By Ken Edwards

For more than a decade after Arizona achieved territorial status, there were no banks closer than Santa Fe, New Mexico and the major cities of California. Gold and silver were the accepted currency; paper money was not always trusted. 

During the 1860s, merchants carried out many of the functions of banks. They would grubstake miners, extend credit, keep customers' valuables and a supply of cash in their safes, redeem government pay vouchers and advance money on future crops and freight.

By Ted Edmundson

This is a three-part article series. Part 2 was published November 28, 1998, and Part 3 published on December 6, 1998. However, all three parts have been combined into this article.

Part 1 - Published November 21, 1998

My first exposure to Arizona was in October, 1929.  My mother had ten kids, five girls and five boys, was quite frail, and about ready to go into TB.  Her doctor suggested that we take her to the Arizona desert.  Incidentally, she lived to be eighty-nine and dad died at the age of fifty-nine.  We should have come out here for dads health.

By William Bork

Harry Brisley, a native of London, England, came to Prescott and set up his drugstore on Whiskey Row in 1893.  He remained in business until the sale of the store to W.S. Bontag in 1925. From early on, he was a big booster of the climate, scenic beauties of the area, and of other attractions.  A native of London, where he had completed a rigorous apprenticeship, he was joined by a cousin, T. Ed Litt, a Canadian, born in Stratford, Ontario, who soon chose to move to Tucson, where he was in business at the corner of Congress and Stone in the downtown until 1949.  It appears that Brisley came to Arizona by way of Canada and many people thought both men were Canadians.  A true Canadian, E.A. Kastner, a grocer, who introduced the Piggly Wiggly Supermarket to Prescott, came here at about the same time.

By Dawn Dollard

The ultimatum was implied. "If you go to Tonto," George Brown had almost said to Angeline Brigham Mitchell.  But Angie, writing in her diary on September 5, 1880, reacted to the unspoken threat: "I merely reminded him that I promised I'd go to the most 'barbarous' country I could if he ran for anything on the ticket, and he promised not to.  He broke his share of the agreement.  George had run for, and been elected, as a Republican representative to the 11th Territorial Legislature to meet in Prescott in January 1881, and I thought Tonto would answer my purpose.

By Karen Despain

A small world of Murphys will descend on Prescott next week to weave more threads into their family’s tapestry.

Progeny of Billy and Julia Murphy already have one ancestral saga upon which to add more, and it is the anniversary of the particular episode – a tragic one – that will unite 80 of the clan for its first-ever reunion Nov. 6, 7 and 8.

By Dawn Dollard and Jean Petrie

Before there was a building on the chosen site in Arizona Territory (where the Governors Mansion stands today at the Sharlot Hall Museum), the Governor's Party camped among the pines. Atop one of the tallest trees, they raised an American flag to mark the spot where the government of the new Territory would be located.

By Sandra Lynch

On October 24 and 25, all day Saturday and Sunday, Sharlot Hall Museum will host its first Prescott Indian Art Market featuring over 50 Native artists.  The idea of Indian art, as market commodity, evolved within a history both Native and American.  Long before Spain's galleons put to shore in the Caribbean, American Indians had established art markets.  Pacific shell pendants, etched by acid and wax, crossed Arizona deserts in human caravans.

By Jay Treiber

On Jan. 19, 1922, my maternal grandmother was born in a cinder-rock building near the Arizona-New Mexico border, 25 miles northeast of Douglas. The place was then a general store: it has since been a post office, a barn, a general store again, and finally, someone’s house.
 

By Kim Rosenlof

A recent night flight brought a friend of mine and me to Ernest A. Love Field in Prescott.  At first, we had a rough time distinguishing the airport from the busy lights of the mountain-nestled town, but once we were over Prescott Valley, we could see quite a few aircraft in what had to be the traffic pattern of a busy airport.  Switching to Prescott's arrival frequency, the radio buzzed with traffic.

By Richard Gorby

In 1865, with Prescott only a year old, the first post office, a wood frame building on Montezuma Street, just a few feet north of Goodwin, was occupied by the Reverend Hiram Walker Read, the town's first postmaster.  After a year, with a total postal return of $23.16, the Reverend Read left in disgust, and Prescott's first post office became G.M. Holaday's Pine Tree Saloon, in 1866.

There was a government rule that a post office should not be in the same room with a saloon, so the Prescott Post Office was moved across the Plaza to Cortez Street, inside Calvin White's store, and White was made postmaster.