Tuttle, Edward D., 1834-1928

Arizona pioneer; Army officer, 4th California Infantry, 1862-1865; and author of articles on Arizona history.

Edward D. Tuttle -- soldier, miner, businessman, legislator, and California and Arizona pioneer -- was born in New York in 1834. He moved to northern California sometime before the Civil War. In November of 1861 he enlisted in the Fourth Infantry Regiment of California Volunteers and was stationed as a 2nd Lieutenant of Company A at Fort Walla Walla in Washington. In August of the next year, Tuttle was promoted to 1st Lieutenant, Co. H, and sent to Camp Drum, near Los Angeles. In February of 1863 he marched to what is now Yuma, Arizona. While in Yuma, he was elected to the first legislature of the Arizona Territory (in 1864) in Prescott. He remained in Yuma until he was mustered out of his regiment in San Francisco in November of 1865; he returned to Arizona soon afterwards, working at the quartermaster's depot at Fort Yuma until 1869, when he became an agent of the Colorado Steam Navigation Co. Also in 1869 Tuttle married Marietta L. Robinson, of Oakland, California, and brought her to Arizona. They returned to northern California in 1870, and lived there until 1877, when they and their three children relocated to the Pueblo Viejo valley in Arizona, where they helped to found the town of Safford. Tuttle owned a store in Safford and acted as clerk for several of the first judges of Graham County. In later life, Tuttle wrote out his reminiscences of life in Arizona in response to inquiries from two state historians; he also wrote a number of other manuscripts on the subject. Tuttle died in Los Angeles in 1928.