EDWARD ALBERT WITTIG

PIONEER BARBER, MINER, MUSICIAN

Recorded by C.C. Beddome, Field Reporter

Mr. Wittig arrived in Tombstone in the year 1882 when he was but a youth of 16 years, coming from Denver, Colorado with his mother, sister and one of his brothers. The fourth member of the family a brother, was born in Tombstone later. The birthplace of this man was in Cairo, Illinois, the state where his own father, the late Edw. H. Wittig was also born. Mr. Wittig, the elder, was a musician of some repute and was conducting the orchestra in the new Bird Cage Theatre at this time, the gilded gathering place for Tombstone’s elite. Here some of the nation’s best known performers appeared to entertain the more than ten thousand population of which Tombstone at that time boasted. (It has since shrunk to less than one thousand persons—including a big percentage of Mexican’s). some of those early day artists included Lotta Crabtree, Eddie Foy, Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle, David Nelasco, Nat Goodwin and, in fact, most of the great and near great actors of yesteryear.

Mr. Wittig recalls the evening that he presented himself at the box office of the Theatre inquiring for his father, who had preceded his family to Tombstone by more than a year. He knew that they would eventually arrive, having sent them money upon which to make the journey, but as transportation was so irregular and communications so undependable the husband and father had not been advised that his family was in Tombstone until he noticed his son walking toward the orchestra section at a time when the actors were in the midst of the show being presented—at a time, so Mr. Wittig states, when the supreme moment had the audience on their toes with jittery expectancy of “How the villain still pursued her”. The violins were softly playing and a tense moment was due. Just then Mr. Wittig, the elder, spied his son, the music stopped, the actors discontinued their dialogue, the audience sensing something unusual noticed the orchestra leader leap from his chair and run up the aisle to embrace the boy. Many of the people both on stage and in the audience being keyed up with the performance, joined the father and son in shedding tears, and in fact according to the narrator, a holiday atmosphere was declared by everyone in the building. The proprietor gave out return tickets to the audience, the actors were allowed their pay for the night's’ performance and Tombstone generally accepted the arrival of the Wittig family as an event that was the chief topic of conversation throughout the environs of the city for several days.

Ed Wittig began his schooling which had been interrupted by the family’s change of residence and continued with his lessons for the next year at which time he engaged in the mining field going to work as a mucker in what was known as the “Tough-Nut Hole” a mine that was responsible for the removal of several millions of dollars worth of silver ore. Mr. Wittig worked underground for better than a year in what he considers one of the most exciting experiences of his life. It was never known whether a miner would ever rise to the surface when the shaky cages were lowered to the four and five hundred foot levels, through both dry and damp atmospheres and pungent smelling gases, the pay for being a miner varied according to the values recovered, but as he recalls his pay checks ranged between $3.00 and $4.00 per day. However Mr. Wittig states $3.00 wage back in the early ‘80’s was pretty good when one thinks of the difference in the range of commodity prices for food, clothes and lodgings of today. He was very well satisfied with his pay, even though the hours were long, never less than ten hours per day, and often longer.

After pursuing the work as miner for a year the young man decided to try his hand at barbering, so he went to work as an apprentice and learned that trade which he followed most of his life. Barbering was a good paying business among the gentry of Tombstone, but the cow-boys and miners didn’t clean up or get their hair cut but once in four or five months. It was the practice to wear the hair long and nearly as much money was spent to trim hair as they received for cutting. Twenty-five cents was the price of a haircut and fifteen cents was the cost of shaving a person. One other practice that has practically been discontinued in the barbering profession is the act of singeing hair. This is supposed to preserve the oils in the hair and give a better dressed appearance. Of late very little singeing is done, probably because men keep their hair cut more often and it is therefore shorter.

One day while he was at work in the barber shop a man came in and stated, “Let’s go down to the foot of Allen Street and see them hang John Heath”. John Heath, it will be remembered, was the party who was supposed to have been the leader of the group of four others who had staged a holdup near the entrance to Brewery Gulch in Bisbee in which several persons were killed, including a woman looking out of a hotel window. The four men had had their trial and were under sentence of death. John Heath, the supposed ring leader, had just recently been apprehended and had as yet not been given a trial. But he was reputed to be the son of a wealthy Boston family, and much pressure was being brought to bear for his release. The people, resenting eastern influence, decided on mob action and the crowd had removed the prisoner from the custody of the county authorities and were on their way to see that justice would be done.

Wittig and his boss closed the shop and followed several hundred others down this street to see what would occur. At the foot of Allen Street, and at the outskirts of the city, a man identified as Bill Von Ray was in the act of climbing the telegraph pole and was stringing a rope over the cross-arm, the other end of the rope was about the neck of heath, who was vehemently protesting that they had the wrong man.

“Have you anything to say, before we strangle you?,” he was asked.

“Boys, I guess you mean business”, Heath replied, “I only wish to make one request. Please don’t riddle my body with bullets.”

A handkerchief was placed over his eyes, his feet were bound, and five men pulled him up above the heads of the crowd without further ado. Mr. Wittig said, “No shots were fired into his body, and it was left hanging there for about an hour before the sheriff came and lowered it; and a burial was held that day in the famous Boot Hill cemetery, late in the afternoon. But whether John Heath was buried with his boots on Mr. Wittig said he had never learned. Anyway the $25,000 defense fund was returned east to Heath’s family in Boston.

A couple of years later or to be specific in 1886, Mr. Wittig was looking out of the shop window which faced the post-office on the corner of 4th and Allen Streets when he noticed a man hiding behind a telegraph pole at the side of the entrance to the post-office doorway. Calling the attention of someone in the shop, they identified the man as “Billy the Kid” Claybourne. (Not the original Billy the Kid). He had a rifle in his hands and was apparently waiting for someone to come out of the post-office, so a citizen walked across the street and went into the building to see who was there. This man found a citizen by the name of Frank Leslie who said he had had trouble with Claybourne, and he guessed he was the man who was to be shot, so Leslie went out the back way and came around the front of the building with his six-shooter out and when Claybourne saw him, he began to raise the rifle, but Leslie was the quicker and dropped “Billy the Kid” whose shot went off into the ground at Leslie’s feet.

It was learned at the inquest that Claybourne who, was a hanger-on around the “red-light” district was attempting to make good a threat, “I’ll get that guy”, for a dispute the two had had earlier in the week. The coroner found that a trail was unnecessary for the reason that Leslie had shot in self-defense, so another man was interred in Boot Hill.

With reference to the red-light area, Mr. Wittig stated that there were, in all probability, more than a hundred “painted ladies” in Tombstone at that time, but they were no trouble to the officers, and were under police surveillance at all times. They were permitted to come to town and shop the same as anyone else, and most of them supported “a dandy” who gambled the money the women earned. These women were of mixed races and had to be examined by a physician every two weeks to determine whether they were diseased or not. They were good spenders, and dressed in the heights of fashion and always contributed to any public subscription to be raised for charity or church work in the vicinity.

The Wittig family moved from Tombstone into Bisbee in 1890 and have resided here ever since. Mr. Wittig’s father, a former soldier in the Civil War, died here and was buried in the Bisbee Evergreen Cemetery. After coming from Tombstone, Ed. Wittig engaged in mining for the Phelps-Dodge Corporation and was a timber-man in the old Holbrook workings, he also acted as handyman underground and when he wanted to take a holiday, he would go back to barbering for a time. During the time he was mining he set up and managed several barber shops, selling them out, buying them back, working them for a time, then back underground for diversion.

There never has been a time since he resided in Bisbee that any local affairs interested him greatly, except that he remained home during the time that nearly twelve hundred miners were deported from Bisbee by peace officers and reputed company gun-men over what the Bisbee businessmen considered exorbitant labor demands on the mining companies for wages. This at a time when copper was selling for thirty cents per pound, and the men insisted on receiving more according to the market prices. The whole thing so embroiled local business and professional men who, believing a movement was on foot to wrest control of the miners from their owners, sprinkled with the thoughts that subversive acts were attempted by foreign agitators, that a round -up of sympathizers was ordered by someone. Fearing he might become mixed up in the question, Mr. Wittig states that he stayed at home that day in 1917 but, he added, “I believe that most of those fellows returned to Bisbee later”.

Mr. Wittig raised his own family of two boys and one daughter here in Bisbee and all of them are located in “good jobs” at present. Mr. Wittig receives an “Old Age Allowance” from the government, which helps to provide him with a fair living, and he concluded “I’ve still got the same wife I started with,”, they having recently celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary.

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