Anecdotes of Prescott History Brought to Life From the Pages of Old Newspapers and Other Sources.
In July 1910, William Oliver, manager of the Shumate confectionery, billiards, and cigar store in Humboldt, was vacationing in Prescott. He spoke to the newspaper “in glowing terms” of his new hometown, describing it “as a coming commercial and mining center.” Little did he know that within a month, Humboldt would suffer two “great fires”; the latter of which would start in the basement of the building in which Oliver’s business was housed!
T.F. Averill had “long been known as a resolute and desperate man,” the newspaper wrote, and he was now infuriated with a Mayer saloon owner named Charles Wells. He told nearly everyone he came across that he intended to kill Wells at noon on September 29, 1910.
Yavapai County has sent hundreds of thousands of items to the Smithsonian Institution; most of these are insects and indigenous artifacts, but several other intriguing and occasionally mysterious items have been sent there as well. The most interesting of these are the items that the Institute had never seen before.
Mummies, pygmies, and three separate accounts of giants are some of the amazing finds that were made in the early 20th century in the greater Yavapai County area. Back then, “Indian artifacts” were a commercial business where people would sweep up arrowheads and any other objects and sell them in stores or on the roadside.
Shamefully, much of this activity devolved into what could only be described as grave-robbing until the Antiquities Act made such behavior illegal. However, these relic hunters would occasionally come across some astonishing items…
“It was a piteous scene and remarkable in the extreme,” the Journal-Miner observed. Harrison Yarnell (for whom Yarnell, Arizona, is named) stood before Judge Frank O Smith, a broken man. He was applying for admission to the Pioneers’ Home in Prescott—something reserved only for the destitute. “I’ve tried hard to keep from this,” he told the judge, “but I’ve fought my battle, and I’m through.”
At the very least, it was bitterly ironic. His namesake mine, which he founded, had yielded $12,000,000 worth of gold at that point. "All the money, however, went back into the ground in an attempt to find the big deposit of gold which he believed was to be found within a space of five miles square around the Yarnell mine,” the Hassayampa Miner described, but it was his attempt to solve one burning mystery that took his last dollars.
Pleasure to meet you.
My name is Albert Sieber, and I was considered one of the best Indian scouts in the Arizona Territory, if not the Southwest. I was born in Germany on February 19, 1844, and came to America as a young boy, the 13th of 14 children.
Early in 1862, I enlisted in Company B, 1st Minnesota Volunteer Infantry. I saw some terrible sights during the Peninsula Campaign in the Army of the Potomac as a Corporal and a sharpshooter. I thought I was a goner at Gettysburg when a piece of a shell hit me in the head. I sat lying on the battlefield until long after the fighting before they found me.
