, and his experience with
the Willing claim seems to have sug-
gested the idea of getting up one for
himself, which he did on the most
magnificent scale.
After. ten or twelve years of the
most ingenious and industrious labor
he asked Congress to confirm 20 his
wife the title to tract of land i'll New
Mexico and Arizona nearly twice as
large as the state of Massachusetts,,
about 40 miles wide and 800 miles
long, aud containing a population of
80, 900 or 40, 900. The Santa Fe Rail
road company recognized the justice
of the claim before it WAS acted upon
by Congress, and paid him S55, 900
for right of way across his wife's
property. The Southern Pacific COM
pauy not only paid greater amount
for right of way, but its chief own
ers are said to have furnished Reavis
from time to time not less thar $780,,
600 to pay the expenses of proving
his title.
Several committees of Congress re-
ported favorably on the claim, and if
it had not been for the persistence
with which some of the settlers fought.
it, the title might have been coh-.
tirmed by. a legislative act. Reayis,.
who spent q good deal of time in
Washington those days and lived with
ostentatious elegance at the Arlington
hotel, had the nerve to consent to al
investigation by the United States
court of claims, which was never fin
ished. In the midst of the proceed
ings the claimant was tried and con-
victed Of forgery, and the great struc-
ture he had spent so much time and
skill in building collapsed like house
of cards. His distinguished attorneys
withdrew from the case, his financial
hackers repudiated him and bill of
$4,000 for board ut the Hoffman
House, New York, remains unpaid.
There is story that Reavis has