Sharlot Herself: Selected Writings of Sharlot Hall

Book Review
By LeeAnn Sharpe

Sharlot Herself: Selected Writings of Sharlot Hall Edited by Nancy Kirkpatrick Wright with an introduction by Margaret F. Maxwell Illustrations by Carlos Parra Copyright 1992 by Sharlot Hall Museum 415 W. Gurley Street Prescott, AZ 86301
ISBN 0-927579-04-9 Sharlot Hall books can be ordered at phone: 928.445.3122.


Recently my friend Bob Roloff, the Arizona Duuude, introduced me to the writings of Sharlot Hall. First I read her biography by Margaret F. Maxwell, “A Passion For Freedom: The Life of Sharlot Hall”, “Cactus and Pine” and then the Arizona Strip book. Finally I have completed the series with the “Sharlot Herself: Selected Writings of Sharlot Hall”, Edited by Nancy Kirkpatrick Wright.

With each book I have come to love Sharlot Hall more. Her dedication to the state of Arizona and love of early history runs parallel to the course I have set for my own life. Sharlot’s way of turning a phrase using the jargon of the western cowboy and Arizona pioneer makes her stories especially interesting.

It is almost beyond belief that a woman of her era was able to travel so extensively and participate in so many daring and adventurous activities generally associated with men. As a young girl she rode her pony with her pioneering family from Kansas to Lonesome Valley Arizona outside Prescott. That in itself led to many adventures and strengthened her spirit.

Her chauvinistic, self-centered, brute of a father probably did her a favor in setting her mind against marriage at an early age. Seeing how her mother was merely his property and slave, worked to death without the affection due as reward for her commitment, Sharlot vowed never to be yoked by any man.

Perhaps once or twice she felt genuine affection for men in her life, but they didn’t see her as wifely material, not that she was interested. Rather she was almost an intellectual equal or student to sit at their feet and learn, take advice and fawn over their ideas.

Samuel Putnam, a proponent of the Free Thought Movement who lectured in Prescott in 1895 caught her eye and she became an ardent follower until his death just a year later. Her poems reflected her deep love for him and regret that he was gone from her life forever. At the same time she seemed almost angry with him that he was gone or maybe more that she had fallen for him so deeply. It must have hurt her knowing he was traveling with a young woman much like herself. But then the woman has died in the same gas accident as Putnam.

Her life was filled with exciting men of history including the renowned publisher Charles F. Lummis, the last Arizona territorial governor Richard E. Sloan, first state governor George W.P. Hunt, President Calvin Coolidge and artist Maynard Dixon.

Sharlot Herself: Selected Writings of Sharlot Hall presents many of Sharlot’s previously unpublished bits and pieces of prose and letters into the context of her life at that time. It helps to flesh out the character of this rugged individualist with a unique talent for throwing a lariat to lasso up just the right words to express her feelings and experiences. When she went north to the Arizona Strip she went through territory few people had traveled. Her descriptions of nature; flora, fauna and geology aroused the interests of many businessmen looking at the area for mining and lumbering potential.

Each of the books mentioned above would be of interest to anyone with a love for early Arizona history. Reading about a brave adventurous woman like Sharlot Hall is inspirational.

SHARLOT HALL ON THE ARIZONA STRIP

Book Review
By LeeAnn Sharpe

SHARLOT HALL ON THE ARIZONA STRIP: A Diary of a Journey Through Northern Arizona in 1911 by Sharlot M. Hall, edited by C. Gregory Crampton, foreword by Valeen Tippetts Avery published by Sharlot Hall Museum 415 W. Gurley Street Prescott, AZ 86301. Revised edition, © 1999 112 pp., photograph, map ISBN: 0-927579-08-1
$14.95, paperback. This book has just gone out of print. Other Sharlot Hall books can be ordered at phone: 928.445.3122.

You think you know everything about your home state until you read the words of a traveler who walked the state step-by-step discovering intimate details known no other way. Some of the way was in a buckboard, but she enjoyed walking ahead, even running on occasion to enjoy the freedom of being one with nature alone in the wilderness.

Sharlot Hall and Al Doyle walked every inch of the trails in the Arizona Strip, the area north of the Grand Canyon. It was in a time, 1910, when trails were few, rugged and treacherous at best. It was in a time when women seldom left the comforts of home, unless absolutely necessary. But Sharlot Hall of her own free will and desire took on the role of historian and adventurer to document the area before Arizona was even a state.

When my friend Bob Roloff, the Arizona Duuude, wrote of his love for the writing of Sharlot Hall it made me curious. First I read her biography by Margaret F. Maxwell, “A Passion For Freedom: The Life of Sharlot Hall”, and her book of poems “Cactus and Pine”. Then I had to read “Sharlot Hall: the Arizona Strip” by Sharlot Hall.

I’d always thought of myself as a fairly brave and adventurous spirit, raised as tom boy, the son my father never had. I’ve hiked, hunted, fished and camped all of my life. Arizona has been a wonderful playground in which to explore and learn about nature and history, especially back in the 1950’s and 1960’s when much of the state was still barely inhabited.

But what it must have been for Sharlot Hall and Al Doyle to travel from Prescott to Kingman, Flagstaff, to Tuba City and up to Lee’s Ferry. They went across the Colorado River to the Arizona Strip and the Painted Desert, the Kaibab Plateau, Fredonia and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

Her descriptions of the flowers and trees, the mountains and trails and every living creature they encountered were fascinating. Thrilling were her descriptions of wagons swallowed whole in raging rivers and strong oxen teams washed downstream never to be seen again. The incredible muscle and will it took to move equipment and supplies to remote mines and construction projects at a snails pace make it hard to imagine getting anything accomplished. But they did and we reap the benefits today.

Sharlot may not have known at the time, but while she traveled the state as the official Arizona Territorial Historian, appointed by Governor Richard Sloan, the October 1910 Constitutional Convention was meeting in Phoenix to plan the preliminary document that would lead to Arizona’s statehood. As a direct result of Hall’s appointment which had generated criticism at the time, a provision to deny suffrage to women, and another stating only qualified voters could hold public office were insert into the state constitution. Thus when Sharlot returned her position was in question and her termination came when Governor George W.P. Hunt was sworn in as the first Arizona state governor. Still she remains the only woman to serve public office in the Arizona Territory.

She may have been born a woman but she was not going to let the dictates of a male dominated society tell her what she could and could not do with her own life. She continued to take risks, write about all she saw, run a ranch until her father’s death, and took a dilapidated territorial governors mansion and restored it into what is now one of the foremost historical museums in the state today.

Sharlot Hall once said, "There is something better than making a living--making a life." And so she lived her life.