Jack “Blackjack” Newman
E.B. Kellner and Jack Newman, seated on right, in Globe, Arizona, ca. 1880s
Jack Newman, at one time believed to be the richest man in Arizona, made his riches through his sharp business acumen and his uncanny ability to stake out successful mining claims.
One would not expect a Polish Jew born on April 9, 1862 in the village of Chorna, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to receive a name like Jack B. Newman. This particular Jack B. Newman did indeed have a different name at birth, now lost to posterity, and only gained his Anglophone name at the age of twenty one. While still living in his home village, Newman worked as a shepherd, but at the age of fourteen he emigrated to New York, having been pushed out of the family nest after his mother died and his father remarried. In order to guarantee himself passage to the New World, Newman worked as a crewman on the ship that transported him. Intending to work in his uncle’s shoe manufacturing plant in New York, Jack got a rude surprise: his uncle gave him only five dollars to make do with. And make do Jack did, as he bought himself a train ticket to Pennsylvania.
The young Newman got his introduction to mining while in Pennsylvania, working in coal fields, until he was almost killed by a mine explosion. He then promptly headed westward, first via mines in Michigan, then taking up work on the Texas and Pacific Railroad as a means to get himself even further west. By the early 1880s, Newman had arrived in the Arizona Territory. His most important experience was in the Old Dominion Mine near Globe, where he gained the name Newman. Not having a terribly good grasp on the English language, Newman struggled to make himself understood to the clerk who managed the payroll, who, fed up with the miscommunication, decided that using “The New Man” as a name would suffice. This eventually morphed into Newman. Working as a mucker at Old Dominion and continuing to exploit the Pioneer Mine, which was believed to be exhausted, Newman ended up saving around $330,000, only the beginning of the vast riches that he would go on to accumulate. He fully personified the image of a Wild West pioneer one day when, having gotten into an argument with his business partner Jim Evans, who he believed was stealing from him, Newman took out a .45 caliber pistol and shot one of his arms off. Newman served a sentence of a little more than a year, from April, 1889 until his pardon on June 15, 1890. Once he regained his liberty, he went straight back to mining around Globe.
During the Spanish-American War, Newman fought in Company B of the First Territorial Regiment. While serving in the military, he became known as Black Jack thanks to his good luck in playing cards. Upon his return from the war, Black Jack started to buy and sell mines in the Globe area and discovered that he had what one could call a sixth sense for finding mines rich in ore just by looking at them. It was this knack that led him to discover thirteen claims just outside of Globe, based on the red coloration that he perceived at the hilltops. According to Newman, this was a surefire sign of good ore being found below. Those thirteen claims would eventually form the Miami Copper Mine, and would end up bringing him even more wealth.
In 1904, Jack Newman married Jemima Tune Woolsey, and that same year they had their first child, Samuel. Their daughter, Ollie Belle, arrived the following year. Samuel recounted once that his father was so overjoyed to have a son that he decided to celebrate by opening up every bar in Globe to give its citizens drinks for free. According to Samuel, that was the only time in his life that his father ever got drunk. Moving into other ventures later on in life, Newman started to buy up real estate. First, he built the Dominion and Pioneer Hotels in Globe, both of which have since burned down, and later went on to have office buildings built in Globe’s downtown. He continued to buy property in Arizona, Arkansas, and Texas, even after the family resettled in California in 1910. Having around $2,000,000 to his name at that point, Newman was able to afford a home near Venice and bought even more property in downtown Los Angeles. He embarked on a third career later in life with investments in livestock and agriculture in California’s San Joaquin Valley.
One day before his sixty-sixth birthday, on April 8, 1928, Jack B. Newman passed away, after he contracted uremia following a botched surgery. Although he is buried in Santa Monica, he is remembered in Arizona for his vast contributions to the mining industry in the late 19th century.
Cholent and Chorizo, by Abraham Chanin
Jewish Settlers in the Arizona Territory, by Blaine Lamb
Photo credits: Bloom Southwest Jewish Archives