Chinese and Jewish settlers

The Chinese came in the 1860s with the building of the railroads. Many of them settled in Arizona after California expelled them in 1876.

Two decades after Arizona statehood, many more found a new life in the state after Mexico, where they also immigrated to find work, pushed them across the border.

“They found work in the mining camps along with the Irish and the Italians,” Trimble said. “You name it, they found something to do in these camps. The ones with the strong backs worked in the mines and others worked mining the miners. Every town had Chinese restaurants and laundries.”

Eventually, household merchandise, clothing and farm supplies were sold in retail outlets that were opened by Arizona’s pioneering Jewish settlers, who arrived in the territory in the 1850s.

The Goldwaters were among those early settlers, and “no family in territorial or state history of Arizona had more dramatic adventures or contributed more,” according to the Bloom Southwest Jewish Archives.

One of the state’s most famous citizens, U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater, was raised an Episcopalian due to his mother, Josephine Williams’ upbringing. His father, Baron, was raised in a Jewish household and his grandfather, Michael, was active in California Jewish congregations and was a lay leader in Arizona’s territorial days in informal Jewish services on high holidays.

In his 1988 autobiography, Barry Goldwater wrote that “it was only on entering the power circles of Washington that I was reminded I was a Jew. I never got used to being singled out in that way. My answer was always the same. I’m proud of my ancestors and heritage. I’ve simply never practiced the Jewish faith or seen myself or our family primarily of the Jewish culture. In the jargon of today’s sociologist, we’ve been assimilated. We’re American.”