Francisco Levy

Francisco Levy, 52, traces his roots to a “frontier romance” in Texas between a New York-born Jew named Meyer Levy and Simone Garcia, whose family was one of that state’s early Spanish settlers. Emanuel Garcia Levy, their illegitimate child born in 1859, was Francisco’s greatgreat-grandfather and the family’s Arizona pioneer.

Going by Manuel or M.G. Levy, the offspring got a European education in mining engineering at the University of Heidelberg in Germany during the 1870s, thanks to the father who had another family and otherwise shunned him. After graduation, Manuel came to Arizona, where he opened stores and developed extensive mining claims before the turn of the century.

Documents in Francisco’s collection record the federal government’s purchase of Manuel’s Victoria Mine in 1939 to create Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Copies of surveyors’ drawings show his great-great-grandfather’s Nogales mining-town store, M.G. Levy Mercantile, was used as a landmark to map the state’s border with Mexico in 1893. Some of the store’s advertisements in Francisco’s collection promote horsedrawn Studebaker wagons, “an assortment of iceless refrigerators” and oil cooking stoves that “will save your strength, money and health.”

When Manuel arrived in what would eventually become Ajo in 1894, there were just two other men living there, according to local history books in Francisco’s collection. He became the region’s second postmaster in 1906 and opened a store that he ran until it burned down when a clerk filling a gas lamp caused an explosion.

“Our family has ties to a lot of Arizona history, but they didn’t talk about the illegitimate child,” Francisco said. .

A Phoenix resident and former Arizona Department of Environmental Quality employee, Francisco spent most of his life in his ancestral turf in southern Arizona. A state history book purchased at a Tucson yard sale sparked his passion for genealogy and a growing collection of historical photos and documents, including family brand registrations and the Victoria Mine purchase signed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.