Monthly Archives: March 2014

Passion Comes to Prescott – Part 1

Posted on
Reply

by Alexandra Piacenza

The Fremont House on the Sharlot Hall Museum campus stands as testimony to John C. Fremont’s service as territorial governor of Arizona, from 1878 to 1881, and the year he resided here with his wife, Jesse Benton Fremont, and their daughter Elizabeth.  The genteel interior belies the dramatic lives of its occupants, who plumbed the depths of personal drama and scaled the heights of national prominence preceding their time in Prescott.  The powerful balance struck between the adventurer and his articulate, fiercely loyal wife still reaches out from the names, dates and places of history to touch the mind and heart.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said of him, “Frémont has particularly touched my imagination. What a wild life, and what a fresh kind of existence! But, ah, the discomforts!”  His partner in exploration of the American West, Brigadier General Christopher “Kit” Carson, testified, “I find it impossible to describe the hardships through which we passed, nor am I capable in doing justice to the credit to which he deserves.”  Fremont met his match in Jesse Benton whom the Wheeling Register of April 14, 1880, described as “this brave, fair woman, whose crown of roses has ever been plentifully strewn with thorns . . . the same witty, buoyant, fascinating Jesse Benton who made perpetual sunshine in her father’s home, and who from earliest girlhood successfully measured swords and talked with ripe scholars and dignified statesmen.”

03-29-14_John C. Fremont and Jessie Benton Fremont early

John Fremont and Jesse Benton in their younger days (Photos Courtesy of author Alexandra Piacenza).

Fremont, known by the sobriquet “The Pathfinder”, is best remembered for leading the first national surveys of the Oregon Trail (1842), the Oregon Territory (1844), the Great Basin, and Sierra Mountains to California (1845).  His military career included leading an expedition of 300 men in the Mexican-American War to capture Santa Barbara, California, and a few days later, bringing armed resistance in California to an end by accepting the surrender of Andres Pico and signing the Treaty of Cahuenga on January 13, 1847.  As a civilian, he made a multimillion dollar fortune in the California gold bonanza of 1848 and waged a memorable if unsuccessful campaign for U.S. President in 1856, the first Presidential candidate of the newly-formed Radical Republican Party.

Not all his exploits were glorious ones, however.  Caught in the cross-fire of a struggle for control of California between rivals Brigadier General Stephen W. Kearny and Commodore Robert F. Stockton, Fremont was dishonorably discharged from the military.  Although the sentence was commuted after review by President Polk, Fremont resigned his commission in indignation.  Rejoining the military as a major general in the American Civil War, he proceeded to lock horns with President Abraham Lincoln. In command of Union forces in Missouri, Frémont lost his first battle, announced he would hang all partisans caught behind Union lines, then declared all slaves emancipated in Union-held Missouri territory.  When asked by Lincoln for sensitive political reasons to rescind these orders; he refused unless Lincoln ordered him publicly to do so.  Lincoln removed Fremont from his command shortly thereafter.

Neither were Fremont’s roots especially admirable, at least from the point of view of the society of his time.  His mother, from a respected family fallen on hard times, ran away from an arranged marriage to a prominent but much older man into the arms of a charming French language tutor purported to have spent time imprisoned in Haiti.  John was born January 21, 1813, in Savannah, Ga., the birth possibly out of wedlock. The family moved from town to town, often camping for extended periods with Native Americans, which is said to have fostered an early attachment to the subject in John.  As low as the birthright of John C. Fremont was, so dignified was Jesse Benton’s.  An 1895 article by the Daughters of the American Revolution notes that her mother Elizabeth Preston McDowell was the granddaughter of William McDowell, a regimental leader killed in battle during the Revolutionary War.  Her father, Thomas Hart Benton, the first U.S. Senator from Missouri, served in the Senate from 1821 to 1851 and was the acknowledged architect and champion of Manifest Destiny. It was this passion for westward expansion that would draw the Senator and Fremont together—as well as John and Jessie.

Look for part 2 here in a future Days Past.

(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 also available at www.sharlot.org/library-archives/days-past. The public is encouraged to submit articles for consideration.  Please contact SHM Library & Archives reference desk at 928-445-3122 Ext. 14, or via email at dayspastprescott@gmail.com for information).

Women’s Suffrage Heroes of Yavapai County

Posted on
Reply

by Melissa Ruffner

March is Women’s History Month, a celebration of women’s contributions to history, culture and society.

The life we enjoy today was hard won by women who were ridiculed, ostracized and even imprisoned for daring to demand that fifty percent of the population should be able to exert some control over their own lives, bodies and minds.  They had to overcome widespread beliefs regarding the frailty of the female body and mind.  One presumed axiom was that women, when faced with a decision at the polling booth, would faint.  Indeed, even most women felt there was nothing to gain by competing in the male domain of politics.  The swearing and shouting unnerved them; fisticuffs were fearful; and drinking attended every election.  Men would have to clean up their act if women were allowed into this sacrosanct inner circle.

03-22-14_Woman Suffage Congress 1913

Shown here is a 1913 stamp commemorating the International Woman’s Suffrage Congress held in Budapest. Fannie Munds of Prescott served and attended this event as a proud representative of Arizona (Photo Courtesy of Melissa Ruffner).

Women also felt they had far more to lose than gain by such “unladylike” demands.  Unless daughters were born into extraordinary families, they were drastically undereducated, needing only the domestic arts to comply with their assigned adult roles as wives and mothers.  When sewing machines were first introduced, one manufacturer sent free samples to the wives of ministers, feeling that when their husbands saw what time and labor-saving devices they were, they would be enthusiastically endorsed from the pulpit.  Instead, preachers condemned the contraptions as too mechanically complicated for a mere woman to master.  Sewing machines were also considered to be the work of the Devil, because with time on their wives’ hands…”What are they going to do…think?”

Although some women voted within colonial governments, and during the Revolution demanded to be included in the government, many upper–class women feared punishment through loss of financial and societal status.  Most poor women didn’t believe that having the vote would improve their own lives or their children’s.  It required enormous courage to envision even a small part of what women today often take for granted.  Women in the western United States secured the vote earlier than their Eastern sisters.  It was harder to convince pioneer women that they were too weak to make a decision, ladies who homesteaded; delivered babies (sometimes their own); worked sixteen hours or more a day; roped and branded; or cultivated, canned and cooked.

03-22-14_po0518pb(Cropped)

Frances Munds was an Arizona pioneer in every sense of the word, including women’s suffrage (Photo Courtesy Sharlot Hall Museum Call Number: PO-515pb).

Frances Lillian Willard Munds was such a western woman.  She was born in 1866 in Franklin, California.  Her father, Joel, died during the trek to the Arizona Territory, leaving her mother, brothers and thirteen year old Fannie to homestead.  The area was called Willard – later Cottonwood.  While riding with her brothers, Fannie met John Munds, whose family ranched south of Flagstaff in the area now called Munds Park.  She graduated from Central Institute in Pittsfield, Maine, and her first teaching job was in the Mormon village of Pine, and she later taught in Payson, Mayer – where she was the first teacher – and finally Jerome.  On March 5, 1890, she married John Munds.  He served as a Deputy Sheriff from 1894 to 1897 under Sheriff George Ruffner and was subsequently elected Sheriff of Yavapai County, serving from 1898 to 1903.

Fannie was making a name for herself in Prescott and Yavapai County.  She was a member of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.  In 1898, she was elected secretary and later president of the Arizona Woman’s Suffrage Organization.  She worked tirelessly to overcome the prejudice and fear which women accepted every day as their lot in life.  On November 5, 1912, women secured the right to vote in Arizona – eight years before national woman’s suffrage.  In 1913, she was appointed by Governor George Hunt as representative to the International Woman’s Suffrage Congress held in Budapest.  Upon her election in 1914 as the State Senator from Yavapai County – and the second female state senator in the United States – Fannie remarked: “Our friends, the true – blue conservatives, will be shocked to think of a grandmother sitting in the State Senate.  She retained her active interest in politics until her death on December 16, 1948.  In 1982, Frances Munds was inducted into the Arizona Women’s Hall of Fame.  Her contributions to her state and nation were recognized in 1995 with the creation of the Frances Willard Munds Award to “honor the accomplishments of modern women who have fulfilled Munds’ vision of equal participation on Arizona politics.”  The first recipient of the award was the first woman appointed to the United States Supreme court, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

The legacy of Fannie Munds and women like her is not just the right to vote…..it is the right to choose.

(Melissa Ruffner is a native Prescottonian whose first ancestor arrived here in 1867.  She is the recipient of the Sharlot Hall Award, the Al Merito Award given by the Arizona Historical Society, and is one of the 100 Arizona CultureKeepers.  Her most recent project is a DVD entitled Melissa Ruffner’s Prescott.)

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 also available at www.sharlot.org/library-archives/days-past. The public is encouraged to submit articles for consideration.  Please contact SHM Library & Archives reference desk at 928-445-3122 Ext. 14, or via email at dayspastprescott@gmail.com for information.

Arizona Women’s Diaries and Writings

Posted on
Reply

by Mary Melcher

Women’s diaries, journals and letters provide a fascinating glimpse into the lives of Arizona’s pioneer women, their families and communities.  From reading diaries like these, we learn of Arizona women’s experiences, as well as territorial and state history.  These writings also help us understand the history of our own region.

Margaret Hunt McCormick, the young bride of Territorial Secretary Richard McCormick, kept a journal describing her trip from New York to Arizona in 1865.  After moving into the Governor’s Mansion—now part of the Sharlot Hall Museum campus—she wrote letters to her brother describing the mansion’s layout.  Unfortunately, her writings were cut short when she died in 1867 after the birth of her stillborn baby.

Elizabeth (Lily) Benton Frémont, the daughter of John Charles and Jessie Benton Frémont, also kept a diary while living here.  She described social gatherings in Prescott and at Fort Whipple, as well as political events.  She illuminated territorial life, describing the sheriff’s funeral in this passage:  “Tuesday 7th [January 7, 1879] Woke to a howling snowstorm which had already covered everything some inches deep, but cleared off cold and bright about 2 p.m.  Mother slept till near noon and had a comfortable day. Father devoted himself to letters except for the brief interval of attending the funeral services at Mr. Bower’s house.  Frank went on with the procession to the Masonic burial grounds; it was quite a long & imposing procession being led by the Masons on foot & closed by men on horseback, many varieties of vehicles including the Post ambulances filling in between.  There is no hearse so one of the larger express wagons was draped with black and used; the flags were half masted & the bells of the school house and court house tolled alternately. Mr. Bowers had been for four years sheriff of the county doing his duty fearlessly in the days when to have his horse shot under him whilst pursuing desperadoes was not uncommon.  Both the Supreme Court and the Legislature attended the services at the house.” (The Arizona Diary of Lily Frémont, 1878-1881, edited by Mary Lee Spence.)

03-16-14_po0772.2pa_Lily Fremont

Elizabeth (Lily) Benton Frémont, the daughter of John and Jessie Frémont, kept a diary while living in Prescott (Photo Courtesy Sharlot Hall Museum Call Number: PO-772.2pa).

Diaries provide an unfiltered view of an individual’s experiences.  Sharlot Hall, Arizona’s poetic first woman territorial historian, was also a diarist and writer.  She kept a journal of her 1911 journey through the remote Arizona strip, north of the Grand Canyon and south of Utah’s state boundary.  During the 1890s, several unsuccessful bills had been introduced into Congress calling for Utah’s annexation of this area.  Hall’s goals for her trip were to see this isolated region, completing her tour of the territory and then to apprise others about it.  She hoped for and believed that informed Arizonans would block Utah’s annexation of the strip.

Hall traveled by wagon for seventy-five days with an experienced guide.  Through her diary she highlighted the area’s history, its people and resources, as well as its beauty.  This passage describes land near the Grand Canyon’s North Rim:  “I walked all the morning, far ahead of the wagon, alone with the mountains; when I grew tired, I lay down in the grass and rested, and thought that it would be lovely to be buried in such a serene and yet majestic spot, the flowers dancing above and the quakenasp leaves tinkling like little silver bells.” (Sharlot Hall on the Arizona Strip” edited by C. Gregory Crampton.)

Although Hall had traveled throughout Arizona Territory, this diary is the only published record of her journeys. It drew attention to the strip, and in 1914, scientists employed by the state surveyed the region’s agricultural value.

To mark Women’s History Month, University of Arizona professor Dr. Judy Nolte  Temple will discuss these diaries, plus the writings of Mim Walsh, a plucky Irish immigrant who wrote a 50-year-long journal revealing her experiences on the frontier as an Irish immigrant—and a great deal more—during an upcoming lecture at the Sharlot Hall Museum Archives on March 22 at 2 p.m. This free lecture is sponsored by the Arizona Humanities Council.

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 also available at www.sharlot.org/library-archives/days-past. The public is encouraged to submit articles for consideration.  Please contact SHM Library & Archives reference desk at 928-445-3122 Ext. 14, or via email at dayspastprescott@gmail.com for information.

 

 

Arizona Territory’s First Newspaper Begins its Publication at Fort Whipple

Posted on
Reply

By Al Bates 

To those of us who still use newspapers—we learn from them, argue with them, line our bird cages with them—March 9, 1864, was an important day in local history for that is when the first issue of the Arizona Miner newspaper was published at Fort Whipple, then still at Del Rio Springs.

Some may argue that that the Miner was not the first newspaper published within Arizona’s boundaries—the Weekly Arizonian had been published briefly before the Civil War, first in Tubac and then at Tucson—but the

03-8-14_MinerMarch1864

The first Arizona Miner was issued on March 9, 1964. Page one of that edition is shown here (Photo Courtesy Sharlot Hall Museum Call Number: Newspapers>Arizona Miner March 9, 1964).

Miner was the first newspaper published in the newly formed Arizona Territory, and for many years was a prominent voice commenting on territorial affairs.

Territorial Secretary Richard McCormick brought the materials needed to publish a newspaper overland with the Governor’s Party.  These materials included a used printing press of 1820s vintage and handset type fonts.  According to McClintock’s history of Arizona, that press was in use in Prescott as late as 1880, but was destroyed in the Whiskey Row fire of 1900.  Even then the bed was recovered and used as an imposing stone.

The nominal publisher was Tisdale A. Hand, a 23-year-old immigrant from New York, though it is certain that the owner, Secretary McCormick, contributed much of the editorial matter.  Albert Franklin Banta who had arrived with the Fort Whipple founders as a “bullwhacker,” was Hand’s assistant for at least the first issue.

In the manner of the times, the Miner had a motto, “The Gold of that Land is Good.” It consisted of four pages, with four columns to the page, and initially was published twice monthly before becoming a weekly in 1867.  Advertising in the first issue occupied only a single column on page four and included jewelry and watch making services, postage stamps and envelopes for sale, and a $100 dollar reward for recovery of Marshal Duffield’s lost horse.

Additional embellishments on the first page included images of the American Flag and the original territorial seal designed by Secretary McCormick.  Editorial content included a description of the governor’s proclamation ceremony at Navajo Springs including the text of Secretary McCormick’s remarks.  The Organic Act establishing Arizona Territory was also printed in full.  Much of the remaining columns contained filler material from other sources, a common practice of the time.

Page two led off with pledges to emphasize local news and everything outside “of note.”  And there were statements that the Miner would be “independent” and “non-partisan,” which political foes of the Secretary must have found amusing.

03-8-14_bub8135pa

The Arizona Miner office eventually moved to Montezuma Street, shown here, c. 1878 (Photo Courtesy Sharlot Hall Museum Call Number: BU-B-8135pa).

Some of the local news items found in the first issue: Urgent need for stage routes to Albuquerque and Mesilla; Considerations of where the Territorial Capital should be located; Indian troubles including a third raid on King S. Woolsey’s Agua Fria ranch; and information on the upcoming special census.

After Fort Whipple moved to its new location on Granite Creek, the newspaper moved to the new Prescott townsite.  Their offices were located across from the town plaza in a frame building that the paper proudly announced was the first building completed in the townsite.  The first issue published with a Prescott dateline was June 22 and the paper apologized for missing one edition due to the move.

Publisher Hand did not remain in Prescott for long.  Banta, although a not totally reliable source, shed some light on his departure telling of an incident, featuring Editor Hand and a desperado named Lou Thrift.  He told that one day at dinner in the Prescott House Hand got into a political argument with Thrift, a native of Virginia and ardent Confederate supporter, and “in the dispute Hand was so indiscrete as to call Thrift a liar.”  Thrift proposed to settle the matter then and there with “Colonel Colt” as arbiter.  Hand demurred saying he was unarmed and never carried a pistol.

Thrift then drew one of his two six-shooters, cocked it, and placed it beside Hand’s plate indicating he was free to use it.  Hand prudently declined to do any shooting.  Thrift, “boiling with rage,” picked up his gun, and slowly returned it to its scabbard.

Banta concluded his story with, “Shortly after this Mr. Hand left the country for the East.”

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 also available at www.sharlot.org/library-archives/days-past. The public is encouraged to submit articles for consideration.  Please contact SHM Library & Archives reference desk at 928-445-3122 Ext. 14, or via email at dayspastprescott@gmail.com for information.

The Legend of the Quartz Rock Saloon and the Origins of Whiskey Row

Posted on
Reply

(This article is one of a series that will appear in this space during this year on historic events relating to the Arizona Territory’s Sesquicentennial.)

by Brad Courtney

There are many marvelous Prescott legends that are a delight to read or hear and, of course, retell.  Some, when researched thoroughly, reveal themselves as spectacular yarns.  Others are part truth, part fable, often based on a true story, but along the way the temptation to embellish and throw in extra characters and events proved too strong to their tellers.  Perhaps some are culminations of oral history gone wild.  One endearing and enduring piece of Prescott folklore, however, is a combination of certain true, distinct, and even related events.  Such is the legend of the Quartz Rock Saloon.

It begins during Prescott’s earliest days with an enterprising pioneer, Isaac Goldberg, who, improvised a makeshift cantina on the banks of Granite Creek—a shanty covering a crude, wooden-board counter, two bottles of whiskey, and a single tin cup.  It was called the “Quartz Rock Saloon,” and was an instant success.  However, as the story goes, Goldberg ran into problems when intoxicated patrons either stumbled face down into the stream, or became nauseated from gazing at the trickling water.  Consequently, the proprietor moved to the newly formed Montezuma Street.  This cantina, it is theorized, was the seed that eventually sprouted a crop of saloons which later would be dubbed “Whisky Row.”

Unlike many legends replete with adornments and distortions, the Quartz Rock Saloon legend is merely an alteration of the truth.  There was an Isaac Goldberg who told his story in 1894 to the Society of Arizona Pioneers.  Arriving in the Prescott area during the mid-summer of 1864, he did indeed set up a saloon of sorts with a “rude counter which concealed sundry bottles of whiskey.”  This plank bar exposed only the reputed two bottles while each dram of whiskey was sold for fifty cents from one tin cup.  His assistant, who often appears in the folklore version of this operation, was an AWOL soldier with most of his nose missing.  Goldberg never mentions a creek, or a name for his business.  Nevertheless, his set-up may have actually been Prescott’s first wholesale/retail liquor undertaking, if not saloon.

03-2-14_po2138p

William Hardy opened “The Quartz Rock” with much fanfare on November 14, 1864. It may have been Prescott’s first saloon (Photo Courtesy of Sharlot Hall Museum Call Number: PO-2138p).

In the thirteenth Arizona Miner, September 7, 1864, Goldberg advertised his firm for the first time, and was the first Prescott liquor wholesaler/retailer to do so.  This advertisement mentions that Goldberg was now selling his wares out of the Juniper House.  For Whiskey Row historians, this is an intriguing juxtaposition.  The Juniper House, founded by the multifaceted George Barnard, bore a conspicuously similar history as that of Goldberg’s cantina.

The Juniper House is, irrefutably, Prescott’s first food and beverage go-to spot, but, like Goldberg’s liquor stand, it also began in primitive style.  One witness noted that the “progressively inclined” Barnard had “no house nor stove” when he first opened in 1864.  Rather, he cooked his cuisine over an open campfire by a sizable juniper tree.  Eventually nail and lumber sheltered a workable restaurant, where Goldberg’s spirits provided a welcome addition.  Several noteworthy sources point to it as being established on the Plaza side of Montezuma Street.  If so, the Juniper House with Goldberg’s cantina attached would make it the first of its kind amongst the area that would become known throughout the Southwest as Whiskey Row.

Goldberg’s libations set-up has four possible competitors vying for the distinction of being Prescott’s first bona fide saloon.  One was opened on November 14, 1864, by the controversial, but influential frontiersman William Hardy—who founded the Colorado River town, Hardyville, which later became Bullhead City—with an “inauguration” from a local club of townsmen called the “Barbarians.”  The Barbarians’ mission was to “properly [celebrate] important events” marking Prescott’s progress.  Opening a bar featuring the best billiard table in the territory with a saloon offering “a better class of liquors than we have been used to in Prescott” was certainly, in their minds, significant progress.  The saloon was christened “The Quartz Rock.”  It was located on Granite Street along the banks of Granite Creek.  There it stayed and operated successfully for almost 7 years.  The Juniper House floundered, and soon both Goldberg and Barnard moved on to other entrepreneurial experiments.

It is unusual when truth is more amusing than legend.  The Quartz Rock Saloon and Juniper House histories are, arguably, exemplars of such an occurrence.

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 also available at www.sharlot.org/library-archives/days-past. The public is encouraged to submit articles for consideration.  Please contact SHM Library & Archives reference desk at 928-445-3122 Ext. 14, or via email at dayspastprescott@gmail.com for information.