The Missing Anvil

The following is from my memory of dad telling this story as well as getting additional feedback from those of my brothers who also remember dad relating the tale of the missing anvil. In May 1930, Levi Hancock passed away. His youngest son Andy was a 19-year-old young man and was living at the ranch home he had helped his father Levi build above Cottonwood Wash near Clay Springs. The large anvil which Andy had inherited from his father Levi, disappeared from their place. Perhaps someone figured since Levi had passed away, the anvil might be of more use to them than located at a remote place in the cedars. In those days, an anvil was an essential piece of equipment for maintenance and repair for farm, home, transportation, and industry needs. Among other things Levi would have used the anvil to keep his freight wagon repaired, shoe his horses as well as possibly manufacturing building materials and other tools. Andy had become a skilled tracker, partly due to the time he spent working with his Uncle Press Plumb in Young, Arizona where Andy had spent at least one winter hunting and trapping. After Andy found the anvil was missing from the barn, he looked around for signs in the yard, and it soon became evident someone had loaded the anvil in some kind of cart and hauled it away. It is not clear if there was suspicion about who may have been responsible for the heist, but sometime later, Andy was at a blacksmith shop in Holbrook where he saw and recognized the missing anvil. I may be wrong, but it occurs to me, Andy may have gone to the blacksmith shop in an effort to locate the missing anvil. When he found the missing Anvil, Andy went and got his brother Joe and after they arrived back at the shop where it was located, Uncle Joe saw the anvil, confirmed it was the one missing and looking around at the guys in the shop, Joe asked "Who here claims this anvil? When, likely out of fear of self-incrimination, no one answered, Joe picked up the 150-pound anvil in his arms and dad remembered him saying "Since no one here claims this, I will just take it back to where it came from". He then carried it out without any objections from those present. Today, this same anvil is mounted on a large base and sits outside of Alvin’s shop in Wickenburg.