Arizona republican., 1900-09-10
TO STEAL A KINGDOM
Story Of RaaVis and the Per.
 alta Claim
Greatest Land Swindle Ever Attempt ed and Its Squalid Ending-An- cient Pedigree of the Barony of Arizona.

-A A-NAif tliiAA' Si dN A+-NAa SN' ''tN 1'ap who lives in lonely. squaiid ,..bin home on the outskirts of Alhu- querque, N. M. where he earns pit tance by looking after bunch of horses along the Rio tirande. has been the boldest most remarkable impoSter the United Statos has ever known. Senator Teller Of Colorado said re- gently that this poor. broken. prema- turely old man has been the most e;l- traordinary rorger of modern times, and Robert G. Ingersol wrote a few years ago that this same man was the most remarkable legal fabricator le had ever heard Of.
 'Ie is James Addison Reavis. or as the people in this region used to know him. Prince Rsavis. Through eighteen years of persistent scheming. ceaseless activity and never hagging persever- ance, he built up a fraudulent title to over 13.400,000 acres of the most val uable strips of Arizona and New Mex ico. A dozen or the leading lawyers Of America believed his claims to be unassailable, and for a time it seemad as if he would soon be vested with the rights to the property he claimed. The average career in forgery is limited to the utterance of dozen or possibly a score of checks, drafts or negotia ble notes. But here was a man who forged long deeds in Spanish, inserted fabr.- cated documents in ancient and guard ed public records. invented royal Span ish cedulas, manufactured wills a cen tury and more old, fabricated detailed probate proceedings during the eigh- teenth century, altered the AlcaIde'S records at Guadalaiara. Mexico. and the old cathedral records, now kept at Madrid, Spain. He got up old and beautifully colored dOc-mants onEarcA- ment, showing the births and baptis nal records of thirty-three ancestors, and altered archives a the City of Mexico as corrOborative evidence. He created out of his own imagination a line of aristocratic. holy and rich an cestors from Seville Spain, in 1704, to Monterey, Mexico, in 1856. He gave each ancestor an individuality and had d lot of traditions concerning each an cestor. In this he exhibited as much art as a novelist does in conceiving q book full of characters. And he did all this so ingeniously and he worked out the plot so finely that lawyers of na- tional reputation believed his chain ct - tutHNt was lid WEISS
 Reavis was no common imposter. n1 everyday schemer. He laid claim by inheritance to a strip fifty-seven miles wide. reaching from a north and south line near Phoenix, Ariz., eastward over cl6 miles tp Silver City. N. NJ. Rough ly estimated, the property is worth about ninety-fve million dollars. It comprises double the area of land that there is in Connecticut. Massachu- setts, Rhode Island and Delaware put together, and a tract greater than one-half of the state of New York. It comprises a score If copper mines and smelters. thousands Of settlers homes and ranches, a half dozen railroads, vast irrigation systems. several Indian reservations, many cattle and sheep ranges. few military forts. mountain ranges. forests of pine, alfalfa farms, five towns of over 4,OOO population. and eleven towns of over 2.50O people, be- sides lot os mining and cattle camps. The possibilities of American citizen ship are very great" said President Cleveland once. Here was a man who lad peddied with hack on his ba ci< among the Missouri farmers, and had once beat his way on the cars to San Francisco, with an almost confirmed title to a nearly loo million dollar es- tate.
 The evidence Of the impostor's title 10 this domain was 30 strong that more than $4OOOO was advanced to him from widely known lawyers and busi- ness men throughout the country for the collection of still more evidence and for the prosecu,ion of his pretend ed rights. When he vas brought to trial in the United States criminal court in Santa Fe his private account books showed that he had deceived such men as Robert C. Ingersoll and Roscoe Conkling of New York, Emery Storrs of Chicago. Richard Kerens of St. Louis and Senator stephen B. Elk ins of West Virginia. to the extent that they had each advanced $2,000, S5.000 and more several times. and had bought stocks in the Peralta company, which was to manage the vast prop erty when the title was finally con- firmed. The Southern Pacific Railway company's attorneys looked into Req vis's claim to a good slice of Arizona and New Mexico. and they gave him S50.000 for a perpetual right of way through his alleged grant. The Silver Mining company uf New Mexico gave
 
 ed claim on their prouerJy. The Elm pire Copper company's attorneys came out from New York to Phoenix to ex- anime into the Reavis claim on their mines and gave him s27.00O for re- lease.
 Those were John Addison Reaviss s prosperous days. His wife testified at his trial for fraud an1 forgery that from 1887 until 1899 ,hc Reavis family spent over $6O,OO0 annually from sums collected on her husbands claims to the Barony Of Arizona. The family lived at the Windsor hotel in New York city for months at a time. They travelled to Europe and lived in fine style in Paris and Madrid. They had q retinue of servants and kept splen- did equipages. In Madrid, Reavis en- tertained the American gation at law ish dinners that aye sill the talk of the city. h Guadalajara, Mexico. where Reavis took his family and servants in private car. when he went to fiE