RockyGoltra
Jr. Member
- Nov 6, 2022
- 21
- 9
Thats amazing friend. \By chance, is there a place where you have published any portions of those interviews in any way.Title of this thread: Waltz and known facts, not stories.
Reading books is fine and gives you some idea of what someone else thinks, but it will never give you anything other than 3rd or 4th hand information at best.
To form solid opinions you have to get down to the first hand information or the information that was directly passed on to someone by an original participant.
One good example is several years back Roger Newkirk and I were in downtown Phoenix talking about Waltz and people related to the Dutchman story.
Roger was driving around and we happened into the old part of Phoenix known as the Coronado edition east of downtown. The section where Dick Holmes lived after Jacob Waltz died.
Roger and I drove past the old Holmes house and turned onto a street a block or two away and I recognized the house of Joe Porterie's grandson. Joe Porterie was the man who did the assay on Waltz's gold ore.
I saw Porterie's daughter's car in the driveway and said to Roger, lets stop and see if the old man would talk to us about his grandfather and the Waltz story.
Roger and I walked up to the house, knocked on the door and were welcomed inside. For the next couple hours we sat and talked with Joe Porterie's grandson who was more than happy to tell us everything he knew and remembered as a young man growing up in Phoenix about his famous grandfather and Jacob Waltz.
We took notes that day and were welcomed back later to get the grandson on tape. We also were invited to see his grandfather's record books from his assay business and the equipment that survived from his assay office. The assay records were written in French as Porterie was born and raised in France.
It was an enlightening day for Roger and I to say the least, and did we get some good SOLID information that day ? You better believe we did.
The point is, If you are really and truly serious about getting to the bottom of the Lost Dutchman legend you can't just rely on somebody else's 4th hand book or somebody's theory of how they THINK things were.
You have to go after the source whenever and wherever you find them. That is the only way you will ever form solid opinions.
For almost a half a century I have been talking with the old pioneer families and getting their stories. I have almost 300 interviews, photographs and tapes of old timers and people who were in a position to know the straight of the story.
Sadly most have passed on. Some of the last great interviews I had were with George Holmes (son of Dick Holmes), Maude Bailey (daughter of Matt Cavaness), Alma Alkire, (grandaughter of Frank Alkire), Urban Porterie (grandson of Joe Porterie), Hilda Kramer (daughter of Caroline and Alexander Steinegger and the niece of Julia and Emil Thomas), John Spangler (nephew of Jim Bark), Paul Pettit (gr-grandson of Gottfreid Petrasch).
If you want known facts and not just stories, these are the people you should have been talking to.
Best,
Matthew