Tombstone’s Cemetery: Boothill

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Early on the morning of February 22, 1884, 50 armed men rode up to the Tombstone jail and took the prisoner Heath from Sheriff Ward. Half an hour later the lynch mob departed, leaving Heath dangling from a telegraph pole on Second Street. The other five were left in jail to let the law take its course. The five of them have one common epitaph that states they were legally hanged March 8, 1884. Heath’s epitaph relates that he was taken from the county jail and lynched by a Bisbee mob.

In 1886 a Mexico-Arizona train was held up a short distance out of Nogales. The bandits shot the train crew. Two of the outlaws, Manuel Robles and Neves Deron, decided to hide out at the camp of Manuel’s brother Guadalupe Robles. An honest, hard-working woodcutter, Guadalupe had his camp in French Joe Canyon in the Whetstone Mountains. Reluctantly, he agreed to hide the two until they could leave the country.

Cochise County Sheriff John Slaughter was a man who received a great deal of information, and it was not long until he knew where the two he sought had gone into hiding. Slaughter, Burt Alvord and one other deputy raided the hide-out one morning at daybreak. In the uncertain light, the lawmen shot at anything that moved. Consequently, when Guadalupe Robles and Deron ran out of the camp toward him, Slaughter shot them both. Manuel Robles was seriously wounded by Alvord’s shots, but still managed to get to a horse and escape. His innocent brother, Guadalupe, was planted in Boothill along with Deron.

One Boothill headstone and epitaph is a little different. It is the grave site of a former slave who outlived most of the good, the bad, the ugly and any others who happened along the streets of Tombstone. The old black man was Sheriff John Slaughter’s servant, and his epitaph reads: ‘JOHN SWAIN (SLAUGHTER) BORN JUNE 1846, FORMER SLAVE WHO CAME TO TOMBSTONE 1879, DIED FEB. 8,1946. ERECTED BY THE PERSONNEL AT FORT HUACHUCA AND FRIENDS OF TOMBSTONE IN MEMORY OF A WORTHY PIONEER.’

China Mary was the wife of Ah Lum, co-owner of the Can-Can Restaurant with Quong Keel Ah Lum was also the ‘Worshipful Master of the Chinese Masonic Lodge.’ China Mary was the absolute ruler of ‘Hoptown’ and all its denizens. She not only ruled them but also virtually owned them body and soul. Her word and her decisions were undisputed law, and none disobeyed. It was extremely unusual for a woman, any woman, to occupy such a position in the American West.

No Chinese could be hired except through China Mary; none could be paid: except through China Mary. She also controlled Chinese prostitution and all the opium trade in town. She owned an interest in most Chinese businesses in Tombstone, too.

In spite of all her shady operations and the fact that she was Chinese, Mary was respected and well-liked in Tombstone. She would lend money to anyone who impressed her as honest and hard-working. No sick, injured or hungry person was ever turned from her door. She once took a cowboy with a broken leg to the Grand Central Boarding House and paid the bill until he recovered. At her death, a large number of people attended her burial in the Chinese section of Boothill. Her funeral had all the pomp and ceremony of a lavish Chinese extravaganza.

Three legendary characters of Tombstone who avoided spending eternity in Boothill were Doc Holliday, John Slaughter and Wyatt Earp. Holliday, probably Tombstone’s most cold-nerved gunman, died of tuberculosis in Glenwood Springs, Colo., six years after the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. As he lay dying, he said, ‘This is funny.’ Likely he meant it was funny for him to die peacefully in bed rather than in the midst of roaring guns.

Slaughter also died peacefully in bed. He had served four years, 1886-1890, as sheriff of Cochise County. During that time very little was spent on prisoners because Slaughter very seldom brought any back. Mostly, he left them lying where he found them. His quick gun turned the county from a haven for two bit outlaws to a place of law and order. Just before he died in Douglas, Ariz., in 1927, Slaughter said: ‘Don’t bury me in Boothill. I don’t want to be buried there because Tombstone will be a ghost town.’ His wish was granted, and he lies in the Douglas cemetery.

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