Sylvester Mowry

Sylvester Mowry
An 1864 drawing of Sylvester Mowry by John R. Browne.
Born	January 17, 1833 Providence, Rhode Island
Died	October 17, 1871 (48) London, England
Allegiance	United States
Service/branch	United States Army
Years of service	1852 - 1858
Rank	First Lieutenant
Unit	3rd Artillery Regiment
Battles/wars	Apache Wars Mowry Massacres
Other work	Miner, Pioneer, Author, Politician

Apache Wars

Sylvester Mowry (October 1830 - October 15, 1871) was an American best known as a pioneer and the founder of Mowry, Arizona. He also served as an officer in the United States Army and was arrested as a traitor during the American Civil War.

Born in 1830 at Providence, Rhode Island, Sylvester Mowry attended West Point in 1848 until graduating in 1852 as a lieutenant. Well educated, he spoke Latin and later became the author of the 1863 book The geography and resources of Arizona and Sonora. After West Point, Mowry went west and explored with the army for the Pacific Railroad until 1854. In 1856, Mowry was elected to be a delegate in the 35th Congress for the creation of Arizona Territory but because the bill did not pass, Mowry never took his seat. From then until 1857, Sylvester was stationed at Benicia, California and Fort Yuma. During his military career, Mowry became enemies with another officer named James H. Carleton, who later arrested him during the Civil War. Mowry served at Old Fort Buchanan before resigning his commission on July 31, 1858. He then went and lived in Tubac where on July 8, 1859 he fought a duel with Edward E. Cross who was an editor for the Weekly Arizonian and had written questionable things about Tucson and Mowry's mining operations. Both of the men were armed with rifles and they dueled on one of Tubac's streets. Four shots were fired but Cross disarmed himself sometime during the exchange and Mowry refused to continue shooting at an unarmed man. So the duel ended without bloodshed and the two apologized to each other. Cross was killed at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863.