File photo of Jon Johnson/Gila Herald

Graham County’s First Hometown Lawyer

By Edres Bryant Barney

Pima – Charles Rosebery Rogers was born in Pima, Arizona on December 2, 1888, and was the third son and second son of Louisa Christina Rosebery and Joseph Knight Rogers. His mother had left all ten children at home when his father died in an accident. Within a year his brother Charlotte and Joseph were married, leaving Charles at home as the eldest son.

They lived on a half-finished farm on Rogers Reservoir, two miles southwest of Pima, where two small mules did all the farm work. For six years, Charles did every kind of hard labor imaginable: digging stumps, digging ditches, gathering timber, leveling the land, working in mines, logging mountains, and so on.

Gladys Hawes became his bride on October 1, 1915, in the Salt Lake Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

After turning 30, he held the following positions: 6 years as a janitor, 3 years as a schoolteacher, 2 years as a constable, 2 years as sheriff of the City of Pima, 4 years as a magistrate, and 12 years as Graham. Several years as a county attorney, four years as an Arizona Attorney General, and 25 years as a Pima Town Clerk. These duties and his 40 years of law practice kept him busy.

Charles was the first Graham County resident to become a lawyer from Graham County, and the first person from Graham County to serve as county attorney, serving for a record number of years.

Charles and Gladys spent 1965 serving missions of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at the Hill Cumorah Mission in New York, and in 1967 they were called as ministers in the Mesa Arizona Temple. They were the parents of four daughters and one son.

This and other personal and family histories can be viewed Thursday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Eastern Arizona Museum in Pima.