Louisa Elizabeth F. Wilson was born in 1820 in Kentucky. Her birthdate is not known, nor are her parents’ names. She married Charles Francis Wilson, a merchant, in Missouri. In the 1860 Missouri Federal Census, Charles is no longer mentioned. Whether he passed away or left is not known.

Nellie Mae (Beal) Francis, daughter of Martha (Hatfield) and Marvin Beal, was born on December 22, 1865, in Utica, Oneida County, New York. Nellie came to the West with her family. After spending several years in Texas, her father and his brother Frank traveled to the frontier railroad town of Flagstaff, Yavapai County, Arizona Territory, where the two brothers built a saloon and restaurant.

By Tom Collins

Prescott’s theatregoers gobbled up the pompous press puffs that heralded the arrival on January 3rd, 1896, of Lillian Lewis’s lavish production of Sardou’s Cleopatra at Patton’s Opera House on Gurley Street.  Known in New York City as a modern drama queen, Miss Lewis was proclaimed (by her husband and manager Lawrence Marston) as “the foremost American actress” and superior, in this role, to Sarah Bernhardt herself!  Her leading man, Edmund Collier, was “the successor to that great classical actor, John McCullough.” (Miner, Jan. 1, 1896).  The scenery and special effects dazzled, but the discerning might have cringed at the acting.

By Mick Woodcock

Central Arizona’s mineral riches first drew Anglo prospectors in 1863. Gold was the original metal, but silver and copper were also discovered and mined with more or less success. Remote locations and mountainous terrain made moving the ore and building smelters to process it very difficult. Large freight wagons pulled by multiple mule teams were the only source of transport.

Irene Luzzatto (Coen) La Guardia was born July 18, 1859 to Fiona (Luzzatto) and Isac Abram Coen, in Rijeka, Croatia, near what is now Trieste, Italy. In Trieste, Achille Luigi Carlo La Guardia met, and later married Irene on June 3, 1880. She was taken by her suitor’s good looks and sophisticated worldly charm and the prospect of going to America.  He was impressed with her social status, poise, and schooling. She was fluent in Italian, Hebrew, and German. She was a descendant of a prestigious Italian-Jewish family of scholars and poets. Theirs was a civil marriage officiated by the Mayor of Trieste. Shortly after wedding, the couple left for the United States. Their first two children were born in New York City, New York: Gemma on April 24, 1881, and Fiorello on December 11, 1882.

By Brad Courtney

One would think that the Keystone Saloon on Cortez Street had accommodated enough death. Although three suicides had taken place there between 1885-87, it hadn’t yet hosted a homicide. That would change eight years later over a dispute of seventy-five cents.

By Brad Courtney

If any early Prescott saloon was cursed, it was Cortez Street’s Keystone Saloon. It was possibly sited where Lyzzard’s Lounge is today.

Its first proprietor, Gotlieb Urfer, came to America from Switzerland sometime before the Civil War. He arrived in Prescott in 1874, opened a lodging house on Cortez in 1877, and eventually added a saloon, naming it the Keystone Saloon and Lodging House. He married Ellen Dunn of Ireland in 1878.

By Mick Woodcock

Based on the Days Past article of Nov 29, 2014.

What follows are excerpts from articles about Christmas in early Prescott. We hope this will give you an idea of what our predecessors thought of the holiday and how they observed it.

By Dana Brisendine Sharp

McCabe, Arizona, once a thriving town . . . is no more.  Located in the Big Bug Mining District, the little town was about four miles southwest of Humboldt and a couple miles from the Huron siding on the Prescott and Middleton Branch of the AT & SF Railroad.

By Bob Harner

Despite risking his life to successfully persuade Geronimo to surrender for the last time, Lieutenant Charles Gatewood remains largely unacknowledged today, primarily because his unyielding commitment to defending the rights of Apache  men and women (the term “Apache” includes what today are known as Yavapai) alienated him from his Army superiors and peers.