CHESTER A. ARTHUR
1881 - 1885
Arizona Timeline
1881 - The first house erected in Kingman was the dwelling of Henry P. Ewing and William Heimrod. It was destroyed by fire in June of 1903.
1881 - Southern Pacific Railroad crosses southern Arizona.
1882 – Kingman ( formerly known as Middleton) established as a siding on the new Atlantic and Pacific Railroad ( Santa Fe).
1883 - The Atlantic and Pacific Railroad crosses Northern Arizona Territory, reaching Kingman in March and the Colorado River in August.
Chester Alan Arthur became our
21st president upon the
assassination of President
Garfield in September of 1881.
During his administration the
Tariff Act of 1883 was passed and
the Southern Pacific, Northern
Pacific and Atchison, Topeka and
Santa Fe railroads were
completed.
Ellen Lewis Herndon Arthur
and Chester Arthur were married
in 1859. Ellen died a few months
before Arthur was nominated as
vice- president. After Arthur
became president, his sister Mary
McElroy served as his hostess.
President Chester A. Arthur was born in 1829 or 1830 in Fairfield, Vermont, the son of a Baptist minister. After graduating from college he taught
school and studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1854. He was successful in suits involving Negroes, one which secured a decision that a slave was
free while in New York, even if he was in transit between two slave states. In 1871 he was appointed Collector of Customs for the Port of New York, but
was asked to resign during the Hayes administration. At that time it was thought that the customs house embodied the evils of the “ spoils system.”
Arthur refused to resign on the grounds that he was not personally responsible, but he was removed in 1878. He became the vice- presidential candidate
on the Republican ticket in 1880, and became President on September 20, 1881, when President Garfield was shot by an assassin. Because Arthur's wife
Ellen had died a few months before his nomination as vice- president, he turned to his sister Mary McElroy, who left her family to help during the White
House social season.
Arthur made many changes in the decoration of the White House during his term in office, with the help of Louis Tiffany of New York. He did not
receive the nomination of his party at the end of his first term, and retired to New York. He died on November 18, 1886.
Mohave Museum - U.S. Presidents and the History of Arizona
