By Kristen Kauffman

Sharlot Madbridth Hall was a remarkable woman, championing women’s rights during the suffragette age as an essayist and poet, lobbyist, and in her work as Arizona’s first female territorial historian. At the risk of overstating, Hall left many lasting legacies, most notably the Sharlot Hall Museum, which opened June 11, 1928.

Hall had always been a woman concerned with the preservation of history. As far back as 1907, she accumulated both relics from the ruins of Native American sites and the possessions of the territory’s first pioneers as they were passing away. Much of what she treasured of those early pioneers was non-material: Henry Fleury, a personal secretary for both Governor Goodwin and McCormick in the 1860s and one of the first residents of the Governor’s Mansion, was a pioneer who told stories which fascinated her.