The “First Lady” of Phoenix

She was a Mexican woman named Trinidad Escalante Swilling. She married Jack Swilling in Tucson in 1864 and four years later moved north to the town he founded–a settlement that became Phoenix. Trinidad was the first non-Native American woman to live there. She was born in Hermosilla, Sonora, Mexico. She and Jack had seven children and she outlived her husband, dying in Phoenix in 1923.