By Al Bates

This article is one of a series that will appear in this space during this year and the next on historic events relating to the Arizona Territory’s Sesquicentennial.

In the afternoon of Saturday, September 25, 1863, after a two-hour delay to complete packing, the party of Governor John Goodwin and other Arizona Territorial officers left Leavenworth, Kansas, on the first leg of their wagon train trek to the wilds of the southwest.  Soon afterwards, they, and their military escort, were completely lost.

By Fred Veil

It was very dangerous to travel within many parts of the Arizona Territory in the early 1870s, as the Indians, especially the Apaches, remained hostile to the ever-increasing encroachment of the white settlers on their native lands. The newspapers of the day, and the memoirs and reminiscences of our pioneers, are replete with stories of men and women killed or captured by marauding Indians while traveling within the Territory.

By Robert S. Birchard

Cowboy star Tom Mix was not the first filmmaker to set up shop in Prescott, Arizona.  The flamboyant ersatz Corsican, Romaine Fielding (born William Grant Blandin in Riceville, Iowa), blazed that trail in mid-July 1912 with the Southwestern unit of the Philadelphia-based Lubin Mfg Co.  But, unlike Fielding, Tom Mix would often make Prescott a home away from Hollywood during his movie career.

By John P. Langellier, Ph.D.

Martha Durham lived a comfortable life on her native Nantucket Island.  All that was to change when a young United States Army officer named John Wyer Summerhayes appeared with the shinny buttons and handsome dark blue uniform.  “Jack” as Martha came to call him, won the fair New England lass’s hand.  After they wed, the young lieutenant groom received orders that took them to Fort D.A. Russell in Cheyenne, Wyoming, but soon they would be sent on to “the wilds of Arizona” which in her mind “was that dreaded and then unknown land.”  Thus, in 1874, the newlyweds set off across the continent for their first adventure as husband and wife.

By John P. Langellier, Ph.D.

In 1864 local residents came together to establish the City of Prescott.  In June of that year the need arose to bury one of their fellow pioneers, Joel Woods, in what would become Citizens Cemetery (also known as the Town Cemetery, Prescott Cemetery, City Cemetery, County Cemetery and Citizens Burying Ground) as the first of many men and women who would be laid to rest there.

By Al Bates

This article is one of a series that will appear in this space during this year and the next on historic events relating to the Arizona Territory’s Sesquicentennial.

As stated in a previous article in this series, General James H. Carleton at Santa Fe reacted favorably to reports of gold findings in the central Arizona highlands in the spring of 1863 by the prospecting parties led by Joseph R. Walker and Paulino Weaver.  He made plans to establish a military presence in the area, but first he dispatched New Mexico Territory’s Surveyor General John A. Clark to the “diggings” for first-hand verification.

By Jay W. Eby

There are many legends of treasure and gold in Sycamore Canyon on the boundary between the Prescott and Coconino National Forests in northern Yavapai County.  An early tale is of an Indian, I presume a Yavapai, who lived at Camp Verde.  It is told that he always had money to spend.  When his resources began to wane he would go to Sycamore Canyon and return with a gold nugget, never two or three, one gold nugget.  He never told anyone where he got them or how.  All attempts to follow him to the source failed.  He died with his secret intact.

By John P. Langellier, Ph.D.

Born in today’s Germany, on February 29, 1844. Albert Sieber could have been an inspiration for Karl May’s fictional frontier character “Old Shatterhand.”  During 1848, Sieber’s family emigrated as revolutionary unrest raged throughout their homeland. They made their first home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, then moved on to Minnesota.

By Charles H. Herner

(This article is a summary of a presentation Sam Palmer will make at the Tenth Annual Western History Symposium that will be held at the Hassayampa Inn on August 3rd. The Symposium is co-sponsored by the Prescott Corral of Westerners and the Sharlot Hall Museum and is open to the public free of charge. For more details, visit the Corral’s website atwww.prescorral.org or call Fred Veil 928-443-5580).

By Patrick Grady

This article is a summary of a presentation Patrick Grady will make at the Tenth Annual Western History Symposium that will be held at the Hassayampa Inn on August 3rd. The Symposium is co-sponsored by the Prescott Corral of Westerners and the Sharlot Hall Museum and is open to the public free of charge. For more details, visit the Corral’s website atwww.prescorral.org or call Fred Veil (928-443-5580).

HOMESTEADING.  The word evokes visions of sod houses in Nebraska or the fabled Oklahoma land rush or the novels of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  But what about the desert and mountain regions of Arizona Territory?  Homesteading is often ignored in the stories of the settlement of Arizona.  While historians have generally downplayed the overall impact of the 1862 Homestead Act on western migration, an estimated 1.7 million homesteaders found opportunity that might otherwise have eluded them, successfully claiming 270 million acres.