By Edna Ballew Patton

(Edna Mae Ballew Patton lived in Skull Valley for over 60 years. In the late 1990s, she committed many of her memories to paper. Her first published memoirs appeared in the Days Past issue of November 20, 2008 and can be read there. Mrs. Patton died on July 31, 2008, five days after giving Sharlot Hall Museum permission for her memoirs to be published.)

By James F. Vivian

Captain John G. Chandler, according to the Arizona Journal-Miner on June 26, 1915, was presented as the “first man known to suggest that the first capital of Arizona be christened Prescott.”

By James F. Vivian

In 1864, the town of Prescott was named in honor of Massachusetts-based historian William Hickling Prescott, who was already deceased at the time and had never set foot in the west. Even in the 19th century it was unusual for towns to bear the names of people who were not involved with their founding, and thus the question has been raised as to which of our earliest territorial pioneers suggested the honor for Mr. Prescott.

By Bob Cornett

The western half of the North American continent contained a million square miles in 1800, all unknown to the U.S. citizens in the eastern half. For expansion westward, maps and handbooks were needed. We know there were more than 40 major surveys and mapping reports from the time of Lewis and Clark (1804-1806) up to the General Land Office surveys of the late 1850s. Americans believed that it was their God-given right to settle the West (Manifest Destiny), and the path had to be cleared.

By Bob Cornett

Next to the west door of the Sharlot Hall building on the museum grounds in Prescott is an 1859 map of the United States commissioned by Col. Carlos Butterfield. It shows ocean shipping routes, mail and stage routes, and four proposed railway routes west.

By Marjory J. Sente

On Oct. 27, 1948, the Prescott Post Office opened to a very special day of business. The issuance of the Rough Riders Commemorative Stamp made the post office look like a land office during a gold rush. While the local public bought the new commemorative stamp at the counter, more than 50 special employees worked behind the scenes to process the requests for first-day covers.

By Marjory J. Sente

October 27, 1948. What a day for Prescott: Navy Day, former President Theodore Roosevelt’s 90th birthday anniversary and, yes, the first day of issue of the Rough Riders commemorative postage stamp at Prescott, Arizona. For that one-day in October of 1948, the eyes of the stamp collecting and first day cover world were focused on Prescott.

By Katherine Krieger Pessin

Medora had finally achieved her longtime goal of becoming a field geologist with the USGS and was assigned to Prescott, Ariz., in 1947. She spent the next 35 years mapping in the State of Arizona, a total of 12 quadrangles, including those of Prescott and Paulden. She has to her credit many professional papers for publication with the USGS as well as other scientific organizations.

By Katherine Krieger Pessin

My mother, Medora Hooper Krieger, was one of the most prolific geologic mappers at the USGS during the twentieth century. Although her early training and work was in the eastern United States, particularly in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, she is known mostly for her 35 years of mapping in the State in Arizona, where she did what was considered a man’s job in a world that was considered a man’s world.

By Richard Cunningham McCormick

(Edited by Parker Anderson)

I was at Washington at the first inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, and saw much of him. It was difficult, even in view of the Baltimore plot, to make him think that anyone sought to injure him, or that his life was in danger. The intention of that plot, by the by, suggests a correction of the common impression that Mr. Lincoln passed through Baltimore in disguise.