By Mick Woodcock

Victorians celebrated the coming of the New Year in a number of ways over the time that Victoria was queen of England, 1837 to 1901. It would seem that she was the reason that people in England and the United States gave the day any importance. The Queen was taken with the Scottish tradition of celebrating Hogmanay, which was the last day of the year. In Scotland it was celebrated by the giving of small gifts and the tradition of “First-foot” which meant that one received visitors on New Year’s Day.

(Condensed from an article written by Sharlot M. Hall, founder of Sharlot Hall Museum, that first appeared in the Prescott Courier on December 24, 1930.)

Counting miners, soldiers, pack-train owners and all, there might have been two or three hundred men in reach of Prescott that Christmas season -- that late December of 1864.  There were half a dozen families, mostly with several children; most of them arrived in October on a California-bound train and decided to try their fortune in Arizona instead of going on further west.

By Mick Woodcock

The war put a crimp in the Holiday celebrations in 1917.  Not only were some families missing members who were gone in direct support of the war effort, but also a number of other factors conspired to dampen yuletide spirits.

By Tom Schmidt

Although schools existed in private homes in early Prescott, the hand-hewn log cabin built at the corner of Granite and Carleton Streets in 1868 or 1869 by Samuel Curtis Rogers provided the first schoolhouse for Prescott’s children. Rogers, who helped develop and taught in California’s first rural public school district, used borrowed books and his own library to teach his students. The schoolhouse served not only as Prescott’s but also Northern Arizona’s first schoolhouse.

By Ray Carlson

Arizona became part of the United States as a result of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo that ended the Mexican-American War in 1848.  The Gadsden Purchase, five years later, added additional territory needed to build a transcontinental railroad across the Deep South.  The negotiations for the purchase also attempted to resolve conflicts with Mexico.   The War evoked mixed reactions in the East with critics like Abraham Lincoln wondering what the US achieved.

By Brad Courtney

As noted in Part 1, Dan “D. C.” Thorne came to Prescott in 1867. In 1870, he traveled east and “committed matrimony” with Mary Wilson of New Jersey. He opened the Cabinet Saloon on lot 19, 118 Montezuma Street, in 1874 and soon made it the go-to place on the evolving Whiskey Row.
 

By Brad Courtney

Today he is known to local historians and a few Whiskey Row regulars, but in his day he was a living legend. Dan Conner “D.C.” Thorne has even been called the founder of today’s famous Palace Saloon. Is this true?
 

By Mick Woodcock

The aim of President Woodrow Wilson and most American citizens in 1916 was to avoid getting involved in what was perceived as another European war. There was no planning or preparation for America to go to war. When war was declared, however, there was an immediate flurry of activity in Washington, DC, to put the country on a wartime footing.
 

By Bob Harner

The new Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Arizona, Charles Silent, arrived in Prescott from California in February, 1878. The new Territorial Governor, John C. Frémont, arrived from New York in October the same year. Precisely when these two unlikely business partners began to collaborate isn’t clear, but according to the published diary of Lily Frémont (the unmarried adult daughter of John and his wife, Jesse), they were actively engaged in a variety of ventures by 1879.
 

By Bob Harner

Unless you have researched the life of Arizona’s fifth Territorial Governor, John C. Frémont, it’s unlikely that you’ve heard of Judge Charles Silent. Yet Charles Silent was not only a prominent judge and lawyer in the Arizona Territory in the late 1870’s and early 1880’s  but also a more successful businessman than his better-known partner, Frémont, making him worthy of a closer look today.