By Stuart Rosebrook
[Stuart Rosebrook, Ph.D., Executive Director of Sharlot Hall Museum, discovered he is related to Sharlot M. Hall through a shared relative on his father's and Sharlot's mother's Boblett-Deardorff side. He adapted this article from Margaret E. Maxwell’s “A Passion for Freedom: The Life of Sharlot Hall” republished by the Sharlot Hall Museum and for sale at the Museum’s gift shop.]
From her childhood days in Kansas to her home at Orchard Ranch, Sharlot Hall grew up with a Western work ethic and love and appreciation for all the family’s animals.
Sharlot Hall Museum’s founder, Sharlot M. Hall, was born in James “Jim” and Adeline Hall’s homestead cabin in northeastern Lincoln County, Kansas, on October 27, 1870. Sharlot recalled her birthplace was adjacent “a small stream thickly lined with oak, elm, walnut and hackberry trees, and with thickets of tall wild alum bushes all along in which the poles forming the framework of the Indian tepees [sic] were still standing when I was old enough to play in the abandoned teepee shelters.”
Sharlot’s parents struggled on their 150-acre Kansas homestead until 1879, when a sweltering summer led Sharlot’s father to look for better conditions to raise crops and a family. Adeline had given birth to two more children; in 1872, the first son only lived six weeks, but Edward V., born in 1874, survived. Life wasn’t easy. According to Sharlot’s biographer, Margaret Maxwell, “[o]f this period, Sharlot said that her father ‘pecked around all summer at a crop that didn’t always feed the stock…We had enough to eat,’ she concluded, ‘because [mother] was a wonderful cook and “rustled.”’”
The Halls left their 150-acre homestead in the fall of 1879 for a new claim in Barbour County [later corrected to Barber], Kansas, that Maxwell describes as “a region of cattle ranches and few homesteaders because of its proximity to Indian Territory.” The Halls built a home for their ranch amidst rolling hills along Little Mule Creek, a half-day ride from Medicine Lodge. Texas cowboys drove herds through the county en route to the railhead in Dodge City. One cowboy gave Sharlot’s mother a Texas pony named Fanny. Nine-year-old Sharlot quickly bonded with Fanny. Little did Sharlot know that two short years later, she would ride the mare across the country—much of it on the Santa Fe Trail—to their new home on Lynx Creek in Lonesome Valley.
While Jim Hall intended for their lives and income to improve on the new ranch, “even at best,” according to Maxwell, “life was difficult on the isolated ranch in southern Kansas…. But the year 1880 was one of real disaster for Kansas farmers and ranchers.” The Halls barely held on through a scorching summer and a freezing winter. Sharlot recounted the suffering cattle and piles of dead stock frozen against the fences.
In the spring of 1881, Adeline received a letter from her brother, John Boblett. He waxed profusely about life in northern Arizona, along Lynx Creek, near Prescott. Gold was for the picking, and the grass was bountiful in a climate mild in the summer and milder—compared to Kansas—in the winter. The Halls made plans to move to the Prescott area near the John Boblett family. In early November 1881, Sharlot’s life was transformed forever as their family wagon train traveled to Arizona and their future home on Orchard Ranch.
On August 2, Sharlot Hall Museum's Curator of Education Bailey Cacciatore presents, "The Life and Legacy of Sharlot M. Hall" in the Education Center Auditorium. Bailey, a third generation Arizonan, understands the need to preserve Arizona’s history, just as Sharlot did. See ticket information online at sharlothallmuseum.org/event/lecture-series-the-life-and-legacy-of-sharlot-m-hall-august-2-2025/
“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.