Richard Stackpole Socorro County, New Mexico

Richard Stackpole, a farmer of Socorro, was born in Ireland, July 10, 1846, and was educated in the national schools of that country. He came to America in 1863 and for two years was employed in the Corliss Machine shops before enlisting for service in the regular army. He became a recruit, joining the army at Providence. Rhode Island, and for three years did active service in the south during the reconstruction period. In 1869 he came to New Mexico as a member of Company B, Fifteenth Regiment of Infantry, having re-enlisted at Clarksville, Texas, in 1868. He served for two years at Fort McCrea and was promoted to the rank of first sergeant. He was then engaged for three years in the Indian service, collecting the Apache Indians and moving them to Tularosa, where an agency was established, and afterward moving them back to the Hot Springs reservation.

He acted for some time as foreman of the Southern Apache Indian reservation. When his service among the Indians was ended Mr. Stackpole retired from the Indian service and turned his attention to merchandising in Alamacita, where he remained for a year. He afterward engaged in freighting for four or five years in New Mexico and has continued in freighting and farming to the present time. He had trouble with the Apache Indians during the Apache war in the San Mateo Mountains, during which he lost his horses and cattle.

In community affairs Mr. Stackpole has been deeply and helpfully interested, recognizing public needs and doing everything in his power to meet them. For the past eight years he has been a member of the school board, and he assisted largely in instituting the public school system in Socorro County. In 1880 he was county commissioner, and for four years was a member of the city council. In politics he has always been an advocate of Republican principles, but at local elections casts an independent ballot, supporting the men whom he thinks best qualified for office. Mr. Stackpole was married in 1877, in San Marcial, to Miss Elicia Torres, and to them were born twelve children, three of whom are deceased.

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Source: History of New Mexico, Its Resources and People, Volume II, Pacific States Publishing Co., 1907.