By Al Bates

Many of the American men who moved west in the mid-19th century had episodes in their past they wished forgotten.  A common solution to this problem was to change names, a practice followed by two of Prescott's earliest pioneers.  Both men became well known in Arizona Territory long before they felt secure enough to resume use of their real names.  Both served in the Territorial Legislature while using aliases, and both made significant contributions to the written record of territorial Prescott. 

The first of these two was "Daniel Ellis," a wanted man because of his participation in an attempted uprising against the Union in Colorado.  The second was "Charles A. Franklin," whose reasons for concealing his true name are less clear.

"Daniel Ellis," whose real name was Daniel Ellis Conner, arrived in the Prescott area in the spring of 1863 with the first group of miners to stake placer claims on the Hassayampa River.  Born in Bardstown, Ky., in 1837, Conner attended Hanover College in Indiana.  With jobs scarce after the panic of 1857, he went west to the Colorado gold fields.  There he joined in a planned Confederate uprising and thus became a federal fugitive in the fall of 1862.

Leaving Colorado quietly, he joined the Joseph R. Walker party in New Mexico and came with them to the Prescott Basin in the spring of 1863.  He mined in the Prescott area for several years and served as a Yavapai County representative in the second and third sessions of the Territorial Legislature, all the while using the Ellis name.  It was not until after he tired of the frontier life and left the territory that he resumed use of his full name.

After leaving territorial Arizona, Conner worked as a civil engineer in Ohio and California between 1869 and 1917, when failing health hospitalized him for the remainder of his days.  Conner wrote a lengthy account of his adventures in Colorado and Arizona and then spent the rest of his days trying to find a publisher.  It was not until well after his death in 1920, that his lengthy manuscript was edited to produce two books, "Joseph Reddeford Walker and the Arizona Adventure" (1956) and "A Confederate in the Colorado Gold Fields" (1970).

In addition to the manuscript, he left behind a series of letters to Arizona historians T. E. Farrish and Sharlot Hall, correcting what he believed were inaccuracies in published information about early territorial days.

Albert Franklin Banta arrived at Chino Valley under the name "Charles A. Franklin" with the Fort Whipple founding party in December 1863.  Banta's reasons for use of an alias apparently arose from his role during the chaos in Kansas and Missouri early in the Civil War.  He was born in Indiana in 1843, with a family line that traced back eight generations to early Dutch settlers.  In the light of his latter accomplishments, it is impressive that his formal education totaled 12 months of schooling that ended when he was 11 years old.

When the Civil War broke out, Banta did a short stint in the Missouri Militia and also served as a "Three Month Volunteer."  He then worked as a bullwhacker before his first newspaper job in Lawrence, Kansas.  After being misidentified as one of Quantrell's spies and threatened with death, he decided to head west under the "Franklin" name.  Over 20 years passed before he resumed use of his real name.

Late in 1863, Banta left a job as a printer in Albuquerque to join the Whipple founding party as a teamster.  At Fort Whipple, he aided in publishing the first two issues of the "Miner," Arizona Territory's first newspaper, and then began a wildly varied career.

In the next half century, Banta mined, scouted for the army, served in the Territorial Legislature, and held other elective and appointive political offices.  He claimed discovery of Meteor Crater in 1873 and that for a time it was called "Franklin's Hole" in his honor.  Along the way, Banta founded several newspapers and in them included his stories of early Arizona.  He also contributed to T. E. Farrish's multi-volume "History of Arizona"

Back in Prescott as a newspaperman, Banta was wiped out "root and branch" in the Whiskey Row fire of 1900.  After further adventures in Arizona and Panama, he retired to the Arizona's Pioneers'' Home in 1916.

Retired he was - but not inactive, spending many nights and weekends as the office of the Prescott Courier working on his memoirs.  His manuscript remained in the archives of the Sharlot Hall Museum until it was published under the title "Albert Franklin Banta: Arizona Pioneer" in 1952.

The books mentioned in this article are out of print, but are available both at the Prescott Public Library and the Sharlot Hall Museum.  A word of caution, however; these books are based on the memories recorded years after the events related and do not always agree with official records and primary accounts written closer in time to the events.

Al Bates is an independent researcher and past Sheriff of the Prescott Corral of Westerners.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number: (). Reuse only by permission.

Albert Franklin Banta (about 1870) and Daniel Ellis Conner (about 1900) were among the first settlers in the Prescott area when they arrived in the early 1860s.  Both left very good records of their exploits, including Civil War activities that made them feel like they needed to change their names.