11/29/1992
Marc Simmons
New Mexico Scrapbook
One of the finest historical and architectural monuments in the Southwest is the Magoffin Home, a 19-room adobe house with period furnishings located at 1120 Magoffin street in El Paso.
Built in 1875, the structure is on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Magoffin name figures prominently in the history of the Southwest. The family came from Ireland and settled in Kentucky. By 1825, the eldest Magoffin son, James, had become a Santa Fe trader, heavily involved in overland commerce with Mexico.
Generous and congenial, James Magoffin was very popular among the Mexicans of the border provinces.
Everyone knew him there as Don Santiago. Soon after opening a store in Chihuahua City, he married a local belle, Maria Gertrudes Valdez. That further strengthened his social and economic position.
Sometime in the late 1820s, James was joined in his freighting and trading business by two younger brothers, Samuel and William. Not long after that he was appointed U.S. commercial agent in Chihuahua.
By 1884, having acquired a large fortune, James left Chihuahua City with his wife and children and moved to Independence, Mo., at the head of the Santa Fe Trail. There his wife died the following year.
Perhaps James had sensed the coming war with Mexico and wanted to get his family out of harm’s way. In any case, both he and his brother Samuel were to play a small but significant part in that chapter of history.
At the outbreak of hostilities, James was called to Washington and a meeting with President James K. Polk. He was asked as a patriotic duty to travel to Santa Fe and then Chihuahua City in an effort to persuade governments there not to resist an invading U. S. army that was on its way.
Not only did James speak fluent Spanish but he was related, through his late wife, to Manuel Armijo, the Mexican governor at Santa Fe. Thus, Polk thought he would make an excellent envoy.
Magoffin hurried west along the Santa Fe Trail, overtaking Gen. S.W. Kerny’s army of conquest at Bent’s Fort in southeast Colorado. At that point he found his brother also, with freight wagons attached to a huge merchant caravan following the army.
Brother Samuel Magoffin was accompanied by his new wife, Susan, only 18 years old and a Kentucky native, who was seeing the Wild West for the first time. Her adoring husband had provided her a handsome and comfortable Rockaway carriage and a servant girl to lessen the hardships of the trail.
Susan was destined to become the most famous of the Magoffins, owing to the diary she kept of her experiences over the Santa Fe Trail and down the old road to El Paso and Chihuahua City.
Her diary was lost for many years but finally discovered in an old trunk and first published in 1926. It remains a rich source of history for the war year of 1846.
At Bent’s Fort, James Magoffin secured a military escort and rode on to Santa Fe in advance of Kearny. We know that in the capital he had a secret meeting with Gov. Armijo – and although there is no written record of exactly what transpired, the suspicion exists that he persuaded the governor to abandon New Mexico without a fight.
Armijo did flee and Kearny’s troops seized Santa Fe Aug. 18, without bloodshed. The merchant train arrived soon afterward and Susan rolled through the plaza in her carriage.
In he diary she wrote: “I have entered this city in a year that will always be remembered by my countrymen, and under the ‘Star-spangled banner,’ too.” She and her husband were greeted by brother James with a bottle of champagne.
Next day James Magoffin rode south to continue his “intrigue.” But at El Paso he was arrested by Mexican authorities as a spy. For the duration of the war, he remained imprisoned, first at Chihuahua, then Durango. With peace in 1848, he was finally released.
After the war, James settled on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande in the El Paso valley.
He married again and his estate became the bustling settlement Magoffinsville, a forerunner of El Paso.
By 1851 he was joined by son Joseph, from his first marriage. It was Joseph Magoffin who would carry on the family name, serve four terms as mayor of El Paso, and in 1875 build the Magoffin Home that is today a historic showplace.
It is that residence – together with Susan Magoffin’s diary, still in print – that keep the Magoffin name alive and warm in the memory of all lovers of Southwest history.
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