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HolsumAZ.com > About Us > History

Preface

This story begins in the mid-1800's with the Gadsden Purchase, one of the most-curious real estate deals in which Uncle Sam has ever taken part.

James Gadsden (1788-1858) soldiered for several years under General Andrew Jackson. Gadsden was later appointed by President Monroe as the commissioner in charge of placing the Seminole Indians on reservations. While living as a painter in Florida, he championed nullification and lost the patronage of President Jackson. He had long been interested in promoting railroads and it was his pet dream to knit all Southern railroads into one system and then to connect it with a Southern transcontinental railroad to the Pacific, to make the West commercially dependent on the South instead of the North.

When Gadsden learned that the most direct and practicable route for the Southern railroad would be south of where the United State's boundary with Mexico was, he made plans to have the Federal Government acquire title to the necessary territory from Mexico. Through his friend Jefferson Davis, who was Secretary of War at the time, he got himself appointed U. S. Minister to Mexico by President Franklin Pierce with instructions of his own design to buy from Mexico enough territory for a railroad to the Gulf of California.

By the treaty of Guadalupe-Hildalgo, signed February 2, 1848, at the close of the Mexican War, the Republic of Mexico was compelled to abandon its claim to Texas and to cede to the United States the territory we know as New Mexico, Arizona, California, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada, amounting to almost 200,000 square miles or two-fifths of Mexico's territory. In return, the U.S. paid Mexico $15,000,000 and assumed the responsibility for paying $3 million in claims of American citizens against the Mexican government.

The territory desired by Gadsden was sort of a no-man's land, experiencing frequent Indian raids. The United States wanted to make certain 'boundary adjustments' with Mexico and--since Mexico needed money and also wanted a settlement of its Indian claims against the United States--Gadsden in 1852 paid Santa Anna $10 million for a strip of territory south of the Gila River and lying in what is now southwestern New Mexico and southern Arizona. This Gadsden Purchase comprised an area of 45,535 square miles or nearly 30 million acres. Thus became the Territory of Arizona.

Continuing our story, in chronological order, the next 'event' occurred on May 2, 1856 when a son was born into the Paul Eisele family in Saulgau, Bavaria, Germany and was given the name Edward. Little did Edward know what was awaiting him in a few years on a different continent!

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