In 1909, when Clara Schultes Higgins arrived in Tucson, she had no idea that over the ensuing years she would be responsible for the care, feeding and comfort of thousands of children who needed a place to stay, a safe environment and someone to watch over them.
Clara Schultes was born in Germany on Dec. 22, 1870. Immigrating to the U.S. at the age of 7, Clara and her family settled in Missouri, where she met and married Irishman Patrick Louis Higgins in 1891. Their two sons, John (1892-1957) and Raymond (1894-1944), were born in Missouri.
The family relocated to Tucson in 1909 when Patrick was hired as the Pima County probation officer.
At the time, Tucson had no facility to detain and house children who had to be separated from their parents for a number of reasons, from abandonment to delinquency to more serious charges.
As probation officer, it fell to Patrick to either put these children in the county jail or find suitable accommodations for them during their time under the court’s jurisdiction. He began taking many of them home for Clara to care for while they or their parents sorted out their difficulties.
Initially, Patrick brought infants and young children who could not be placed in foster care. Later, he added runaways and delinquents. Clara became the county’s unofficial detention officer, receiving the sum of $1.25 per child per day plus $1,500 a year rent for her house. The county also donated clothing and linens.
Patrick died in 1929, but Clara continued to provide for Tucson’s wayward children and soon earned the title “Mother Higgins.”
She hired her friend, Clara Heim, for assistance. Heim lived with Higgins for many years, mending and altering clothing to fit the children, as well as assisting in the kitchen.
Clara Higgins, know as “Mother” Higgins, sits with her birthday cake on her 85th birthday in December 1955, in Tucson. When her husband, Patrick Higgins, was the county probation officer, Tucson had no facility to detain and house children who had to be separated from their parents for a number of reasons, from abandonment to delinquency to more serious charges. He began taking many of them home for Clara to care for while they or their parents sorted out their difficulties.
Clara’s house on East Fourth Street had a basement, an unusual addition to a house in Tucson, but it served well as a dormitory for the girls left in her care. A small building in the backyard lodged the boys. Both quarters had access to a large play yard.
During the summer months, everyone moved outside to sleep on cots under the stars, with Clara chaperoning throughout the evening.
Puzzles, games and books filled the recreation room.
Each morning, she woke the children at 7. By 7:30, they were eating breakfast that usually consisted of bacon, eggs, fruit and toast or biscuits. She varied the meals with pancakes and waffles.
Each child was assigned chores for the day: cleaning rooms, cutting and weeding the yard and gathering wood for the woodpile.
Noon was a big meal that might consist of a repast as sumptuous as a complete turkey dinner replete with mashed potatoes, dressing, peas, string beans, squash, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie.
Younger children were put down for naps in the afternoon while older youngsters continued their tasks.
A light meal of sandwiches and fruit comprised the evening meal.
Lights out was between 8:30 and 9 p.m.
Clara received a food allotment from the county, although she did her own grocery shopping, meal planning and cooking, with Heim’s help.
Visitors were allowed one day a week. On Sundays, Clara gave the children each a quarter out of her own pocketbook to go to the movies — if they had been good. Very few failed to return from these outings.
She tried to make Christmas special. Everyone received gifts and sweets, paid for by Clara. She also provided gifts for children at the state industrial school for boys at Fort Grant, the Convent of the Good Shepherd reform school for girls, the Arizona Children’s Home and local hospitals.
Birthdays were not neglected. Clara celebrated each child with gifts and a party.
Clara was strict but affectionate with her charges, and she was adamant that the children under her care were not felons. “I do everything in my power to keep these children out of reform school,” she said. “My kids aren’t criminals. I don’t even think they’re delinquents — most of them are just neglected.”
She could handle about a dozen children at a time, with ages ranging from infants to teenagers. She used what sources she could coax out of the community to find jobs for some of the children once they left her home. Often, her “graduates” brought their own children to meet the petite woman who had saved them from a life of crime.
In 1950, at the age of 80, Clara retired. She estimated she had housed at least 11,000 youngsters during the years she was the county’s detention officer.
“I’ve worked under 11 judges,” she said, “and taken care of children from the time they were in the cradle ‘til the time they got married.”
After Clara closed her home, youngsters were either placed in foster homes or the juvenile section of the county jail until 1956, when the Pima County Juvenile Court and Probation Department building was completed. It was originally known as the Mother Higgins Home and feared by children of all ages. Parents threatened their children by telling them if they did not behave, they would send them to “Mother Higgins.” This was a place children learned to dread, not the comforting home of Clara Higgins.
In 1952, over 400 people celebrated Clara as Tucson’s Mother of the Year.
Clara died on July 20, 1957, after years of service to the Tucson community and all she did to help the never-ending array of children who stepped through her front door. She is buried at Holy Hope Cemetery.
Both of Clara’s sons remained in the Tucson area. Raymond worked as a conductor for the Southern Pacific Railroad, while John became a Pima County undersheriff before serving as justice of the peace in Florence and assistant warden at the Florence State Prison.
