Ahwatukee author and historian Janelle Molony has built a reputation for uncovering unusual and often overlooked stories from Arizona’s past.
Her latest discovery continues that traditionl.
This spring, Molony helped confirm the identity of a long-unidentified woman buried in Phoenix’s Pioneer & Military Memorial Park — a woman now believed to be one of the earliest recorded Cherokee residents interred in the city.
Jacquelina “Lina” Biggs King, born in 1844 in Arkansas, has now been traced through historical records as a member of the Cherokee people, with ancestry tied to the tribe’s eastern homeland in Tennessee and connections to multiple principal chiefs…