Riggs family papers

John Casey Riggs (1874-1943) was the eighth of ten children born to Brannick Riggs (1828-1907) and Mary Robbins Riggs (1838-1935), pioneer homesteaders from Texas who arrived in the Sulphur Springs Valley area of southeastern Arizona (Cochise County) in 1879. John Casey Riggs was born in Los Animas County, Colorado in 1874 and traveled by oxen and wagon with his family in 1877 to join other Riggs relatives in the Dos Cabezas gold mining district of Arizona with a herd of horses and about eight head of cattle. The Riggs family established themselves in the area as ranchers, bankers, and state and local politicians, as well as attorneys, teachers, miners and loggers in this part of southeastern Arizona where many of their offspring continue to live and work. They established the Riggs Cattle Company in 1904 and the Riggs Bank of Willcox, AZ in 1920. Family stories in the collection tell of the tragic deaths of Brannick Riggs’ brother John and his wife, Jane, in Bell County, Texas by Comanches in 1857, the final years of the Chiricahua Apache Wars and raids on neighboring homesteads, and the earthquake of 1887 that shook southern Arizona, to name a few.

John Casey Riggs graduated from Valparaiso University in Indiana in 1894 and obtained his law degree in 1906. He practiced law in Tombstone, Arizona until 1911. He then became general manager for the Riggs Cattle Company until 1917. He helped organize the Riggs Bank in 1920, and after it closed in 1933, he was elected to the Senate of the Eleventh State Legislature. He married Jeanette (Nettie) Mary Brauns of Upper Sandusky, Ohio in 1910, and together they built the John Riggs Ranch. They had four children, Paul William Riggs (1911-1990), John Stark Riggs (1912-1998), Ellerbe Brauns Riggs (1915-2007), and Jeanette Mary Riggs (1916-2004), who continued to marry and settle on ranches in the same area where their family has resided since 1879. The Riggs family celebrated their centennial in Arizona with a family reunion in 1979 in Willcox, AZ.