Remembering Marguerite Elzetta Greer Nichols

Marguerite Elzetta was the seventh child and fourth daughter in the family of Harris and Orpha Greer. She was born on 27 October 1897 in St. Johns, Arizona. She was a beautiful girl with long, auburn hair. When she was young, her family called her Maggie, but some records inaccurately list her name as Margaret. She spent her childhood on Greer Ranch and learned to work hard along with the rest of her siblings.

On 5 April 1917, she married a local schoolteacher named Warren C. Nichols in St. Johns. They had two children, Warren Cornelius and Mary Ellen. Marguerite and Warren were divorced in 1942 and she never remarried.

Marguerite attended business school and modeled hosiery in San Francisco. She worked as a stenographer for many years. She was quite ahead of her time in owning a health food store and 

with her sister Kate

bakery in Los Angeles in the 1940’s. Marguerite was a hard worker and carefully invested her money, particularly in real estate. She was able to support herself through her retirement and later paid for her own stay in a nursing care center. She died on 18 January 1988 in Scottsdale, Arizona, at the age of ninety-one.

Hawaii 1967

Remembering Thomas Lacy Greer

Thomas Lacy Greer

Son of John Harris Greer

Thomas Lacy Greer was born on 8 August 1895 in Concho, Arizona, and named after his paternal grandfather. He was a handsome man with auburn hair and hazel eyes. He excelled at handling cattle under his father’s tutelage on the Greer Ranch and chose ranching for his life’s work. Tom served in the 143^rd Infantry Regiment 36^th Division of the US Army during World War I and was on the front lines in France.

His children remember growing up in a happy, loving home and their father as affectionate and helpful to their mother Nellie Martha Thomas Greer. Tom would often take his children with him to gather cattle and include them in his other daily duties. He had been taught to work hard and carried that forward into his own family, but he and Nellie did their best to make even the chores fun. He was well liked and trusted by his many friends and business acquaintances.

Tom died 15 April 1936 at the young age of forty-one from massive head injuries sustained in a car accident outside of St. Johns. He and Nellie had only been married for eighteen short years, and he left behind nine young children, the youngest of whom was only six months old.

Nat & Edith with Tom & Nellie @1918

Remembering Nathaniel (Nat) Greer

Nathaniel, the fifth child of John Harris and Orpha Greer, 

was born 27 Oct 1893 in Concho, Arizona. At the time, his oldest sister Myrtle was seven, brother John was six, Bina was four, and Lillian was two years old. They enjoyed their baby brother, whom they called Nat, and it is known that their father was loving, attentive, and playful with his little children.

Nat grew up on the Greer Ranch. Having learned ranching

in his youth, he continued that kind of work until he joined 

the Army in 1917 during World War I. In Laurie Jo Greer Rhoton's book "The Greer Trail," she has printed some of the letters Nat wrote home from his base in Ft. Sill, Oklahoma. 

Soon after returning home from the war, he married Edith Viola Thomas 27 October 1920 in St. Johns. They made their home in Holbrook for a few years. During that time, Nat worked as a store clerk. Nat and Edith ran a cafe at Peach Springs and later operated the Phantom Ranch in the bottom of the Grand Canyon for Fred Harvey. They had no children and were later divorced. Nat stayed several months with the George E. Crosby family and helped his sister Florence operate the Crosby's lodge at Greer.

Nat later moved to Yuma, Arizona, and then to Whittier, California, where he worked in a welding shop with his brother Jim. He married a young widow, Marjorie Akers, who had two sons, Michael and Robert, and they lived in Seal Beach, California. In 1956 Nat developed cancer of the throat. He died 2 April 1958 and is buried in Costa Mesa, California.

Remembering Lillian Oasis Greer Parks

Lillian Oasis Greer

by her sister Florence Leoma Greer Crosby

Born in 1891, Lillian Oasis Greer joined three other siblings in the Harris and Orpha Greer family. Her middle name was after her father's younger sister. Lillian had beautiful, curly red hair. She learned to be an expert rider as well as a fine hostess for the many travelers to her father's Apache County ranch. Grandmother Greer taught Lillian and her sisters to sew and to make hats. Lillian graduated from the St. Johns Academy. 

At age 25, she married Gordon Arthur Parks, who was born 6 November 1896 in Longmont, Colorado, and whose family had moved to St. Johns sometime before 1912. Gordon and Lillian lived at the site of the Lyman Reservoir where he was employed as one of the chief engineers. Their first child, Maxine, was born 11 December 1917 in Holbrook. Lillian brought the baby and visited often with friends and family in St. Johns. When in St. Johns, Lillian taught teenage girls to sew and display their work at the county fair.

Remembering Sabina Ann Greer Law

Sabina Ann Greer was born on 9 October 1889 in St. Johns, Arizona. She was raised on her

father’s ranch where she learned to work hard making 

butter, gathering wood, weaving homemade rugs, and wrestling teams of horse. As one of the older daughters in the family, she was often put in charge of her younger siblings. But Sabina’s father wanted his children to also know the finer things in life, and she particularly enjoyed singing and dancing.

She could ride, in her words, “like nobody’s business” and became an excellent shot with a gun. She tells of a time travelling home to visit her parents during the summer of 1916 when she “shot clothespins right down the line from their wagon with a .22 caliber rifle.”

While working at a rooming house at the age of 22, Sabina met and married a railroad engineer who went by the name of Harry Love, but whose real name was Guy Pinkerton. They had a daughter Cathleen in 1911 but were later divorced in 1915.