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Emil Christian Adolf Fritz
Born into a prominent family in Eglosheim, Germany on March 3, 1832, young Emil was the first of three Fritz children to immigrate to the U.S., circa 1849. He enlisted in the U. S. military in California in 1851. Fritz reenlisted in August, 1861, as a commissioned captain, and marched into New Mexico in July, 1862, in Gen. James H. Carleton's California Column.
Briefly appointed commandant of Ft. Sumner (in 1864) and Ft. Stanton (1866), Fritz was promoted to Lt. Col. in June, 1865. He was discharged at Ft. Stanton in September, 1866. By April, 1867, he and Lawrence Murphy were partners in the L. G. Murphy & Co. Fritz boasted a spotless military record. He was quiet, Old World money; reserved and tastefully dressed, the background partner who preferred to scurry about and get things done. He was well connected, and L. G. Murphy & Co. prospered.
In September, 1867, the firm got its first one-year contract to supply Ft. Stanton with beef. By September, 1868, L. G. Murphy & Co. had built an 18-room trading post a few hundred yards upstream of the fort, and opened a small branch office 10 miles downstream in Lincoln. They'd also gotten a U. S. government license as Indian traders to the Mescalero Apache Indians.
By 1872, the portly Fritz was beginning to show signs of the heart trouble and kidney disease that would kill him. A lifelong bachelor, he began spending more and more time at his Spring Ranch (which he sold in Sept., 1873, to older brother, Charlie), nine miles downstream of Lincoln.
Fritz decided to return to Germany to visit his family over the summer of 1873. That June 13, Murphy went with him as far as Santa Fe, where they sold the firm's trading post for $8,000. He arrived at his family's Stuttgart home that August a sick man. Although Fritz had hoped to return to Lincoln by December, his illness worsened, and he died in Stuttgart Hospital-Church in June, 1874. His death also marked the end of whatever moderating influence Fritz had been to his junior partner, Murphy, and the beginning of the firm's decline.
Fritz's $10,000 life insurance policy, which the cash-tight House of Murphy sought, became a long, drawn out bone of contention between L. G. Murphy & Co., and its lawyer, Lincoln resident Alexander A. McSween.
