By Marjory J. Sente

Etta J. Oliver made many contributions to the Prescott community during the four decades she called it home. She, however, had a special passion for the Sharlot Hall Museum and used her involvement in local organizations to benefit it.

Sharlot Hall established the museum in 1928. According to her friend Alice Butterfield Hewins, “The roof needed new shingles and some of the Prescott women became interested and raised money by card parties.”

In 1930 the Monday Club, with Etta as president, held a “Trade at Home” dinner, benefiting the museum, at the St. Michael’s Hotel, featuring Arizona foods. Three hundred people paid $1 each to attend. With additional donations from as far away as Jerome and Skull Valley, the Monday Club raised $550 for the roof restoration. Per Mrs. Hewins, “Instead of shingles she [Sharlot] used shakes as had been done originally.” 

Etta was a member of the local General George Crook DAR Chapter when it presented, on July 4, 1929, a flagpole and flag owned by John N. Goodwin, Arizona’s first territorial governor, to the museum. The chapter wanted to contribute to the restoration of the Governor’s Mansion, and the flag reminded people of the loyalty and courage of Prescott’s early settlers. Accompanying the flagpole was a bronze marker set in a granite boulder. Almost a century later, the museum is still using the flagpole with the marker beside it.

In 1932, when Etta was regent, the DAR Chapter planted two cherry trees at the Governor’s Mansion to commemorate the George Washington Bicentennial. One was named George Washington, the other General Crook.

Sharlot and Etta were charter members of the Prescott Garden Club, founded in 1931. The club’s goal was to make Prescott the Garden City of Arizona. Sharlot encouraged members to donate flowers to the museum, including irises and roses, while she transplanted ivy and plants from her Orchard Ranch home.

Garden Club members, along with the Yavapai Cow Belles, were instrumental in starting the museum’s Memorial Rose Garden in 1948. Four years later, Etta wrote a detailed article about the museum’s flora in “A Child Visits Arizona’s Garden of Memories” for the March 1952 Arizona Highways. Besides giving the history of the Boursalt rose root, the first in Northern Arizona, that the Territorial Governor’s wife Margaret McCormick planted near the Governor’s Mansion,  Etta reported that the new Memorial Rose Garden had 100 different roses named for Arizona’s pioneer women and as memorials for other women associated with Prescott. That spring she also participated in a radio broadcast, “In A Governor’s Mansion Garden.”

Etta again promoted the garden in an April 12, 1953 Arizona Republic interview detailing her lifelong interest in plants and flowers. Harold Butcher wrote, “Mrs. Oliver is interested in the Governor's Mansion garden located in Prescott, adopted by the Arizona Federation of Garden Clubs as the historical garden of Arizona.”

“A feature of the garden is a memorial rose garden. ‘It offers an opportunity to pay honor to women of the pioneer period,’ Mrs. Oliver says. ‘Choice roses have been bought for this garden, and those wishing to make memorials may do so.’" 

In 1994 Etta was inducted into the Territorial Women’s Memorial Rose Garden that she helped to establish and promote.

Sharlot Hall was Arizona’s Poet Laureate. On April 7, 1953 Etta directed special ceremonies at the museum marking Poetry Day in Arizona and honoring Sharlot, who had passed away ten years prior.

A fire at her home in 1957 tragically cut short Etta’s life of service to Prescott and the museum. A month after her 81^st birthday, Etta came to the end of her trail.

“Days Past” is a collaborative project of the Sharlot Hall Museum and the Prescott Corral of Westerners International (www.prescottcorral.org). This and other Days Past articles are also available at www.archives.sharlothallmuseum.org/articles/days-past-articles/1. The public is encouraged to submit proposed articles and inquiries to dayspast@sharlothallmuseum.org Please contact SHM Research Center reference desk at 928-277-2003, or via email at archivesrequest@sharlothallmuseum.org for information or assistance with photo requests.