Nancy Catherine “Cappy” (Hite) Bozarth was born on November 23, 1889, in Octavia, Butler County, Nebraska, the daughter of Marion Francis and Fannie Fern (Fitzsimmons) Hite. Cappy’s mother Fannie died in April 1897. Cappy and her sister, Virginia, were living with their grandparents John and Nancy Fitzsimmons, in 1900. Later, Cappy moved to Prescott, Yavapai County, Arizona Territory, with her uncle, Thomas Fitzsimmons, and attended Prescott public schools.

According to a December 25, 1901, article in the Arizona Weekly Journal-Miner, she participated in a literary program through the Prescott public schools. Tom Fitzsimmons, a bricklayer, put Cappy’s name on the white granite cornerstone at the southwest corner of Washington School when it was built in 1902. Later she attended the University of Colorado at Boulder for a year, and then took a job teaching in Elk Creek, Nebraska, before returning to Prescott in 1909.

On March 23, 1910, she married Orville Diville Bozarth, a pioneer rancher in Yavapai County.  After their honeymoon in Wickenburg, they returned to live in Miller Valley. They owned ranches in Camp Wood, Fair Oaks and Williamson Valley. Cappy served as a military registration official in September 1918, in the area around Simmons.

In 1930, Cappy and Orville were living with his father, John Bozarth, on N. McCormick Street.  Orville was working as a butcher and Cappy as a dental assistant.  Orville was elected Yavapai County Sheriff in 1946, retiring in 1954.

Cappy was a charter member of the Yavapai Cowbelles, the women’s auxiliary of the Yavapai Cattle Growers Association and was press supervisor for the first volume of Echoes of the Past: Tales of Old Yavapai, which wascompiled by the Yavapai Cowbelles.  She was president of the Monday Club from 1957 to 1958 and a gray lady for more than seventeen years at Fort Whipple, volunteering 5,000 hours at the hospital.  She was also a member of Rebekah, the Prescott Garden Club and the Alta Vista Garden Club, a social sponsor for Alpha Theta Chapter of Epsilon Sigma Alpha sorority and a pink lady at Yavapai Community Hospital.  She received a special award from the Yavapai County unit of the American Cancer Society in 1968. She was a lifetime member of the First Congregational Church.

Cappy died on March 13, 1972, and was buried in Mountain View Cemetery. Her sister, Virgie Robbins, is also represented in the Territorial Women’s Memorial Rose Garden.

Donor: Yavapai Cowbelles
Photo Located: PB-146, F-16, I-6
Updated: 9/4/2015, D. Sue Kissel