Description

Sharlot M. Hall in a formal group portrait with her friends and Dewey ranching neighbors John Mars and his niece Mary E. Bowers (later Reid).

In 1884, Mary E. Bowers of Pittsfield, Illinois arrived in Arizona to stay with her uncle John Mars. John Mars owned the land that would later become Fain Ranch out in the Dewey, Arizona area. The headquarters of Mars' ranch was located near the junction of Lynx Creek and the Aqua Fria River. A few miles up Lynx Creek was James Hall’s Orchard Ranch, which the Halls had settled in 1882. It was during this time that Mary Bowers, “Aunt Mary,” and Sharlot began a friendship that was to last their lifetimes.

By 1886, Mary had met a freighter by the name of James “Jim” A. Reid and they married on March 29, 1891 in Prescott. Together they settled the Reid Ranch and stage stop along the Buckeye Road near Salome, Arizona. Sharlot remained good friends with Mary and during one visit to the stage stop, Sharlot wrote a poem about freight teams watering at twilight, which is in Sharlot’s book, “Cactus & Pine.”

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.

NOTE: There is a second similar photo in this collection with Call Number 1928-0001-0120 that was not placed on website.