Monthly Archives: April 2013

A Short History of the Bashford House, Part II

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By Nancy Burgess

Once the Bashfords had remodeled the house to their tastes and to reflect their status in the community, the Bashford House became a meeting place for the well-to-do high society of Prescott’s business and professional elite.  Wealthy businessmen, financiers, mine owners, soldiers and politicians met at the Bashford’s elegant house.   Mrs. Bashford’s soirees, to which the ladies of society wore their elegant outfits, were a popular pastime for the wives and daughters of the prominent men of the community.  These elaborate dresses, with bows and layers of flounces and pleats and “princess trains” were only worn once, as being seen in the same dress twice would shatter the important statement made by the wearer that the family was wealthy enough to afford such opulent costumes.  Mrs. Bashford’s gracious hospitality helped take the edge off the raw frontier that was just beyond the borders of the city.

As Melissa Ruffner wrote in Prescott: A Pictorial History, “Mrs. Bashford’s rich tastes were mirrored in every room.  The exterior of the structure was decorated with gingerbread trim and a solarium was added on, enclosed by eight large windows with stained glass transoms above and lavishly bedecked with plants.  Several other rooms were decorated with intricate cherry-wood lattice work imported from Europe.  The windows were richly curtained and thick carpets covered the floors.  Delicate and expensive bric-a-brac was on every shelf and table…..”

In September 1904, the Bashfords sold their property to Eugene Greenwood for $9,000 “together with all improvements of every character, nature and description situate thereon including household and kitchen furniture, fixtures and personal property as found in the residence occupied by grantors.”  The Bashfords then moved to Los Angeles, where William died in March 1915.  In later years the home was occupied by various tenants and by 1935-36, it had been converted into apartments.  In the 1950s, it was known as the “Goodloe Apartments” with eight units.  Mr. Charles Goodloe lived in apartment number one for many years.

In 1974 the Bashford House was doomed to demolition if it was not moved.  The owner, Delbert Pierce, donated the building to the Sharlot Hall Museum, and, after three months of  hard work and every conceivable type of community fundraising, the house was moved in seven sections to the museum grounds on April 19, 1974.  After a two-year rehabilitation and restoration, the house was opened to the public amidst much celebration on May 15, 1976.

Bashford_House_Part2_DaysPast

A modern Photograph of the Bashford House on the grounds of Sharlot Hall Museum. (Courtesy of Sharlot Hall Museum Marketing Department)

In October 1995, the Bashford House was documented and the paperwork was submitted to the Arizona State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) for a “Consideration of Eligibility” to the Arizona and/or National Register of Historic Places.  The building was described at that time as a “Victorian with Queen Anne influence in the detailing and ornamented structural members, including decorative spindles, incised decoration, hood molding, decorative brackets, and moon gate entry; and Stick influence in the massing with gabled roof structure, asymmetrical shapes, angular form and decorative trusses in [the] gables.”

After consideration by the SHPO staff, there was a mixed recommendation as to the eligibility of the building due to the extensive additions, restoration and rehabilitation, and primarily, because it had been moved from its original site.  Staff stated that the building was a good example of its style and that “the details of its structure convey the important defining characteristics of its style.”

Ultimately, the Historic Sites Review Committee determined that the Bashford House was eligible for the National Register of Historic Places and it was entered into the Arizona State Inventory of historic resources.  However, to date, the nomination to the National Register has not been prepared and the Bashford House has not been listed in the National Register.

The building is well protected by State statutes which require state-owned historic buildings to be properly maintained and their historic integrity protected.    This is, however, not an easy task for the state agencies responsible for these treasured representatives of our cultural history, because of funding priorities.  It is often necessary for the community to step up and help with this important work, just as the community of Prescott stepped up in 1974 to save the Bashford House from demolition.  Mrs. Mary Louise Evans Bashford would surely be pleased that the Bashford House is still a part of the Prescott community today.

 

(Days Past is a collaborative project of the Sharlot Hall Museum and the Prescott Corral of Westerners, International (www.prescottcorral.org). This and other Days Past articles are available at www.sharlot.org/library-archives/days-past. The public is encouraged to submit articles for Days Past consideration. Please contact Assistant Archivist, Scott Anderson, at SHM Archives 928-445-3122 or via email at archivesrequest@sharlot.org for information.)

A Short History of the Bashford House, Part I

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By Nancy Burgess

Prescott was established as the capital of the newly created Arizona Territory in the spring of 1864.  At the time, it could not even be characterized as a settlement, just a few camps of miners and the beginnings of Fort Whipple a few miles from town. Prescott’s earliest buildings consisted of tents or brush shelters.  However, with a plentiful source of timber, log buildings soon began to appear and, by 1865, Prescott was described as a town built entirely of wood.

The earliest existing example of log construction in Prescott is the Governor’s Mansion which still stands today at its original location on the campus of Sharlot Hall Museum.   Other log buildings on the campus also represent the log building types of the 1860s – Fort Misery, which was moved from its original site on Goose Flats next to Granite Creek near South Montezuma Street and subsequently rebuilt and restored; and the Schoolhouse, a replica of the log schoolhouse which was built in 1872 by Samuel Rogers beneath a large Cottonwood tree on what is now the campus of Mile High Middle School.  The schoolhouse was destroyed in a fire in 1948.

Very shortly after Prescott was established, entrepreneurs of every sort came to the area. A. O. Noyes and George Lount very quickly established a sawmill on the banks of Granite Creek.  By 1867 or 1868, George Curtis became a partner in the business and began building homes and commercial buildings.  The availability of sawn lumber made an impact on the development of Prescott as the crude and often dirt-floored log buildings were considered temporary.

By the 1870s, homes were being built with locally made brick foundations, horizontal wood siding, sash windows, brick chimneys and wood-shingled roofs.  There are only a few unaltered buildings left in Prescott from this time period, and once the railroad arrived in 1886, many were converted to large, fancy, Victorian-era homes.  By then, Prescott was a center of commerce in the area and many wealthy businessmen had moved into the community.  It was important in the society of the day for the socially elite to have an up-to-date, elegant and attractive home in which to entertain.  Most of these homes were located along Union, Gurley, Mt. Vernon and Pleasant Streets.

The J. A. Merrill Residence, a typical Prescott 1870s Victorian Cottage. Photograph by D. F. Mitchell, 1870s (Courtesy Sharlot Hall Museum - Call Number BU-RE-4069).

The J. A. Merrill Residence, a typical Prescott 1870s Victorian Cottage. Photograph by D. F. Mitchell, 1870s (Courtesy Sharlot Hall Museum – Call Number BU-RE-4069).

The Bashford brothers––Coles and Levi–– came to Arizona Territory in 1864 with the first territorial governor.  Coles, a prominent politician in Wisconsin where he had been a governor, senator and attorney general became the president of the Arizona Territorial Legislature, and in 1875 was appointed Secretary of the Territory.  His brother, Levi, came to Prescott and soon became an important merchant, opening the Bashford Mercantile Store in 1868.

In the spring of 1874, Cole’s son William Coles Bashford, joined the mercantile business and a partnership with Robert H. Burmister resulted in the well-known mercantile “The Bashford-Burmister Company,” commonly known as “The B-B.”  Located across the street from the Plaza on West Gurley Street, it was a very successful business well into the 20th century.  Along with the success of the business came the financial success of its partners, including William Bashford.

In 1877, Samuel Baker built a small, rectangular, two-story, wood-framed cottage on the southeast corner of Pleasant and Gurley streets, facing west, onto Pleasant Street.  It was soon purchased by William and his wife Mary-Louise for $2,000.  There are no known photographs of this building, but it can be surmised that it was a simple “Victorian Cottage,” typical of the homes being built in Prescott at the time.

Over the next ten years, the Bashfords completely transformed the building in size, architecture and elegance.  Several additions enlarged the footprint of the house and a solarium and a two-story bay window were added to the east side of the building.  The front entrance was relocated to the Gurley Street façade and a beautiful moon gate was added to the entrance, along with a pair of stained glass French doors.  Painted in a period color scheme of approximately seven colors, the house was a very visible landmark on East Gurley Street.   By 1903, it was the epitome of a Victorian-era Queen Anne with Eastlake influences which could, and did, hold its own with any of the other high-style homes in Prescott.

Next Sunday: The preservation and historical registration of the Bashford House.

Mrs. William C. Bashford (Mary-Louise Evans Bashford) circa 1880s (Courtesy of Sharlot Hall Museum – Call Number: PO-0134pc).

(Days Past is a collaborative project of the Sharlot Hall Museum and the Prescott Corral of Westerners, International. This and other Days Past articles are available at www.sharlot.org/library-archives/days-past. The public is encouraged to submit articles for Days Past consideration. Please contact Assistant Archivist, Scott Anderson, at SHM Archives 928-445-3122 or via email at archivesrequest@sharlot.org for information.)

Lucy Martinez’s Love Story: Part 2

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By Al Bates

The first part of this article told of the rescue of a young Mexican woman from Apache captors and how she became the wife of King S. Woolsey and the mother of his children and how financial problems forced them to move to a ranch just north of the Gila River.

In 1869 life at the Agua Caliente establishment became complicated.  Woolsey, on a visit to Gila Bend, met “Miss” Mary Taylor who was passing through with a California-bound wagon train.  A few hours later, she accompanied Woolsey to his Agua Caliente Ranch to become his housekeeper.  Mary’s exact marital status at this point is uncertain because she had been traveling with a Mr. Nash as either his fiancée or his wife.  In any event, she and Woolsey were birds of a feather: tough, hard working and ambitious.

What the living arrangements at Agua Caliente were cannot be known.  However, Mary did spend much of her time across the Gila River from the ranch supervising Woolsey’s Stanwix Station, a wagon train and stage stopping point.

Whatever the arrangement, three events of significance occurred less than two years later: A son was born to Woolsey and Lucía, Woolsey and Mary were married, and Lucía and her three children left for Yuma permanently.

Mary continued to spend much of her time at Stanwix, building a reputation as a hard working, no nonsense business person while Woolsey increasingly turned his attention to opportunities in the growing community of Phoenix and to his political ambitions.

It was during Woolsey’s unsuccessful run for Territorial Representative to Congress in 1878 that word of his abandoned family was published in the Arizona Sentinel of Yuma.  That scandal—along with Woolsey’s support for moving the Territorial Capitol to Phoenix—made him run poorly in Yavapai County.

After Woolsey’s sudden death in 1879, a Yuma businessman acting as the children’s guardian petitioned for a share of Woolsey’s estate to go to them.  And then things got nasty.

Woolsey’s Stanwix stage and wagon train stopping place south of the Gila River between Yuma and the Pima Villages in 1873. (Courtesy of Sharlot Hall Museum – Call Number: BU-ST-6009p)

Mary Woolsey resisted the petition strongly, but in a legal maneuver allowed her lawyer to admit that Clara and Johanna were Woolsey’s children by an “Indian woman” named Lucy.  There was no such admission of parentage regarding the boy who undoubtedly was a very sore point with Mary.  What is significant is that “Lucy” is referred to as Indian while previous statements made by Mary had referred to her as Mexican.

Mary’s motives are clear.  Because of the existing miscegenation laws, no white person could marry an Indian, thus classifying the children as the result of an “illegal cohabitation” and thereby reducing their claim on Woolsey’s estate.  An initial ruling in favor of the girls was reversed on Mary’s appeal.  There were rumors that Mary later provided “pittances” for the girls out of her considerable assets.

The 1880 census for Yuma provides almost the last trace of Lucía and her children.  Significantly, they all were registered as white as then would be any person considered racially Mexican.  Also by then, she had a second son.  His father is unknown.

The older daughter, Mrs. Clara Woolsey Marron, died in Phoenix in 1947.  Her obituary gave her place of birth as the Agua Fria ranch, and her father as King S. Woolsey.  There is no known further record either of her siblings or of their mother, Lucía.  However, when King Woolsey’s remains were moved from the old Phoenix cemetery to the “Pioneer’s Cemetery”, the names of three granddaughters, were recorded on the re-burial certificate.

With Woolsey’s estate in hand, Mary Woolsey went on to marry and outlive two additional husbands and accumulate an even more substantial fortune.  When she died in 1928, Governor George W. P. Hunt ordered state flags to be flown at half-staff, the first such recognition of a woman in Arizona.

The contrast is striking:  Woolsey acknowledged two wives.  The first (common law) wife died in obscurity and probably in poverty.  The second (and quite possibly bigamous) wife died honored and wealthy.  Is there a moral there somewhere?  As Lucía might have said, Quien Sabes?

(Days Past is a collaborative project of the Sharlot Hall Museum and the Prescott Corral of Westerners, International. This and other Days Past articles are available at www.sharlot.org/library-archives/days-past. The public is encouraged to submit articles for Days Past consideration. Please contact Assistant Archivist, Scott Anderson, at SHM Archives 928-445-3122 or via email at archivesrequest@sharlot.org for information.)

Lucy Martinez’s Love Story: Part 1

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By Al Bates

Love stories are supposed to have happy endings.  This one from Yavapai County’s territorial days did not.

Lucy’s story begins like a romantic novel of the old west—think Zane Grey at his most florid.  First, Apache raiders abduct an innocent Hispanic child.  Then, after two years of privation as a captive she is rescued and given a home in a small mining town.  Soon after this she becomes the wife of one of the most powerful men of Arizona Territory.  But then the storybook romance turns sour when her husband abandons her for another woman leaving Lucy to fend for herself and their three small children.

Lucia Martinez was 12 years old and living with an older sister, a schoolteacher, when Apache raiders prowled south across the Gila River into Sonora in search of loot and captives.  When the Apaches returned to their hideaway in the rugged central Arizona Mountains, Lucia was one of their captives.

For two years Lucia was kept under constant guard, mistreated, and—in her opinion—purposely starved.  Escape was out of the question since she was too far away from home to even consider crossing the rugged landscape that surrounded the Apache stronghold.

Happily for Lucia, the situation was changing.  The discovery of gold not far from the Tonto Apache strongholds had brought miners from around the world to the newly formed Arizona Territory.  An area once known only to roaming Apache and Yavapai tribes was now open to a new dominant civilization.  The newcomers were well armed and quick to retaliate when Indians threatened their survival by stealing their livestock.

A retaliatory expedition of militia into Apache territory in the summer of 1864 finally provided Lucia with an opportunity to escape.  In the confusion during a skirmish between the militia and Apaches she managed to slip away and make her way to the militia camp.  Daniel Ellis Conner in his book Joseph Walker and the Arizona Adventure told first-hand of her rescue.

He described how the malnourished, dirty, naked and trembling, 14-year-old Lucia was kindly treated by the militiamen who soon rustled up some empty flour sacks, plus a needle and thread, for the shy young girl.  They were impressed by Lucia’s skill in converting the sacks into a serviceable dress and by her willingness to help about their camp.

In the beginning, communication with the terrified young girl was difficult since she had no English and only a few of the militia had any rough use of Spanish.  After struggling with her name in Spanish, one of them said “Oh hell, call her Lucy,” and Lucy she became.

Lucy’s rescuers were led by Lieutenant Colonel King S. Woolsey who was not impressed at first sight of the emaciated young maiden.  He later wrote: “[a] Yaqui squaw about ten years of age came into our camp.  She had been a captive among the Apaches, and had just made her escape.  She came in with us, and now is at my Agua Fria ranch.”

Soon afterwards, Lucy was sent to live and work in Prescott as a servant for a recently married couple, John and Mary Dickenson, who were close friends of Woolsey.

Conner related how the members of the rescue party on encountering Lucy in later months marveled at how quickly she learned English and became a neat and pretty young woman once the effects of her captivity wore off.  She was always grateful to her rescuers and was known to nurse them in sickness.

In retrospect it is clear to see that she had particular affection for the rescue party’s leader, for less than three years later, in February 1867, King S. Woolsey and Lucy, by now his common-law wife, became the parents of a baby girl they named Clara.

Ruins of the King S. Woolsey ranch house on the Agua Fria River located just off the Old Black Canyon highway in Dewy-Humboldt (Courtesy of Sharlot Hall Museum – Call Number PB10-f5-i12)

The first cloud on Lucy’s horizon came just three months later when financial setbacks caused Woolsey to lose the Agua Fria Ranch to foreclosure and they were forced to retreat to Woolsey’s Agua Caliente ranch and hot springs located just above the Gila River where Lucy bore Woolsey a second child, a girl they named Johanna.

Next Sunday: A serpent enters Lucy’s Love Nest.

(Days Past is a collaborative project of the Sharlot Hall Museum and the Prescott Corral of Westerners, International. This and other Days Past articles are available at www.sharlot.org/library-archives/days-past. The public is encouraged to submit articles for Days Past consideration. Please contact Assistant Archivist, Scott Anderson, at SHM Archives 928-445-3122 or via email at archivesrequest@sharlot.org for information.)