By Dr. Ken Edwards

His father was a peddler, his brother founded a highly successful department store in Phoenix and his nephew was a famous Arizona senator who ran for president of the United States. But Morris Goldwater established his legacy in Prescott. This is the first of four articles about Morris and his family who played an important part in the early history of Prescott.

By Jan MacKell

"The ancient card faces painted on the layout were doubtless faded and worn, but to my boyish eyes they glowed like a church's stained-glass window.... (Gaye) started drawing the cards one by one from the battered old silver box. As he drew, I could see his lips move and knew he was making bets for imaginary customers." So did Nugget (the main character in Conrad Richter's book "Tacey Cromwell") describe how his brother practiced to become a faro dealer in Bisbee during the late 1800s.

By Vicky Kaye

Ellen "Nellie" Cashman was a mere five years-old when she immigrated to America in 1850 with her mother and sister. Today, she is remembered as a pioneer, miner, entrepreneur, businesswoman, organizer, leader and "angel" throughout the West, Canada and Alaska. She was always searching for opportunities related to her first love - mining. She always paid her own way in the mining boomtowns by establishing businesses, buying and selling mines and actual hands-on mining. With any excess funds, she supported charities (and encouraged fellow miners to do the same), established hospitals, churches and schools, grubstaked other miners and helped the poor or needy from Arizona to Alaska, wherever she happened to call "home" at the time.

By Vicky Kaye

On a lonely stretch of the Richardson Highway near Paxson, Alaska, is a highway historical marker that gives tribute to the "gold rush women." With a backdrop of the Alaska Range, Prescottonian Melissa Ruffner and I (a recent transplant to Alaska) discovered quite by accident that one of our heroines from our home state of Arizona had a much more exciting life than we had imagined.

By Carol Powell

Louis Clair Miller was an ex-constable and himself a troublemaker in Prescott who was jailed for forging a check in 1897. In last week's Days Past, I began the final chapter of his life story.

By Carol Powell

Nearly nine years ago, Dec. 14, 2003, my first entry in Sharlot Hall Museum's Days Past was published. I had posted information on the Internet seeking help with my husband's genealogy and, to my surprise, I had two replies. Both thought my husband's ancestors were interesting enough to publish stories about them. One was the Genealogical Society's Copper State Journal. In its July 2003 issue, they ran my article, "Just a Railroadin' Family."

By Kathy Krause

It was July 1973 when the new Sharlot Hall Museum director, Dr. Ken Kimsey, came on board to lead activities for the next 17 years. Up until the early 1970s, the University of Arizona "museum studies" classes made field trips to visit Sharlot Hall Museum in order to observe "museum problems" and learn how not to run a museum! According to museum curator Norm Tessman, "It was Dr. Ken Kimsey's era, the fruits of his hard work and insight" that ended the field trips to Prescott. Under his leadership, "the quest for museum quality was to continue and accelerate in the years ahead." There was a new sense of professional pride, not only by the museum workers but by the community as well.

By Stan Brown

Before the founding of Prescott in 1863, Apache raids on ranches and wagon trains occurred in the southern part of what would become the Arizona Territory. Mining between the Gila River and the Mexican border brought new investors and laborers. To protect these settlers, military posts were built and, in 1861, a skirmish at Apache Pass in the Chiricahua Mountains brought Cochise and his warriors into a full scale conflict with the Americans. That same year, the Civil War broke out, and the soldiers left their frontier posts to fight the Confederates back east. The Indians concluded that their intensified raids during the 1850s had finally won them a victory, causing the white men to withdraw. The Apache, Yavapai and Mohave took heart and became more ferocious than ever.

By Ray Carlson

Arizona became part of the United States as a result of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo that ended the Mexican-American War in 1848.  The Gadsden Purchase, five years later, added additional territory needed to build a transcontinental railroad across the Deep South.  The negotiations for the purchase also attempted to resolve conflicts with Mexico.   The War evoked mixed reactions in the East with critics like Abraham Lincoln wondering what the US achieved.

By Stan Brown

 This is Part 2 of a three part article.  Part 1 was published on June 21, 2008 and Part 3 was published July 12, 2008 and all are in the SHM L&A Days Past Archives.

We left off last time with Tom Sanders returning from a trip to California to help settle his sister there. Soon after returning to Prescott, Tom married Cynthia Miller, thus further uniting two of the original settler families of Miller Valley.