By Parker Anderson

I am unable to deny it, but I am fascinated by Yavapai County and Arizona history in general. This was not always the case for me. As a child and young adult, I had naturally heard a lot of the traditional stories and legends about Prescott area, but I never really got into it until I was about thirty years old. At that time, I had joined Sharlot Hall Museum's Blue Rose Theater to write and produce plays about local history. Theater director, Jody Drake, stressed to me that our plays had to be as historically accurate as possible, which meant extensive research in the museum archives and other locations as needs might warrant. 

To my everlasting embarrassment, I got off to a shaky start in that area. I made the same mistake that many researchers make when they first start out. I assumed that researchers that came before me had gotten all the facts correctly, so I looked largely at "after-the-fact" accounts of the stories I wanted to write plays about, most of them from magazine articles and books. Now, I am not generalizing that this is a bad practice - I am not dumping on "after-the-fact" historical articles, for I have written quite a few myself. But I did learn in short order to, at the very least, research the original first-hand documentation as well, if for no other reason than to fact check. There are a lot of fanciful and romantic legends about Arizona history that are just not true despite how widespread they are and despite how much they have been printed. 

There is an old saying among some researchers that if you find the same story in three different places, it is probably true. I am skeptical of that, particularly when dealing with "after-the-fact" accounts in western magazines and the like. When I speak of first-hand, primary sources, I refer to court papers (much of which has survived), old newspapers and the like. There can be errors here as well, but perhaps not so major as the errors fostered by over a century of folklore and spin. At the risk of sounding like I am boasting, I feel that I eventually developed an instinct for separating fact from fiction. I have put my skills to use in writing my Blue Rose Theater plays and my contributions to Days Past articles. 

As an example of widespread folklore, a few years ago I chose to write a Days Past article on Manuel Abiles who was Yavapai County's first legal hanging victim in 1875. A version of his story has been repeated countless times - a version in which Abiles allegedly was walking down a road when he found a corpse. Suddenly, a group of white men rode up, accused him of the murder and took him to Prescott where he was quickly hanged! This story ends with a cryptic denouement in which another man confesses to the crime from his deathbed 60 years later, proving Abiles was innocent. 

Having heard this story so often, I had no reason to disbelieve it but, true to my researching nature, I wanted to verify the story from original sources in the Sharlot Hall Museum Archives before writing about it. Imagine my shock to discover the facts bear no resemblance whatsoever to the fable that has been spun for so many years! In reality, Abiles and two other men (who are not characters in the folklore version) got raucous at a Mexican wedding party, a fight broke out and the three killed one of the other guests. All three were arrested for the murder, but one was acquitted, the other got off due to a hung jury, leaving Abiles to face the hangman alone. And no, there was no deathbed confession from anyone else 60 years later. Contrary to folklore, Manuel Abiles was indeed guilty of at least being an accessory to murder and possibly the murder itself. Very detailed court papers and news accounts back this up; too detailed to be a fabrication. 

Note: There are three spellings in various documents and accounts of the first Prescott hanging for the last name of Manuel in the account above. The oldest documents at the time of the hanging spell his last name Abiles. Later written accounts use Aviles. There is even one newspaper article that spells his name Abelis. To maintain consistency, we will use the name as given in the oldest documents.

For a number of years, there has been strong interest in legal prostitution in Prescott; the red light district was on Granite Street back then. But no one seemed to know exactly when prostitution became illegal. I was told it was an enduring mystery. One day, while scanning old newspapers, I unexpectedly solved the mystery. I found some newspaper articles from 1918 relaying how the U.S.War Department had asked all states to outlaw prostitution on the grounds that the ready availability of women was leading soldiers down the wrong path! The articles further detailed how Yavapai County authorities then raided Granite Street and forcibly shut down all of the houses and cribs. Legal prostitution ended that day. I showed my find to then-museum archivist, Michael Wurtz, who was very excited about it. These articles are now readily available in a vertical file folder in the archives on prostitution. 

In 2000, I began my proudest work as a local historical researcher. Having loved the Elks Opera House since I was a child, I embarked on a project to document every booking the grand old theater has ever had in 100 years! It took me four years to complete this task.