Description

Sharlot M. Hall at Orchard Ranch walking with James K. Hall (Sharlot's Father) and dogs.

SHARLOT MABRIDTH HALL (b. October 27, 1870, d. April 9, 1943) moved from Lincoln County, Kansas to Arizona in 1882. She moved twelve miles southeast of Prescott, Arizona at Lynx Creek, with her father, James Knox Hall, her mother, Adeline Susannah Hall, and her brother, Edward "Ted" V. Hall.

Sharlot became a poet, a writer, a journalist, an associate editor of "Out West" magazine, and served as Arizona's Territorial Historian from 1909-1912. In addition, she became the first steward and curator of the Arizona Governor's Mansion in Prescott, which she eventually turned into a Museum beginning in 1928. Today, she is the namesake of the Sharlot Hall Museum.

JAMES KNOX POLK HALL is believed to have been born on or about December 2, 1844 in Kansas.  Little has been documented about his early life, except that his mother died when he was an infant, after which his father abandoned his family, leaving young James in the care of a family slave (Kansas was a slave state).  He spent much of his young adulthood as a trapper, hunter, and buffalo hunter before marrying Adeline Susannah Boblett on January 31, 1869.  They had three children: a daughter, Sharlot (b. 1870); a son, John (died in infancy in 1872); and a son, Edward (b. 1874).

The Hall family moved to Yavapai County, Arizona in 1882, traveling over the Santa Fe Trail by covered wagon.  They homesteaded land they later renamed Orchard Ranch.  James spent his later years confused and bitter over his daughter Sharlot’s successes as a poet, writer, and historian, as he felt she should have married and become a ranch wife.  He died on September 3, 1925, and is buried in the Hall family plot in the Simmons section of what is today the Pioneer’s Home Cemetery.