The first adventurous step that Roxie Webb’s family took into Arizona history began with the arrival of Webb’s great-grandmother, Kathryn Dunning, who traveled to Prescott by covered wagon in 1879. Her diary, given to the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff, tells of making their last camp at Granite Dells, just a few miles from Fort Whipple and Prescott. Settlers posted sentries to warn of hostile Indians in the still wild Arizona territory.
Webb Motors, Prescott Arizona circa. 1940’s
“Kate” became the new schoolmistress at the Prescott Free Academy, Arizona’s first graded public school. She married Amos Adams of the successful Adams and Clark Lumber Company, located on Cortez Street, across from the present Murphy’s restaurant. Kate and Amos had five children, and to help care for them, a young woman named Sharlot Hall came to live at the family home on the southeast corner of East Gurley Street and Mount Vernon. Hall would later become famous as a writer/poet and territorial historian.
Kate’s daughter, Helen, born in 1885, was an educator, musician, and local basketball coach. She married George Colton in 1906, and in 1913, they moved to the Grand Canyon where George was in the Indian trading business at Verkamp’s. It was a short walk from the landmark El Tovar Hotel. Helen became the Canyon’s first Justice of the Peace.
Rockwell (Roxie) Webb, Sr., left Texas in the I920s. to represent the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in Northern Arizona. In May 1929, while having lunch with a tire dealer in Williams, he met the lovely Harriette Colton.
Two months later they married, and often traveled together over the dirt roads of Roxie’s territory, from Kingman to Winslow to the White Mountains and back again, measuring distances not in miles but in the number of flat tires.
In 1935, tired of life on the road, Roxie, Sr., bought the Ford dealership in Prescott, which he successfully operated for twenty-five years. He sold Webb Motors in 1960 and in 1961 opened a stock brokerage office in Prescott.
His son, Roxie Webb, Jr., attended the Virginia Military Institute, received a B.A. in English from the University of Arizona and attended Arizona State University for graduate studies in finance. Roxie was a “Distinguished Military Graduate” in the Army R.O.T.C. program at the University of Arizona and he accepted a commission in the United States Army Signal Corps, serving as a contracting officer in the field of electronic warfare.
Roxie Webb, Sr. Jeannine Foley, Roxie Webb, Jr. in 1973
With his tour of duty completed, Roxie, Jr., joined the family business in 1968. After five years of growth, joining the Midwest Stock Exchange and opening an office in Sedona, Roxie, Jr., decided to change the direction of the firm from commission-driven to fee-based. “I never liked the conflict of interest between stockbrokers and their customers,” said Roxie, Jr. “The size of the commission can have a lot to do with the investment advice given by the salesperson. It was risky to move to a fee-based company, especially when your firm is established, respected, and prospering. But the choice was a good one.”
In 1979, Roxie, Jr., decided the time was right to create a hometown bank, one that would be more responsive and offer more personalized services, especially to the business community. In 1981 when so many banks nationwide were floundering, Chairman/CEO Roxie, Jr., and a board of thirteen other co-founders opened The Bank of Prescott. Its resounding success led to The Bank of Prescott being acquired in 1987 by The Arizona Bank.
In 1981, Roxie, Jr., and two members of the Bank of Prescott Board of Directors decided to purchase a company that was making a product now known as Ester C. Ester C, a molecularly different and patented dietary supplement, has been a national and international success. The company was successfully sold in 1997.
The Roxie Webb family has been managing securities’ portfolios for more than forty five years. The goal of Roxie Webb Securities Management, Inc., is to serve a limited number of clients well and to keep those clients over the long haul.
Adams and Clark Lumber Company in downtown Prescott, c 1900 Amos Adams (right) is the great-grandfather of Roxie Webb, Jr.
