Everett E. Ellinwood papers

Everett E. Ellinwood

Everett E. Ellinwood was born July 22, 1862, in Rock Creek, Ohio. He attended Knox College from 1882-1885 and took the law course at the University of Michigan shortly after. He was admitted to the bar of Illinois in 1889 and moved to Flagstaff the following year, where he engaged in private practice for three years. In 1893, President Cleveland appointed Ellinwood to the US District Attorney for the Arizona Territory, a position Ellinwood retained until 1898.

During his tenure as District Attorney, Ellinwood located both his home and office in Tucson. Following his return to private practice, Ellinwood successively had offices in Flagstaff, Tucson, Prescott, Bisbee, and Phoenix. In 1905, the law firm of Hawkins, Ellinwood, and Ross was formed in Prescott by John J. Hawkins, John Mason Ross, and Ellinwood. The following year Ellinwood assumed duties as general attorney for the Phelps Dodge industrial and mercantile interests in Arizona and New Mexico, which included the Copper Queen Consolidated Mining Corporation and Store.

Ellinwood left the firm in 1907 to move to Bisbee and was joined there by Ross in 1910. It was then that the firm of Ellinwood and Ross was formed. A previous firm, Hearring, Sorin, and Ellinwood reached it dissolution in January 1909, however Ellinwood remained in close contact with all of his former law partners. Ellinwood and Ross continued on in Bisbee until 1929 when the main office was moved to Phoenix. A branch office continued in Bisbee until 1935. Other prominent clients included the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad Company, the Model Gold Mining Company, W. H. Taggart Mercantile Company, Babbitt Brothers Mercantile Company, and the Arizona Lumber and Timber Company.

Ellinwood considered himself a conservative Democrat and his influence in the political concerns of pre-statehood Arizona are not inconsiderable. He was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1892 and was chairman of the Democratic Territorial Committee in 1900-1902 and 1904-1906. He was a significant force in the writing of the state constitution at the Constitutional Convention in 1910 but declined to sign the final document due to its allowing for the recall of the judiciary. In 1926, Ellinwood was an unsuccessful candidate for governor.

Additionally, he served as president of the Phoenix National Bank and the Phoenix Savings Bank and Trust Company. From 1897 to 1911, he was Arizona Commissioner for the promotion of uniform laws in the United States. He also served two terms on the University of Arizona's Board of Regents. His son Ralph E. Ellinwood eventually was a partner with William R. Mathews int he purchase of the Arizona Daily Star from Phelps Dodge in 1923 and acted as its editor until his death at the age of 37 in 1930. E. E. Ellinwood died of a chronic heart ailment in his Tucson home on August 8, 1943.

John Mason Ross

John Mason Ross was born in Davis County, Indiana in 1874. He graduated from Stanford University in 1897 and engaged in private practice in California for three years until relocating in Prescott. There, Ross associated himself with John J. Hawkins, following which Ross became a partner in Norris, Ross, and Smith. In 1905, Hawkins, Ellinwood, and Ross formed in Prescott. When Ellinwood accepted the duties of general counsel to Phelps Dodge, he left and the firm moved to Bisbee. The task as counsel to Phelps Dodge was a complex one and in July 1910, Ross joined Ellinwood in Bisbee and in partnership. Ross followed Ellinwood from Bisbee to Phoenix in 1929 and remained there until Ellinwood's death in 1943. J. M. Ross died of a heart attack in Laguna Beach, California, on August 2, 1944.