By Ann Hibner Koblitz
If we judge by most of the accounts available in bookstores, women in early territorial Arizona had precisely two occupations-- ranch/farm wife and prostitute. Some further reflection might expand the list of women's jobs to include schoolmarm and possibly maid servant or laundress, but after that most of us would draw a blank. Probably we would excuse our inability to come up with a longer list with some facile remark about how restricted women's lives were in Victorian America, and how 19th-century Arizonan women could not be expected to have had the myriad ambitions and opportunities of their 21st Century descendants.
And yet the pages of the Journal-Miner and (from 1882) the Prescott Weekly Courier reveal that women in early territorial times engaged in a bewildering array of moneymaking activities that ranged from the traditional (teaching, housecleaning, prostitution) to the unusual and at times downright peculiar.
Some of the more obvious positions for women might be thought of as natural extensions of their roles as homemakers. For example, married women often kept roominghouses, sometimes with small eating establishments where they would feed their lodgers and possibly other boarders on a 20-meals-per-week basis. The going board rate circa 1880 was $15/week, and landladies/restauranteurs promised their diners eggs and chicken at regular intervals. Most of these in-home operations were relatively small, though the Courier reported that a Mrs. Groves was handling eighty boarders in her place in Jerome. Other townswomen took in laundry and mending, made hats and fancy dresses, offered lessons in everything from china painting to watercolors to Latin, and operated small poultry yards and tree and flower nurseries.
Farm and ranch women also contributed to the family income. Besides the traditional "egg money" they earned from their poultry enterprises, rural women ran dairies, raised and sold cattle, carried the mail, and served as postmistresses and guides for mail carriers. Many of these women were married, yet most managed their businesses completely independently from their husbands.
In most parts of 19th-century America women lost their independent civil identities upon marriage, and could not own property or transact business. However, according to an 1865 act of the Territorial Legislature "On the Rights of Married Women," women in Arizona could recover their economic citizenship by announcing their intentions in the newspaper. The wording of these "sole trader" declarations could at times be quite detailed. For example, in 1885 Mrs. Rose A. Hoover, wife of Philip Hoover, declared her intention to engage as a sole trader in "farming, ranching, stock raising, the buying and selling of live stock, real estate, mining and other property, the locating and developing [of] mines and mining property, the dairy business, teaming, freighting, and general trading." Mrs. Hoover's start-up capital was $5,000-- not a fortune, but a respectable sum when a schoolteacher's annual salary was $1,000 to $1,200.
Rose Hoover was not the only woman to see the potential profit of nontraditional occupations such as hauling, teaming and mining. In 1885 Mrs. Charles Hudson began a fast freight line between Prescott and Ash Fork-- a service which the Courier praised highly. And a number of women worked in mining in every capacity from prospector to developer to owner. In 1880 the Miner published a front-page obituary of Eliza P. Hitchcock titled "Death of an Excellent Lady." Mrs. Hitchcock, the daughter of a man who made a fortune building New York's Erie Canal, spent $50,000 developing mining properties in the Big Bug mining district (southeast of Prescott, near the Agua Fria River). And at least two other women who devoted themselves to mining, Catherine Alexander and Mary (May) Bean, went so far as to successfully sue those who attempted to defraud them of their mining claims.
Other women entered relatively new professions. Several acted as clerks for the Territorial Legislature, a number were census takers, and at least three were telegraph operators for Western Union. In addition, both the Miner and the Courier employed women as compositors and typesetters. A surprising number of women had medical practices of some sort. The first one mentioned in the press was Mrs. Caroline Cederholm, who advertised in 1870 in the Miner and claimed extensive experience in Europe and on the Pacific Coast. Cederholm combined her doctoring with preaching, and the Miner was not kind to her when writing of her in the latter capacity.
Other women physicians who resided in Prescott for varying periods included Dr. Mary J. Safford (sister of the former Territorial governor) and Dr. Frances Mary Murray, who after leaving Prescott became a successful surgeon in Oregon Territory. For a short time in 1879 there was even a mother-son medical practice: G. B. Abbott, M.D. and surgeon, advertised jointly in the Miner with his mother, Sara Y. Abbott, a "ladies physician."
How did men in the Territory react to the unusual variety of women's careers and possibilities for independence after marriage? For the most part, Arizonan men appeared to view women's expanded opportunities with equanimity, even with approbation. The "leading citizens" of Arizona were desperate to shed their frontier image, and like other western territories with a surplus of single men, one way they sought to do so was by attracting "respectable" women. If that meant offering women the vote, access to the professions, or secure economic status, most upstanding male Prescottonians were willing to make the trade-off.
There was, however, another reason for this acceptance of women in a wide range of occupations. The editor of the Miner, which for much of its early history called itself the "Organ of the White People of Arizona," and many other Arizonans wanted to attract white women in order to render unnecessary the use of Chinese, Mexican American, Native American, and other non-white laborers. For example, in 1868 the Miner invited the white women supposedly displaced by Chinese laborers to "shake the dust of San Francisco from their feet and strike for Arizona, where they would be received with open arms by sturdy bachelors who would protect and defend them against John Chinaman or any other man." In short, the treatment of (white) women was influenced in a complicated and sometimes surprising way by the racial insecurities and prejudices of the time. But that's another story.
(Ann Hibner Koblitz is a Professor of Women's Studies at Arizona State University in Tempe. She is the author of two books on Russian women scientists, and is currently working on a cross-cultural study of fertility control and women's medicine.)
Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(po0142pa)
Reuse only by permission.
Sharlot Mabridth Hall was the first Territorial Historian of Arizona, championed independent statehood for Arizona, and went to Washington as an elector for President Coolidge. Restoration of the Governor's mansion in Prescott was due largely to her efforts.