Sharlot Mabridth Hall was an unusual woman for her time: a largely self-educated but highly literate child of the frontier. Born on October 27, 1870, Sharlot was given her name by an uncle who claimed it was of Indian origin. Her earliest memories were of Comanche raids, grasshopper plagues, prairie fires, and of pet buffalo killed by wolves. In 1882 the Hall family crossed the Santa Fe Trail and went on to Arizona. Her impressions of this journey remained with her all of her life. She loved ideas and the written arts and expressed her fascination with Arizona frontier life through prose and poetry. The family settled on Lynx Creek near today’s Prescott Valley. It was the final decade of the great western frontier, and its memories stayed with Sharlot.

The Hall family raised horses and mined gold on Lynx Creek, then built a homestead that they called Orchard Ranch. James and Adeline along with their children, Sharlot and Ted, kept pigs and cows and grew vegetables, apples, and pears. Sharlot’s father, James Hall, worked the hydraulic, gold mining operation on Lynx Creek. In 1890 he built a ranch above the junction of the creek with the Agua Fria River and planted fruit trees. Until 1927 “Orchard Ranch” was Sharlot’s home. However, this home was often a burden for Sharlot as she lived the title “Ranch Woman.” The hardships of ranch life, and particularly of ranch women, were a frequent theme in her writing.

Sharlot attended school for a couple of brief terms in a log-and-adobe schoolhouse four miles from the ranch, then boarded in Prescott for one year of schooling in town. There she met Henry Fleury, who had come to Prescott in 1864 as secretary to the first governor, John Goodwin, and who lived in the old log Governor’s Mansion. The gruff, grey-bearded Fleury told Sharlot many fascinating stories of Prescott’s early times.

Sharlot Hall saw the need to save Arizona’s history. The territory had been founded in 1863 and by 1900, as early settlers died, their possessions were lost, along with their stories. There was also widespread looting of Arizona’s spectacular Indian ruins to supply the eastern market with “Indian relics.” To save what she could, Sharlot began to collect both Native American and pioneer material. As early as 1907, Sharlot Hall planned to develop a museum for her collections.

In 1906, Sharlot Hall became active in the crusade against the congressional measure which would have brought New Mexico and Arizona into the Union as one state. Sharlot toured Arizona gathering opposition to the bill and wrote a 64-page article in “Out West Magazine” praising Arizona’s resources. Her epic poem, “Arizona,” describing why Arizona deserved separate statehood, was placed on the desks of each congressman. The measure was defeated, perhaps due, in part, to Sharlot’s efforts.

In an age when a woman was often considered inferior to men, she loved a good fight and broke gender barriers. Sharlot was a free soul and her writing expresses this sense of freedom.

“But I do enjoy everything – just the sunshine on the sand is beautiful enough to keep one giving thanks for eyes to see with. And all day long I’m glad, so glad, so glad that God let me be an out-door woman and love the big things. I couldn’t be a tame house cat woman and spend big sunny, glorious days giving card parties and planning dresses — though I love pretty clothes and good dinners and friends – and would love a home where only the true, kind, worth-while things had place.
“I’m not unwomanly – don’t you dare to think so – but God meant woman to joy in his great, clean, beautiful world – and I thank Him that He lets me see some of it not through a window pane.
“Your telegram came yesterday – on from Phoenix. Every one of my happiest thoughts, all the days through, ends in a prayer for you – and gratitude beyond words that I have you to call friend – dear, dear, dear Great Comrade. Goodnight, Amigo, God keep you everywhere. (signed) S. M. H.”
—Sharlot Hall to Matt Riordan, September 1910

Sharlot served as Arizona’s territorial historian from Sept. 1909 until Feb. 1912. She was the first woman to hold a salaried office in the territory. During her tenure, she visited prehistoric ruins and Indian Reservations and collected pioneer material throughout Arizona. In July 1911, Sharlot began the longest expedition of her tenure, a ten-week wagon trip across the wild, remote Arizona Strip north of the Grand Canyon.
At about this time she was also very active in the national political arena, first as a lobbyist and later as a presidential elector.

When Calvin Coolidge won the presidential election of 1925, Sharlot was selected as the elector who would deliver Arizona’s three electoral votes to Washington. For the trip the Arizona Industrial Congress commissioned an overdress of copper links which she wore to the inauguration. Later, Sharlot often wore this unusual garment with its copper accessories and a cactus hat as she lectured about Arizona and it’s resources.

Finally, on June 20th, 1927, Sharlot agreed to move her extensive collection of artifacts and documents into the Old Governor’s Mansion and open it as a museum on June 11 the following year. She signed a contract to house these artifacts in Arizona’s 1864 Governor’s Mansion and to operate it as a public museum. For the rest of her life, she worked to preserve the old log building and to save Arizona’s historic past. Sharlot had called her home and business the Old Governor’s Mansion Museum and in the 1930s with the help of the Civil Works Administration, she had the Sharlot Hall Building built behind it and began to call the new building the Sharlot Hall Museum. After Sharlot’s death in 1943, the entire museum was officially named for her.

Her diligent efforts inspired others to contribute to the preservation of early Arizona history. After her death on April 9, 1943, a historical society continued her efforts to build the complex that bears her name. In 1981 Miss Hall became one of the first women elected to the Arizona Women’s Hall of Fame.

Mollie Sheppard, an Irish immigrant, and popular courtesan becomes rich while operating a successful brothel in Prescott, Arizona during the 1870’s. After being forced to leave Prescott through political collusion between the Ladies Morality League and the territorial governor, an array of enigmatic characters and a streak of turbulent circumstances turn Mollie’s life topsy-turvy. During the chaos that follows, Mollie almost dies when she is wounded by Indians; she fends off an assault attempt; adopts a teenager to save the girl from a life of prostitution; quits the brothel business; returns to her homeland in Ireland to join her family; and becomes a successful legitimate businesswoman. She finally finds love with a man she met aboard the ship during the trans-Atlantic crossing to Ireland.

Excerpt from “The Life of Mollie Sheppard: A Bold Independent Woman” available on Amazon here. 

Frances Lillian Willard “Fannie” Munds (June 10, 1866 – December 16, 1948) was an American suffragist and leader of the suffrage movement within Arizona. After achieving her goal of statewide women’s suffrage, she went on to become a member of the Arizona Senate more than five years before the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution granted the vote to all American women.

After graduation, Willard joined her family in the Arizona Territory, where her four brothers operated a ranch in the Verde Valley with her father’s former business partner, William Munds (Joel Willard had died in 1879). She worked as a school teacher in the communities of Pine, Payson, and Mayer before marrying John Lee Munds, youngest son of Willard Munds, in 1890. The couple moved to Prescott in 1893 where John Munds was elected Yavapai County sheriff for two terms beginning in 1899. The couple had one son and two daughters.

In 1898, Munds was elected secretary for the Territory of Arizona Women Suffrage Organization. Together with organization president Pauline O’Neill, she reached out to Mormon women within the territory. This marked a change from the practices of earlier suffrage leaders, such as Josephine Brawley Hughes, who had shunned the Mormon community. This outreach enabled the organization to lobby Mormon members of the territorial legislature to support legislation supporting women. Munds also attended legislative sessions personally to lobby for women’s issues. After several years’ effort, the 1903 territorial legislature passed a bill granting women the vote. This legislation was later vetoed by Territorial Governor Alexander Brodie. A similar bill would later be vetoed by Governor Kibbey.

In 1909, with statehood appearing imminent, Munds struck a deal with the Western Federation of Miners in which the labor union would support women’s suffrage in exchange for the women’s organization’s support in labor issues. The next year, during Arizona’s constitutional convention, a proposal granting women’s suffrage was introduced. The proposed plank was defeated before it could be added to the constitution.

Following Arizona’s admission to the Union on February 14, 1912, a meeting of the State of Arizona Women Suffrage Organization unanimously elected Munds the organization’s president. She initially refused to accept the position, but acquiesced on the condition the position be renamed chairman, and that she be allowed to reorganize the state organization. During the summer of 1912, Munds helped organize a petition drive to collect the 3,342 signatures needed for a ballot initiative. After gathering the needed signatures, Munds then proceeded to get the support of 95% of the state’s labor unions. When the Progressive party came out in favor of the suffrage issue, Munds was able to force the Democratic and Republican parties to reevaluate their positions by threatening to throw support from women to the third party. When the election results were counted, the suffrage initiative had passed by a three-to-one margin in every county.

In 1913, Governor George Hunt appointed Munds to represent Arizona at the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in Budapest, Hungary. The next year, she, along with Rachel Berry of Apache County, became the first woman elected to the Arizona Legislature (representing Yavapai County).

Upon her entry to the state legislature in 1915, Munds said, “true blue conservatives will be shocked to think of a grandmother sitting in the State Senate.” During her time in office, she chaired the Committee on Education and Public Institutions, and also served on the Land Committee. Sen. Munds also introduced legislation doubling the widow’s tax exemption. She chose not to run for a second term in the legislature, but in 1918 was persuaded to run for Secretary of State, a run that was unsuccessful.

After leaving office, Munds remained active in politics for the rest of her life. She died at home on December 16, 1948, and was buried at the Mountain View Cemetery in Prescott, Arizona. In 1982, she was inducted into the Arizona Women’s Hall of Fame.

Grace Sparkes was born in Lead, SD, on January 21, 1893. She came with her family to Prescott in 1907 and graduated from St. Joseph’s Academy in 1910. Later she received a degree from Lamson Business College in Phoenix.
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Grace served as secretary of the Prescott / Yavapai Chamber of Commerce, from 1911 until 1945.  She helped organize the Prescott Frontier Days for 30 years. She was known throughout the West as “the girl who bosses 200 bronco busters.” Sparkes helped establish general rodeo rules, many of which are still used by professionals today. She is also credited with coining Prescott’s slogan: “Cowboy Capital of the World.”

Seeing the need for a first-class hotel downtown, Grace spearheaded funding and construction of the Hassayampa Hotel. In 1921, she helped organize the Smoki (pronounced smoke-eye) People of Prescott which promoted Indian lore for over 70 years. 

As chairman of the Yavapai Civil Works Administration in 1933-34, Sparkes was instrumental in securing the New Deal funding necessary to construct many buildings and improvements that are still with us today. These include the Lindley Field and Park; the Smoki Museum; and no less than four road bridges in Prescott. 

In 1935, Grace and Sharlot Hall, with Yavapai leaders, Sam and Viola Jimulla, secured 75 acres of land to create the Prescott Yavapai Indian Reservation. Sparkes also secured money for the Yavapai Indians to build their own houses on the new reservation.

Sparkes played a crucial role in preserving other historic sites in Arizona including the Coronado National Memorial, the Tuzigoot Indian Ruins, and the Montezuma Castle National Monument.

Sparkes spearheaded the effort to bring us Interstate 10–a faster way to California and an economic boom for the state.

Upon her retirement in 1945, she moved to Cochise County to oversee her own mining claims. She also enjoyed hiking, horseback riding, and reading.

The Old Armory building in Prescott is now named The Grace M. Sparkes Activity Center in her honor, as well as the bridge on Williamson Valley Rd. that crosses over Mint Wash.

Grace Sparkes passed away at age 70 on October 22, 1963, and was buried in the family plot at Mountain View Cemetery, Prescott.

Because of her effective interest in public welfare and her estimable personal qualities, she had an extensive number of acquaintances and was highly esteemed by all who knew her.

She was inducted into the Arizona Women’s Hall of Fame in 1985.

Margaret (Williams) Ehle was born on October 14, 1817, in Ohio, the daughter of Henry and Amy (Beale) Williams. Margaret married William Joseph Ehle in Washington County, Iowa, on December 9, 1841. By 1860 the family had moved to Colorado. They accompanied the first U. S. troops to be stationed at Fort Whipple and arrived in Prescott, Yavapai County, Arizona Territory, on July 28, 1864. In 1865, they established the first government road station at Skull Valley.

The Ehles were the proprietors of the Montezuma Hotel on the corner of Montezuma and Willis, and they lived next door. The Arizona Miner referred to her in 1880 as “one of God’s best women, one of the first ladies that settled in Prescott.” In her obituary, written by Sharlot Hall, she was called “a pioneer of the pioneers in Northern Arizona.” She brought the first sewing machine, a Grover and Baker, to Prescott and helped women learn dressmaking. She also brought with her a “Bouncing Bet” plant from Iowa to brighten her new home.

A midwife, she tended Margaret McCormick during the birth of her stillborn baby and at the time of her death. Margaret, who was also called Grandma Ehle, also dressed Margaret McCormick for burial.

The Ehles were the first settlers to have honeybees and chickens, as well as a yellow house cat. According to Sharlot Hall, Margaret “bore her full part… Past the toil and struggle of the early days, she lived to a serene and stately old age that was like a benediction to all who knew her.”

The Ehle children were John Henry, Mary Jane Dickson (whose marriage to John Dickson on November 17, 1864, was the first in Prescott and performed by Governor Goodwin in the Governor’s Mansion), Olive Bowers-Crouch, Emma Elizabeth Silverthorn-Sanders, Margaret Viola Foster, and Sarah F. Baker.

The Weekly Journal Miner carried an item: “Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Ehle will celebrate their golden wedding next Thursday, December 8th, at their residence on Montezuma street.”

Margaret Ehle died of pneumonia on November 5, 1905, and was buried in the Masonic Cemetery. Joseph died November 30, 1912, and his newspaper obituary published in the Weekly Journal Miner December 4, 1912, recalled that when they came to Prescott from Colorado, “Mrs. Ehle brought along a yellow house cat, and this feline attracted very much attention, being the first of its race, along with the fowls, to reach this section.”