By John P. Langellier, Ph.D.

Martha Durham lived a comfortable life on her native Nantucket Island.  All that was to change when a young United States Army officer named John Wyer Summerhayes appeared with the shinny buttons and handsome dark blue uniform.  “Jack” as Martha came to call him, won the fair New England lass’s hand.  After they wed, the young lieutenant groom received orders that took them to Fort D.A. Russell in Cheyenne, Wyoming, but soon they would be sent on to “the wilds of Arizona” which in her mind “was that dreaded and then unknown land.”  Thus, in 1874, the newlyweds set off across the continent for their first adventure as husband and wife.

Having never been west of New York the interim posting at Cheyenne seemed to the blushing bride “the wildest sort of place.”  She quickly learned that there were even more remote locales when Jack ’s next transfer brought them to San Francisco for a brief layover before heading down the coast of California on shipboard then transferring to a smaller vessel to bring them up the Colorado River on the way to their next home—Arizona Territory.

Martha lamented she “had never felt such heat, and no one else had or has since.”  She had no choice but to resign herself to the “dreadful heat” that did not abate once the steamer reached Fort Yuma.  Martha noted this garrison was said to be the very hottest place that ever existed.  To drive home her point she repeated the oft-told parable of the “poor soldier who died at Fort Yuma, and after awhile returned to beg for his blankets, having found the regions of Pluto so much cooler than the place he had left.”

At least Martha, confessed the “fort looked pleasant to us….”  In fact, having spent “twenty-three days of heat and glare, and scorching winds, and stale food, Fort Yuma…seemed like Paradise.”  But the journey was not over, as they were to continue slowly upstream on their paddle wheeler.  Martha bemoaned her fate.  “When we departed, I felt, somehow, as though we were saying good-bye to the world and civilization.”

A portrait of Martha Summerhayes from her book titled, Vanished Arizona: Recollections of the Army Life of a New England Woman, 1911.

With a sense of foreboding she began her “… journey up the Colorado River, that river unknown to me except in my early geography lessons …”  The interminable voyage passed in slow motion with everyone wandering about the deck, “first forward, then aft, to find a cool spot.”  After eleven days, a quick trip according to the captain of the paddle wheeler, the boat tied up at Fort Mojave.  A week and a half on the Great Colorado during midsummer prompted her to vow, “nothing would ever force me into such a situation again … my only feeling was … to get out of the Territory in some other way and at some cooler season.”

Yet months after she swore to avoid this place, Jacked received yet another transfer from a relatively pleasant assignment at Fort Apache to a posting at Ehrenberg.  But that move to the dreaded inferno along the Colorado River lay in the future.   Little did Mattie realize that her pledge would be a futile one.

For the moment she had no idea that she would be returning.  Unaware of what was to come, she now focused on the march to Camp Apache, in the far eastern part of the territory where Jack’s Company K was stationed.

Bouncing along in an army “ambulance” and camping out under canvas for many days, the Summerhayes eventually reached the oasis of Fort Whipple.  Martha was delighted and pronounced it “a very gay and hospitable post, near the town of Prescott, which was the capital city of Arizona.”  She thought the officers’ quarters there were quite commodious, and after seven weeks of continuous traveling, the comforts she experienced provided a refreshing change.  The respite was a temporary one, and all too soon the Summerhayes continued on the move to Camp Apache.

To learn the rest of her love-hate story about life on the far away frontier read Martha Summerhayes’ now classic memoir, Vanished Arizona: Recollections of the Army Life of a New England Womanavailable in most libraries and at the Sharlot Hall Museum store.

(Days Past is a collaborative project of the Sharlot Hall Museum and the Prescott Corral of Westerners, International (www.prescottcorral.org). The public is encouraged to submit articles for Days Past consideration. Please contact SHM Library & Archives Reference Desk at 928-445-3122 Ext. 14 or via email at archivesrequest@sharlothallmuseum.org for information.)