Abraham Henson “Arizona Charlie” Meadows (1860 - 1932)
Abraham Meadows was born near what is now Visalia, California, the sixth child of Margaret and John Moberly Meadows. In 1863, some northern sympathizers destroyed the printing presses in town and John Meadows changed his son’s name to Charlie as a protest against Abraham Lincoln and ‘his shameful war.’ Charlie Meadows learned to ride and rope at an early age.1)
In 1877, the Meadows family, except for three married daughters, moved to the Tonto Basin in Arizona, about eighty miles from Prescott. In 1882, conflict between Apaches and the United States Army caused the death of some settlers, including Charlie’s father John Meadows and his brother Henry.2) Charlie travelled around Arizona working as a cowboy. In the early 1890s he was in travelling “wild west” shows including Buffalo Bill’s and then he started his own show called Arizona Charlie’s Wild West Show.3)
In 1897, when Charlie heard about the Klondike gold strike he organized a party of twelve, including his second wife, Mae. They left San Francisco on the steamer Coos Bay bound for Juneau, Alaska. Their goods were transferred to the steamer Queen for the trip up the Lynn Canal, and after one night in Skagway the outfit was landed at Dyea. His Arizona Company suffered a long delay there due to the stampede chaos.4)
Within four months of his arrival in Dawson in 1898, Charlie had published a souvenir newspaper.5) He canvassed miners on the creeks and charged them a fee to publish a brief sketch of their operations. He made thousands on this enterprise.6) He began building the Palace Grand Theatre during the summer of 1898 using lumber from two beached sternwheelers. The Palace Grand opened in July 1899.7)
Meadows sold his theatre in 1901 and moved to the southwest United States. He gathered a group of armed companions and they set sail for Tiburon Island off the coast of Mexico in search of lost treasure. There was little adventure, and no treasure, and an attempt to buy the island from Mexico failed. Meadows then settled on a cattle ranch in Yuma, Arizona where he gained a reputation as being bitter and cantankerous. He was tried on numerous accounts of armed assault and tax evasion. In 1906, he started publishing issues of the Valley Hornet to verbally attack anyone who annoyed him. He was sued several times for slander even though he started using the pseudonym I. Sting. He predicted that it would snow at his death, and it did – the first snow storm that Yuma had seen in fifty years.8)