VANISHED ARIZONA 1870-1900 [SOLD]

VANISHED ARIZONA 1870-1900 by Martha Summerhayes

Recollections of the Army Life of a New England Woman

Second Edition published by The Salem Press Co., Salem, Mass. 1911

The Rio Grande Press, Inc. first edition published in 1970

This Rio Grande Press, Inc. Hardback 7^th edition, 2^nd printing in 1979

Illustrated with historic photographs

New condition, never read

PUBLISHER’S PREFACE

Martha Summerhayes, the author, was a cultivated New England girl, a descendant of famed Rev. Jonathan Edwards.  She was born at Nantucket, Mass., October 21, 1846, and here she grew to womanhood.  The character of her education is suggested by the fact, alluded to in the opening chapter of her narrative, that she spent two years in study in Germany.  Following her return to Nantucket, she married Lieutenant Summerhayes, and as an army bride set out in the spring of 1874 for Wyoming Territory.

After a short sojourn at Fort D. A. Russell, near Cheyenne, Mrs. Summerhayes went with her husband’s regiment to Arizona, which in the middle seventies was probably the most turbulent and least civilized area between the borders of Canada and Mexico.  Here, during the years from 1874 to 1878 she underwent the experiences which supply most of the contents of this book, although as a matter of chronological fact the relation covers also, more briefly, the succeeding twenty years.  A decade later still, with old age upon her, she wrote “with the aid of some old letters,” the narrative of her army years, which she had been in the habit of relating in the form of stories to her children.  Upon retiring from active service, Colonel Summerhayes lived for a time in New Rochelle, then in Washington, and finally in Nantucket, where he died in March, 1911.  Mrs. Summerhayes died in Schenectady, May 12, *1911.

Image of Martha Summerhayes (right) Source: Wikipedia 

Note: *Wikipedia states that her death year was 1926.