Submitted by Elizabeth Burns, Aug 2002

John Gleeson
Arizona, The Youngest State, 1913, pg 283

John Gleeson, one of the founders of the town of Gleeson, has been identified with the mining interests of Arizona for more than a quarter of a century and is one of the pioneer prospectors of Cochise County.  His birth occurred in Ireland in November 1861 and he is one of a family of eight children, six of whom are living and of these five reside in the United States.  The parents passed their entire lives in the Emerald Isle where the father devoted his energies to agricultural pursuits.

The boyhood and early youth of John Gleeson were passed in Ireland where he acquired his education.  In 1879 he emigrated to the United States, first locating in Mt. Pleasant Iowa.  After a brief period there he removed to Breckenridge Colorado where he worked in the gold mines and did his first prospecting.  At the end of a year he moved westward to Tombstone Arizona, where he prospected for eight months and then went to Prescott.  After six months he went to Silver King, Pinal County but subsequently settled in Ray.  He there acquired some mining properties which he developed but later went to  Hachita, New Mexico where for four years he was engaged in the operation of the American mine.  Ten years later he abandoned that undertaking and went to Pearce Arizona removing from there to Gleeson, which town he assisted in founding shortly afterward.  There in 1897 with others he located the Copper Bell Mine, one of the heaviest producers in the state and now the property of the Leonard Copper Company of Gleeson.

In 1889, Mr. Gleeson was united in marriage to Miss Elizabeth Cummings of Syracuse, New York, a daughter of John Cummings who is now deceased.  Her mother is living at the age of seventy two years and continues to make her home in New York.  Mrs. Gleeson of is one of the elder members of the family has become the mother of three children: Nellie, born in 1891 who was graduated from the Sisters school and completed her education in a
Catholic Academy at Los Angeles; Edwin M. born in 1895 who attended a Catholic Academy and a military and is now at home and Emmet, born in 1900 who is still attending school at Gleeson.

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