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Manuela Sotelo and Her Daughter, Maria:
A Heritage of Education in Early Tempe
By Christine Marin, PhD
BARRIOZONA
June 8, 2009
Maria Sotelo Miller is the daughter of Tiburcio and Manuela Sanchez Sotelo. Maria’s grandfather, Ignacio Sotelo, a
Lieutenant in the Mexican government, served as the Commander of the Presidio of San Ignacio de Tubac from 1813 to
1814. In 1820, the Mexican government assigned him the responsibility of over-seeing the Tumacacori Mission in
southern Arizona.
Tiburcio Sotelo came to Tempe in 1870 with his sons, José and Feliciano and his brother, Pedro. They helped the
Mexican farmers who lived in the South Mountain area along the Salt River beneath present-day 24th and 40th streets
build the “Mexican Ditch”, also known as the San Francisco Canal. The Mexican Ditch brought life-saving water to their
farmlands. The head of the canal was located near what is now downtown Tempe; and the channel extended three and
one-quarter miles in a southwesterly direction toward the northern foothills of South Mountain.
The industrious nature and strong work-ethic of the Sotelo men caught the attention of Winchester Miller, a Confederate
soldier from Ohio who came to Tempe via California in 1869. Miller was the first zanjero (water master) for the Hardy
Irrigation Canal, later called the Tempe Canal Company when it became part of the Salt River Valley Water Users’
Association canal network. In 1871, Miller hired Tiburcio, his sons and his brother to work for him as irrigation workers.
Their steady work and pay enabled Tiburcio and his sons to settle on 160 acres of land in Tempe, which was platted in
1890 by Tiburcio’s wife, Manuela, and called the Sotelo Addition. Manuela and her children forged a living as enterprising
farmers within a wilderness ready for improvement by Mexican families like the Sotelos. They grew herbs, beans,
squash, and corn and sold or traded their crops with other farmers.
Maria Sotelo was now a lovely, well-mannered and intelligent nineteen year-old in 1872, educated in a private school
administered by the Catholic Church in Pitiquito, Sonora, Mexico. Winchester Miller, a widower twice Maria’s age with teen-
age children of his own, became captivated by Maria’s youthfulness and beauty and after a five-month courtship approved
by Maria’s father, Miller made Maria his bride in Tucson on January 8, 1873. Unfortunately, an ailing Tiburcio died in
Florence some time before the wedding and did not see his daughter marry Miller.
Miller took young Maria to his sparse home in the settlement of Lehi, the home provided to him by the Tempe Canal,
when Miller served as its Superindendent. The one-room house, fortified only by a door, bore no windows; instead,
portholes served as protection against the Apache and Pima Indians nearby. The Millers soon moved to Tempe, where
their first child, Anna Manuela Sotelo Miller was born in October, 1873. It is believed that Anna is the first Anglo-Mexican
child born in Tempe, a frontier example of the results of a mixed-culture marriage so characteristic of what brought
prosperity and development to Tempe and what made the community unique in its own heritage of cultural diversity.
Maria Sotelo Miller raised eleven (11) children. Records show that six of her children attended the Arizona Territorial
Normal School in the period from 1896 to 1906. Her daughters, Anna Manuela Sotelo Miller and Clara Maria Sotelo Miller
graduated from the Arizona Territorial Normal School, each with two-year teaching diplomas, becoming the first Mexican
American Arizona State University alumni members. Anna taught school in Flagstaff for three years and Clara taught in
Tempe and Buckeye. It is important to note that their mother, Maria Sotelo Miller, regarded education as a civic and
parental responsibility. Thus, it is likely that all of Maria’s eleven (11) children attended the Arizona Territorial Normal
School. Maria’s children, all born in Tempe, are:
- Anna Manuela Miller, born in 1873
- Clara Maria Miller, born in 1874
- Albert James Miller, born in 1878
- Samuel B. Miller, born in 1880
- Andrew J. Miller, born in 1880
- Sarah “Sally” Miller, born in 1884
- Benjamin Miller, born in 1886
- Rosa Miller, born in 1890
- Louis Winchester Miller, born 1891
- Lydia L. Miller, born in 1894
- Laura Miller…birth date unknown
In Tempe, Winchester and Anna Sotelo Miller owned a quarter section of land adjacent to and north of the Sotelo Addition.
Manuela Sotelo allowed them to join her ranch on the Sotelo Addition and the Miller ranch in order to preserve Manuela’s
water rights, as the two homesteads were separated by a canal. The Sotelo Addition, located east of Rural Road and
south of the Phoenix, Tempe, and Mesa Railway, was later subdivided when Manuela Sotelo began sharing her property
with her children and their spouses and selling parcels of land to other Mexican families coming from Hermosillo, Mexico
to Tempe for homesteading purposes. For example, she sold a lot 143 feet by 25 feet to Jesus Arros for $75.00. Manuela
Sotelo also held two of fifty shares (valued at $200 each) issued to the original founders of the Irrigating Canal Company,
shares given to her by her husband, Tiburcio. Manuela’s entreprenurial skills and sharp business acumen, linked with
her financial resourcefulness and knowledge, served her well: with her daughter, Maria Sotelo Miller, she was able to
maintain a solid business ethic among Tempeans and she helped to strengthen a Mexican and Anglo-American
business and social relationship in Tempe that began in 1873 and continues today.
The unions of Tempe’s prominent Anglo-American men with Mexican women (Winchester Miller and Maria Sotelo; James
T. Priest and Mariana Gonzalez; Dr. Walter Wilson Jones and Alcaria Montaño; Dwight “Red” Harkins and Alica Peralta;
Frederick Dick and Rosa Pauline Jaime) offer examples of mixed-cultural companionships. The results of these
marriages provided the cultural and educational underpinnings for the growing community of Tempe, as evident in Maria
Sotelo Miller’s story. It is important that the names of Manuela Sotelo and Maria Sotelo Miller and their contributions to the
history and development of Tempe, and to Arizona, since the 1870s, be recognized and acknowledged.
Bibliography/Sources:
Books :
Hispanic Historic Property Survey. Final Report. (Phoenix: City of Phoenix, Historic
Preservation Office, 2006), p. 18.
Officer, James E. Hispanic Arizona, 1536-1856. (Tucson, Ariz.: University of Arizona Press, 1987).
Schroeder, K.J. An Historic Sketch of the Sotelo-Heard Cemetery in South Phoenix, Arizona. Roadrunner Publications in
Anthropology Series, No. 6. (Phoenix: Pioneers’ Cemetery Association, 1995), pp. 13; 60-64; 67.
Dissertations/Theses:
Muñoz, Laura K. Desert Dreams: Mexican American Education in Arizona, 1870-1930.
Ph.D. dissertation. History. Arizona State University, Tempe, Ariz., 2006, pp. 144; 199-201; 222.
Solliday, Scott W. The Journey to Rio Salado: Hispanic Migration to Tempe, Arizona. Masters thesis. History. Arizona State
University, Tempe, Ariz., 1993.
Government Documents:
Arizona State Board of Health. Bureau of Vital Statistics. Certificate of Death. State File #242.
Maricopa County Recorder. Subdivision Plat of Sotelo Addition of Tempe, Book 1 of Maps, Page 64, filed August 23, 1890.
On file at the Office of the Maricopa County Records, Phoenix, Arizona.
Journal/Newsletter Articles:
Christine Lewis. “The Early History of the Tempe Canal Company.” Arizona and the West. Vol. 7, No. 3, Autumn, 1965, pp.
229-230; 232
Mark Estes. “Anatomy of Early Arizona Marriages: Companionship, Status and Money.” Pulse. Vol. 27, No. 26, June 24,
1993 (Tempe: Salt River Project, 1993).
Newspaper Articles:
“Changes During 60 Years Seen By Mrs. Miller.” Arizona Republican. (Phoenix), April 18, 1925.
“Manuela Sotelo Sold Lot.” Phoenix Daily Herald. December 10, 1889.
Unpublished Manuscripts:
Kupel, Douglas E. “Tempe’s First Families: Soza, Sotelo and Elias.” Paper Presented to the Arizona Historical
Convention, April 23, 1993.
Robinson, Dorothy. “A History of Early Tempe.” (no date). Arizona Collection. Department of Archives and Special
Collections. Hayden Library. Arizona State University, Tempe.
“Maria Sotelo Miller: the Life of an Arizona Pioneer.” (no date). Arizona Collection. Department of Archives and Special
Collections. Hayden Library. Arizona State University, Tempe.
Christine Marin ©2009
Copyright © 2009 Hispanic Institute of Social Issues
Grassroots Journalism
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