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Title: Vanished Arizona: Recollections of My Army Life
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Manufacturer: Cosimo Classics
List Price: $15.95
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| Vanished Arizona: Recollections of My Army Life by Cosimo Classics A Frank Tale of Arizona History | In the late nineteenth century, Martha Summerhayes and her young lieutenant husband take up residence in the dusty army forts of Arizona. Vanished Arizona is a collection of memories of those days. Along the way, the reader meets a variety of characters such as a nearly-naked Indian cook and a "dentist" who accidentally extracts the wrong tooth.
We learn of treacherous travel in which mule carts overturn and people drown while crossing rivers. In one harrowing adventure, young Martha is advised by her husband to shoot herself and her baby son in preference to being captured by Indians.
What I love about this book is the guileless storytelling that seems unblemished by political correctness. She does not varnish the truth as she sees it, nor does she attempt to make her life in dusty Arizona attractive; she offers an honest appraisal of the rather brutal trials of an army wife in that era.
At times you'll love Martha Summerhayes for her courage, and at times you'll wish she didn't whine quite so much.
I recommend this book to anyone interested in frontier America and the brave people who settled the land. | | Vanished Arizona: Recollections of My Army Life by Cosimo Classics Experiences of an army bride in the Arizona Territory. |
This is the autobiographical story of a young army bride who accompanies her husband to Fort Apache, one of the most remote frontier outposts in the Arizona Territory, in 1874. To accomodate to the vicissitudes of the transition from a sheltered New England home to the wilderness she must endure hardships in travel, hostile Apaches, lack of even basic amenities, and inhospitable climate. Her accounts of how she survived these problems and of her interactions with soldiers and civilians provide insight into the early history of the Arizona Territory as well as into life in the frontier army. The book is nicely annotated to provide extra detail on places and persons, and there is a good selection of additional references. It is well written and, in my opinion, a must read for those interested in this mostly forgotten part of our history. | | Vanished Arizona: Recollections of My Army Life by Cosimo Classics An unusual perspective on a very interesting time and place | | Part travelogue, part coming-of-age story, a bit of a sociological study, and entirely a memoir of a woman's encounter with the unknown, "Vanished Arizona" is an introduction to a world most of us only know from John Ford westerns. In 1874, new Army wife Martha Summerhayes made the unusual decision to head west with her husband to his post on the Wyoming frontier. Further travels take them south through Colorado, Arizona, and other parts of the West. Along the way, Martha becomes a mother, meets Apaches face-to-face, and leaves behind the prejudices and presuppositions of her New England upbringing. This is a remarkable chronicle of the American Southwest from an all-too-rare perspective. Nearly a century after it was first published, it holds up very well for the contemporary reader. | | Vanished Arizona: Recollections of My Army Life by Cosimo Classics Life wasn't easy for Martha Summerhayes in frontier Arizona | Complain, complain, complain! Nantucket born and educated in Germany, Martha Dunham married John Summerhayes, a second lieutenant attached to the 8th Infantry, and in 1874 she accompanied him west to Fort D.A. Russell and then to Fort Apache in Arizona. This memoir recounts her experiences in the West (mainly in Arizona, but also including time spent in California, Nevada, Nebraska, Santa Fe, and Texas), and there is hardly a single positive thing she can say about her experiences. Forlorn, desolate, dreadful, unkempt, and disagreeable are adjectives often employed by Mrs. Summerhayes, and she is a constant complainer about the high temperatures, dusty conditions, poor living conditions, rattlesnakes, bugs, and just about every other inconvenience encountered on a western frontier military post in the 1870s.
Clothes are important to her: one of her first observations upon reaching Arizona is how old-fashioned the women are dressed, and one of the greatest tragedies confronting her was when a steamer carrying all her clothes burns to the waterline and she is left with only the clothes on her back. At one point she is so miserable that she questions whether marrying a soldier was wise for her, and she writes, "[I] decided then and there that young army wives should stay at home with their mothers and fathers, and not go into such wild and uncouth places." Her harsh opinions are somewhat tempered over time (and when her husband is assigned to "less primitive" posts such as Fort Niobrara in Nebraska), but it's clear her experiences were more an ordeal than an adventure. She must have been a pain, too, to others, with her demands about procuring good cooks and servants. Editor Dan Thrapp finds humor enough in her complaints (and in her "flexibility" in her responses to the complaints of others about her) that the reader "warms to her," but I found that not to be my response.
Interesting is Mrs. Summerhayes's decision not to write at all about the Indian campaigns or any other chiefly historical matters of her time and place. "I have given simply the impressions made upon the mind of a New England woman who left her comfortable home ... to follow a second lieutenant into the wildest encampments of the American army." Fortunately (for us, not her) her husband transferred frequently from one post to another, which gave the author different encampments and on-the-road experiences to relate. She paints quite a different picture than one would get in a military memoir, for example. And there's value to that, despite the negativity. Life was hard for the well-bred Mrs. Summerhayes, and she makes no bones about it in this memoir.
| | Vanished Arizona: Recollections of My Army Life by Cosimo Classics Must reading for biography lovers | I first read this many years ago and have recently re-read about Matha's adventures. Living in Arizona for the past 30 years, I was amazed at the changes since Martha's time.
But as to the book, she writes clearly, simply and fairly. She was obviously a woman ahead of her times. At a period of time when there was so much socail structure, her ability to accept everyone at face value was refreshing. She begins her story with her time in Germany and at first it is unclear why, but do read these chanpters. They give you a reference point for her previous life before she meets and marries her husband and sets forth on her adventure.
I would recomment this to history buffs, Arizonans, bioraphy buffs and anyone who likes to read about interesting people, Martha Summerhayes certainly is! | | Vanished Arizona: Recollections of My Army Life by Cosimo Classics Product Description | | The seventh day after the birth of the baby, a delegation of several squaws, wives of chiefs, came to pay me a formal visit. They brought me some finely woven baskets, and a beautiful papoose-basket or cradle, such as they carry their own babies in.... [I]t was their best work. I admired it, and tried to express to them my thanks... -from "Chapter 13: A New Recruit" Martha Summerhayes was a respectable Victorian lady when she left civilized society behind, in 1874, to follow her cavalry-officer husband West, to the Wyoming Territory and then to unknown and inaccessible Arizona. Written "at the urgent and ceaseless request" of her children and first published in 1908, this compulsively readable account of her life on the frontier is a unique document of the American exploration and settling of the West, offering a little-heard woman's perspective on an historical era that continues to echo in contemporary American society. From the deprivations of her kitchen-where she has no choice but to make do with army pots and pans designed for cooking for dozens-to terrifying encounters with wildlife, attacks by Indians, and the challenge of giving birth alone, Summerhayes' indomitable spirit and sense of adventure shines through. American writer MARTHA SUMMERHAYES (1846-1911) was born in Massachusetts and spent two years studying in Germany before her life on the American frontier. |
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