Re: Della Gillespie Tovrea Stuart
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In reply to:
Re: Della Gillespie Tovrea Stuart
Janet Wasson 8/07/09
It all began in 1883, when 22-year-old Edward Ambrose Tovrea migrated to Arizona from his native Sparta, Illinois. Legend has it that E.A. or "Big Daddy," as he became known, arrived in Holbrook on a freight wagon.
The stout, big-boned young man moved to Bisbee, near the Mexican border, after a time. There, he opened a butcher shop and, in the 1890s, took the first steps toward becoming a cattle baron.
E.A. and his first wife, Lillian, had five sons together. The youngest, Philip Edward Tovrea--the legendary Big Phil--later assumed the role as family patriarch.
Divorced from Lillian, 45-year-old E.A. married Della Gillespie in 1906. She was only 18, but was feisty and could stand her ground.
The Tovrea cattle concerns flourished over the next two decades. By the late 1920s, Big Daddy began to turn control over to Big Phil. Big Daddy died in 1932 at the age of 70, just months after he and Della had moved into the recently completed Tovrea Castle. (Della, who did not have children, lived at the Castle until shortly before she died in January 1969, after two men beat and tortured her during a robbery. Both were caught.)
She slept on a cot in the kitchen, and heard them come in upstairs. She also carried a pistol with her to scare people off the property. She fired the pistol through the ceiling in the kitchen to try to scare them off, but it didn't. The hole is in the Tovrea castle ceiling today.
The timeline for her is as follows:
Della Tovrea Stuart nee Gillespie was born in Blanco County TX to a confectioner, James Steele Gillespie and his wife Irena Anderson. She was the youngest in the family and had two sisters and a brother, Austin.
Della (b. 08-Oct-1888)
Della (m. 18-Dec-1906) to Edward Ambrose Tovrea;
(b. 20-Mar-1861, Sparta, Randolph Co, Illinois);
(d. 07-Feb-32, Phoenix, Maricopa Co, AZ, of nephritis, myocarditis, cirrhosis of liver);
(obituary Phoenix Gazette p. 1, 08-Feb-32)
(buried, Greenwood Memory Lawn Cemetery, Phoenix, AZ 85009)
First wife of E.A. Tovrea, Lillian Isabella Willott
(b. 13-Aug-1865, CA);
(m. 02-Apr-1885, AZ - divorced)
(d. 2-Jan-1926, carcinoma of uterus, Avondale, AZ)
(buried, Greenwood Memory Lawn Cemetery, Phoenix, AZ 85009)
Della (m. 16-Nov-36) to William Plato Stuart;
Editor of the Prescott Evening Courier
(b. 18-Dec-1879)
(d. 26-Nov-1960)
(buried, Greenwood Memory Lawn Cemetery, Phoenix, AZ 85009)
Della (d. 17-Jan-1969)
(buried, Greenwood Memory Lawn Cemetery, Phoenix, AZ 85009)
She is buried in Section 34, there are only three headstones in this section, one reads Della Gillespie Tovrea Stuart 1888-1969, one reads TOVREA, Edward A. 1861-1932/Della 1888-1969, and the last reads STUART, Della 1888-1969/William P. 1879-1960