"Don Miguel" Wormser, Pioneer Jew in earliest Prescott

By Tom Brodersen

The first store on Prescott’s Courthouse Plaza was operated by Michael Wormser, a pioneer Jew from Alsace-Lorraine, France. Wormser purchased the adobe building on the southeast corner of Montezuma and Goodwin (next to the current Chamber of Commerce office) from Rafael Lucero of New Mexico. For the next decade, Michael Wormser sold miners supplies and general merchandise on the Plaza.

Michael Wormser left his native France in 1858 and arrived in New York City with only fifteen dollars in his pocket. When he died he was one of the wealthiest men in Arizona. His cousin Benjamin Block paid for his passage in steerage from the slums of New York to San Francisco. Wormser slept in the straw in Block’s livery stable, in San Luis Obispo, California, on duty round the clock. When that business failed, Wormser earned his way as a peddler and horse trader.

In 1862 trapper and scout Paulino Weaver discovered gold on the Colorado River at La Paz, 120 miles north of Yuma. Michael and his cousin Ben staked claims there, but both failed as miners so they opened a general store. When the mining boom in La Paz began to slow down, and gold was discovered in 1863 at Weaver Gulch, near Wickenburg, Michael Wormser moved on to try his hand at mining and store keeping again.

Mountain man Joseph Reddeford Walker and a group of prospectors soon found gold on Lynx Creek, in the heart of Arizona territory. Wormser pulled up stakes once more and opened a store on Lynx Creek. Soon a town site was surveyed on the east bank of Granite Creek and on May 30, 1864, the founding citizens named it Prescott. Michael Wormser opened for business on the Courthouse Plaza on August 24, 1864.

A Wormser and Company ad in the Arizona Miner, announced a "new and large assortment of goods, just received from San Francisco… the most complete ever brought to Prescott. It consists of clothing, dry goods, boots and shoes, liquors and a general assortment of the choicest groceries." They even sold chickens, pigs and cattle out behind the store.

Goods were not delivered by UPS in those days. In fact, Wormser and his party were attacked by "Apaches" while hauling in supplies by wagon from Ehrenberg on the Colorado River, in December of 1865. In spite of a military escort, Wormser was struck by an arrow "in the fleshy part of his anatomy nearest the saddle." When he arrived in Prescott from a later journey the local paper joked, "Our time-honored friend, M. Wormser . . . returned from a trip . . . [however] his old friends . . . failed to honor him with the customary salute in the rear."

Many of the pioneers of Prescott were immigrants from various countries. Two partners from Germany, Henry Wunderlich of Bremen and Aaron Wertheimer a Jew from Baden joined Wormser in business. Wormser had originally hoped to return to France one day. However, according to Wormser’s friend, Judge Edmund Wells, when Alsace-Lorraine was surrendered to Germany in 1871 Wormser accepted "exile rather than become a German subject."

Michael Wormser, who spoke French, Yiddish and English, picked up Spanish quickly. The Mexicans called him "Don Miguel" or "El Judio Miguel" (the Jew Michael). In fact, on his naturalization papers he signed his name Miguel Wormser. Along with other early Arizonans like King Woolsey and Daryl Duppa, "Don Miguel" Wormser figures prominently in "Sugarfoot" by Clarence Budington Kelland, a 1942 western novel set in Prescott.

Along with his retail business, Wormser continued to stake, buy, and sell mining claims in the Walker, Hassayampa, Agua Fria, Big Bug, Turkey Creek, and Bradshaw mining districts. Like many others he never had much luck in mining gold. He also grubstaked other prospectors in mining ventures.

Wormser’s partner Aaron Wertheimer was one of the founders of the Arizona Pioneers Historical Society and treasurer of the Prescott’s Aztlan Masonic Lodge. Wertheimer set up a sawmill and shingle machine at Bradshaw, near Crown King in 1872. Wormser and Wertheimer were also partners, along with others, in the Big Bug Quartz Mill.

On March 22, 1873 the Journal Miner announced, "Those old time Arizona traders, Messrs. Wormser and Wertheimer, have taken a new and very spirited start in business… at Phoenix in the Salt River Valley." They purchased a large adobe building at the southeast corner of Central Avenue and Jefferson Street. However, on January 20, 1874, Aaron Wertheimer died at age 41, apparently of stomach cancer. The Arizona Miner reported, "Prescott and Arizona have lost another good citizen by the death of Aaron Wertheimer, a man who was widely known, loved and respected by all who knew him… His spirit has flown upwards, leaving his body to the care of brothers and friends who are, even now, preparing to deposit it in its last resting place in the Masonic Cemetery."

Without his trusted business partner, Wormser was forced to liquidate the Prescott store at a loss. To pay off their creditors, Wormser sold property in Prescott and elsewhere to his nephew Abraham Lippmann, and settled in Phoenix. There, in addition to minding the store, Wormser borrowed horses and land and began farming.

After many setbacks Wormser’s perseverance made him a wealthy man in Phoenix. When he died in 1898, at the age of 69, he had been instrumental in developing the canals that made the desert bloom and he left a large estate. His wealth was mostly tied up in agricultural land. His liquid assets amounted to $100 cash.

Wormser had never married and lived simply. His personal belongings were limited to a bed, a few chairs and a table, a stove, a bookcase, and a wardrobe and dresser containing well-worn clothes – the sort of things one might find in a pioneer’s cabin. The newspaper reported that "Michael Wormser is kindly remembered by many old timers who, in the early days, were favored by him with the necessities of life when money was hard to obtain . . . Mr. Wormser gave much to charity, but in an unostentatious manner."

Wormser’s lifelong friend Edmund Wells of Prescott is most remembered today as the author of Argonaut Tales, a classic book on Prescott’s early days. Wells also arrived in Prescott in 1864 and Governor Goodwin appointed him as Yavapai County’s first Justice of the Peace. Judge Wells devoted a chapter of his book to Michael Wormser recording that Wormser’s "public spirit and generosity made him popular in the business community." Edmund Wells served as a pallbearer at Michael Wormser’s funeral and other friends recited Hebrew prayers. The land in Phoenix where he is buried was donated by his estate to be a Jewish cemetery, Beth Israel, at 35th Avenue and Van Buren in Phoenix.

(Tom Brodersen is a student at Yavapai College and was the 2001 summer intern at the Sharlot Hall Museum Archives)

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(st136pa). Reuse only by permission.

This view from atop the old Yavapai County Courthouse in the mid-1880s shows the corner of Goodwin and Montezuma Streets. "Don Miguel" Wormser’s store sat on the southeast corner in the 1860s and sold "clothing, dry goods, boots and shoes, liquors and a general assortment of the choicest groceries."