The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction
Linda Gordon
"In 1904, New York nuns brought forty Irish orphans to a remote Arizona mining camp, to be placed with Catholic families. The Catholic families were Mexican, as was the majority of the population. Soon the town's Anglos, furious at this "interracial" transgression, formed a vigilante squad that kidnapped the children and nearly lynched the nuns and the local priest. The Catholic Church sued to get its wards back, but all the courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, ruled in favor of the vigilantes."--BOOK JACKET. "The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction tells this disturbing and dramatic tale to illuminate the creation of racial boundaries along the Mexican border."--BOOK JACKET.
Award History
2 wins · 2 total
| Award | Year | Result | Category / Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bancroft PrizeMajor | 2000 | Winner | Official source |
| American Historical Association Book Prizes: Beveridge Family Prize in American History | 2000 | Winner | Official source |
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies
This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.
01 Central figures
None extracted with sufficient confidence.
02 Central places
- Arizona86%
Show lower-confidence suggestions
These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.
- New York45%
03 Suggested argument
The events in Arizona around 1904 show how racial boundaries along the Mexican border were created, including through vigilante kidnapping of Irish orphans and court rulings favoring those actions.
Model confidence 62%
04 Reading orientation
74 / 100 academicAcademic
An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.
Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 48%.