Arizona women's hall of fame

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WOMEN'S
HALL of FAME
Ir;il
by
Rosalie Crowe and Diane rod
~ DEPARTMENT OF
U88~f;tj~IVEs
STATE DOCUMENTS COU.ECTION
This monograph was published by the
Arizona Historical Society
with the cooperation of. ..
The Phoenix Gazette
Arizona Humanities Council
Salt River Project
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WOMEN'S
HALL of FAME
by
Rosalie Crowe
and
Diane Tod
Arizona Historical Society
Museum Monograph
Central Arizona Division
1242 North Central
Phoenix, Arizona 85004
1985
1985 Arizona Women's Hall of Fame
STEERING COMMITTEE
Ms. Arlene Bansal
Deputy Director; Department ofLibrary, Archives
and Public Records
Betsy Bolding
Special Assistant, Governor's Oflice
Bill McCune
William McCune Productions for Television
Andrew E. Masich
Director, Central Arizona Division,
Arizona Historical Socie~y
Betty Rockwell
State Representative, Phoenix
Jane Rosenbaum
Special Assistant, Governor's Office
Polly Rosenbaum
State Representative, Globe
Sharon Turgeon
Director; Department ofLibrary, Archives and
Public Records
SELECTION COMMITTEE
Kenneth Arline
History Columnist
Olga Aras
Regional Marketing Manager, USA TODA Y
Margaret BretHarte
Librarian, Arizona Historical Socie~y
Dr. James Byrkit
Professor, Department of Geography, Northern
Arizona University
Raquel Rubio Goldsmith
Instructor, Pima Communitiy College
Alison M. Hughes
Dr. Ken Kimsey
Director, Prescott Historical Society
Betty Rockwell
State Representative, Phoenix
Vada Carlson Rodriguez
Historian-Author
Polly Rosenbaum
State Representative, Globe
Lester W. Ruffner
Arizona Historian-Author
ii
Foreword
Established by the Arizona Women's Commission in 1981, the Arizona
Women's Hall of Fame is now in its fifth year under the joint sponsorship
of the Arizona Historical Society and the Arizona Department of Library,
Archives & Public Records.. Each year nominations submitted from across
the state are reviewed by a Selection Committee, a learned and impartial
body.. Recommendations for induction to the Arizona Women's Hall of
Fame are then received by the Steering Committee, which oversees the
annual meeting and public educational programs.
The Steering Committee felt strongly that a publication containing the
biographies of the twenty-eight inductees was needed in 1985, proclaimed
"The Year for All Arizona Women," by Governor Bruce Babbitt. The
Arizona Historical Society accepted the challenge of compiling this
monograph, which was made possible only by the generous donations of
time and talent from a score of volunteers.
The writers, Diane Tod and Rosalie Crowe, are chiefly responsible for
the completion of this project. Both are employees of The PhoeniX
Gazette, which, with the cooperation of Lynne Holt, Mary Weingart and
Bill Shover, made available typesetting time and equipment. Editing
assistance was provided by Carol Freeman. Final printing of the
monograph was made possible through a grant from the Arizona
Humanities CounciL Arizona Historical Society staff in Phoenix, Tucson
and Yuma freely offered their research, editorial, and photographic
expertise - special thanks to Patricia Callahan, Pierce Chamberlain III,
Beth Dewitt, Susan Luebberman and Joan Metzger. Finally, the staff of
the Arizona Deparment of Library, Archives & Public Records and
Director Sharon Turgeon deserve much credit for their role in
coordinating the Arizona Women's Hall of Fame programs.
Andrew E. Masich
Director
Central Arizona Division
Arizona Historical Society
October 19, 1985
iii
Contents
Nellie Cashman 3
Ida Redbird. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Elsie Toles " , . . .. . . . . . . . 9
Mary Bernard Aguirre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 12
Isabella Greenway King. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 15
Cordelia Adams Crawford. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 17
Angela Hutchinson Hammer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 19
Grace M. Sparkes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 21
Louisa Wetherill. . . . .. .. . . . . . . . . . .. .. . . . . . .• . . . . . . . . 23
Sarah Herring Sorin 26
Sharlot Hall. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 28
Eulalia Elias. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 31
Ana Frohmiller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 33
Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 48
Sallie Davis Haydel] 51
Carmen Sota de Vasquez 54
Frances Lillian Willard Munds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 56
Jane H. Rider 59
Maie Bartlett Heard 62
Laura E. Herron 64
Edith Stratton Kitt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 67
Rachel Emma Allen Berry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 69
Anna Moore Shaw. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 72
Amy Cornwall Neal 74
Lorna Lockwood. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . .. 76
Mary Russell Ferrell Colton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 78
Placida Garcia Smith 80
Nellie T. Bush.. " . . . .. .. . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . .. . . . . . . . .. . . . . 82
iv
Introdudion
Each of the women described on the following pages has a story worth
telling. Their individual achievements, taken singly, may not seem
extraordinary. None of them won the Nobel prize. None of their names
is commonly known across America.
And yet, with each individual act of courage these women succeeded in
changing the society we live in. Taken together, their achievements in
artistic, social political and scientific fields are significant. For the progress
of women, and of society in general, comes about through the cumulative
effect of thousands of small acts of rebellion. Each time these women stood
up and demanded justice, or their rights, or accountability, or freedom,
or charity, they made our world better.
Susan B. Anthony's words, spoken in 1873, have validity even today:
"Cautious, careful people always casting about to preserve their reputation
or social standards never can bring about reform. Those who are really
in earnest are willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation,
and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathies with
despised ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences."
You do not have to look far to find courageous acts in these pages.
There is Nellie T. Bush, who challenged the University of Arizona when
it banned women from attending law classes where rape cases were
discussed. Ifrape doesn't concern women, who does it concern, she asked.
There is Ana Frohmiller, state auditor, who refused to pay a $1,804
claim for a buffet luncheon that benefited the officials who ate it, but nQt
the public. She was determined that the state's money would not be
misspent.. Did it matter that she was taking on the power elite, again and
again?
Elise Toles sat on a parole board that decided who should live and who
should die. She did not shirk the responsibility, although society at the
time was shocked that a woman would even want the job. Her critics
charged that because she was a woman, she would cave in to sentiment
and release the worst of criminals from prison ..
How did these women accomplish so much?
What in their backgrounds or heredity pushed them to greatness?
Shakespeare, in his play Twelfth Night, said, "Some are born great,
some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." The
individuals in the Arizona Women's Hall of Fame achieved greatness
because they were determined. If they saw a need, they filled it, and
when they were confronted by an obstacle, they got around it - one way
or another. They did not shy away from challenges..
It is interesting that our definition of heroism is an act above and beyond
the call of duty. Yet in countless interviews with heroes, they say, "I was
Qnly doing my job," or "It was just something that had to be done."
And those two lines seem to echo through these biographies. These
women, more often than not, spoke of their achievements with
understatement and a certain matter-of-factness that says, "I was only
doing my job."
It is with hope that these women will serve as inspiration and as role
models to us today that we have presented their biographies. These were
outstanding individuals - not just outstanding women. When we read of
their determination and triumphs it is easy to believe that something we
thought impossible yesterday, is possible today.
A voice speaks in unison from these courageous women: Don't stop to
question.. Forge ahead.
Perhaps a few words are in order about how we have presented the
biographies.
They have not been organized chronologically, or by the year of
induction into the Arizona women's Hall of Fame, but rather we have
attempted to present them in an order that will be interesting and will
draw you forward to see who shall surprise you next.
The photos were chosen to illustrate a time in the state's history when
many of these women lived, and do not necessarily document incidents in
the biographies. We have also included pictures of historical artifacts as
a tangible reminder of the past.
The biographies were written based on information supplied in the
nomination files of the Arizona Women's Hall of Fame. Often the material
left questions unanswered or suggested the need for further research. We
trust that these biographies will serve as a starting point for those
interested in the history of Arizona women..
Although journalists and historians both strive to present the facts
accurately, some of the style conventions used by the two professions
differ.. Because we are journalists, we took the liberty of letting our
conventions prevail and used Associated Press style. Where our
differences show, be lenient, historians!
Rosalie Crowe and Diane Tod
October 19, 1985
2
Nellie Cashman
1844 - 1925
liMy boy, I've got it this time, and when I hit the pay streak
in the shaft I'm sinking now, 1'/1 strike it so damned rich that I
won't know what to do with my money."
- Nellie Cashman, talking about prospecting in Coldfoot, Alaska
The English writer George Eliot once wrote that the growing good
of the world is partly dependent on small acts of kindness from
those who rest in unvisited tombs.
She might have been writing about Nellie Cashman, who is
buried in a lonely grave in Victoria, British Columbia, far away
from Arizona, where she spent more than two decades, first running a
restaurant in Tucson and then operating a boarding house and restaurant
in Tombstone.
A pioneer, prospector and businesswoman, Miss Cashman lived her life
serving others and abiding by the Christian values of kindness, mercy and
charity. So widely were her good deeds known, especially among the
miners in the West, that she was known as "the miner's angel."
What record we have of Miss Cashman's life is largely thanks to John
P. Clum, her friend and the editor of The Tombstone Epitaph. When
Clum was 80 years old, he decided to set down an account of Miss
Cashman's life in an essay entitled, "A Modest Tribute to the Memory of
3
a Noble Woman Whose Energetic, Courageous, Self-Sacrificing Life Was
an Inspiration on a Wide Frontier During Half a Century."
"Nellie Cashman led a humble life," Clum wrote. "Her principal
business was to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless, and her chief
divertissement was to relieve those in distress and to care for the sick and
afflicted. She persisted in good deeds through half a century, and her
helpful activities were distributed over a broad field, which extended from
the arid deserts of Mexico to the bleak and inhospitable regions within
the Arctic Circle.."
Miss Cashman was born in Queenstown, Ireland, in 1844. She and her
sister came to America around 1867, landing in Boston and then traveling
to San Francisco.. There, Nellie's sister married Thomas Cunningham.
In 1877 Miss Cashman joined the stampede to find gold in the Yukon
Territory. She was among the group of hardy adventurers who trekked to
the Cassiar District, which extended across the northern border of British
Columbia and into the Yukon Territory.
The trails were new and difficult. The winter in this region near the
Arctic divide was harsh. Before long, scurvy broke out.
It was due to Miss Cashman's heroic effort that vegetables were
brought to the remote region and many lives were saved. The grateful
miners carried the story of Miss Cashman's courage with them as they
moved from camp to camp. And throughout her life Miss Cashman often
encountered persons who had heard of her courage. The stampede to the
Cassiar District was remembered largely for the hardships experienced;
practically no gold was found.
Miss Cashman's taste for adventure then led her to the silver mines in
Nevada. Those camps were in decline, however, and she soon headed for
Arizona.
She went to Tucson in 1879 and opened Delmonico's Restaurant, where
she did a good business with her excellent cooking.
In 1880 Miss Cashman moved to Tombstone where she took over the
Russ House, a boarding house and restaurant. That same year, her sister
died, leaving "Aunt Nell" to raise the five young Cunningham children.
Miss Cashman, who never married, thus assumed the responsibility for
supporting and educating her "acquired" family.
In the 1880s Tombstone was without a hospital. Yet illness and
accidents were common in the bustling mining camp.
"There were many opportunities for generous, self-sacrificing, willing
hands to help in these cases of illness or accident or pressing need, and we
soon found that Nellie was prompt and persistent and effective with plans
for relief," Clum wrote in his account of Miss Cashman's life. "It might be
a simple contribution, or an entertainment of some sort, but whatever it
might be, Nellie's plan met with immediate and substantial support. If
she asked for a contribution - we contributed. If she had tickets to sell­we
bought tickets. If she needed actors for a play - we volunteered to act.
And although Nellie's pleas were frequent, none ever refused her.
"Her benefits were many and varied. One I can never forget. A
prospector had been sinking a shaft single-handed and had fallen into the
4
shaft and broken both legs. He was discovered in a most pitiable
condition. Nellie rushed to his aid and within a day or two secured nearly
$500 for his care and comfort."
Miss Cashman was instrumental in building one of the first schools in
Tombstone and it was largely through her efforts that funds were raised
for the town's first Catholic church.
In the summer of 1884, Miss Cashman joined the rush to find gold in
southern California and Mexico, according to her nephew M.J.
Cunningham of Tombstone. She donned a flannel shirt and overalls and
joined the group of men who took off for the Mexican town of Muleje.
Along the way, the group of prospectors ran out of water. Nellie, who
was in better shape than any of the men, volunteered to go in search of
water. After a long, hot search in the isolated region, she found an old
Spanish mission. She returned to her party carrying the water that saved
her companions' lives.
In 1897 Miss Cashman left for Alaska to join the prospectors in the
Klondike. There, she ran a store and grubstaked many a prospector.
In 1924, at the age of 79, Miss Cashman set a record as the champion
woman musher of the world. She mushed her dog team 750 miles,
breaking her own trail from Koyukuk to Seward, Alaska, in 17 days.
At Coldfoot, Alaska's northernmost mining camp, Nellie became ill in
the summer of 1924. She was sent to Fairbanks where she was diagnosed
as having double pneumonia. She died a short time later - on Jan. 4,
1925 - in Victoria, British Columbia.
5
r
Ida Redbird
1892 - 1971
The clouds gathered, and the skies wept when Ida Redbird,
master potter of the Maricopa Tribe, died Aug. 10, 1971, in
Sacaton, Ariz.
"She had just finished shaping some pots and had put them in
the sun to dry," recalled her brother Ernest Bill, who lived
across the street from Mrs. Redbird's Gila River Indian Reservation
home.
"Then she went to lie down on the bed under the tree. The tree just
broke," he said, although there was no wind at the time. A large branch
fell on her and she was killed.
Soon after she died, the storm began. Bill's wife, listening as he
recounted the events of that day, quietly said: "Old people believe there
will always be a storm when a person dies.. Something happens in· the
sky."
It was not unusual for Mrs. Redbird to be outside working on her pots,
although an air-conditioned workroom was available to her. Friends at the
Heard Museum in Phoenix recounted the times she spurned the indoor
facilities while teaching children's potting classes, preferring to take her
students and their clay to a place on the patio shaded by a cluster of pa~m
trees.
6
The tamarisk tree that had shaded Mrs. Redbird in the late afternoon
when she died was an old friend - almost as old as her 79 years.
"Ida was always outside under that tree with her pottery," her brother
said. "Her children used to tell her to come inside, but she always wanted
to be outside,"
Not long before she died, she told her brother, "I might just end my life
under that tree."
"That's the way it is with old people," Bill said. "They have ways of
understanding."
Ida Redbird was born March 15, 1892, in Laveen on the Gila River
reservation where she spent almost all her life. Despite the fact that she
lived and died in one small geographic area, her artistic influence was felt
in ever-widening circles. Her pottery was known nationally and collected
by many prominent people and museums. News of her death was carried
by newspapers as far away as Washington, D.C., and editorials were
written in her memory.
Anna P" Kopta, widow of the late Arizona sculptor Emery Kopta and a
former teacher at the Phoenix Indian School, had Ida Redbird as a
student. She recalled that Mrs. Redbird was "a good student..""shy but
very serious in all her activities... "
"Like other Maricopa women, Ida early learned to make pottery," Mrs.
Kopta said" "However, she was not satisfied with the art as practiced. By
painstaking effort and persistence, she sought improvement"""
"Ida not only created loveliness, but stimulated other women of the
Maricopa to strive to improve their wares," Mrs. Kopta said. "The
movement that she began is still moving forward. From the skill and
vision of this talented woman, Maricopa potters are reaping a rich
reward,"
In the mid-1930s, Mrs. Redbird became well-known for her role in the
effort to raise the prices paid to the Maricopa potters, In those early days,
Mrs. Redbird earned five cents each for the small ollas she sold to dealers
in Los Angeles,
Even in the Depression that was extremely low pay, considering the
time and work involved in the production of pottery, noted Mary L.
Fernald in her 1973 master's thesis for the Arizona State University
Department of Anthropology.
Mrs. Redbird also played a major role in the 1937-1940 revival of
Maricopa pottery,
Elizabeth Hart, a home extension agent with the United States Indian
Service, had encouraged the potters to ask more for their wares and to
accept ideas for improving their pottery. Mrs. Redbird was one of the first
to adopt Miss Hart's ideas; many of the other Maricopa potters followed
her lead, Fernald said in her thesis.
In 1938, her fellow potters elected Mrs. Redbird as the first president of
the Maricopa Pottery Makers Association, an organization formed to find
a better way of marketing the members' wares.
Even before Mrs. Redbird's name became synonymous with Indian art,
7
r
she had become active in the preservation of her people's history and
culture.
In the late 1920s, she did translations for Leslie Spier, who was doing
research for a book on the Yuman people living along the Gila River.
"Altogether an exceptional woman," was how Spier described Mrs.
Redbird in the preface to her book, Yuman Tribes of the Gila River.
"Much of my success was due to her understanding and sympathy with
my purpose and to her enterprise in voluntarily ferreting out
information."
"Although she had had little formal schooling, her English vocabulary
was very wide and her understanding of modern American culture as full
as that of her own people," Spier wrote. "To only one characteristic could
I take exception; none of the good-humored obscenity, so characteristic of
the Yuman speech, was ever translated without being toned down."
Mrs.. Redbird was an articulate woman who liked to talk about her art.
But her modesty compelled her to note that fellow potter Mary Juan was
really the best potter.
Mrs. Redbird conceded that she might be better known, but it was only
because she "talked too much," she said.
Nonetheless, it was this trait that drew people to her, fostering a
greater understanding of her art, friends noted.
"One cannot think of Indian pottery without thinking of Ida," said
Paul Huldermann, founder of the Scottsdale National Indian Arts
Exhibition.
"In her heyday she was outstanding. And she's especially noteworthy
- historically and anthropologically - since she used the paddle-and-an­viI
method of the ancient Hohokams rather than the coiling method of pot
making."
She was truly worthy of her title, master potter of the Maricopas, said
Tom Cain, Heard Museum curator.
8
Elsie Toles
1888 - 1957
"As soon as we got accustomed to our work, the diHerence
of sex had no bearing on our decisions. But it is doubtful if
anyone else, besides ourselves, realized this.
"...undoubtedly clear to the end, the people of Arizona
credited my male colleagues with all paroles denied and he/cl
me responsible for every parole granted. "
- Elsie Toles, commenting on her two years on the State Parole Board
in an April 1965 interview in True West magazine
Elsie Toles, Arizona's first woman superintendent of public
instruction, was ready for the job when she began her statewide
campaign in 1920.
What she wasn't ready for was "the dark responsibility victory
would carry with it," the life-or-death responsibility she would
assume as a member of the State Parole Board.
By a quirk in state law, the superintendent of public instruction was
automatically a member of five boards, including the parole board.
"Campaigning through the lovely golden days of an Arizona fall, I
enjoyed the prospect of the top job in school work, with the added
excitement of trying my hand at things that only men had done," she
recalled years later.
9
Her full responsibilities didn't hit home until she received a postcard
from a death-row prisoner in the state prison in Florence. His message
read: "Please save my life. I am sentenced to be hanged September
ninth."
"Receiving that was a terrific shock," Miss Toles said in an interview
with Phyllis W. Heald for True West magazine in 1965. "For the first time
I actually realized that in my new position I would have the power to send
a human being to his death.
"I can still remember the expression in the stenographer's eyes that
morning when she handed me the mail with this on top. She waited while
I read it. Her silence was eloquent in asking 'How could you, a woman,
want such a job?' "
With the passing months, Miss Toles learned just how hard the job was.
Each plea for mercy was aimed at her, and all followed essentially the
same theme: A woman wouldn't condemn a man to die. A woman
wouldn't let a man stay in prison. Awoman would understand.
Her only recourse was to strive for justice and mercy and reject
sentimentality, she said.
And the prisoner who wrote the postcard?
"There was no choice," she said. "He was guilty. He paid the penalty.
But I'll never forget the day we faced him across the parole board
table..."
Born in Bisbee on Sept. 19, 1888, Miss Toles grew up hearing her
parents' and grandparents' hair-raising stories of Apache raids, stage
hold-ups and early-day life in the Cochise County mining camp.
She was one of four girls that made up Bisbee High School's first
graduating class. Later she attended Pomona College in California for one
year before her mother died, forcing her to temporarily give up her
studies. She returned home to care for her 12-year-old sister Myriam and
8-year-old brother Silas.
She had, however, received her teaching credentials from State Normal
School at San Jose, Calif., and was able to teach for two years at Bisbee
before taking her brother and sister with her for a year of specialized
studies in education at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Returning to Arizona, she taught for another year in Bisbee and two
years in Douglas.
It was at that point in her career that the Cochise County Republican
Party talked her into running for county superintendent of public
instruction. Although she was a candidate in a strongly Democratic
county, she won, because, as her sister said, "she was a native
daughter" ..with well-known qualifications."
Miss Toles held the post for two terms and spent four years supervising
rural schools. It was "a formidable task that meant driving over dirt roads
in a Model T Ford," she later recalled.
"I carried tools to repair and inflate a flat tire and also a five gallon
emergency can of gas.. ,,"
One school was perched on top of a mountain at the end of a winding
10
road. The gas tank, located beneath the car's front seat, was lower than
the carburetor when she tried to drive up the steep mountain. So the only
way she could get to the school was to drive backwards for three miles.
All the schools were plagued by a lack of trained teachers, poor
equipment and ramshackle buildings. They were as poverty-stricken as
the homesteaders they served, Miss Toles observed.
Added to these problems was the fact that some of the school board
members tried to use the school as a place to settle personal grudges.
In one such instance, recalled Miss Toles' sister Myriam, Miss Toles
refused to fire a teacher who had managed to get on the bad side of a
board member.
"So he burned down the school house and gleefully announced that the
teacher would now have to leave," Myriam said. "Elsie decided that since
the teacher had a contract and had violated no law the board would have
to pay her salary for the rest of the year. There were no more fires."
Miss Toles is credited with starting a school health service in Cochise
County. And at the state level she initiated a long-range program to raise
teacher certification standards.
She also worked to increase financial-aid for schools, particularly rural
ones, and supported a movement to make the state superintendent of
public instruction an appointive position.
In 1923, at the end of her term in state office, she completed work on
her master's degree at the University of California in Berkeley and taught
as a demonstration teacher for two years. Later she became a professor of
education at San Jose College, a position she held for 17 years.
During World War II, Miss Toles helped establish child-care centers for
mothers working in California's war production plants.
After her retirement in 1945, she co-authored with her sister two
children's books, Adventures in Apacheland and The Secret ofLonesome
Valley.
She died in Douglas Aug. 29, 1957, at the age of 69.
11
I
Mary Bernard Aguirre
1844 - 1906
"...we began to meet herc/s of buffalo anc/ hac/ quantities
of meat. The tongues were something c/elicious after they
were picklec/. We hac/ plenty of them as my husbanc/ was a
great buffalo hunter anc/ kept us well suppliec/. I can never
forget the first one (buffalo) I saw. It hac/ just been killed anc/
we roc/e to where it was, off the roac/. I hac/ a curiosity to
measure the hair on its neck, which I c/ic/ with my arm, anc/ it
coverec/ it from my finger tips to the shoulc/er. "
- an account of a wagon trip across the Great Plains, from the journal
of Mary Bernard Aguirre
Mary Bernard Aguirre's journal began: "Our lives are
through highways and byways - some over rugged ground
and some 'down blossoming ways.'
"I have been a traveler all my life and have seen many
highways and byways in my time."
The journal is a vivid account of many of the experiences in her life,
including her years as one of the first teachers in Tucson's public schools.
It is considered an important documentary record of a time when travel
was by steamboat, railroad and stagecoach.
Mary Bernard was born on June 23, 1844, in St. Louis, Mo., which at
12
the time was a small town with narrow, muddy streets and no gas or city
water.
"When I was six months old, my travels commenced - my parents
moved to Baltimore, Maryland, (my mother's birthplace) and we went as
far as Wheeling, Virginia, by steamboat and from there to Baltimore by
stage," Mrs. Aguirre wrote many years later in her journal. "Imagine what
a trip that must have been over the Allegheny mountains in a stage with
three small children."
For the young Mary, it was the beginning of a life of travel. After 12
years in Baltimore, the family again packed its bags - this time moving
to Westport, Mo., where Joab Bernard owned a large store.
"So, in April (1856), we started on our long journey 'out West,' " Mrs.
Aguirre recalled. "I can well remember hearing it called the 'jumping off
place,' having in my mind's eye an immense bank from which one could
look down into space."
This time the family, which had grown to seven children, traveled part
of the way by railroad car. According to the account in her journal: "With
us went the servants, two Negro women and a white housekeeper, and no
end of luggage. I can remember the immense lunch baskets and the
delight of lunching on the cars and the wonderful views as we sped along."
In 1862 Mary met and married Epifanio Aguirre, a wealthy Mexican
trader. Aguirre, whose family owned a large amount of land near
Chihuahua, Mexico, quickly made a name for himself in the business
world. By 1864, he owned the -bulk of the government contracts for
freighting along the Sante Fe trail between the Colorado and Missouri
rivers. The hundreds of mules and oxen he owned carried supplies to
Army posts throughout the Southwest, and he is said to have employed
more than 300 men as teamsters and roustabouts.
The year after her marriage, Mrs. Aguirre traveled extensively ­visiting
Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore - before
embarking in September 1863 on a trip with her husband across
"unknown lands" - The Great Plains.
She traveled in a wagon train that "consisted of ten wagons, each one
drawn by ten fine mules and loaded with 10,000 pounds of freight."
Her journal documents the trip in detail: "We journeyed on for weeks
and weeks. Went through Council Grove, Fort Larned and many other
points where there are towns now, on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe
railroad, but then (it) was only a wilderness. There was nothing to be seen
but grass for miles - one long unending road with not a shrub even and
never a tree except for an occasional small one near a water hole.
"We made thirty miles a day when we drove a good day's driving. The
tall grass was turning gray with the cold that came upon us very
gradually. The very monotony of it became pleasant at last. There seemed
nothing more to expect, nothing to look forward to and nothing to do."
The Aguirre family continued to travel extensively during the next
seven years. During this time, Mary bore three sons, Pedro, Epifanio and
Stephen.
Then in January 1870, her husband was killed by Apache Indians near
13
I
Sasabe, Ariz. Mrs. Aguirre returned to Missouri to be with her family.
In 1875 she decided to come back to Arizona to take a teaching job in a
small town called Tres Alamos.
But an Indian raid in April 1876 closed the school, and so she moved
back to Tucson, where in May of the same year she was named head of
the public school for girls.
"There were about 20 girls in the school when I took charge," she
recalled later. "With a few exceptions, they were the most unruly set the
Lord ever let live. They had an idea that they conferred a favor upon the
school and teacher by even attending...
"The recess bell was a signal for those girls to climb out the windows
into the street, to whoop and scream like mad, and to generally
misbehave. I let the first recess pass, but when the afternoon recess came,
I would not allow a girl to leave her seat. Of course, there was rebeilion
and muttering dire, but I told them that the first one who left her seat
should go home and stay there. So order was restored and no one left the
room."
Mrs. Aguirre continued her disciplinary measures, sending home
students who misbehaved. At the end of a week, her class of 20 students
had dwindled down to five.
"Governor Safford, who had been a personal friend of mine since 1869,
came to visit the school at the end of the first week," she recalled. "He
asked me how I was getting along. I said, 'Governor, I have broken up
your girl's school, trying to keep order' - I also said that unless I can
have order, I will not teach this school even for $500 a month - (I was
getting $100).
"He laughed 'til the tears were in his eyes, but I was dead earnest. Then
he said, 'Mrs. Aguirre, you just go on breaking up the school that way; you
shall keep this school if you never have more than five scholars.' "
Mrs. Aguirre's determination paid off. The next week the girls returned
and by the end of the month she had 40 students. In 1879 when she
resigned, the school's enrollment stood at 85.
Mrs. Aguirre's achievements in the field of education continued, and in
1895 she became head of the Spanish language and English history
departments of the University of Arizona.
She died on May 24, 1906, in San Jose, Calif., of injuries suffered in a
Southern Pacific train wreck on May 9.
14
Isabella Greenway King
1886 - 1953
"I think the American people. .. would welcome a plan
that began to pay the bills as we go and in so doing relieve
industry of the suspense and uncertainty that must be holding
back the recovery program. "
- Isabella Greenway, talking about issues facing Congress in 1935
Isabella Greenway King was in her mid-30s when she came to Arizona
in 1922. She was on her honeymoon, and it was her first real visit to
the state.
Just 10 years later she was so well-known in the state that she
was called "Arizona's sweetheart." She had made her name through
business and civic activities in Tucson and as Arizona's Democratic
National Committeewoman and the state campaign chairman for
Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
In 1933 she won a special Congressional election, thus becoming
Arizona's first and only congresswoman.
Isabella was born into a family that had wealth, fame and social
standing. Nevertheless, her life was not an easy one; each corner she
turned in life was marked by personal tragedy.
She was born Isabella Selmes on March 22, 1886, in Boone County, Ky.
Her father, Tolden R. Selmes, was not a healthy man, so when Isabella
was still a young girl, the family moved to a North Dakota
15
horse-and-sheep ranch co-owned by her father and Theodore Roosevelt.
Isabella attended Chapin School for Girls in New York City, where she
became close friends with Roosevelt's niece Eleanor. In 1905 she was a
bridesmaid in the New York wedding of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt.
Not long after that, Isabella herself was married to a former Rough
Rider, Robert Ferguson, who came from a wealthy and titled Scottish
family. The couple had two children. With a family and a home in New
York, Isabella must have thought her life was set.
But in 1910 history repeated itself for her. Just as she and her parents
had been forced to leave Kentucky because of her father's health, the
Fergusons had to move to New Mexico; Robert Ferguson had contracted
tuberculosis.
The family homesteaded near Tryon and Isabella became active in
state affairs, chairing the Women's Land Army of New Mexico in 1918.
Three years later, Robert Ferguson died, and Isabella moved her
children to Santa Barbara, Calif. There she met an old friend of Robert's
and another former Rough Rider, John Greenway. They were married in
1922 and Greenway, who managed the New Cornelia copper mine in Ajo,
Ariz., moved his family there.
Greenway had developed a new method of refining copper that made
copper mining more profitable. He was a wealthy and prominent man, one
who could provide a comfortable life for Isabella and the children,
including their son, John F. Greenway.
Unfortunately, tragedy again struck Isabella's life. In 1926, four years
after they were married, Greenway died in New York from complications
after surgery. Once more Isabella was left a widow.
Moving to Tucson with her children, Isabella turned her energy to
business, operating the Double X Ranch near Williams and Gilpin
Airlines, based in Los Angeles. In 1934 she built the Arizona Inn, an
elegant Tucson resort often visited by the wealthy, the great and the
famous.
With her wealth, political connections and business acumen, she was
naturally drawn to Arizona politics. She was elected to Congress in 1933
to fill Lewis W. Douglas' unexpired term. She was re-elected for a second
term by an overwhelming majority.
During her years in Washington, D.C., she was instrumental in
obtaining protection for the U.S. copper industry from foreign producers
whose low prices had forced the shutdown of some American mines.
She worked to secure public health relief for transient families, fought
cutbacks in veterans' benefits, and, with the aid of New Deal funds, saw
that homes were found for destitute families in Phoenix, Mesa and Casa
Grande.
By 1936 Isabella was tired, however, and decided against a third
congressional term in favor of going home to Tucson. She married Harry
O. King in 1939, and the couple made their home in New York City,
returning to Tucson for occasional visits with her children. It was on one
of those visits in 1953 that Isabella Greenway King died on Dec. 18 at the
age of67.
16
Cordelia Adams Crawford
1865 - 1943
Cordelia Adams Crawford was three years old in 1868 when she
came by wagon train with her parents, brothers and sisters to
present-day Phoenix.
She had been born on Feb. 27, 1865, in Lampesas, Texas.
Her father, John Quincy Adams, a captain in the Confederate
Army, lost everything, including his farm, in the Civil War. At the end of
the war, he was asked by neighbors to lead a group of settlers West.
This group was the first to settle permanently in the Phoenix area.
John Adams made a home for his family on 90 acres near the end of the
Swilling Ditch and what is now Van Buren Avenue. There he planted
corn, oats, barley and hay.
The Adams family, in addition to Cordelia and her father, was
composed of her mother Emily, a sister Saphrona, and three brothers ­James
Monroe, Andrew Jackson and Jefferson (Jeff) Davis. Another
sister, christened Texas, was born about five months after the family's
arrival in Phoenix.
Cordelia was 15 when she married Bushrod Foley Crawford in 1880.
The couple established a ranch in the Tonto Basin. They grew hay and
oats, which they used for their cattle, mules and horses.
Crawford sold his cattle in San Diego, and the trip over there and back
17
took six months. During the times he was gone, Cordelia was left in charge
of running the ranch. She had to deliver her own babies - three times ­because
the nearest ranch was 40 miles away.
With neighbors and towns so far away, it was only natural in those days
that Cordelia learned to deal with sickness and injuries.
Over the years, she developed a great friendship for the Apache women
in the area. Because they trusted Cordelia, they would bring their sick
children to the Crawford ranch for her to heal.
Family reminiscences tell how the Apache women would sit under a
tree at the bottom of the hill in front of the ranch house. Cordelia would
go down to meet them, and they would lay the sick child in her arms.
Sometimes it took several days before the child was well enough to go
home, but the women waited there under the tree.
"I asked her what she did," recalled a grandson, Emery Crawford
Johnson of Tucson. "First, she bathed the child in warm water, then she
administered a homemade tea or whatever medicines she thought suitable
from her homemade remedies."
Often the child had suffered a broken bone, and Cordelia set and
splinted it, Johnson said.
She was their friend, and because of this, the women always warned her
of Apache raids. Cordelia took her babies and hid in the fields until the
attack was over.
The Crawford ranch, however, was never burned or damaged in any
way by the Indians. In all likelihood, it was because of Cordelia's kindness
to the Apache women that the ranch - and the family - was saved from
destruction and death.
Cordelia Adams Crawford, who died at age 77 on Jan. 31, 1943, is
remembered by family and friends as a "remarkable woman of courage,
tall and straight as an arrow, who was as easy on her horse as she was in a
rocking chair."
18
f
I
Angela Hutchinson Hammer
1870 - 1952
"/ liked typesetting. When / learned to set type on the
early-day newspapers / hod no ideo that / would ever become
so identified with the Fourth Estate and publish newspapers
ofmy own, but from that one little excursion out ofmy chosen
profession of schoolteaching, / got into something / have never
been able to get out of."
- Angela Hutchinson Hammer talking about how she began her career
in newspapers
Angela H. Hammer has the distinction of holding membership
in two Halls of Fame in Arizona. In addition to the Women's
Hall of Fame, she was named to the Arizona Newspaper Hall
of Fame in 1965. The members of the Arizona Newspaper
Association conferred thathonor on her in recognition of her
long and colorful career as publisher of weekly newspapers in a number of
Arizona towns.
Angela Hutchinson was born on Nov. 30, 1870, in Virginia City, Nev. In
1883, at the age of 13, she and three sisters traveled by rail to Arizona,
They were met by their father, whotook them by covered wagon to Picket
Post, where the family home was located.
Mr. Hutchinson was a mine construction engineer and the family lived
in several small mining towns, including Silver King and Wickenburg.
In 1889, at the age of 19, Angela obtained her teaching certificate from
19
the Clara A. Evans Teachers' Training College in Phoenix. During the
next few years, she taught school in Wickenburg and Gila Bend.
In the 1890s, while she was living with her family in Phoenix, she had
her first taste of journalism, taking a job as a typesetter and proofreader
for The Phoenix Gazette and The Arizona Republican, forerunner of The
Arizona Republic.
She wrote of the experience: "I liked typesetting. When I learned to set
type on the early-day newspapers I had no idea that I would ever become
so identified with the Fourth Estate and publish newspapers of my own,
but from that one little excursion out of my chosen profession of
schoolteaching, I got into something I have never been able to get out of."
In 1896 she married J. S. Hammer, a building contractor. The couple
had three sons before they were divorced after eight years of marriage.
In 1905 Mrs. Hammer made the first of her newspaper purchases,
buying the Wickenburg Miner for $500. At first it looked like a poor
investment, but after llf2 years of hard work she had turned it into a
money-maker and was able to support her family on the profits.
From 1908 to 1910 Mrs. Hammer worked to establish a chain of
newspapers at four rapidly growing mining towns. In her printing plant at
Congress Junction, she published the Wickenburg Miner, Swansea Times,
Wenden News and Bouse Herald.
Then in 1912 she moved her printing plant to Casa Grande and joined
Ted Healey to publish the Casa Grande Bulletin. The partnership,
however, was not made in heaven. The two took opposite sides during a
bitter dispute over water reclamation for the Casa Grande valley.
According to one newspaper account, during the night of Dec. 23, 1913,
Mrs. Hammer had all her printing equipment moved out of the Bulletin
building, and when Healey came to work the next morning all he found
was his desk.
Determined to have a newspaper in which to express her opinions, Mrs.
Hammer founded the Casa Grande Dispatch on Jan. 1, 1914. The
Dispatch supported the Casa Grande Water Users Association and the
Democratic party. For nearly 10 years, the Bulletin and the Dispatch
tangled over political and water issues. Mrs. Hammer quickly earned a
reputation for aggressive, honest reporting and her strong editorial
opinions.
In 1925 Mrs. Hammer moved to Phoenix and the following year
established the Messenger Printing Co., operated by her two sons,
William and Marvin. That company merged in April 1951 with Arizona
Printers Inc. and Mrs. Hammer became a board member of the combined
operation. .
In 1938 she was appointed by Gov. R. C. Stanford to the State Board of
Social Security and Welfare, a position that she held until 1943.
Having earned the respect of journalists throughout the state, she was a
valued member of many professional organizations, including the Phoenix
Business and Professional Women's Club, the Phoenix branch of the
National League of American Pen Women and the Phoenix Writers Club.
Mrs. Hammer died April 9, 1952, at the age of 81.
20
Grace M. Sparkes
1893 - 1963
There was a time when progress in Yavapai County was spelled
S-P·A-R-K-E-S. Grace M. Sparkes.
Matter of fact, there was a time when progress in the state was
spelled the same way, and Sparkes was synonymous with the
terms Arizona booster, patriot and public servant.
That time is long past; Arizonans as a whole no longer recognize her
name, but Grace M. Sparkes continues to touch their lives - even today.
Do you like sightseeing in northern Arizona? Have you driven to the
West Coast on I-10? Then say thank you to Miss Sparkes. It was she who
campaigned for good roads across the state, including a shorter, more
direct route - and bridge - to California.
She coordinated and bossed the Prescott Frontier Days rodeo,
becoming known throughout the West as "the girl who bosses 200 bronco
busters." And she helped establish rodeo rules, many of which are still
used by professionals today.
In 1920, she threw her efforts behind a group of Prescott citizens who
wanted to build a first-class hotel in town. By February of that year,
$30,000 had been raised for the newly organized Hassayampa Hotel Co.,
and by June, 1925, the Prescott Kiwanis Club had raised $150,000 toward
the $350,000 goal.
21
The hotel, which opened in November 1927, is on the National Register
of Historic Sites today.
Born Feb. 23, 1893, in Lead, S.D., Miss Sparkes was 14 years old when
she came to the Arizona Territory with her family in 1906. She graduated
from St. Joseph's Academy in Prescott and Lamson's Business College in
Phoenix before going to work for the Prescott Chamber of Commerce,
forerunner to the Yavapai County Chamber of Commerce, in 1911.
She became secretary for that organization, continuing in the job until
August 1945, when she resigned to oversee her own mining interests in
Cochise County.
In 1921 she helped organize the Smoki People of Prescott, a group of
business and professional men and women dedicated to the preservation
and perpetuation of Indian lore, rituals and dances. To promote Prescott
and the Smokis, she went to Washington, D.C., in 1924 and made
President Calvin Coolidge an honorary member of the organization.
She joined Sharlot Hall, noted historian, author and poet, in efforts to
establish a permanent reservation for the Yavapai Indians near Prescott.
Of that effort, Murray Bemis wrote in 1938:
"The spot preferred by the Yavapai group was a picturesque location
about a mile north of the city of Prescott. This was formerly a part of
Whipple Barracks Military Reserve. Through the efforts of Miss Hall and
Miss Sparkes approximately 75 acres were transferred from the
Department of Interior by Act of June 7, 1935. This 75-acre tract is held
in trust for the Yavapai Indians as the Yavapai Reservation. Thus, the
ancient tribal designation, Yavapai, dropped for several decades from the
census rolls of the Indians, is once more included."
Eight years later, Nov. 17, 1943, more land was added to the
Montezuma Castle National Monument, thanks to Miss Sparkes, and a
year later, she began her campaign to get the Coronado Entrada area in
Cochise County proclaimed a National Monument.
While known mainly for her work in local and state chambers of
commerce, Miss Sparkes also served on the Arizona State Board of
Welfare, was coordinator for a special Arizona exhibit at the Chicago
Century of Progress World's Fair of 1934, and was volunteer secretary of
the Northern Arizona State Fair Association.
She worked to secure approval of many federal projects, including the
establishment of a Veterans Hospital at old Fort Whipple, the renovation
of Tuzigoot Indian Ruins and the restoration of the Old Governor's
Mansion on west Gurley Street in Prescott.
Upon her retirement in 1945, she moved to Cochise County to oversee
her own mining interests in Texas Canyon near Benson.
She died at age 70 on Oct. 22, 1963.
22
Louisa Wetherill
1877 - 1945
"As a guest in a land where most white people are
regarded with suspicion, always remember that your
acceptance by The People will depend on your ability to
accept with dignity, sympathy and honesty the Navajo way
oflife."
- Louisa Wetherill, giving advice to a visiting journalist
Louisa Wetherill was not a trained linguist or ethnologist, yet she
pursued her interest in the Navajo culture with diligence and a
passion that attracted both scientists and artists.
In the early 1900s, she researched a history of Navajo blanket
designs; she translated tribal legends and songs; she collected 300
medicinal and ceremonial herbs used by the Navajo; she compiled a list of
the 56 tribal clans she had identified; and she amassed an impressive
collection of sand-painting drawings.
Today, she is given credit for being one of the first people who
recognized the need to understand and preserve the culture of the Navajo
people.
Mary Louise Wade, who would later be known as Louisa, was born
Sept. 2, 1877, in Wells, Nev., the daughter of U.S. Army Captain Jack
Wade and his wife, Julia Frances Rush Wade.
23
When she was about 2 years old, Louisa traveled with her family
through Kayenta, Ariz., located about 20 miles south of the Utah border
on the Navajo Indian reservation. She could not have known it at the
time, but Kayenta was to be her home for most of her adult life,
The family continued on to Mancos, Colo., where they established their
home. About the same time, another family, the Wetherills, also moved to
Mancos..
"It was there that the destinies of the two families became intertwined
- the Quaker Wetherills from Pennsylvania and the military Wades
originating in Virginia," wrote Mary Apolline Comfort in her book,
Rainbow to Yesterday: The John and Louisa Wetherill Story.
On March 17, 1896, 18-year-old Louisa married John Wetherill. A son,
Benjamin, was born on Dec. 26, 1896, and a daughter, Georgia Ida,
followed 13 months later on Jan. 17, 1898.
In 1900 the young couple took over the management at the Ojo Alamo
trading post on the Navajo reservation, thus beginning a period of 45
years in which they traded and associated with the Navajos.
It was at this isolated trading post that Mrs. Wetherill began to learn
the Navajo language - first to ensure that she was not cheated by the
traders, and later because she had a genuine interest in the people,
according to Comfort's biography.
Mr. Wetherill was often away, and Louisa, along with her young
children, explored the desert around the trading post and became
acquainted with the Indians.
Unfortunately, a severe drought badly affected business at the Ojo
Alamo trading post, and soon Mr. Wetherill began looking for a location
where they might establish a post of their own. In 1906 the Wetherills set
up a trading post at Oljato, or "Place of the Moonlight Water" near the
Arizona-Utah border.
In 1910 the couple moved south to Kayenta, where they opened another
trading post and began doing business from a rather unsubstantial­looking
collection of tents and wagons.
The Wetherills later built a lodge at Kayenta and it became a stoppmg
off place for many important visitors.
"The Wetherills' guest books at Kayenta during the 1920s and 30s were
filled with the names of scientists and students, writers and artists,
Easterners getting glimpses of the last frontier, and other persons
intensely interested in Indian lore," Comfort said.
Teddy Roosevelt and Zane Grey were among their visitors.
Louisa's knowledge of the Navajos attracted the attention of the
general public as well as scholars. She became a popular speaker and her
lectures on the Navajos were in demand on the West Coast.
Around 1906 she began her collection of herbs, which eventually
numbered more than 300 specimens. She made notes about which plants
the Navajos used for food, healing purposes or in sacred ceremonies.
She was also collecting sand paintings, and by 1909 had amassed a
considerable collection. Mrs. Wetherill had befriended a medicine man
24
named Yellow Singer and persuaded him to reproduce the paintings on
paper using crayons.
Mrs. Wetherill also collected the legends and translated the folk tales
of the Navajos.
"Relatives have told that it was not an uncommon sight in the summer
to see as many as one hundred Indians sitting on the lawn under the trees
at Kayenta, telling stories, with Louisa in their midst, laughing and
chatting as volubly as any of them," Comfort wrote.
Among her original translations was "Prayer to the Big Black Bear," a
prayer to ward off evil. The folk tales she translated include "The Woman
Whose Nose Was Cut Off Twelve Times," "How the Raven Got His
Coat," "Story of the First Lie," and "Creation of the Burro." It is not
surprising that her children preferred these stories to Mother Goose
rhymes.
Louisa's knowledge of the language helped her become an intermediary
between the military, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Navajos. The
Indians trusted her, and because they believed she would be fair, they
abided by her judgment.
In 1918 Louisa won national recognition for the drive she made on the
reservation to help the Red Cross war effort overseas. Although the
Navajos had no money to donate, they gave a sheep or a goat from their
flocks as their contribution to the war effort..
Beginning in 1921, Louisa made a number of trips to Mexico, intent on
proving a theory that certain Navajo clans had migrated northward.
Although she intended to write a history of the Navajo people, she never
completed the project and whatever material she collected on her trips
has been lost.
From the 1920s on, Louisa suffered from a variety of illnesses and was
unable to continue life at her old pace. Her husband died in November
1944; lonely and unhappy, she died less than a year later, on Sept. 18,
1945, in Prescott.
25
Sarah Herring Sorin
1861 - 1914
In the early 1900s Sarah Herring Sorin, Arizona's first woman lawyer,
became the 25th woman to argue a case before the United States
Supreme Court.
In that appearance, Mrs. Sorin was representing the Phelps Dodge
Corp. One newspaper wrote: "The case was that of James H. Work
against the United Globe Mining Company, a contest for the possession of
the Big Johnny mine. As a result of Mrs. Sorin's victory before the highest
court of America, the Phelps-Dodge interests, owners of the United
Globe, have undisputed possession of the Big Johnny and it is expected
that they will proceed without delay to develop the mine, which gives rich
promise."
In making her appearance in Washington, Mrs, Sorin was following in
her father's footsteps; in fact, it was under his tutelage that she first
studied law"
But by the time she stood before the Supreme Court, it was clear to
everybody in the Arizona Territory that Mrs. Sorin was standing beside
- not behind - her father. The father and daughter were partners in a
Tombstone law firm called Herring & Sorin,
Mrs. Sorin practiced law throughout the Arizona Territory, developing
a specialty in mining law and arguing many of the state's important
mining cases. In her practice, she represented a variety of clients before
26
local, state and federal courts.
We can only imagine today what it must have been like to be on a jury
and hear a case argued by Mrs. Sorin. Certainly, wherever she appeared in
court, she attracted the public's attention - not only because she was
Arizona's only woman attorney at the time, but also because of her
"innate dignity and charm of manner," according to the History of
Arizona by Richard E. Sloan.
Another account, this one from The Tombstone Epitaph, gives us a
glimpse of her talents, "Mrs. Sorin is at perfect ease in a courtroom and
commands the respect of both judge and jury and wins the admiration of
the bar for the graceful manner in which she handles her case," the
newspaper wrote" "She is never at a loss for authorities, being so
thoroughly prepared as to have references at her fingers' end, and no
matter how complicated the issue, she possesses that happy facility of
elucidation that most generally wins for her client a favorable verdict..."
Sarah Herring was born in New York City on Jan" 15, 1861. She was
educated in New York and in 1881 moved with her family to Arizona.
Like many women of her time, she began her career by teaching ­becoming
the first woman teacher in Tombstone.
Later, she studied law under her father and returned to New York City
to attend law school.
Her studies were interrupted briefly in 1893 when she married Thomas
Sorin, a prominent Tombstone miner"
In 1902 Mrs" Sorin was admitted to the bar in Arizona.
Colonel Herring and Mrs. Sorin eventually moved their law practice to
Tucson. Later, when her father died, Mrs. Sorin moved to Globe where
she became the attorney for the Old Dominion Copper Co.
The History of Arizona tells us Mrs. Sorin was "a woman of strong
character" who opposed the suffrage movement but who stood "for those
things which she felt were right and good,,"
That account of her life concludes: "She was constant and dependable
in everything and her innate dignity and charm of manner gained for her
the sincere respect and admiration of all who came into contact with her."
She died of pneumonia on April 30, 1914 in Globe.
27
Sharlot Hall
1870 - 1943
"This old house has a soul- and that soul was born of the
pioneer life of Arizona and I long to restore and reveal it to
the Arizona of today and of the future."
- Sharlot Hall, speaking of the Old Governor's Mansion, which she
restored and turned into a museum
Sharlot M. Hall was a historian, but more than that, she was a
dreamer and a romantic - a teller of tales whose stories and
poems have helped keep the early days of Arizona alive.
Born in Lincoln County, Kan., Oct. 27, 1870, Miss Hall came to
the Arizona Territory in 1882, settling with her family at Lynx
Creek, 12 miles southeast of Prescott. She had been writing songs and
poems almost from the time she had learned to talk, so it was only natural
that she would record her impressions of that time.
"In mid-February of 1882 I rode into Prescott on a long-legged dapple
gray mare who had just left her footprints the full length of the old Santa
Fe trail. We had been three months coming - three winter months with
covered wagons and a caravan of loose horses - like Abraham and his
family seeking new grazing grounds...
"As I followed down the trail that is now East Gurley street I looked
over across Granite creek to a sprawling gray log building in a cluster of
28
tall pine trees - and I was told that it was the first governor's house - a
governor's mansion of hewed pine logs with a 'shake' roof - but grand
enough to me who remembered the sod houses and 'dug outs' of the Great
American desert which we had just crossed."
That was the beginning of her life-long fascination with the place she
called "a house of memories," the house that became the Sharlot Hall
Museum"
"It seems to me worthwhile to have one place just for remembering and
holding in honor the simple but great things of the past.. .I have tried and
am still trying to hold here the memories of the past on which the present
rests.. ," she once said of her efforts.
The first article she published was in the regional magazine Land of
Sunshine, which was headquartered in Los Angeles. Four years later, in
1902, the editor asked her to write a poem in honor of the magazine's
name change to Out West.
Her poem by the same name was so popular that it was widely
reprinted, set to music, collected in anthologies and even made required
reading for students"
Her most notable work, however, was the poem, "Arizona," which she
wrote in 1906. It ridiculed eastern lawmakers for planning to admit
Arizona and New Mexico into the Union as one state. Arizona's territorial
leaders saw that a copy of the poem was placed on the desk of each
member of Congress. Not only that, they had it read on the floor of both
houses and it was reprinted in several publications.,
Who can say just how much the poem and articles written by Miss Hall
in 1906 swayed Congress? This much can be said: Congress amended the
joint statehood bill that year and permitted the two territories to vote
separately on the issue"
Miss Hall became an associate editor and continued to write for Out
West magazine until 1909, when she was appointed territorial historian by
Gov. Richard Sloan. She thus became the first woman to hold public
office in Arizona.
Her official duties were to collect documents, books and other written
records of Arizona's history, however, she felt the gathering of oral
histories was more important. So for the next 14 months, she visited every
city and nearly every mining camp in Arizona collecting reminiscences.
She resigned her position in 1912, returning home to the family ranch
where she cared for her ailing parents"
There she remained until their deaths, re-entering public life briefly in
1924 when, as one of Arizona's presidential electors, she was chosen to
hand-carry the state's vote to Washington, D.C.
Meanwhile, Miss Hall's "house of memories," the Old Governor's
Mansion, was bought by the state and given to Prescott in 1917. In 1927
Prescott leased the house to Miss Hall for life,
While she lived there, Miss Hall used her own money and raised public
funds to restore the home.
"I asked for no money, either from the city of Prescott or from the
29
state," she said later. "I began with the sale of a few cattle that bore the
brand of my father's ranch, a brand he had used for 40 years."
Miss Hall was drawn to the house by what she called "the sweetest and
saddest story." It had been told to her years before by an old caretaker
who tended the roses in the yard.
Margaret Hunt McCormick, wife of the second territorial governor
Richard McCormick, had come to live in the house as a young bride. She
planted a red rose bush with cuttings she brought from her home in
Rahway, N.J.
About a year later she died in childbirth and was buried with her baby
in her arms - the buds of the roses on the homemade coffin.
Remembering the days when she passed the house on her way to school,
Miss Hall later said, ".. .I seemed to see a lovely young face behind the
window of the room where she had died - a face that had been as sweet
and friendly as the roses..."
Despite her romantic nature, Miss Hall never married. In a letter to a
friend, she explained: "In all the homes I knew, then and over most of my
life" ..1 saw women crucified by the insatiable passion of men so dull and
stolid and stupid that it was a calamity to the race that they were able to
reproduce their kind.. .I tell you honestly that the very thought of love
became an abomination to me."
Perhaps her feelings sprang from watching her mother work so hard all
her life and the fact that her father, though he was proud of her, never
understood her desire to write and not to work in a field alongside a
farmer-husband.
"I had a fatal gift for logic - even at ten," she wrote once, "and used to
point out to my father that his hired help all chewed tobacco and 'cussed'
and never took a bath except when it was warm enough to go in the
creek.. "and even then had to get me to print out their love letters..."
No matter. The romance in her soul helped her to love the women ­and
men - who built the state, so much so that preserving their
memories became and remained her one true goal.
Sharlot Hall died April 9, 1943, in Prescott at the age of 72.
30
Eulalia Elias
1786 - 1865
Capt. Francisco Elias Gonzalez de Zaya, a Spaniard, came to
Mexico in 1729 at the age of 12. From this Spanish army
captain descended the Elias family that for six generations
produced important figures in the military, religious, govern­mental
and economic life of Arizona and the Mexican states of
Chihuahua and Sonora.
The family contributed a president of Mexico, two governors of Sonora,
a governor of Chihuahua and several priests of the church in Mexico.
As landowners and ranchers, the various members of the Elias family
acquired and operated no less than 30 large land grants and ranches in
Sonora and southern Arizona between 1766 and 1855.
One member of this remarkable family was Eulalia Elias, who was born
in Arizpe, Sonora, in 1786. She spent 16 years managing the Babocomari
land grant in southeast Arizona. It was the first major cattle ranching
operation in what would eventually become a major industry in Arizona.
The family's expansion into the area began in 1827. That year, Eulalia
and her brother Ignacio Elias took advantage of Mexico's 1824 Law of
Colonization to purchase a tract of land on the San Pedro River. The
following year they purchased approximately 130,000 acres a few miles
north of the present-day city of Sierra Vista. This land was referred to as
31
the San Juan de Babocomari grant. The title to the grant was issued by
the treasurer general of Sonora, Mexico, on Dec. 25, 1832.
In the spring of 1833, the Eliases began construction of a fortified
hacienda on Babocomari Creek. The hacienda was built of adobe and
consisted of 15-foot-high walls that formed a square about 100 feet long
on each side. There was only one entrance, a gate on the east side. The
interior of the square was lined with rooms, the roofs of which formed a
fighting platform behind the wall. The layout was typical of the early
fortified haciendas on Mexico's northern frontier.
The administration of the ranch at Babocomari was handled primarily
by Eulalia and her brother Juan Elias, a priest. The Elias women were not
the secluded and protected ladies of old Spain; they played an active role
in managing the family's ranches, stores and agricultural holdings.
The Eliases grazed thousands of cattle and horses on the lush
grasslands that extended from the Santa Rita Mountains to the San
Pedro River. By 1840, the Babocomari ranch apparently supported 40,000
head of cattle. But after 18 years of relative prosperity, the family's
fortunes turned.
By the end of the 1840s, Ignacio had died and two of the Elias brothers
had been killed by Apaches. The Indian raids, which were more and more
frequent, took their toll. In 1849 the family was forced to abandon the
hacienda and return to Arizpe in Sonora.
Just two years later, J.R. Bartlett, head of the U.S.. Boundary
Commission, which was charged with establishing the international
boundary line between the United States and Mexico, stopped at the
Babocomari ranch. He wrote the following account:
"The valley of the Babocomari, is here from a quarter to half a mile in
breadth, and covered with a luxuriant growth of grass. The stream which
is about twenty feet wide winds through this valley, with willows and large
cottonwood trees growing along its margin...This hacienda, as I
afterwards learned, was one of the largest cattle establishments in the
State of Sonora. The cattle roamed the entire length of the valley, and at
the time it was abandoned there were no less than forty thousand head,
besides a large number of horses. The same cause which led to the
abandonment of so many other ranches and villages, had been the ruin of
this. The Apaches encroached, drove off the animals and murdered their
herdsmen. The owners, to save the rest, drove them (the cattle) further
into the interior and left the place. Many cattle and horses remained,
however, and ranged over the hills and valleys nearby.. From these,
numerous wild herds have sprung which now cover the entire length of
the San Pedro and its tributary, the Babocomari."
Eulalia died in Arizpe on Aug. 6, 1865, at the age of 79. She was buried
with the co-founder of Babocomari, her brother Ignacio, in the cemetery
at Arizpe.
32
Ana Frohmiller
1891 - 1911
"I do not have a big political organization to conduct my
campaign. Nor do I have big signs nailed to trees, fences and
posts to disfigure the countryside. I do not want such a
campaign. My habits and desires are in keeping with my
resources. They are plain and devoid of all pretenses."
- Ana Frohmiller speaking in a radio broadcast during her 1950
gubernatorial campaign
In 1950, when Ana Frohmiller became the first woman in Arizona to
be nominated for governor, her campaign was launched with the
slogan: "I offer the voters experience, not an experiment."
It was a claim she could justly make. She had held public office
since 1922 - winning 14 consecutive elections - and, as the state's
auditor since 1927, earning a reputation as a tough administrator. No
matter how small the sum, Mrs. Frohmiller felt it was her obligation to see
the state's money was not wasted,
She was outspoken. She was willing to take on the establishment if she
believed it was wrong.
"Ana Frohmiller, state auditor, refused yesterday to honor claims
totaling $1,804 covering expenses of a buffet luncheon given in connection
with the recent inauguration of Dr. Byron McCormick as president of the
33
University of Arizona," stated an article in the June 12, 1948, issue of The
Arizona Republic.
"Mrs. Frohmiller questioned the expenditure on grounds it was not for
a public purpose and further, that it in no way benefited the educational
progress of university students.
"The luncheon guests reportedly dined on cold turkey, baked ham,
potato salad, rolls, spiced peaches, ice cream and cake,,"
Mrs. Frohmiller's ability to say "no" to officials made her a perennial
favorite with the public. During her last six terms as auditor, she didn't
bother to campaign, a fact that didn't stop her from swamping the
Republican competition - when there was competition - in the
elections..
By 1950, when she announced her intention to run for governor, she
was among the two best-known women in the state - her only rival being
Jacque Mercer, a Miss Arizona who had gone on to become Miss America.
As it often is, the road to success was paved with hard work for Mrs.
Frohmiller,
Born on July 28, 1891, in Burlington, Vt., she moved with her family to
Phoenix when she was 7 years old. When she was a sophomore at Phoenix
Union High School, her mother died, leaving a baby boy three days old
and six other brothers and sisters younger than Ana.
She was only a teenager, but Ana took charge of the family. She quit
school to take a position as a bookkeeper in a meat market.
Then in 1916, at the age of 25, she was offered a better bookkeeping job
in Flagstaff with the Babbitt Brothers Mercantile Co. Taking "her"
children with her, she accepted the job.
She worked for six years as a bookkeeper for the Babbitt company,
continuing her education at night school and with correspondence
courses.
By 1922, when the Coconino county treasurer resigned with his term
uncompleted, she had established herself as an expert auditor. She was
appointed to complete his term, and in the fall of the same year was
elected in her own right to a two-year term.
She served as Coconino County treasurer until 1926, when she was
elected state auditor. She would serve 12 terms in all- 24 years.
As auditor, Frohmiller received, investigated and passed judgement on
financial claims against the state, including payrolls, expense accounts,
contractors' bills and pensions. She handled about 45,000 claims a month
and during her years in office authorized an estimated $400 million in
legitimate claims. She rejected about one in a thousand claims -often
attracting headlines when she did so.
"State auditor Ana Frohmiller disclosed today she is holding up
payment of a $7,500 appropriation to Phoenix College because the
institution has dropped the word 'junior' from its name," said a story in
the Jan. 9, 1948, issue of The Arizona Republic.
"In making the disclosure, Mrs. Frohmiller pointed out that the
legislature last spring appropriated $30,000 apiece for the state's two
34
junior colleges - in Phoenix and Gila.
"However, early this fall Dr. Robert J. Hannelly, dean, announced that
Phoenix Junior College was going to change its name and make plans for
starting a four-year course."
If it was no longer a junior college, she reasoned, it was not going to get
money earmarked for junior colleges.
She took on the Arizona State Legislature in one case, the governor in
another, the entire Pima County contingent in the House of
Representatives in yet another case. She took on anybody she felt was
incorrectly using the state's money.
It took her 10 years to bring about a complete audit of the state's books.
Recovery of the funds misspent and the enactment of a modern financial
code for the state took five more years, with frequent setbacks and
defeats.
She became a moving force in the National Association of State
Auditors and was consulted by many states on modern accounting
procedures.
On May 16, 1950, Mrs. Frohmiller announced her candidacy for the
Democratic nomination for governor. In a characteristically concise
statement, she said: "Economy has been my watchword in the office with
which the people have entrusted me 12 times.
"I believe no one questions that I have always fought to get a dollar's
worth for every tax dollar spent.
"As auditor, I have never hesitated to reject what I considered an
unjust claim against state funds. As governor, I will have authority to
strike at waste and extravagance at their source."
Although she won the Democratic primary, Mrs. Frohmiller was
defeated in the general election by Republican Howard Pyle. The margin
was slim; less than 3,000 votes.
Her friends urged her to demand a recount. But to do so would require
a great sum of money, which Mrs. Frohmiller - naturally - could not see
spending. She announced that she would not pay for such a venture, and
would not ask her supporters to pay for it.
"I am out of politics," she declared.
She went on to become the founding secretary and treasurer of
Southwest Savings and Loan Association, a post which she held until
1962.
She died on Nov. 25, 1971, in Prescott.
35
w
OJ
The Arizona Historical Society
Biology students at the University of Arizona, c.1895.
The Arizona Historical Society
Clara Fish Roberts supervises mealtime at a
backyard picnic in Tucson, 1897.
The Arizona Historical Society
Sarah Wilson Walker in her kitchen at Benson, Arizona.
37
w
(Xl
The Arizona Historical Society
Mary Hughston at her desk at the Consolidated National Bank, Tucson, c.191 O.
to)
<0
The Arizona Historical Society
Southern Pacific Railroad workers during World War II.
Edith Stratton Kitt used this sidesaddle­she
rode equally well astride.
In 1917, a convict at the Arizona State
Prison in Florence made this wooden
sewing box for Mrs. A A Anderson
the warden's wife ...
AHS-Tucson
40
• Mathilde Hampe was a sure shot
with this 38 caliber Merwin and
Hulbert revolver at her Rucker
Canyon ranch, c.. 1890
This satin sash is typical of those worn by Arizona suffragettes
before they "got the vote" in 1912...
Mary Elizabeth Post used this brass bell at the Ehrenberg
Schoolhouse, c, 1875,.
Addie Slaughter played with this
china-head doll on the San
Bernardino ranch, c, 1880, ...
AHS-Tucson
41
AHS-Tucson
The Arizona Historical Society
Isabella Greenway is flanked by Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and Arizona Senator Thomas
Walsh at the Greenway's Williams ranch in 1932.
The Arizona Historical Society
A musical interlude in the Figueroa family garden, Tucson, c.1905.
43
The Arizona Historical Society
"From cow to consumer direct" near old Camp Rucker, Arizona, c.1900.
The Arizona Historical Society
May Clark and her six children at the Liberty Mine school in 1899.
The Arizona Historical Society
Papago women with ollas at the community well.
The Arizona Historical Society-Yuma
"Votes for Women" rally on Main Street in Yuma, c.191 O.
Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter
1869 - 1956
More than two million people visit the Grand Canyon each
year, many of them passing through one of the buildings
designed by Mary Jane Colter. Colter's buildings there
include Bright Angel Lodge, Phantom Ranch, Hermit's
Rest, Lookout Studio and Desert View.
If you visit the Grand Canyon and at first you do not notice these
buildings - if the architecture seems to blend in with the surroundings ­do
not be surprised: That is what Colter intended.
"Colter's philosophy was that a building should grow out of its setting,
embodying the history and flavor of the location," wrote Virgina Grattan,
Colter's biographer.
"It should belong to its environment as though indigenous to that
spot."
An incident that took place in 1914 illustrates Colter's philosophy. She
was asked by her employer, the Fred Harvey Co., to design a refreshment
center at the end of Hermit Rim Road. The Sante Fe Railroad operated
stagecoach tours along the road and the new building, to be called
Hermit's Rest, would be a place where travelers could buy refreshments
and relax before their return trip to Grand Canyon Village.
Colter's idea was to make the building look as if it had been put
48
together by an untrained mountain man. It was built into the side of a hill
and constructed of stone and crude posts. Inside, the furniture was made
of twisted tree stumps.
/
Grattan tells us: "Some of the railroad men teased Mary Colter about
the building's rustic appearance. It was so dingy and full of cobwebs, they
complained. 'Why don't you clean up this place?'
"Colter laughed, 'You can't imagine what it cost to make it look this
old.' "
It had cost$13,000 - no small sum at the time.
How did this woman, who was born on April 4, 1869, in Pittsburgh, Pa.,
come to be an influential architect - not only in Arizona - but
throughout the Southwest?
As a child, Colter had hoped to be an artist. After her father's death in
1886, she urged her mother and sister to use some of the money her father
had left to send her to art school. Reluctantly, they agreed and Mary was
enrolled in the California School of Design in San Francisco (now the San
Francisco Art Institute).
While she was there, she worked as an apprentice architect to help pay
for her studies. She was exposed to - and adopted - the new
architectural theories that said buildings should be sympathetic to their
environment rather than copies of European styles.
Upon graduation, Colter sought a teaching job. In 1892, at the age of 23,
she began a 15-year teaching career at Mechanic Arts High School in St.
Paul, Minn.
While on a vacation in San Francisco one year, she visited a friend who
worked at a Fred Harvey gift shop and indicated her interest in working
for the Fred Harvey Co. And in 1902 she received a telegram offering her
a summer position. Her job was to decorate the interior of the "Indian
Building" adjacent to Harvey's new Alvarado Hotel in Albuquerque.
In 1904 another commission followed; this time she was to design the
Hopi House at the Grand Canyon. Colter wanted to create a building that
would fit the natural setting and reflect the history of the region. Hopi
Indians had lived in the Grand Canyon area for hundreds of years, so she
decided to pattern the building after Hopi dwellings in Oraibi, Ariz.
When work on the Hopi House was finished, she returned to her
teaching job and then took another job in Seattle as a department store
decorator.
In 1910, the Fred Harvey Co. offered her a permanent position as
designer and decorator for Harvey facilities. She moved to Kansas City
and worked at the company's headquarters.
During her 46 years with the company, she was responsible for 21
projects, including La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe, N.M.; the Painted Desert
Inn in Arizona's Painted Desert; and the Union Stations in Kansas City,
St. Louis and Los Angeles.
In 1985 the Bright Angel Lodge at the Grand Canyon celebrated its
50th birthday. Colter's interest in history is demonstrated in her design
for the lodge.. Although most of the cabins there are new, two were
adapted from existing historical buildings. One had been the first Grand
49
- Canyon post office; another had been the cabin for Buckey O'Neill,
Yavapai County sheriff in the late 19th century.
In what is now the lodge's History Room, she had a "geological
fireplace" built. Mules were used to haul rock up from the canyon floor.
The fireplace was then built, floor to ceiling, with the rocks in the same
order as the strata of the canyon's walls.
Bright Angel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on
Nov. 20, 1975, partly because of its connection with Colter but also
because of its sensitivity to the land.
From Colter's work a style of architecture known as National Park
Service Rustic evolved. Many of the National Park structures built
between the 1920s and 1940s used native stone and rough-hewn wood
reminiscent of Colter's early Grand Canyon buildings.
On Jan. 8, 1956, Colter died in Santa Fe, N.M.
50
Sallie Davis Hayden
1842 - 1907
"Mr. Hayden, though extravagant in large business
matters, was thrifty in small New England ways. On a day of
strenuous house cleaning, she (Mrs. Hayden) had accumu­lated
a pile of household rubbish. Mr. Hayden came in and
saw some moth-eaten yarn on top. He said to her: 'This ought
not to be thrown away - where shall I put it?'
She replied with asperity: 'Eat it!'
The Judge went away with the yarn in his hand and
shortly returned, offering it to her and saying mildly: 'Won't
you take the first bite?' "
- from Carl Hoyden's reminiscences in Sallie Davis Hayden ­Thoroughbred
Pioneer
From the state's earliest days, the Hayden name has been
associated with progress.
Charles Trumbull Hayden established the Hayden mill and
ferry along the banks of the Salt River in Tempe. Carl Trumbull
Hayden served Arizona for 56 years in Congress.
Less well-known, but equally as important, was Sallie Hayden, wife of
Charles and mother of Carl (and three other children). She played an
important role in Arizona's development and is remembered as a woman
51
of enormous vitality, intelligence and wit. She created a home where
education and religious tolerance were taught. She took an active interest
in national as well as local politics - an interest that was passed along to
her son.
According to an account of her early life written by her son, Sallie
Calvert Davis was born July 12, 1842, near Forrest City, Ark. Her father,
Cornelius Davis, did not believe in formal education - and certainly not
for his four daughters.
When Sallie was 12 years old she ran away from home because her
father, a strict disciplinarian, threatened to whip her with his bridle reins.
She took refuge at an aunt's home, where she presumably found more
freedom to pursue her interest in books and an education.
During the Civil War the Davis family found its finances strained, and
it became necessary for all of them to go to work. Sally obtained a position
as a teacher in an Illinois elementary school.
"Although she had received such limited and episodic schooling, she
educated herself by reading serious books, a habit that she continued in
later years whenever books were to be had," her son wrote.
Several years later, an uncle in Calfornia wrote to tell her that
schoolteachers in that state were well-paid. He advised her to move West.
She taught briefly in Nevada City, then continued on to Visalia, a little
town in central California. There, she met the Alford family.
"Dr. Alford and his wife were people of breeding and education who
realized that the young Southern teacher should not live in her uncle's
rude cabin on the sheep ranch," Carl wrote.
They found. her a teaching job and with their love and guidance she
"rapidly matured into an attractive woman."
It was at the Alfords' that she met Mr. Hayden, who was visiting the
doctor while on a trip to San Francisco.
"It took him two years to persuade Miss Davis to marry him,"
according to their son's account.
"She was not then passionately in love with Mr. Hayden, but she had a
profound admiration for his gentle dignity and his scholarly temperament
and was interested in his dream of building up a civilized community in
southern Arizona."
Mr. Hayden, who was 17 years her senior, provided the intellectual
companionship and the challenge that she desired. The couple soon
settled at the Hayden House in Tempe.
Mrs. Hayden was embarking on a new life, and from her son's account
we know she was "terribly depressed" by what she found in Tempe. She
hated the hot weather. Her new home had a dirt floor and was cheaply
furnished. There were few companions for conversation. And Mr. Hayden
was often occupied with his business, neglecting his new wife.
The desert seemed desolate to her, so she sent away for Bermuda grass
seeds; the grass quickly spread and became a pest in the garden.
She imported a cow to provide milk. In short, she set about making this
new place a home.
52
Gradually, she came to share her husband's dream of building a
community along the Salt River and making it a place where she could
raise her children.
She served as postmistress of Hayden's Ferry (later renamed Tempe)
from Dec. 19, 1876, to July 28, 1878.
She became a member of the local school board and worked to bring
better teachers to the region; she campaigned to see that the "right"
politicians won; she established a library in her home that included many
of the English and American classics, books that could not easily be found
in the Southwest; and she entertained suffrage speakers whenever they
came to Tempe.
While her children were young, she moved the family to a new home
two miles outside of town. The home would become known as the
"Hayden Guest Ranch" because it served as a hostelry for teachers,
writers, lecturers and many other distinquished Tempe visitors.
It was also a place where persons with tuberculosis could convalesce.
"There was scarcely ever a time when some such unhappy person was
not being entertained at the Ranch House throughout the winters, and
often without charge," her son wrote. "Delicate teachers, poor college
professors, any educated person with limited means, and lame ducks of
every sort, appealed to her sympathetic, generous heart."
It was Mrs. Hayden's sound management that kept the ranch going.
She made it profitable by bringing in cattle and she defended her water
rights when they were challenged.
When Carl was old enough for college, she insisted on borrowing the
money to send him to Stanford. Even after the death of her husband in
1900, and despite the severe financial problems that he left behind, she
managed to find the money to provide for her daughters' education.
Mrs. Hayden died Sept. 15, 1907, in Tempe.
Her three children remained the visible testimony to her life. Her son
Carl inherited her political acumen; her daughters carried on her service
in the fields of education and social welfare.
53
-
...
Carmen Soto de Vasquez
c
1863 - 1934
armen Soto de Vasquez was in her 50s when she launched her
own artistic revolution, thereby thrusting Tucson into the role
of Southwestern cultural center. During the 1920s the city
enjoyed a cultural renaissance as music, operas, and theatrical
productions became an important part of life in the desert
town.
Born in 1863 in Tucson, she was a I)lember of a prominent pioneer
family. Her mother, Carmela Comaduran de Soto, was descended from
Antonjo Comaduran, captain of the Royal Pr~sidio at the Fort of San
Agustin de Tucson. Her husband, Ramon Vasquez, was also born in
Tucson and he later became the owner of one of the largest mercantile
businesses in Nogales.
Carmen Soto de Vasquez was a businesswoman and a cultural leader.
She founded El Teatro Carmen and commissioned a renowned architect
and builder, Manuel Flores, to build the theater.
The building was designed in the Sonoran-mission style and was
located at 348,S. Meyer, the heart of what is now Tucson's historic
district. Mrs. Vaquez' purpose behind the theater project was to provide a
place for the performance of outstanding Spanish language literary
productions as well as operas, musicals and melodramas.
Under her guidance, the theater attracted internationally acclaimed
54
troupes from Spain and Mexico. Highly-touted actors and actresses
performed for appreciative audiences in a western city that no longer
could be dismissed as a sleepy, little cowtown.
The opening night for EI Teatro Carmen was May 20, 1915. Featured
was Cerebro y Corazon, a play by the Mexian author and poet Fardias
Iassi. It was a grand night, a tremendous success, and a great social event,
judging by newspaper accounts.
EI Cronista, the pseudonym used by the literary critic of the Spanish
newspaper EI Tucsonense, wrote:
"The inauguration of Teatro Carmen was a great artistic and financial
success, and the announcement of the forthcoming programs was received
by Tucson society with much enthusiasm."
Carmen Soto de Vasquez was the impresario of EI Teatro Carmen for
nine years before moving to Nogales with her husband and family.
In that time, the theater became more than just a place where
high-quality productions were performed. It became the cultural center of
the community. The project wa,s very successful financially, but it meant
much more than that to Mrs. Vasquez,
Armando Migm;lez, in his study of Hispanic theater in Tucson, noted:
"Carmen Soto de Vasquez was conscious of her role as a culture
promoter who put the theater at the disposal of the public so they would
have the opportunity to enjoy art characteristic of their culture and so
that by supporting these events, (Mexican) culture would be retained in
the city."
Mrs. Vasquez died Oct. 8, 1934, in Nogales.
55
II
-
Frances Lillian Willard Munds
1866 - 1948
".. .I want the women to realize that they will have to
make a concerted demand for the things they want, and not
merely present a bill and ask someone to put it through for
them. I want them to get into the battle themselves."
- Frances Willard Munds, April 24, 1915
By the time a woman reaches grandmotherhood, she's not
expected to step out of her home and into a political career ­even
these days.
But that is exactly what former schoolteacher Frances
Willard Munds did Jan. 11, 1915, when she took office as a
senator in the second Arizona Legislature. She was the first woman
senator in Arizona, the second in the United States.
Momentous as the occasion was, it was not her first foray into the
public limelight.
Mrs. Munds had battled for years for the right to vote, serving as
secretary of the first state suffrage organization and working for the 1903
passage of the Suffrage Bill by the U.S. Congress.
The bill was vetoed in Arizona by Gov. Alexander O. Brodie, but the
suffrage movement did not end there.
Mrs. Munds took over as head of the State Central Committee,
56
directed the campaign's reorganization and appeared before every
legislature until victory was achieved.
In 1912, statehood year for Arizona, a successful referendum gave
women the right to vote in the state, and the following year, Mrs. Munds
was nominated by Gov. J.W.P. Hunt as state representative to the
International Woman Suffrage Alliance in Budapest.
Born in June 10, 1866, in Franklin, Calif., Mrs. Munds' earliest wish
was to go to school. She got her chance when she moved to Maine where
she lived with her sister's family, attending Central Institute in Pittsfield.
Meanwhile, her parents moved from California to Prescott, where her
father, John Willard, became a well-known cattleman.
In 1885, when Frances was 19, she joined her parents in Prescott,
teaching school in Yavapai County.
Her paternal grandfather had been a member of the Lewis and Clark
Expedition, and her maternal grandfather, Col. James R. Vineyard, was a
member of the Wisconsin territorial legislature.
Maybe it was this heritage, or possibly it was her educational
background, but Frances was deeply involved in the suffrage campaign by
the time she was married five years later to John L. Munds.
In 1914, at the age of 48, Mrs. Munds won election as senator from
Yavapai County.
"The women were splendidly loyal in the way they supported me," she
said later. "There were seven candidates in the field with only two to be
elected. Four of the other candidates were lawyers and one was a cattle
king who was backed by the corporations and a portion of the liquor men.
Fortunately, the saloon men did not support this particular candidate and
so I won the race."
Her margin of victory was wide -=::~she won 600 votes more than the
second-place candidate.
The victorious new senator said, "We believe that we have proved
ourselves worthy of the ballot. Women have been earnest in their
endeavors to support the best candidate and to work by the right means
for the right measures."
Mrs. Munds took her place in the upper legislative chambers Jan. 11,
1915, commenting to a newspaper reporter later, "Our friends, the
true-blue conservatives, will be shocked to think of a grandmother sitting
in the state Senate."
Shocking or no, she got right to work and introduced several bills. One
that called for raising widows' exemptions was passed by both houses.
Writing in The Woman s Journal on April 24, 1915, she described her
first session in the State Legislature:
"This session...was distinguished for being a struggle between the
progressive and the corporation Democrats. The entire legislature was
Democratic with the exception of one lone Republican in the Senate, but
those Democrats were of very different complexions, and the corporation
men did their best to undo all that has been done for Arizona in the last
few years since the people have taken things into their own hands. The
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people rather overdid themselves in the first two elections after
Statehood, and then they went to sleep and let the corporations get in. So
we women contented ourselves with helping the progressive Democrats
keep the corporation men from making bad laws."
In her two-year term, Mrs. Munds served on the Land Committee,
which formulated policy dealing with control and disposition of all state
lands, and the Committee on Education and Public Institutions, of which
she was chairman.
The women of Arizona nominated Mrs. Munds to another public office
in 1918, the office of secretary of state, but she was defeated 17,325 to
12,034 in the primary election. That was the last time she ran for office,
withdrawing from public life in her later years.
She died at age 82 on Dec. 16, 1948.
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Jane H. Rider
1889 - 1981
"Men were astonished when a strange woman appeared
to have a look at the water plant. . .Now engineers are
involved in outer space. Young women, adequately trained,
have a fantastic opportunity to take part in some of the
details of these new explorations. .."
- Jane Rider, addressing a group of young women interested in
engineering careers in March 1969
Jane H. Rider was blessed with a long life; she lived to the age of 91.
And when her achievements are tallied, it is clear she wasted
precious little time in those nine decades.
In all, she gave Arizonans more than 50 years of service in the
field of health. In her 16 years as the state's director of hospital
surveys and construction, she was responsible for making Arizona's
hospitals the very best possible.
When she retired in 1961 from the job, she commented, "There's so
much yet to be done." Her energy was still driving her forward. But she
was ready to pass on the responsibilities and explore new avenues for
herself.
While serving as director, she had had responsibility for deciding how
to spend $2.5 million in federal funds allocated to Arizona under the
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Hill-Burton Act to assist communities in constructing hospitals and
health clinics. The new building for St. Joseph's Hospital and the
additions to Good Samaritan, Maricopa County General and Memorial
Hospitals in Phoenix came under this program"
Even after her so-called retirement Miss Rider continued to serve in
the field of health.
She worked as a consultant for hospital projects in Arizona. For 10
years she was active in the Maricopa County General Hospital Auxiliary
and St. Joseph's Hospital Auxiliary.
She was an honorary member of the Arizona Hospital Association and
St. Luke's Board of Visitors. She was one of the founders of the Arizona
Public Health Association and a member of the Arizona Sewage and
Water Works Association. She served on the board of directors for
Maricopa County Hospitals and was a trustee of St. Luke's Medical
Center.
Miss Rider might never have set foot in Arizona were it not for her
father's job. He was a Pennsylvania Dutch mining engineer (some
accounts describe him as a chemist or an assayer) who had come to
Arizona for the first time in 1882.
He later returned to Pennsylvania to marry, and on Aug. 18, 1889, Jane
H. Rider was born in Sewickley, Pa., a suburb of Pittsburgh. She was the
eldest of three children.. One brother died in infancy; another, Percy
Sower Rider Jr., was killed in World War I.
When she was 6 years old, the family moved to Colorado, residing for a
time in Rico and Durango. Later, Miss Rider attended a private high
school for girls in Denver.
In 1904 the family moved to Tucson. From 1907 to 1911 Miss Rider
attended the University of Arizona. She graduated with a bachelor of
science degree in civil engineering, becoming Arizona's first woman
engineer.
Her first job was as a bacteriologist for the Arizona State Laboratories
at the UofA. She was later assistant director and in 1916 became director
of the lab.
Describing her work, she said she "juggled test tubes in (the) laboratory
and made field investigations of milk and water supplies all over the map
of Arizona, traveling by train, stage, automobile and horseback."
"Water, then as now, was on everyone's mind," Miss Rider recalled
years later. "I spent a lot of time in the field with railroad representatives
and mining men looking for pure water sources."
She also was interested in seeing that milk supplies in Arizona were
safe.
"In 1913 Arizona had the second highest infant mortality rate in the
nation and a good share of the blame went to unsanitary milk," she
recalled in a newspaper interview in 1966.
"Do you know what a 'dobe hole is? When people built their adobe
houses they dug the material out of the ground and left the hole. They let
this fill with water to water their cattle.
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"The cows, on hot days, would stand in the 'dobe hole. Then milking
time came but the bossies were not washed off before they were milked,
and the dirt and stagnant water got in the buckets."
Miss Rider worked to publicize the sanitation problem and played an
important role in establishing the link between infant mortality and
contaminated milk - convincing the dairy industry of the need for
pasteurization.
In 1918 she took a leave of absence from the laboratory to work with
the American Red Cross Commission for Great Britain. She returned to
the lab in May 1919 and worked there until 1935.
Under her direction, one of the lab's jobs was to test food and drugs ­this
was years before the federal pure food and drug acts existed. She and
her assistants worked to stop the sale of dangerous patent medicines and
cosmetics.
In 1935 Miss Rider resigned from the laboratory to become the Arizona
administrator for the National Youth Administration, an agency
concerned primarily with construction work and sanitary engineering.
The job included hospital construction and remodeling.
Her final job as state director of hospital surveys and construction
lasted from 1948 to 1961.
Miss Rider received many honors during her career. She was the second
woman to be accepted into the American Society of Civil Engineers and
was a senior member of the National Society of Women Engineers.
In 1963 she was awarded the Distinguished Citizen Award by the UofA.
In 1970, she was selected as the Phoenix Woman of the Year by the
Phoenix Advertising Club.
Miss Rider died on March 4, 1981, in St. Luke's Hospital in Phoenix.
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Maie Bartlett Heard
1868 - 1951
aie Bartlett Heard was a collector. MMrs. Heard was born on June 11, 1868, in Chicago, and
educated at the Loring School and Dearborn Seminary, a
finishing school. When she was 14, her mother died, and
she assumed the responsibility of overseeing the household
and caring for three younger children.
She met her future husband, Dwight B. Heard, on a trip to Paris with
her father, and the young couple was married on August 10, 1893.
Two years later when Dwight became seriously ill with a chest ailment,
his Chicago doctors advised him to quit the cold and seek a warmer climate.
So, Maie and Dwight loaded some possessions ina wagon, bought a team
of horses and headed for the Pacific Coast. They got as far as Phoenix,
decided this was home, and stayed.
Dwight regained his health, and he became an active businessman in
the young community. In 1912 he bought The Arizona Republican
newspaper, now The Arizona Republic, and published it until his death
in 1929.
The Heards started their collection of Indian Art with a Pima basket.
From there it was a short step to pottery in varying shapes, rugs, and
prehistoric Indian artifacts - all to decorate their ranch house on the
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western outskirts of Phoenix, around present-day 51st Avenue and
McDowell Road.
The collection grew and grew, becoming so extensive that the only
logical way to clean out some closets at home was to build a larger house,
which they did about 1900. Finally, when the house, too, was burgeoning
with treasures, they built and endowed a museum.
Maie was the circulating librarian who forded the Salt River on
horseback to take books to ranch children; she was the philanthropist who
donated the money to build a gymnasium at the YWCA.
But as busy as she was, her main interest centered on her family's
collection of primitive art, including wonderful Hohokam artifacts and
native Arizona arts and crafts.
It would have been easy to slack off, to lay down the lamp of civic and
social work when her husband died. It was just months before the museum
they had both worked to establish was due to open.
But Mrs. Heard continued on, working with the Phoenix Little Theater,
donating land for the Phoenix Civic Center, and giving time to youth.
By the 1920s the Heards' interests had expanded to embrace the
primitive arts and works of mankind.
The museum was established to preserve these artifacts, to encourage
public appreciation of primitive works and culture and to promote
archaeological research and investigation.
In all these years, Mrs" Heard cared for people - in big, public ways
such as founding the Welfare League (the forerunner to the present-day
United Fund), and in small, private ways such as extending a mortgage
for a deserving family, establishing a firewood dispensary for the poor,
or comforting a soldier's widow.
In May 1948 she was honored by the Phoenix Rotary Club for her
service to youth, and the same year she was named Woman of the Year
by Beta Sigma Phi, a businesswomen's sorority.
She was 83 years old when she died in Phoenix' Good Samaritan Hospital
on March 14, 1951, the 22nd anniversary of her husband's death.
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Laura E. Herron
1892 - 1966
''Now girls we must get this batting down pat."
We hear these words from 'Casey at the Bat. '
Sometimes she's cross, most times she's gay,
But she's always there to show us the way,
To continue our studies or to improve our game.
She's loved by all, Miss Herron is her name.
- from a 1960 Phoenix College student publication
There is a picture of Laura E. Herron that appears in many of the
newspaper clippings from the 1960s. It shows her engaged in a
lively conversation and making her point by raising a clenched
fist. And if you read the stories, she is described by adjectives
like "peppery" and "direct."
It is not hard to imagine her on an athletic field blowing a whistle,
shouting words of advice, or cheering on a team - and that is where you
would have found her during much of her life.
A physical education teacher and a leader in recreational activities,
Miss Herron devoted her career to instilling good sportsmanship and a
love for athletics in thousands of young people.
In 1933 she was asked by Phoenix officials to help create a recreational
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program for the city. Over the next few decades, she helped organize one
of the largest women's softball leagues in the nation.
According to a newspaper account, there were 120 women's and girls'
teams in league play and 20 more in open competition in the city's
recreational program in 1962. In one month, they played 348 games.
Men and women combined, there were 15,000 participants in the city
leagues, and on a rainy night as many as 200 games could be washed out.
While the public insisted on calling Miss Herron "the mother of
Phoenix's recreation program," she took a more modest credit, saying she
was, at most, the midwife.
In either case, she was the woman behind the outstanding program,
which amazingly enough was operated by volunteer workers. There were
only two paid workers in the Phoenix women's softball program, and
there were no trophies, no medals - just a lot of enthusiastic players.
Miss Herron was born in Helena, Mont., on July 5, 1892. She graduated
from Stanford University and from the University of California at
Berkeley.
She taught physical education and science for eight years at three
California high schools before becoming head of the physical education
department at San Jose Teachers College. After one year there, she
moved to Humboldt State Teachers College in Arcata, Calif., where she
was head of the physical education department for six years.
While in California, she became a member of the Business and
Professional Women's Club and helped organize recreational centers for
women in six cities in northern California.
In 1928 she was a delegate to the International Athletic Federation.
The same year, she served as the U.S. official in charge of the women's
track and field teams in the Olympics in Amsterdam.
Miss Herron came to Arizona in 1931 and was named head of the
physical education and health department at Arizona State Teachers
College (now Arizona State University) in Tempe. In her two years there,
she coached winning teams in women's hockey and men's tennis.
In 1933 she became supervisor for the Phoenix recreation department,
a post that she held for 31/2 years. At the time of her appointment the city
had only two public pools. During her years as supervisor she added to the
number of pools and saw that playgrounds, tennis courts, and recreational
buildings were built in the parks. All of the construction was done under
government work relief programs, with Miss Herron spearheading the
effort to raise bond money.
"It was the Depression, you know," she said later. "But in spite of that,
almost $1 million in bonds was raised."
She inaugurated programs in aquatics, camping and handicraft
activities for children; she encouraged businesses to form teams and
participate in the city leagues; she worked to establish a strong
professional staff of recreation directors; and she instituted strict sanitary
regulations at the pools and bathhouses.
In 1937 she left that job to become Director of Physical Education for
women at Phoenix Junior College (now Phoenix College). She held that
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position until her retirement in May 1963.
In addition to her job, she served on the Phoenix Parks Board and
organized a basketball tournament for Indian girls. In 1959 she coached
and refereed the play of 10 all-Indian teams in the tournament. One year
later, the tournament drew 16 entries, including teams from California
and New Mexico.
Miss Herron also was active in many organizations. She was a charter
member and first president of the local chapter of the American
Federation of Teachers. From 1948-1950 she served as secretary of the
Phoenix Urban League and president of the Women's Guild.
After her retirement, she continued to teach physical education at
several parochial schools.
In April 1966 Miss Herron received a trophy from the Phoenix District
Tennis Association for her contributions to that sport.
A few months later, on July 25, Laura Herron died in St. Joseph's
Hospital in Phoenix.
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Edith Stratton Kitt
1878 - 1968
"On the 29th of December, 1925, I was installed as
secretary of the Arizona Pioneers' Historical Society. That title
'secretary' was erroneous, for I had to be not only the
corresponding secretary but also the librarian, researcher,
entertainer, welfare worker and father confessor all in one. "
- Edith Stratton Kitt writing in her book Pioneering in Arizona: The
Reminiscences of Emerson Oliver Stratton and Edith Stratton Kitt
Edith Stratton Kitt joined the Arizona Pioneers' Historical
Society in 1925 when it occupied a storeroom in a building at the
corner of Main Avenue and Congress Street in Tucson. Among
the documents in the room were rows of government publications
of all kinds, including reports on fishing in Japan and accounts of
expositions in Paris and Vienna. The bookshelves contained some· old
schoolbooks, an illustrated edition of Dante's Inferno and the complete
works of Sir Thomas More. In all this chaos, there was very little that had
any connection with Arizona or the West.
To say the least, Mrs. Kitt, who had been installed as the society's
secretary, had her job cut out. For the next 22 years, she worked to
organize and expand the collection of the society. In 1963 she was named
the "First Lady of Arizona's Territorial Centennial" for her historical
contributions to the state.
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Mrs. Kitt was a native Arizonan. She was born in Florence in 1878, the
daughter of Emerson Stratton of Clyde, N.Y., and Carrie Ames Stratton
of Cotuit, Mass.
When she was 2 years old, her parents moved to a cattle ranch north of
the Catalina Mountains. Many of her childhood experiences on the ranch
are recounted in her book, Pioneering in Arizona: The Reminiscences of
Emerson Oliver Stratton and Edith Stratton Kitt.
"My father called it the Pandora Ranch when he took it up," she said.
"He said everything was gone but hope."
However hard ranch life was, the young Edith clearly enjoyed it. In her
biography she takes pleasure in describing the cowboys, the semi-annual
roundups, hunting trips with her father, and afternoons spent riding
horses with her sister.
Ranch life may have suited the young woman, but it was difficult for
the Strattons to make ends meet. Eventually, the family was forced to
leave, moving to Los Angeles where Edith graduated from the Los Angeles
Normal School in 1900.
She returned to Arizona to study briefly at the University of Arizona
before accepting a teaching job at a ranch school near Liberty, southwest
of Phoenix.
She taught for several years in Colorado and in Tucson before marrying
George F. Kitt in 1903. The couple had two children, a daughter and a
son.
Although Mrs. Kitt's college education was interrupted by her teaching
career and marriage, she received her bachelor's degree after attending
classes off and on at the University of Arizona for 20 years.
She transcribed many oral histories over the years, including hers and
her father's. As secretary of the Pioneers' Historical Society, which was
renamed the Arizona Historical Society about 1970, Mrs. Kitt turned the
society's office into a kind of clubhouse where old-timers would feel
comfortable. And when they showed up, she took down their
reminiscences..
While she was talking with these pioneers, Mrs. Kitt would inquire
about old letters, documents and diaries. She was able to acquire and
preserve many of these historical records that might otherwise have been
destroyed.
Most of the collections that are in the Arizona Historical Society today
were begun by Mrs. Kitt. She is credited with making its library one of
the top research centers in the Southwest.
She also worked to expand the society's membership and to institute an
annual membership fee that helped pay for expenses.
In addition to her research work and contributions to the Arizona
Historical Society, Mrs. Kitt was an incorporator, director and president
of the Tucson Woman's Club. She also belonged to the Arizona
Federation of Women's Clubs, the American Legion Auxiliary and the
Business and Professional Women's Club.
She died on Jan. 18, 1968, at the age of 89 in Sacramento, Calif.
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Rachel Emma Allen Berry
1859 - 1948
Arizona was one of 15 states that legislated women's right to
vote long before suffrage was obtained nationally in 1920.
The first assembly of the Arizona Legislature enfranchised
women in 1912.
Having won the right to vote, women quickly recognized
the equally important right to hold office.
In 1914, Rachel E. Berry became one of the first women in the United
States to win election to a state legislature. A Mormon who lived in St.
Johns and represented Apache County, she took her seat in the Arizona
House of Representatives on Jan. 11, 1915.
There, she successfully advocated the adoption of the state flag we have
today. She fought for bills concerned with education and child welfare.
She served as chairman of the Good Roads Committee. And she created a
bit of a rumpus over her attempt to banish cigars and chewing tobacco in
the Legislature. (She did not win that battle.)
Rachel Allen was born on March 11, 1859, in Ogden, Utah, the daughter
of Mormon pioneers. She grew up in Kanarraville, Utah, and taught
school there before her marriage to William Berry in 1879.
The couple started to Arizona in the fall of 1881, traveling in covered
wagons with a party of 18 other members of the Church of Jesus Christ of
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Latter-day Saints.
The party followed the tortuous Mormon Trail into the Territory,
ferrying the Colorado River at a point near the present Navajo Bridge.
Mr. Berry drove a large herd of cattle and about 50 horses into what is
now Apache County, where he became a leading rancher and cattleman.
After a three month trip, they arrived in St. Johns on Jan. 27, 1882. At
first, they set up housekeeping in the wagons and tents. Later, they built a
log cabin and in 1886 they built the first brick house in the county.
Mrs. Berry had seven children - four daughters and three sons.
Life in the Territory was hard - especially on young children. In later
years, Mrs. Berry showed little sympathy for those who bemoaned "the
good old days."
In 1889 she nursed her four children through an epidemic of diphtheria,
then she herself got the disease while she was pregnant with her fifth
child. The child was born, but lived only 16 days.
Then in December 1903 tragedy struck again. Her eldest son Wiley was
taking sheep through the mountains to the winter grazing land in the
desert, according to an account written by Mr. Berry.
"He had with him as herders Santiago Vigil and his 16-year-old boy
Juan Vigil.
"When he reached Gisela in Gila County he camped about seven miles
from the town on the public sheep trail. On the morning of the 22nd of
December, after Santiago Vigil had left camp with the herd and was about
three-quarters of a mile away, two brothers, John and Zack Booth - goat
men who our son or the others had never seen before - rode up to the
herder and pointing their guns at him ordered him to leave. He answered
them that he was not the owner of the sheep, but that the boss was at the
camp.
"They rode to camp and in a few minutes the herder heard shots and
hurried to camp where he found both boys dead..."
Zack Booth was later convicted of the crime and hanged.
After her term in the Legislature, Mrs. Berry focused her energies back
in Apache County. She was appointed chairman of the county's Child
Welfare Board and was involved in Mormon church work as president of
the local Relief Society and the Mutual Improvement Association. She
served many years as a trustee of the school in St. Johns.
In 1928 she purchased a home in Phoenix, where she spent her winters,
returning to St. Johns each summer.
Many of her friends and relatives - including 18 grandchildren and 23
great-grandchildren - gathered in Phoenix on March 11, 1948, to
celebrate her 89th birthday.
According to a newspaper account of the reunion, the family matriarch
was still nimble in mind and body. She loved to sew, and during the
previous year had completed nine quilts and helped finish 18 others for
her grandchildren.
She said she wouldn't dream of becoming "just an old lady with
nothing to do."
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Although she was nearly 90, her mind was alert and she kept up with
current events in the world, nation and state. In discussing the new
fashions, Mrs. Berry dryly remarked that she "thought modern young
women had more sense than to want to wear their skirts so long that they
drag in the streets.
"I like to keep up with the fashions," she said, "but I had enough of
long skirts when I was a girl. My dresses suit me fine when they're just a
little below the knee, and I hope sincerely that styles never take the
hemline to the ankle again."
Later that year - on Thanksgiving Day - Mrs. Berry died at her
home in Phoenix.
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A
Anna Moore Shaw
1898 - 1976
"Education in the white man's world is enriching and
essential to economic success, but it need not mean the giving
up of our proud Pima heritage. "
- Anno Moore Shaw, in her autobiography A Pima Past
nna Moore Shaw wrote in her autobiography, "The white
man and his cities surround us - we must embrace his ways,
which are good, while keeping our pride in being Indian."
Her book, A Pima Past, published in 1974 by the
University of Arizona Press, was written in the style of a
family saga, she explained. It told the story of her family and of her own
experiences as a 20th Century Indian.
Mrs. Shaw was born in 1898 on the Gila Indian Reservation. "I was
born near Komatke in the shadow of the Estrella Mountains on the sticks
beneath the bushes," she said later in her life.
Her birth name was Chehia, but when she was 10, her father, Red
Arrow, was converted to Christianity and took the name of Josiah Moore.
He renamed his daughter Anna.
That ended Anna's strictly traditional Pima upbringing and began her
introduction into the white man's world.
She was sent to the Phoenix Indian School and later to Phoenix Union
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High School where she graduated in 1920. A short time later, she married
Ross Shaw, a Pima-Maricopa who she had met at Phoenix Indian School.
The Shaws decided there was more opportunity for them and their
family if they lived in Phoenix and not on the reservation. So, for the next
40 years, they raised their children and involved themselves in civic and
church activities.
But they never forgot their Indian heritage. To help their children
appreciate their Pima culture, Anna told them the many legends and
stories she had learned as a child from tribal elders.
Because she was worried that the stories would be lost in the modern
world, Anna began writing them down.
"I wrote them to preserve the beauty of them for our people," she said.
"But somehow, in English - my English - the beauty just wasn't there."
So Mrs. Shaw studied writing at the Phoenix Evening Technical
School. The result was a beautiful book, Pima Indian Legends, published
in 1968 by the University of Arizona Press.
Her writing wasn't confined to books, however. After returning to live
on the Salt River Indian Reservation when her husband retired in the
1960s, Anna became the editor of the tribal newspaper, Pima Letters.
Her other activities included being an ordained elder in the
Presbyterian Church, participating in the building fund drive for the
Charles H. Cook Christian Training Center in Tempe, and working to
secure better housing on the reservation.
The only real regret she had in her life, she once said, was that she
never had a chance to attend kindergarten.
"I was slow getting started educationally," she said. "Language was a
barrier. I think it would have made a big difference in my life...just going
to kindergarten."
Possibly she was right, but how much difference could it have made in
the innate wisdom of Anna Moore Shaw, who achieved a magnificent
blend of two cultures for herself and her children despite spirit-wounding
obstacles such as prejudice?
"Prejudice? I experienced some," she once told writer Maggie Wilson in
a story for The Arizona Republic. "But it never hurts you so much as it
hurts when your child experiences it."
When her daughter came home from school in tears because
thoughtless classmates wouldn't hold her hand in a physical education
class exercise, Anna counseled:
"We must overlook the shuns and hurts and remember that the white
man has given us something far more lasting than attitudes on this earth.
The white man brought us the message of Jesus Christ. I'm grateful he
did."
Anna Moore Shaw was 77 when she died on April 18, 1976, in Phoenix.
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Amy Cornwall Neal
1888 - 1972
Amy Cornwall Neal was not content merely to direct work
that had to be done; she was the one who pitched in to make
sure the job was done.
Her interests ranged from her home and her family's
cattle business to historical projects and social action. And
while she lived all her life in Mohave County, individuals throughout
Arizona benefited from her social awareness.
Mrs. Neal was born April 2, 1888, on the Cornwall Ranch near Wikieup.
Her father, Adamson Cornwall, represented Mohave County in the 11th
and 14th Territorial Legislatures.
The oldest of five children, Amy was 12 years old when her mother,
Jennie Cornwall, died. From that time on, Amy took charge of the
Cornwall home, caring for her sister and three brothers. She did the
cleaning, meal planning and cooking for the family and the cowboys who
worked on the ranch.
She worked for a time as a Harvey Girl for the Santa Fe Railroad
before marrying John Neal in 1910. Mrs. Neal believed in the importance
of historical preservation, and was deeply involved in the establishment of
the Mohave Museum of History and Art. She served as the group's first
treasurer, and under her direction, enough money was raised to begin
construction of a museum building.
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She helped start the Daughters of Mohave County Pioneers and was
active in organizations such as the Kingman Woman's Club, the Kingman
Garden Club, the Mountain View Cemetery Association and the Order of
Eastern Star.
A founding member of the Mohave County Cowbelles, an organization
that works to promote the cattle industry, she served as the group's first
president.
But Mrs. Neal's interests and work were not confined to her own
community and county.
She was elected state president of the Arizona Cowbelles and was an
early and ardent supporter of the Arizona Boys' Ranch near Chandler.
In fact, she combined her two interests by convincing the Arizona
Cowbelles to raise money for a housing facility for the boys at the ranch.
Not content just to enlist others to help on the project, she donated all the
beef for a huge barbecue in Kingman to benefit the ranch.
She also served as a member of the Arizona State Welfare Board.
Mrs. Neal's helping hand was extended privately, too. More than one
young person received direct aid from her, friends recall.
In later years, she worked diligently to raise community awareness of
the needs of the elderly.. She believed there was a need for a retirement
facility that allowed older people to receive the care they needed while
maintaining their dignity and a sense of independence.
Because of her efforts, a new retirement facility was named after her in
Kingman.
She is remembered by friends and neighbors as someone who could
"always be counted on to give her time, talent, energy and wisdom to any
worthwhile cause." Amy Cornwall Neal died at the age of 84 on Dec. 28,
1972, in Kingman.
75
Lorna Lockwood
1903 - 1977
"In our system, students may not be regarded as
closed-circuit recipients of only that which the state chooses to
communicate. They may not be confined to the expression of
those sentiments that are oHicial/y approved."
- from Justice Lorna Lockwood's Supreme Court opinions
Lawyer, legislator, Superior Court judge, state Supreme Court
chief justice.ooten words that capsulize the career of Lorna E.
Lockwood.
Add to that, assistant attorney general for Arizona, juvenile
court judge and district price attorney for the wartime Office of
Price Administration, and one begins to appreciate the breadth of that
career.
Born March 24, 1903, in Douglas, a small southeastern Arizona town on
the Mexican border, Miss Lockwood was the daughter of Daisy Maude
Lincoln and attorney Alfred Collins Lockwood. The family moved to
Tombstone in 1913, and Miss Lockwood graduated from Tombstone High
School in 1