By Katherine J. (Gernand) Nicolay

I have never read anything about tuberculosis (TB) or tubercular patients in Prescott, even though I grew up here. I feel drawn to tell you how remarkable and brave these people were.  My father, Perry Gernand, developed full-blown TB as a result of having flu and pneumonia in France during World War I. In 1922 I was a year old, when my father had a bad hemorrhage while threshing grain at harvest time on our Illinois farm. In less than two years, he was advised to go to Prescott, Arizona to Whipple Barracks for care. My mother and I followed in a few months. He received excellent care at Whipple, and this is where my story of influence begins.

By Parker Anderson

Local fans of the Elks Opera House are aware that the star of the very first show in that theater was Florence Roberts.  Many have wondered, however, exactly who Florence Roberts was.  Her name is largely forgotten today, but in 1905, when she came to Prescott and the Elks, she was one of the most prominent professional touring actresses in the nation.

By Tom Collins

A horse! A horse!

My kingdom for a horse!

When those words rang out from the stage of Patton’s Opera House on March 10, 1896, Prescottonians knew that the villainous King Richard III was about to meet his doom on the battlefield. They also knew that they were probably witnessing one of the farewell performances of America’s greatest living tragedian Thomas W. Keene. It was a truly momentous occasion.

By Anita Zeller 

(Editor's note: This Days Past story was originally published on December, 20, 1997.)

Memories are a big part of the Christmas season. They link the past with the present, preserving tradition in the heart, as well as the mind. While memories may not always record history with pinpoint accuracy, they can offer an overall view of a time now gone, and give warm insight into the nature of the person who is recalling and translating the past.

By Al Bates

Usually when we think of Christmastime in Territorial Prescott we have images of jolly families with little children warm and snugly gathered around a candle-lit tree after enjoying the fruits of their mama's kitchen efforts. But there was an earlier time when Prescott was barely a town and was peopled by a predominance of single men-especially when the miners came to town.

By Shirley Turner Summers

(Last week, former Governor George W. P. Hunt persuaded the commanding officer to grant the author's father forty-eight hours of leave from Camp Funston to see his mother, Mary Elizabeth Turner Calder, who had met and traveled to the Kansas camp on the same train with the former Governor.) 

She was indebted to the governor for this favor, so wrote the poem, "A Rippling Rhyme," about meeting him on the train, and when she got to Virginia, sent it to him in Phoenix with a letter of gratitude.

By Shirley Turner Summers

(This is part one of a two-part article.)

The Dunbar Weekly noted Governor W.P. Hunt, Arizona's first governor, who won election for seven terms, as "one who neither looks up to the rich nor down on the poor, who can lose without squealing and win without bragging, who is considerate of women and children and old people, who is too sensible to loaf, who takes his share of the world's goods and lets others have theirs, is, indeed, a true gentleman!"

By Dr. Ted Finkelston

(Our tale from last week left off as Jacob "Jake" Theobald, a Prescott youth drafted into the military to fight in the Great War, was finishing his training in the South of France, ready to take his orders to move to the front line.)

Without really telling his mother his unit had moved to the front, Jake wrote in early August, "Bob's big change is in spirits his like the rest of us getting a bit hard at times, but this life in the trenches will make anyone feel that way at times. We are not dry for a week eat & sleep in mud two feet deep but the Hun will pay for it and before very long."

By Dr. Ted Finkelston

On the morning of April 27, 1918, the Selective Service Board of Yavapai County met in the county courthouse and chose forty-seven young men to be drafted into the United States Army. The "Draft" had been enacted by Congress and signed by President Wilson a year earlier to choose men "upon the principle of universal liability to service."

The Selective Service Act of 1917 required all men twenty-one to thirty years of age to register for the Draft (later in August, 1918 that was expanded to all men 18 to 45). Ultimately 2.8 million Americans were called up, and about two million were sent to Europe, where approximately 1.4 million saw action.

By Ryan Flahive

On any given Sunday, these pages of the Prescott Courier are full of yarns about 'the good ol' days' of Yavapai County. Ranching reminiscences, school memoirs, church memories, mining histories and other topics pertaining to the Prescott area pervade our Sunday paper with a column we like to call 'Days Past'. But where do these histories come from? Personal memories? Oral tales?