Arizona Ties

My Connection to Henry Clay Hooker and the Sierra Bonita Ranch

Henry Clay Hooker (1828-1907)

Henry Clay Hooker at the Sierra Bonita Ranch in his later years

Born in New Hampshire in 1828, Henry Clay Hooker (Jr.) started life as an entrepreneur at a young age. After first relocating to Hangtown (now known as Placerville) in California and working in the mercantile trade, by the 1860s he had moved West to the Arizona Territory and was engaged in supplying beef and other products to military posts and Indian agencies. He realized the need to expand and stabilize and to concentrate on the southeast corner of the Arizona Territory, where several forts and the new formed Chiricahua Apache Reservation were located.

In 1873, Hooker selected lush grassland near Fort Grant for his headquarters and named it Sierra Bonita for the stunning views of the nearby Pinaleño Mountains. His investment represented a turning point in the territorial livestock industry brought about by his concentration on purchasing the highest quality livestock of heavier weight and survivability. He introduced Hereford cattle to Arizona. He also reaped financial gains by breeding fine carriage horses and draft animals for the freighting trade. By 1878, the Sierra Bonita was a great ranch covering 620 square miles. With the mining boom at Tombstone, a new market opened up for higher quality beef. His wide ranging businesses were instrumental to the development of Willcox.

Progressive and flamboyant, he wore a suit even on the range and expected his family and guests to dress for dinner. At age seventy-eight, he was still taking an active role in scheduling roundups and looking after cattle sales. Henry Clay Hooker died in 1907. His descendant, Jesse Hooker Davis still operates the Sierra Bonita, Arizona's oldest continuously operated family ranch.

(Note: The preceding paragraphs were taken from Wikipedia and slightly modified)

The Connection - Diana Marie Rockwell

My paternal grandmother, Diana Marie (Rockwell) Ball, was born in Montour, Tama County, Iowa in 1882. At a very young age, she moved with her parents, George Harris Rockwell and Bessie M. (Swift) Rockwell to Willcox, Arizona. After moving to Arizona, Diana’s parents had two more children, Lillia and George Russell, who were born in 1885 in Willcox (making them fraternal twins). My great-grandfather, George Harris Rockwell, was a Horseman and Blacksmith and was the brother of Henry Clay Hooker’s wife, Elizabeth T. (Rockwell) Hooker. Elizabeth’s father was Peter King Rockwell, who introduced his daughter to Henry Clay Hooker while they were living in Placerville (Hangtown), CA. I suspect that my grandmother and her family actually lived on the Sierra Bonita Ranch until their move to California.

In 1901, Henry Clay Hooker wrote a letter to my grandmother Diana regarding a wedding gift of a horse. Diana and my grandfather, Grover Cleveland (Wright) Ball, were married in 1902. My father, Allen Louis Ball had gained possession of this letter after his mother's death and I recall looking at it many times when I was a young girl. Unfortunately, we believe the letter to be lost, although I recall the Sierra Bonita Ranch letterhead with Hooker’s signature and the general content.

For years, I have been fascinated with this story and on a whim in 1980 while in Arizona on business, I made a personal trek to find the Sierra Bonita. I was successful at finding the ranch, but at that time, I had no idea of its significance to Arizona and the cattle industry and that I may somehow be related to Henry Clay Hooker’s wife and children.

Several years ago, I purchased a book on Henry Clay Hooker written by Lynn R. Bailey, and learned of the Rockwell connection. This reignited my interest and in 2009, I joined ancestry.com and began my attempt to finally make the connection between Hooker's wife and my grandmother. At that time I was not able to find substantial evidence. However, I recently renewed my membership and have been able to fill in quite a few of the blank with regards to my paternal family, and happily, on January 4, 2016, I finally made that connection. Thanks to Census records and other reputable sources, I now know that Elizabeth T. (Tewksbury) (Rockwell) Hooker was my great-great aunt and that Henry Clay Hooker was my great-great uncle by marriage, which makes me a distant cousin of the current generation running the Sierra Bonita.

I am elated to finally close the chapter on the mystery surrounding the wedding gift letter that the Arizona Cattle Baron, Henry Clay Hooker, wrote to my grandmother all those years ago. To now realize that my grandmother probably lived and played on the Sierra Bonita Ranch as a young child and was personally acquainted with such an important figure in Arizona history is the stuff of legends. I now resonate with all of those ancestry.com commercials I've seen over the years where people have made similar connections. It really is exciting and satisfying to learn who your ancestors really were. I never knew my grandmother Diana, as she passed away several years before I was born, but thanks to the wonders of the Internet and ancestry.com, I now feel a much closer and more personal connection to her and my Hooker relatives.