Bookmark this page or copy and paste URL to Email message

Joseph Bean and Laura Tappan Collection1935-1949

NAU.MS.218 [manuscript]
NAU.PH.660 [photograph]

Biographical Note

Joseph Bean Tappan was born on March 3, 1858, and died on March 29, 1933. He was one of Arizona's early sheep men, starting in the sheep business in 1879, and becoming the first president of the Arizona Wool Grower's Association, which had its headquarters in Flagstaff. In 1898, he developed his own ranch 60 miles west of Congress Junction, Arizona, with a water supply from the Bill Williams Fork river. Around 1915, he lost rights to his ranch, which was called The Alamo, and which is now the Alamo State Park (AZ).

Joseph Bean Tappan's wife, Laura Gordon Fulton (1849-1933), was the granddaughter of Samuel and Ariana (Cole) Howard, prominent members of the Howard family of Baltimore, Maryland, and she illustrates an emerging sign of woman's independence. At the age of 37, she was allowed by her family to travel West to teach kindergarten. In 1886, she established the first kindergarten in the West at Flagstaff, Arizona. She made her home with her brother, Harry Fulton, who had established himself in the sheep business in Arizona in the early 1880's. Joseph Bean and Laura had a daughter, Edith, who was born in Flagstaff in 1891. Edith's first husband, Vincent Montgomery Devine, was killed in Paraguay, leaving Edith a widow at the age of 24 with three children. She then moved to Phoenix where she ran a cotton-citrus ranch successfully and remarried, but with tragic financial and emotional consequences.

Scope and Content Note

The Joseph Bean and Laura Tappan collection consists of correspondence, pictures, and other papers of Joseph Bean Tappan (1858-1933) of Flagstaff, Arizona, which relate to his activities as a sheep rancher and as mine developer in La Paz County, Arizona, to his battles over water rights, and to his family in Gilmanton, N.H. It also includes correspondence, pictures and other papers of Tappan's wife, Laura Fulton Tappan (1849-1933), which relate to her career as a kindergarten teacher at Flagstaff, Arizona, and to members of her family, the Fultons and Howards, in Baltimore, Maryland , and Zanesville, Ohio.

The collection includes Joseph Bean Tappan's own handwritten notes of early life in Arizona and various trips taken during 1879 and 1881 by wagon and on foot between Prescott, Ashfork, Black Tanks, and the Little Colorado, Cataract Canyon, and Hell's Canyon. The notes contain a detailed description of the area besides the relationships between the white man and Indians at this time. This collection also contains papers, letters, and pictures of Joseph Bean Tappan's background and family in Gilmanton, New Hampshire, including his mother's (Ursula Bean Tappan, 1815-1889) "Common Book" that dates from 1838, and contains the Bean-Tappan family genealogy, accompanied by essays and poetry representing the period.

Laura Fulton Tappan's letters, pictures, and clippings are also part of this collection. Her correspondence consists mainly of letters to her family in Baltimore, Maryland, and Zanesville, Ohio, where the Howard-Fulton family had homes. The Flagstaff, Arizona, pictures and clippings in her collection date from the late 1880's through 1900, and they portrait the J. B. Tappan and Harry Fulton homes, families, and friends.

Much of the collection deals with the life of Tappan's only child, Edith. Her life is described through clippings, photographs (some taken by Edith herself at the Alamo ranch at the age of 7 and 8), and letters. Her papers show her bountiful courage, which helped her overcome the hard times in her life. Among her papers is an allegory of a blue appaloosa Shetland pony that was sent to her from Kansas City, Missouri, to the Alamo ranch. The collection contains 22 photographs of, or, related to the pony, Nellie, which played an important role in Edith's Life.

A few letters and clippings of Sharlot Hall, a close friend of Edith Tappan Devine Thomason are included in the collection, as well as an oral history tape recorded on April 14, 1982, by Marguerite H. Kurtz, born in Flagstaff in 1890, who was Joseph Bean and Laura Tappan's niece. In it, she describes early reminiscences of Flagstaff

In April of 1985, Alice Loebel, donated a typewritten biography (photocopy) entitled My Childhood in Southern Arizona - 1914-1928, that was added to the collection. Mrs. Loebel, is a granddaughter of Joseph Bean Tappan's. Her book retells the story of the Tappan family in 47 typed pages. It also contains a copy of Mrs. Loebel's birth certificate, and a manuscript collection copy of her biography.

The photographs in the collection document the Bean, Tappan and Fulton families and homes of Gilmanton, New Hampshire, their ranches and ranchlife in Northern Arizona, their Flagstaff homes, views of Flagstaff businesses as well as portraits of the families and friends.

Organization

Restrictions

Restrictions

See curator for restrictions.

Copyright

It is the responsibility of the user to obtain permission to publish from the owner of the copyright (the institution, the creator of the record, the author or his/her transferees, heirs, legates, or literary executors). The user agrees to indemnify and hold harmless the Arizona Board of Regents for Northern Arizona University, its officers, employees, and agents from and against all claims made by any person asserting that he or she is an owner of copyright.

Related Material

Access Points

Administrative Information

Credit Line

Joseph Bean and Laura Tappan Collection, NAU.MS.218 and NAU.PH.680, Cline Library. Special Collections and Archives Dept.

Container List