by Katherine J. Gernand Nicolay

I have never read anything about tubercular patients in Prescott, and since I had lived it all of my growing-up years (until I was 18), I feel drawn to tell you how remarkable and brave these people were.

My father, Perry Gernand, developed full-blown TB (tuberculosis) as a result of having flu and pneumonia in France during World War I. I was a year old in 1922 when he had a bad hemorrhage while threshing grain at harvest time on our Illinois farm. He eventually, in less than 2 years, was advised to go to Prescott, AZ, to Whipple Barracks for care. My mother and I followed in a few months. He received excellent care at Whipple, and this is where my story of influence begins.

Tuberculars had sick bodies but not sick minds, so friendships started among a very large number of doctors, lawyers, bankers, merchants, businessmen, and farmers at Whipple. My dad’s best friend, Bill Aven, was a Macedonian and was at Whipple with TB. He had apprenticed in contracting and building houses, so he agreed to have workers build our first and only home on Glendale Avenue in 1926, where I presently reside. He used our home after we moved in for a model home on Sunday, as it was the first house he built. I have the newspaper clipping inviting anyone to come. Subsequently my father, Bill Aven and Kenneth Aiken, all on the Board of Supervisors, formed a corporation to develop the area called Ridgewood Heights (bound on the east by Park Avenue, on the west by Vista Drive, on the south by Bertrand and on the north by Crest Avenue). Bill Aven came to our house one day and asked me to choose a piece of paper from numerous papers in his hat. I pulled out ‘Ridgewood Heights’ and to this day, this area is still referred to as Ridgewood Heights. I was probably eight or so and how important I felt!! My dad was a silent partner and ‘Perry Street’ off Country Club was named for him. Today, practically all of the seven houses in this area built in the late 20′s and 30′s are still occupied, in good condition, and the area remains a desirable location to live.

Bill Aven went on to build many more houses in west Prescott and elsewhere. One of the master carpenters of Bill’s crew, Mr. Carl Ernst, who built our home, had come here with a tubercular wife, continuing his trade building many houses.

Four tubercular men at Whipple: Mr. Peterson, Mr. Brook, Mr. Steiner and Mr. Wist became close friends and decided that when they were well enough they would open an outstanding office supply store on the north side of the plaza called PBSW Office Supply. They were highly successful, and the store remained there for many years.

Dr. James Allen, our doctor, brought his tubercular wife and family here in 1920. He practiced at Whipple until 1926 when he started a private practice for the rest of his life.

Norman Rhodes Garrett was a banker in New York. He developed TB and came to Prescott with his family. He so enjoyed photography and eventually illustrated, with his excellent photos, a collector’s book, "Peace Unto You," in conjunction with Rev. Charles Franklin Parker of the Congregational Church, who wrote poems and articles about Arizona. Mrs. Garrett was very active working at the Sharlot Hall Museum.

Herb Rollins brought his tubercular wife and family from Buffalo, New York, and built a motel called Tri-R-Camp across from the Armory on Gurley Street. This way he could make a living, take care of his wife, and support his family.

Frank Steed was tubercular and came with his wife and daughter, Betty, to Prescott. He eventually was very active in the Methodist Church and was on the Prescott school board for several years.

Charles Elrod had TB and brought his wife, Leone, to Prescott from Oklahoma. They were our neighbors. He eventually was able to work, owning and operating Charles C. Elrod Heating Co. He also was very active in the Smoki People, acting as chief, dancer, etc.

Ben Matthews contracted TB in World War I and came to Prescott’s Whipple Barracks for treatment. He eventually became a patient of Dr. Flinn, with the usual bed rest for 1 year, walking a little the second year using shot bags on his lungs to stop the movement of the lungs so they could heal. His wife was a nurse and his children were all born here. He invested in rentals for additional income and lived to be 90 years old.

In 1925, the entire Ogg family of four came to Prescott from Oklahoma because Mr. Ogg had contracted TB. Two years later, he started working as a pharmacist for Sam Ensminger, then moved on to Elmer Lawrence at the Eagle Drug Store. His next employer was Charles Reibling of the Studebaker dealership, and eventually he became vice president of Webb Motors. Because of a heart attack, he moved to a lower altitude and opened Ogg’s Hogan in Wickenburg. Jack Ogg, his son, became a federal Judge.

Dr. Clarence Yount came to Phoenix for a cure of his TB and eventually moved to Prescott in 1902, regaining his health in 1905. He married a doctor’s daughter and had a family. His only son, Clarence Jr. became a very fine physician and was married to Pat. He did much research on penicillin. He was honored and participated in the dedication of the new radio station, KYCA, in 1940.

Mr. Alpheus Favour, an attorney from New York, brought his tubercular wife and his family of three to Prescott. He was a very close friend of Sharlot Hall, helping her greatly with legal matters and enabling her to contact people of influence in her various projects that helped Arizona become the great state that it is today. His two sons became attorneys as well.

Probably the outstanding contribution in Prescott was Dr. Flinn, who had TB in his native Nova Scotia and came, with his family, to Kingman, Arizona in 1898. They moved to Prescott in 1902. In 1903 he opened Pamsetgaaf sanitarium on West Gurley and Willow Strand, and it eventually became known all over the U.S. as one of the best sanitariums. The name stood for: Pure Air, Maximum Sunshine, Equitable Temperature, Good Accommodations And Food. The first letter of each word spells PAMSETGAAF. Movie stars, former miners, Walter Winchell and Margaret C.Sullivan were among his patients. Complete bed rest was his strong medicine as "rest for the lungs" was the only cure. Later he was on the Board of Regents of the University of Arizona. Congressman Lewis Douglas said Dr. Flinn’s sanitarium constituted the mile high city’s greatest asset. My mother, Frances Gernand, was his private secretary for a period of time, and my father became one of his patients. Two of Dr. Flinn’s sons, Robert and Zebud, also became doctors.

Sam Ensminger, a registered pharmacist, came to Prescott from Indiana to arrest his TB. In due time he was employed at Whipple and eventually opened his own Ensminger’s Drug Store on North Cortez, gaining a fine reputation. He married Dr. Flinn’s daughter and had a great family.

St. Luke’s Hospital in Phoenix brought their TB patients to Prescott and housed them in open porches in the Donnybrook Estates area between Bertrand and Copper Basin Roads, west of Park Avenue. These buildings were built (between) 1934 and 1964. Dr. A.D. Wilson was the consulting physician. Cottage Heights, in the Inglewood area west of Prescott, housed TB patients beginning in 1921 at very reasonable rates. When I was a senior at Prescott High School and 17 years old, my father’s TB became arrested and he lived to be 76 years old.

My parents had wonderful experiences with their Airstream Trailer caravans’ abroad as well as in Canada and Mexico. They enjoyed showing their excellent colored slides to many classes of school children.

I remember all of these people I’ve mentioned, as nearly all my friends had either a tubercular mother or father. Many became ‘cured’ and lived wonderful lives for many years. Many never became well. I want to also salute the wives of these sick men, as their burdens were heavy and hard to bear. These wives I knew and loved never complained.

You can see now, just how much these tuberculars from every walk of life contributed positively to culturally change this little mining town of Prescott. Prescott is different from any other town in Arizona and it’s a delight to live here!!!

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(PB86f12i50) Reuse only by permission.

Dr. Flynn’s PAMSETGAAF (Pure Air, Maximum Sunshine, Equitable Temperature, Good Accommodations And Food) sanitarium was the premier location for tuberculosis patients in Prescott.

by Parker Anderson

Local fans of the Elks Opera House are aware that the star of the very first show in that theater was Florence Roberts. Many have wondered, however, exactly who Florence Roberts was. Her name is largely forgotten today, but in 1905, when she came to Prescott and the Elks, she was one of the most prominent professional touring actresses in the nation.

Florence was born in 1871 in New York City, but while she was still a small child, her parents moved to San Francisco, and this is where she grew up. Not much is known of her childhood, except that she nurtured dreams of becoming an actress while still quite young. While a teenager, she struck out on her own and managed to land a job as a "soubrette" at San Francisco’s old Alcazar Theatre in 1888. Being a soubrette largely required playing bits and walk-ons, especially if one were exceptionally beautiful, as Florence was. Plays in those days had large casts and often background extras-this is not as common today. Historically, being a soubrette was considered rather demeaning work.

But Florence persevered, and while working on a show as a soubrette at the Columbia Theatre, she met the man who would ultimately shape the rest of her life, the famed Shakespearian actor Lewis Morrison, who had, of late, fallen into a rut of playing Mephistopheles in Goethe’s "Faust". Much as he would try to do other things, his legions of fans in theatre always demanded "Faust". Morrison was married, although his wife was no longer doing well physically or emotionally. They had children, and for the record, Morrison’s descendants by his first wife were Morton Downey Jr. and the actresses Constance and Joan Bennett, believe it or not.

With Lewis Morrison’s wife, Rose, failing, he was ripe for female attention. Enter 18 year old Florence, who was young enough to be his daughter, and in fact, was not much younger than his oldest daughter. How their affair started is only open to conjecture, but ultimately, Morrison left his wife, married Florence, and started casting her in his plays, eventually making her his leading lady in ‘Faust’ and his other plays. Those who thought that Florence was a no-talent who had used her wiles to get ahead were shocked when the critics of San Francisco, a notoriously tough journalistic crowd, raved about Florence Roberts. Regardless of how she may have gotten there, Florence Roberts could indeed act and hold an audience enthralled, a rare gift indeed.

Florence fast became the toast of San Francisco theatre, and soon was receiving offers to appear in plays by herself without her husband and she accepted with Morrison’s blessing. Soon she was actively producing her own shows as well, casting herself in such exotic dramas as ‘Sapho’, ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’, and her best known role, ‘Zaza’. She was successful with every show she did, and ‘Zaza’ eventually became her nickname. For years afterwards, even some newspapers would refer to her as Florence "Zaza" Roberts. The play, by Charles Berton, told the story of a Parisian showgirl who courts disaster by dating a married man (irony of ironies). Despite the play’s fame and what it did for Florence, surviving scripts are extremely rare and nearly impossible to find today (although I have one and it didn’t come cheap).

By 1905, Florence Roberts had become powerful enough that she was putting together a troupe to tour the nation with her stock productions. She was one of the few women in those days to head a professional traveling theatre troupe. She chose her old standbys like ‘Zaza’, ‘Tess’, and ‘Sapho’ for her tour, and added some new ones such as Angel Guimera’s highly acclaimed ‘Marta of the Lowlands’. Among the actors she chose to accompany her on her tour were Melbourne McDowell, Lucius Henderson, William Yearence, Forest Seabury, and child actress Ollie Cooper, all respected stage performers of their day.

In Prescott, Arizona, in February of 1905, Elks Lodge No. 330 B.P.O.E. were preparing for the opening of the opera house they had built, and were looking for a top professional performer with which to give the grand opening of the Elks Opera House. After much discussion and negotiation, they decided the Florence Roberts troupe was the biggest thing on the road at that time and decided to try to get her. The Elks contacted Florence’s manager, and a deal was struck for the troupe to play a one-night engagement at the Grand Opening of the Elks Opera House in Prescott. The play from Florence’s repertory that the Elks asked her to do was the above-mentioned ‘Marta of the Lowlands’. On February 20, 1905, the Elks Opera House opened its doors with Florence and her troupe on its stage, and by all accounts, she brought down the house, just as she did everywhere she went.

It is interesting to note how the same events can mean different things to different people. Florence Roberts’ appearance at the Grand Opening of the Elks Opera House was, and still is, a significant event in Prescott history. To Florence, however, it was probably no more than just another stop on her tour. There is no record of her ever returning to Prescott for any reason, although ironically, a few months later, one of her San Francisco theatre colleagues, White Whittlesey, would come to Prescott and the Elks Opera House.

The year 1906 would prove to be a pivotal one for Florence. Early in the year, she was invited to New York to appear on Broadway for the first time in the play ‘The Strength of the Weak’. Her hopes and dreams of reaching the Great White Way had come true. Ironically, her Broadway stint caused her to miss the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake. She was well received by the New York critics, and would, in forthcoming years, return to Broadway in ‘Jim the Penman’, ‘Diplomacy’ and ‘The Claim’. Tragedy also struck with the death of her husband and mentor, Lewis Morrison. Regardless of how she had come to marry him, she always maintained in interviews that she truly loved him, and while Morrison’s descendants would blast Florence as a home-wrecker many years later, there is no real reason to doubt her claim.

Florence Roberts continued to act in plays, in San Francisco and on tours. As she got older, though, she discovered what older actresses discover-good roles for older women are scarce. By the time 1920 rolled around, she was starting to appear in vaudeville and taking it easier than she had in her younger years.

In 1920, many years after the death of Lewis Morrison, Florence Roberts remarried. Her groom was actor Frederick Vogeding, who was 15 years her junior, and they stayed together until her death.

From most accounts, Florence Roberts was a racy, saucy woman for her day. Her plays had strong adult content, many of them reflecting the female viewpoint-the pain of being a woman in a man’s world, a view not commonly discussed in that era. Roles like ‘Zaza’ allowed her to show off a little more of her legs than was common for most women back then.

Florence Roberts was a fascinating woman, and there is much more to her life than can be told in this column. On January 20-21 and 27-28, 2006, Sharlot Hall Museum’s Blue Rose Theater is proud to present, ‘Don’t Despise Me: the Life of Florence Roberts’, a one-woman play about the life of Florence Roberts. Prescott’s acclaimed Gail Mangham will essay the role of Florence, in a script written specifically with her in mind. The role is unlike any Mangham has previously played. Tickets can be purchased at the Museum store on the corner of W. Gurley and McCormick in the beautiful Bashford House.

Florence Roberts died on July 18, 1927 at the age of 56, following an operation of undisclosed cause. Although she had not been as active in theatre as she once had, her death made the front page in all of San Francisco’s four newspapers, and it is said that many old-time Frisco residents wept at the news. Despite a few blemishes, Florence Roberts was a giant among San Francisco women-and perhaps among women in general.

(Parker Anderson is an active member of Sharlot Hall Museum’s Blue Rose Theater and the official historian of the Elks Opera House.)

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

The Blue Rose Theater flyer: the story of Florence Roberts, the first star of the Elk’s Opera House, will be told in "Don’t Despise Me" this month (January 20-21 and 27-28, 2006), presented by Sharlot Hall Museum’s Blue Rose Theater.

by Tom Collins

A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!

When those words rang out from the stage of Patton’s Opera House on March 10, 1896, Prescottonians knew that the villainous King Richard III was about to meet his doom on the battlefield. They also knew that they were probably witnessing one of the farewell performances of America’s greatest living tragedian, Thomas W. Keene. It was a truly momentous occasion.

The 1890s were the glory years for the touring professional theatre in Prescott, thanks to architect Samuel Eason Patton. Patton was a Phoenix contractor and theatre enthusiast who had recently built an opera house in Phoenix and, in 1890, designed the handsome 42-bedroom Hotel Burke in Prescott. When this talented designer moved to Prescott with his family in 1894, one of the first things he noted was that the town’s little opera house on the second floor of the old M. Goldwater & Bro. building on the corner of Goodwin and Cortez was falling into decay and ruin. Known as Howey’s Hall, since 1879 it had been the center of social life in Prescott: a lecture hall, concert hall, dance hall, skating rink, and the place where traveling theatre companies performed over fifty melodramas, farces, and operettas. But lately few plays were being staged there. It was time for someone with a vision to fill the void, and the enterprising Patton stepped up to the plate.

Wasting no time, he designed and constructed his new theatre between June and October 1894. It was located near the corner of Gurley and Marina, east of the old Yavapai Club. The building was 140 feet in length by 70 in width. The main hall, which comfortably seated 600 people, was meant to be a ballroom as well as a theatre. The stage measured a generous 43 feet wide by 24 feet deep, and 30 feet high. The dressing rooms were beneath it. Apparently the three-story building also served as a public hall and meeting place, for it had clubrooms at the front.

The new theatre did good business, as Patton traveled to Los Angeles and even to the East Coast to find good acts and plays. The arrival of the railroads (Dec. 31, 1886) had made it possible for professional touring companies to bring their full-scale productions with carloads of scenery and costumes. Even though the decoration was as yet incomplete, Patton opened the theatre on October 18, 1894, with a performance of the Lone Star Minstrels, followed by Prof. Zamlock, King of Conjurers, on October 31. But the official premiere was November 12, with the arrival of the Eunice Goodrich Company performing a repertoire of contemporary comedies. For the next two years, Patton’s Opera House bustled with theatrical activity, hosting prestigious troupes, such as the Augustine Daly Company and the Payton Stock Company, and a spectacular production of Victorien Sardou’s ‘Cleopatra’, starring Lillian Lewis and Edmund Collier.

By far the most historic performance was that of Thomas Wallace Keene (1840-98), the versatile and eccentric Shakespearean actor, who at age 56 played Richard III for one night only (March 10, 1896) at the opera house with a strong supporting company. In an age of modern realistic acting, Keene was decidedly "retro." He blended the styles of the "heroic" and "romantic" schools of acting, best represented by his forerunners Edwin Forrest and Edwin Booth. Little is known about his childhood. He was born Thomas R. Eagleson in New York City. His father, a journalist, died when Thomas was a small child. In his boyhood Thomas frequently attended the Bowery Theatre, where he became stage-struck. The actors and managers who came to know him hired him for bit parts, and in 1856, at the age of 15, he made his New York debut as Lucius in ‘Julius Caesar’. Through determination and hard work he honed his skills in touring companies on the Eastern seaboard. His first big break came in 1865, when he was hired by James Henry Hackett to play King Henry IV in support of the elder actor’s Falstaff in Albany. From 1870 to 1875 he toured with companies that performed in England and in the American West. In 1875 he moved to San Francisco to join the California Theatre Stock Company. Edwin Booth, the greatest Hamlet of all time, joined him there in 1876. They alternated in the roles of Othello and Iago; and in ‘Julius Caesar’, Keene alternated with Booth and the great actor-manager John McCullough in the roles of Brutus, Cassius, and Antony. Then, striking out on his own, Keene moved to the East Coast in 1880 and almost overnight became a star as Coupeau the alcoholic in a Boston production of Emile Zola’s ‘Drink’. From that point on he began to star in his own productions, selecting as the signature vehicle for his talents Richard III, a role he played more than 2,500 times. For over 16 years he toured widely in small towns in the United States. He was Macbeth, Hamlet, Romeo, Brutus, Shylock, and Othello. And he starred as Cardinal Richelieu in Bulwer-Lytton’s Richelieu; or, ‘The Conspiracy’ and as King Louis in Casimir Delavigne’s ‘Louis XI’, both popular star vehicles of the time.

Keene’s electrifying but almost eccentric interpretation of Richard III gave his audiences a thrill ride of black humor, horrifying villainy, and moving tragedy. His larger-than-life, heroic energy grabbed audiences by the throat. Critics commented that his versatility in facial expression was both as asset and a flaw in the role of Richard.

While his facial gymnastics clearly conveyed everything he was thinking, they sometimes bordered on the burlesque. (Vincent Price comes to mind.) In the famous tent scene on the night before his fateful battle with the young hero Richmond, when Richard is haunted by the ghosts of those whom he has murdered, Keene writhed in his agony like "a man who had been brought up on green applesauce." A cranky critic of the La Crosse, Wisconsin Chronicle complained that "Keene’s idea of expressing emotions other than of the violent howling kind, is to do so by ugly grimaces and contortions that suggest the cramp" (April, 1882). Kinder critics admired his superb diction and described his acting as intelligent, florid, emotional, and overtly demonstrative, perhaps verging on the melodramatic. But there was no denying his powerful emotional impact on audiences. Keene’s script for ‘Richard III’ was as retroactive as his acting style. Instead of following the modern trend of restoring Shakespeare’s original scripts to the stage, Keene followed the example of his predecessors by using much of Colley Cibber’s adaptation (1700), which "improved" on Shakespeare’s original. It was, in fact, a tidier and more coherent version that made this tumultuous story of the English monarchy more accessible to audiences. Cibber added the scene from the end of Shakespeare’s ‘Henry VI, Part 3′ in which Richard stabs the saintly King Henry to death in his prison. He also eliminated Queen Margaret (Henry’s vengeful widow), Richard’s brother the Duke of Clarence, and Lord Hastings. He wrote a new scene for Richard’s unhappy wife, Lady Anne, and enlarged the role of Richard’s enemy, Queen Elizabeth. Minor characters were omitted to bring into focus the primary struggle of the murderous tyrant to maintain his shaky throne against the patriots who unite to bring him down. Written for a series of elaborate painted drop-and-wing settings instead of the neutral architectural background that Shakespeare had used, Cibber’s version of the play afforded plenty of spectacles. Keene brought to Prescott beautiful pictorial settings of a street before St. Paul’s Church, the garden of the Tower of London, a gloomy chamber in the Tower, a magnificent throne room, Richard’s military tent, and Bo worth Field, the site of Richard’s "Waterloo."

The Arizona Miner noted one important innovation in Keene’s staging: he shortened the time between acts. "But a few moments would elapse from the time the curtain dropped on one act until it would rise on the next, while the average troupe devotes as much time to between acts as they do to the play itself." In other words, Keene appreciated the need for momentum and continuity in the staging of the play as well as the limits of the audience’s attention span. This was a decidedly modern innovation. It is a pity that the Miner failed to mention the names of the supporting actors (Sarah A. Baker played Richard’s grieving mother, the Duchess of York, for sixteen years) or to comment upon Keene’s interpretation of the title role. Only the depictions of him on his poster remain to give us an idea of the way he looked and how he staged the play. At the height of his powers and only a few years away from his death, Keene would not be returning to Prescott. The Miner lamented that "When Keene passes away he will leave no successor. There will be no melancholy dane, no dusky Moore to doubt the fealty of his wife, no crooked-back Richard, striding through treachery to a bloody throne." Just a few years later, Keene died of appendicitis.

On July 14, 1897 Patton sold his opera house to Charles A. and C. E. Dake, who owned a Whiskey Row saloon. Charles Dake remodeled the theatre to include an impressively larger stage, 50 feet wide and 25 feet deep. It was provided with a high loft, so that all scenery might be hoisted: a big improvement over the cumbersome old style of sliding scenery (The Courier, Aug. 23, 1897). The idea was to make this the most splendid and well-equipped theatre in Prescott: one that could accommodate the technical requirements of any traveling troupe. As their crowning achievement, the Dakes booked professional productions of two spectacular melodramas: ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ and ‘Ten Nights in a Bar Room’ in October of 1900. The glory years continued until 1903, when the building was torn down and ultimately replaced by a bowling alley. What a shame that this grand opera house was not preserved for posterity. But what a boon for Prescott that the Elks immediately constructed a new opera house to carry on the great tradition.

(Tom Collins is a volunteer in the Sharlot Hall Museum Archives.)

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(Richard III poster) Reuse only by permission.

This poster of Thomas W. Keene as ‘Richard III’ illustrates his presentation of the famous Shakespearean tragedy as it played in Prescott in the 1890s.