NS “Boston” Graves died January 12, 1911, at the age of 88. He was “one of the earliest arrivals in this section of the Territory and also one of the most popularly known miners,” the Weekly Journal Miner explained. “He was more familiarly known as Boston.” He took ill with the flu (or grippe as it was called back then) late in 1910, having spent that year searching for “a ‘pothole’ that contained a vast amount of free gold.”
Graves was prospecting in central Arizona before there was really any white civilization—in what the Journal-Miner described as the “Indian days,” and he found some promising sites. He would lay claim to some of them, but didn’t try to develop them until 45 years later.
He was close friends with Joseph Ehle, with Graves building Ehle’s Prescott house in the mid-1860s on the corner of Montezuma and Willis streets. In 1909, Graves visited Ehle in that very house. “Mr. Graves also [took the opportunity to] give some interesting data concerning early Indian depredations in this immediate vicinity,” the Weekly Journal-Miner chronicled. “particularizing [one] expedition of over 45 men that went into the Bradshaw Mountains, and after losing [their] way were finally surrounded.” They were able to fight their way out of the Bradshaw Basin. "They returned to Prescott and were closely pursued by the [Natives] the entire distance they retreated.”
“During this expedition…he and two others made a mineral location on the rim of the basin, and later this ground was known as the Crown King and War Eagle mines. This was the first location made in the Bradshaw region, and the three men held the ground but a short time,” the paper said.
The first newspaper mention of Graves was in May of 1869. The Weekly Arizona Miner reported that he and a man named French “were putting the Eureka Mill in order.” They also intended to work ore from the Tie-Tie mine for CC Bean. The same issue revealed that Graves was a member of the Democratic convention from Lynx Creek that year.
That same newspaper noted that he sold a half interest in the President Grant Claim in early 1888.
The Arizona Sentinel of Yuma reported in April 1893 that Graves, along with M Hill, were “two of the energetic farmers near the boundary line.”
Graves spent years outside of Arizona, although it’s unclear precisely where. The Arizona Weekly Journal-Miner stated that Graves, “an old-time Arizonan, returned from the East recently” in March of 1886. The Weekly Journal-Miner stated that Graves “left this section at the close of the Indian War, and from that day to the present, [September 1909], has resided at Oroville, Cal., making a few trips to this city since leaving.”
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In 1910, he appeared at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s office looking for someone to take him back to his homestead in Yuma. “The old man [was] fairly well-dressed and looks, with his neat linen collar and black suit, somewhat worn and rusty, more like a superannuated minister of the gospel than a prospector,” the Arizona Republican described. “He is the owner of a homestead a few miles below Yuma. He was compelled to leave it three years ago on account of the [drought] but is anxious to get back there now since there will be plenty of water.”
Seemingly in an attempt to gain sympathy, Graves fibbed to the sheriff and the Republican, which reported that he had been in Arizona since the first year of Gov. McCormick’s administration (an untrue claim). He also said that he was an intimate friend of McCormick (which is doubtful). However, the sheriff’s office was legally unable to offer him conveyance.
Eventually, he made it back to Central Arizona to follow up on something he saw nearly a half-century earlier: the “pothole” that contained a vast amount of free gold. “The supposed treasure was along the Hassayampa, and was first discovered by himself and three companions in the [pioneer] days,” the Weekly Journal-Miner explained. “In an effort to get the treasure, all were killed except [Graves] himself.”
In 1910, along with A.L. Little, he located the Boston Pothole Placer claim in the Hassayampa district, but he never did locate his pothole full of free gold before he died. After some 45 years, it’s likely someone else happened upon it and took it without publicizing it.
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SOURCES:
Arizona Republican:
3/22/1910; Pg. 4, Col. 3.
Arizona Sentinel:
4/15/1893; Pg. 3, Col. 2.
Copper Era & Morenci_Leader:
1/27/1911; Pg. 4, Col. 3.
Weekly Arizona Journal-Miner:
3/31/1886; Pg. 3, Col. 1.
1/11/1888; Pg. 3, Col. 5.
Weekly Arizona Miner:
5/8/1869; Pg. 3, Cols. 2 & 3.
Weekly Journal-Miner:
9/15/1909; Pg. 7, Cols. 3 & 4.
1/19/1910; Pg. 5, Col. 6.
1/18/1911; Pg. 7, Col. 6.
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