Tombstone and The Epitaph™

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Post-Clum: Many Names Make News

One needs a scorecard to log the names and faces that were attached to Tombstone’s newspapers after Clum’s departure. His immediate successor was Sam Purdy, a Yuma newspaperman and Democrat. Purdy apparently did not stay long in Tombstone, consigning day-to-day duties to Charles Reppy, a Clum associate, through 1883. The next editor was Harry Woods, a former Cochise County undersheriff, and a former editor of the Tombstone Nugget, which had been Clum’s chief rival. Once fire destroyed the Nugget’s plant, it ceased publication. Reppy, with partner W. D. Crowe, distanced themselves from the Epitaph, taking over the Tombstone Republican. The following year, in 1884, a merger ensued, producing the Daily Epitaph and Republican, with Reppy as editor. In 1885, another consolidation occurred, when the Cochise Record, under editor David F. Cooper, and the Daily Epitaph were combined into the Daily Record-Epitaph. During this period, Clum, who had returned to Tombstone as postmaster, worked for the Record-Epitaph. At the time, it was one of two Republican papers in Tombstone. The other, the Daily Tombstone, was decidedly anti-Clum. Editor J. J. Nash called derided Clum as an “imbecile,” an “egotistical ass” and a “sop” who’d been tossed from the party. Editorial jockeying continued in 1886, when Harry Brooks became editor of the Record-Epitaph, only to be followed nine months later by J. O. Dunbar, a political chameleon who had been one of the founders of the now-defunct Nugget. The Daily Tombstone kept at the heels of the Record-Epitaph until the end of 1886, when it closed down. Reppy reemerged to take the helm of the Epitaph, now free of its association with the old Record, and to pick up what was left of the old Daily Tombstone. By this time, the Epitaph had switched to weekly publication, a reflection of the depth of Tombstone’s troubles underground. Nash, not done yet, launched The Tombstone Prospector, as a daily with the struggling Epitaph square in its sights. Reppy left the paper in 1888. New partners brought it out – as a daily, Democratic paper. In a little over a year, however, George Meek and Joseph Madero, who had leased the paper, haplessly concluded “the town will not support a morning daily.” If silver boomed, the paper might go daily again. It did, briefly, in 1890.

Stanley Chipman Bagg: The Not-So-Gay '90s

In 1888, Stanley Chipman Bagg became sole owner of a year-old Tombstone paper, the Prospector.  This gave the town two papers, both of which wanted to receive what Bagg later called “the velvet of the business at the time” – the printing contract for Cochise County government. Both papers bid on the contract. And it was awarded to the Epitaph even though Bagg’s bid was much lower.  Denied the velvet, Bagg sued the county, only to lose the case before District Judge W. H. Barnes. Unwilling to let the matter rest, Bagg’s Prospector attacked the decision – a moved that landed Bagg back before Judge Barnes on a contempt charge. Bagg was given a choice – a $300 fine or 300 days in jail.  Confident that the public would rally behind him, Bagg chose jail. Attorneys sidestepped the case, figuring any association with Bagg would be the death knell if they had to appear in Barnes’ court on a future matter. And John Slaughter, the county sheriff, was specifically ordered to treat Bagg like in any other inmate, which meant Bagg couldn’t sleep in the sheriff’s office. The matter was finally settled when business owners paid the fine.

In 1891, Bagg solved the rivalry problem by purchasing the Epitaph. He returned to weekly status as a Sunday week-in-review publication. Having been the butt of Epitaph commentary, none of it too complimentary, bagging the Epitaph must have been sweet for the five-foot tall furniture store owner and son of the founder of the Detroit Tribune.

Having taken control of Tombstone’s incredibly shrinking media empire, Bagg turned his attention to other matters, including positions on various prison, immigration and press commissioners and associations. Like editors before and after him, Bagg extolled the wealth trapped below the surface at Tombstone. But by 1895, Bagg was forced to concede that Tombstone’s future simply was not as bright as the glint off a polished silver bar. Bagg sold his papers, his mining interests in Tombstone and moved to California.

William Hattich: Back Shop to Roll-Top

Bagg’s successor was William Hattich, who, at 9, arrived in Tombstone in 1881. He had known the likes of John Henry “Doc” Holliday, had hawked papers on street corners and darkened his hands as a printer’s devil in the town’s back shops. Having lived through the glory days, Hattich was an unabashed booster. When he took over the daily Prospector and weekly Epitaph, Hattich wrote, “Like the courage, perseverance and hope characteristic of the sturdy Arizona prospector in his diligent search for the precious metal, the new Prospector starts out with sharpened tools, new energy and honest and conscientious convictions to prospect on the highways of success.” Standing above the factionalism of a previous decade, Hattich said “Merchants, cattlemen, ranchers, miners and laborers…will find the Prospector a defender, well-wisher and ready and willing champion of their interests.” As booster, Hattich was on fire when E. B. Gage, former superintendent of the Grand Central Mine, returned to the city to disclose the founding of Tombstone Consolidated Mines Company, an outfit that would drain the Grand Central and Contention mines and pump up the local economy. In 1901, the Epitaph said “prosperity has superseded depression.” Two years later, it was equally ecstatic when the El Paso & Southwestern Railroad arrived. Slow as actual progress was underground, Hattich headlined stories such as “Glowing Prospect of Tombstone District,” “Encouraging Showing Below the Water Level,” “Rich Ore Body Encountered,” and “Future Looks Bright.” Even when the mining company was in trouble, Hattich used the fact that machinery was not being brought to the surface as evidence that “no abandonment is contemplated.” That was in 1911. Two years later, on the Prospector’s 25th anniversary, Hattich announced his retirement.

The Giragi Brothers: Birth of a Print Empire

The Giragi family picked up where Hattich left off. Having been in Congress, Metcalf and Pearce before settling in Tombstone, the Giragis had a fair taste for life throughout Arizona. Two sons of Frank and Sarah Giragi, Columbus and Carmel, became friends with Hattich. Columbus took the route of printer’s devil, while Carmel handled advertising errands. When Hattich retired, the young Giragis used their meager savings to acquire the Prospector and Epitaph. Wallace Clayton, a former Epitaph publisher, wrote in 1980 that Hattich essentially gave the papers away as a mark of his friendship with the Giragis – and his pessimism about Tombstone’s future. That future certainly was on the Giragis’s minds when they wrote, “We firmly believe that a reorganization of the mines will bring about prosperity as never witnessed before and confidently believe same is at hand.” People believe as they chose; in reality, the Giragis could not escape the continuing declines of Tombstone’s fortunes; in 1924, they stopped the daily Prospector. Tombstone now was down to one weekly, the Epitaph. Appearing on Fridays, the “county-wide weekly,” as the Giragis called it, would carry with it “more prestige, more confidence and more real advertising value than any other newspaper medium.” They held it until 1926, when it was sold to William Kelly. The Giragi’s newspapering did not end in Tombstone. They saw better prospects elsewhere, taking over papers in Winslow and Holbrook and, later, Flagstaff. Columbus Giragi was known for a pithy column, “Sparks from the Grindstone,” and personal qualities that seemed to fall somewhere between irascible and lovable. A former employee said he was “witty, cynical, caustic, profane, sarcastic, but generally good humored, and always at the finish line, wise and fair.”

William H. Kelly: Helldorado

William Kelly took over the foundering paper while a student at the University of Arizona and editor of the campus paper, The Wildcat. Kelly was the first to sense that Tombstone’s future might be found in a different corner of its past – in the town’s history and setting instead of its flooded and dormant mines. Several events seemed to coincide. Writer Walter Noble Burns was researching a book, Tombstone: An Iliad of the Southwest. With its attention to the Shootout at the O. K. Corral and other slices of southeast Arizona history – such as John Slaughter’s rearing of an Apache orphan, Apache May – Tombstone caught the eye of the national media. Consistent with a dramatic change in American culture in the 1920s – automobile tourism – Kelly sensed the ingredients were right for Tombstone to showcase itself in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the town’s founding. Helldorado, drawn from the title of a book by Billy Breakenridge, was the name given the annual event. The Epitaph and the city underwrote the cost of the event, which was both popular and profitable. It even drew Epitaph founder Clum, who quipped that he was “armed only with a fountain pen – sometimes the mightiest of weapons.” For its success in drawing attention to Tombstone’s place in the history of the Old West, Helldorado was not enough to keep Tombstone from losing its position as the government seat of Cochise County. Copper, not silver, was the metal in demand as the result of vastly expanded electrical production, transmission and use in the 1920s. With its copper mines supporting Bisbee, the economic, demographic and political centers of gravity had shifted south of Tombstone. In November 1929, Cochise County voters ended a long-running debate and decided that the county seat should be moved to Bisbee. Perhaps sensing that Tombstone could not be rebuilt any time soon, Kelly sold the Epitaph to Walter Cole, a Seattle newspaperman. Having purchased the paper for $5,000 from his father and having borrowed $4,000 for a new press, Kelly agreed to let Cole to acquire the paper by assuming the balance on the note. That done, Kelly returned to Tucson, received his Ph. D., and went on to become the first director of the University of Arizona’s Bureau of Ethnic Research, specializing in research on Indians of the Southwest.

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