James Wiley Woolf
25 Nov 1847 - 3 Jun 1916
bornCaldwell County, Kentucky, USA
diedTempe, Arizona, USA
SchooltblData
BiographyFarmer; rancher; building contractor.Came to Tempe in 1889.
He left Kentucky and settled in Los Animas County, Colorado, in 1874. He moved to Colfax County, New Mexico, in 1888, and came to Tempe in January of 1889. He took a leading role in developing the Salt River Valley. He helped initiate the first building expansion at the Territorial Normal School. He was an associate of the Farmers and Merchants Bank in 1896, and was a director of the Tempe Irrigating Canal Company and the Tempe National Bank. He was treasurer of the Tempe Pumping Co., c1910. Owned land near Tempe in 1900. Along with Milton H. Meyer, he started manufacturing concrete blocks for home construction in the Tempe area. To promote the business, he had a large 2-story house of concrete block constructed for himself. He also built several houses with Meyer, including a concrete block bungalow for Samuel C. Long at 27 E. 6th Street (1910), a house for Ira Frankenberg at 2080
E. Southern Avenue (1913), and a house for Theodore Dickinson at 129 E. 8th Street.
Built a total of 24 houses.
He was elected as a Representative for Maricopa County in the Nineteenth (1897), Twenty-
second (1903) and Twenty-fifth (1909) Territorial Legislatures of Arizona.
Lived at 8th Street and Normal (1909-1910) and 105 E. 9th Street (1911) Widow lived at 926 Forest Ave in 1923, and '26.
OSB 86
BIO-Woolf
BIO-Harter
Old Settlers Collection, THM
Federal census (Tempe), 1900, 1910
HPS-127; HPS-239; HPS-240
Tempe CD, 1905-1913, -23, '26
Double Butte Cemetery, Tempe
Hopkins and Thomas, The ASU Story, p. 119
Person TypeIndividual
