The James Adison Reavis Spanish Land Grant Fraud is a very confusing issue for people to understand, to say the least.
There were actually two separate Spanish Land Grants involved in the fraud.
The first was a legal land grant that Miguel Peralta Sr. (the father of Miguel L. Peralta the Phoenix and Klondike, Az merchant) sold to George Willing on October 20, 1864.
James Reavis and Charles Gitt eventually took that first much smaller land grant and used it to change and enlarge the grant to the enormous grant they eventually tried to claim.
The legal grant that Miguel Peralta Sr. sold George Willing was relatively worthless desert land that ran from a point at the Pima Villages on the Gila River east to not quite Florence, Arizona, south to about where Marana, Arizona is located, west to a point in the desert known as Ventana and finally north to the starting point at the Pima Villages. There were virtually no towns or communities included in this grant but there were a few mines which were producing some good ore.
James Reavis partnered up with George Willing and Charles Gitt and when Willing was murdered Reavis and Gitt concocted the much larger Spanish Land grant.
This Reavis/Gitt land grant was enormous, it ran from a point about 20 miles NW of Phoenix, Arizona, ran east all the way to about Reserve, New Mexico, then south to a point well below Silver City, New Mexico, then west to a point in the desert some 50 miles west of Picacho Peak and finally north to the starting point NW of Phoenix.
This huge grant encompassed over 9,500 square miles and included every major city in Arizona and western New Mexico except for Tucson.
Gitt and Reavis were able to pull this off by taking the original (smaller) Peralta land grant and inserting a page into the grant in Mexico City that enlarged the grant considerably.
Miguel L. Peralta the Phoenix merchant was innocent of any wrongdoing in the matter but he and his family suffered greatly at the hands of many who did not understand the fraud case and lumped him in with Reavis and Gitt.
Miguel L. Peralta and his father Miguel Peralta Sr. were never charged with any crime in the James Adison Reavis Spanish Land Grant Fraud.
Below are two photos, the first one is of the original Peralta Spanish Land Grant and the red circles are what Gitt and Reavis added to the grant to legitimize their their claim.
And the second photo is the page Reavis inserted into the Peralta grant to enlarge it to the 9,500 square miles he and Gitt eventually claimed. Everything on this page circled in red was written by Reavis and Gitt.
The rest of the Land Grant which had been in the Mexico City archives for over 100 years was not changed.
Matthew
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