Peru Paxton Daggs
1 Feb 1856 - 8 Jan 1931
diedCasa Grande, Arizona, USA
bornScotland County, Missouri, USA
SchooltblData
BiographyRancher and banker.Came to Tempe c1882.
One of five brothers, the Daggs family drove a herd of sheep across the Mohave desert from California and settled near the San Francisco Peaks, c1875. They established headquarters for Daggs Brothers & Company at Winslow, and later at Flagstaff. They owned as many as fifty thousand sheep, which were on ranges in Apache, Gila, Coconino, Yavapai, and Maricopa counties. The Daggs family, allied with the Tewksbury clan in the "Pleasant Valley War."
Years after the Pleasant Valley War, he noted that all of his enemies were now gone but that it had cost him $90,000 to accomplish it. Some people claimed that he, along with his brother, W. A. Daggs, were responsible for the death of a rival sheepman.
He became an officer of the Bank of Tempe, c1882. During the early 1890s, he and his brother, W. A. Daggs, held a controlling interest in the Bank of Tempe. The failure of the Bank of Tempe in 1894 was followed by several indictments of embezzlement against the Daggs brothers, charging that they knew of the bank's insolvency but issued dividends and notes to themselves against the bank's remaining assets. One embezzlement trial ended in a hung jury, and in the second, they were acquitted. Litigation of more than twenty civil and criminal cases continued for about ten years after the bank closure.
He later owned and operated a silver mine near Casa Grande. In 1909 he bought citrus groves near Claremont, California, and moved his family there although he continued to spend part of his time in Arizona.
First secretary of the Arizona Wool Growers Association.
BIO-Daggs
HPS-153
Hayden Biog File, "Charles T. Hayden"
Tempe CD, 1892-1911
Person TypeIndividual
