March 8 marks International Women's Day. Here are 25+ stories of Arizona women who made their mark in the early history of the territory and the state.
Adams, Mary W. “An Arizona Adventure.” The Midland Monthly, Vol. 1 . Des Moines: Johnson Brigham, Publisher.
Born in Boone County, Iowa, on Aug. 4, 1870, Mary Kidder was destined for a life of academia. Graduating from Stanford University in 1901 with a degree in history, she taught in San Francisco schools and eventually became superintendent of the San Francisco Associated Charities that provided relief during the 1906 earthquake.
She had to adapt to the isolation of ranch living since Douglas, the closest town, was over 50 miles away. Even when Charlie encouraged her to make the trip, she balked. “If you don’t go somewhere pretty soon,” he told her, “you will forget how to talk to other women. … By and by all you will be able to do is to ‘moo’ when they speak to you.”
“We get up at four o’clock, cook and eat breakfast and do the indispensable chores of milking and feeding horses and chickens. Kettles of water are heated to warm the cockles of the truck’s heart. A hind wheel is jacked up; motor oil is drained and warmed on the back of the stove until the whole house reeks like an engine-room at sea. While I dress in my town-going garments, Charlie pours boiling water into the radiator and warm oil into the crank-case.
“It was a hot day,” she said, “far too hot to wear a linen duster over my dress all the time that strenuous job would take me. I peeled off my dress and hung it on the fender where I could grab it quickly in the happy event of an arrival. Then I set to work.” Once, when her parents were away, the maid, swearing Yndia to secrecy, took her to view a public hanging. Yndia thought it was a fun way to spend the afternoon.
The Smalley family cook went to work for the restaurant and supposedly created her own version of the Mexican dessert Almendrado, substituting almond-flavoring for lemon in this sweet pudding and lacing it with a heavy hand of bourbon. “Tucson is destined to become one of the most exciting and valuable research centers of the West,” she said in 1961. “This research center and its archives are considered to be among the finest relating to Southwestern Americans.”
In 1966, long after George Smalley’s death, Yndia gathered up her father’s papers and notes that he had accumulated through his years as a reporter, editor and consummate adventurer and compiled them into a book titled “My Adventures in Arizona: Leaves from a Reporter’s Notebook,” published by the Arizona Pioneers Historical Society.
When Yndia died on Jan. 13, 1997, one of her friends acknowledged that even at age 94, Yndia “took the lead; she never followed.” Anthropologist and historian Bernard Fontana called her a “walking encyclopedia of Tucson — not just from reading about it, but from living it. … She had a wonderful sense of place and continuity of past and present.”
Rose was age 6 when Reed died. Belle married horse rustler Sam Starr in 1880 when Rose was 12. At age 18, Rose gave birth to her first child, Mamie, and was persuaded by her mother to give up the baby for adoption. She married four times and had three more children. Ruth was born in 1894, Arthur in 1898 although he lived less than a year, and Jennette in 1902.
Pearl called herself Rosa Reed when she arrived in Bisbee with pregnant daughter Jennette in tow. Jennette’s baby was given up for adoption just as her mother had done with her first child years earlier. At the time, daughter Ruth, an aspiring musician, was attending The Strassberger Music Conservatory in St. Louis, Missouri.
During this time, she contacted the orphanage that had taken in her first daughter, Mamie. Mamie had been adopted and now used the name Flossie. When Flossie became aware of her birth mother, she contacted Rosa and the two reunited in Bisbee around 1923. Rosa claimed she had never signed the papers giving up her child but that her infamous mother, Belle, wanting a better life for her daughter, had forged Rosa’s signature on the adoption papers.
Less than a year later, on July 5, 1925, Rosa was admitted to the Cochise County Hospital. She died the following day with her cause of death reported as arterial sclerosis. Her daughters decided not to engrave their mother’s tombstone with her tarnished name but instead marked her headstone Rose Pearl Reed.
But Ethel had made up her mind she wanted to run a boardinghouse, and Mose knew early in their marriage that if Ethel wanted something, she would find a way to get it. The one thing Ethel did excel at was dancing. She was a popular partner at Saturday night parties but realized most of her partners glided across the floor as gracefully as a drunken coyote so she started conducting dance classes at Tucson’s Orndorff Hotel. One of her clients was Mose Drachman, one of 10 children born to Philip and Rosa Drachman, who were among Tucson’s early settlers.
Ethel eventually bought the property next door and proceeded to supervise the building of another boardinghouse. Bricklayers, carpenters, plasterers, plumbers and electricians came under Ethel’s scrutiny and woe be the worker who tried to skimp on any part of the house. Daughter Rosemary explained, “A bathroom in those days was a place to do what one had to do in it and leave, not a place to rest, cold-cream one’s face, or read a book.”
But Ethel was in charge of the boardinghouse. She cooked by instinct and seldom used a recipe. She could take the same food served one night and make it taste so different that her boarders had no idea they were eating the same thing the next night. In 1908, Louise had filed a 40-acre homestead claim in Yuma County, and in 1912 she moved permanently onto her ranch in Southwestern Arizona.
Louise immediately set out to improve the education of students by adding much needed programs and more modern equipment to poorly run schools across the state. When she was invited to speak at the National Education Association convention in 1913, her achievements in Arizona schools gained national attention.
Louise successfully ran for a seat in the Arizona House of Representatives in 1920, serving two one-year terms. Louise was instrumental in getting the bill passed through the House of Representatives and then personally delivered it to the Senate floor. In 1921, she was elected the first state president of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs and also served as national vice president of the organization.
Born in 1852, Katharine Sadler Madison had married Army Capt. Melville Cochran in 1872. The couple had five children during their travels with the military, four were with them at Fort Apache. “The commanding officer of the fort , appreciating the dangerous condition of affairs, sent for Nockadelcline and some of the leading warriors to come in and have a talk, thinking that he could quiet them; but instead of coming, they moved their field of operations to the Cibicue, about 50 miles distant.
“My dear reader,” Katharine wrote, “can you realize how we all felt! Can you imagine what were the hopes and fears of those wives who had been waiting two days and nights without sleep!” “I commanded a view of the entire fight,” she said, “watched my husband under fire for an hour or more, listened to the whiz of the enemies’ bullets and to the deafening storm from our own men.”
The major retired from the military in June 1898. Katharine died in Florida on August 26, 1903. Melville followed her on May 4, 1904.Western Women: Sue Summers was integral part of the town of Florence for 40 years Born in Philadelphia on Feb. 13, 1835, the family Bible lists Sue’s birth name as Sussanah Heatherington Campbell, although she preferred the name “Sue.” At age 18, she headed to California and settled in Downieville, a bustling gold mining town that had high hopes of becoming the state capital. She taught school until marrying local storekeeper Hiram Summers in 1855. Son Harold was born in Downieville in 1858.
Sue and Hiram had a rocky marriage and even divorced for several years. The divorce may have been what sent Hiram to Arizona but he was back in California in 1879, as newspaper accounts recorded his remarriage to Sue on June 7, just four months before she boarded the train to join him in Florence. “The station was not very inviting,” Sue recalled, “but we were hospitably cared for by the proprietors Mr. Fryer, afterwards Sheriff of Pinal Co. and Mrs. Fryer, the former famous Pauline Cushman of the Civil War.”
Not all was perfect with Florence, as Sue discovered when word reached town a band of Apaches was headed their way. Women and children were taken to the courthouse for protection. Sue was sick at the time, “confined to my bed with lumbago, but I was badly frightened — such was my willpower, that I deliberately rose from my bed and dressed preparatory to seeking the proposed refuge.”
Along with other townswomen, Sue saw that the streets were cleaned, street signs erected, a library established, and the beginnings of incorporating the town. On March 17, 1896, 18-year-old Louisa married 30-year-old rancher John Wetherill. Their son Benjamin was born Dec. 26, 1896, followed by daughter Georgia on Jan. 17, 1898.
The couple built their home of adobe, stone, and juniper logs with a dirt roof. Louisa regarded everyone who came to the trading post as her friend. She listened to their stories, sympathized with their grievances, and respected their traditions. The Navajo called her Asthon Sosi — Slim Woman. Wolfkiller also taught Louisa Navajo myths, legends, and songs that his grandfather had passed on to him. She translated some of these into English and later, her grandchildren preferred to hear these tales rather than Anglo bedtime stories.
In the fall of 1910, the Wetherills opened the Kayenta Trading Post and lodge in the heart of Monument Valley in Northern Arizona. The couple entertained visiting notables such as western writer Zane Gray who patterned some of the characters in his books after Louisa and John. Theodore Roosevelt stopped by in 1913 after a mountain lion-hunting excursion at the Grand Canyon.
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