Glenn Reynolds

Glenn Reynolds (c. 1853 - November 2, 1889) was an American sheriff, cowboy, and militiaman of the Old West, remembered for his death during the Kelvin Grade Massacre, in Arizona Territory, when a group of Apache renegades escaped from his custody. Biography Glenn Reynolds was born in about 1853, likely around Albany, Texas. He served as a child soldier during the American Civil War, protecting frontier settlements from Comanche raids while the older rebels engaged the Union Army. After the Comanche Wars, Reynolds participated in the cattle drives from Texas to Kansas until being elected sheriff of Throckmorton County in 1885. His election was at least partly due to his prominent family, which owned a cattle company near Albany. Around 1887, Reynolds and his family headed across the Southwest, driving 3,000 head of cattle and 200 horses to Bowie Station in Arizona Territory. He then took his portion of the livestock and settled at a ranch in Pleasant Valley, a troubled region in a time known as the Tonto Basin War between feuding settlers. During this time, Edwin Tewksbury accused Reynolds of killing Al Rose on November 1, 1887, with a shotgun. Rose was killed by eight or nine men wearing masks and overcoats at the Houdon Ranch, one of three owned by the Graham family. The county coroner later said that wounds on Rose's face appeared to have been caused by buckshot. When the situation in Pleasant Valley became intolerable, Reynolds moved his family to Globe, where he was elected sheriff in November 1888. In 1889, a group of prisoners at Globe had to be transported to Yuma Territorial Prison, including the Apache Kid, Pas-Lau-Tau, and other participants in the 1887 mutiny at San Carlos; as well as a Mexican horse thief named Jesus Avott. The first part of the journey required a stagecoach ride to Casa Grande, where the prisoners would board a train for Yuma. Reynolds was ordered to command the procession, with Sheriff William A. Holmes and coach driver Eugene Middleton as a company. On November 1, 1889, Reynolds left Globe for Casa Grande. The party stopped at Kelvin, Arizona, on the Gila River, for the first night, and then set out for Casa Grande early the next morning. Due to concerns that an incline along the road, known as Kelvin Grade, would be too steep for the horses to pull a wagon full of prisoners up, Reynolds decided that when they reached the grade, the prisoners would be taken out of the coach and marched up on foot.