Nonfiction · 1908
Vanished Arizona
Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman
A young bride from a comfortable New England family follows her new husband, an infantry lieutenant, into the raw and dangerous Arizona Territory of the 1870s — enduring desert marches, isolated frontier posts, and the ever-present threat of Apache conflict with a candor and dry humor rare in memoirs of army life on the frontier.
Martha Summerhayes published Vanished Arizona in 1908, drawing on her own letters and memories of the years she spent following her husband's postings across the Southwest three decades earlier.
This Bibliomancer edition presents the complete text.
Contents
- Dedication
- Preface
- Chapter I — Germany and the Army
- Chapter II — I Joined the Army
- Chapter III — Army House-Keeping
- Chapter IV — Down the Pacific Coast
- Chapter V — The Slue
- Chapter VI — Up the Rio Colorado
- Chapter VII — The Mojave Desert
- Chapter VIII — Learning How to Soldier
- Chapter IX — Across the Mogollons
- Chapter X — A Perilous Adventure
- Chapter XI — Camp Apache
- Chapter XII — Life Amongst the Apaches
- Chapter XIII — A New Recruit
- Chapter XIV — A Memorable Journey
- Chapter XV — Fording the Little Colorado
- Chapter XVI — Stoneman’s Lake
- Chapter XVII — The Colorado Desert
- Chapter XVIII — Ehrenberg on the Colorado
- Chapter XIX — Summer at Ehrenberg
- Chapter XX — My Deliverer
- Chapter XXI — Winter in Ehrenberg
- Chapter XXII — Return to the States
- Chapter XXIII — Back to Arizona
- Chapter XXIV — Up the Valley of the Gila
- Chapter XXV — Old Camp Macdowell
- Chapter XXVI — A Sudden Order
- Chapter XXVII — The Eighth Foot Leaves Arizona
- Chapter XXVIII — California and Nevada
- Chapter XXIX — Changing Station
- Chapter XXX — Fort Niobrara
- Chapter XXXI — Santa Fe
- Chapter XXXII — Texas
- Chapter XXXIII — David’s Island
- Appendix
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About this edition
The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
Source mind
About the author
1844–1926 · Victorian
Martha Summerhayes (1844–1926) was born on Nantucket, Massachusetts, and in 1874, newly married to an infantry lieutenant, followed her husband to the Arizona Territory, then still a raw and dangerous frontier of Apache conflict and isolated desert outposts. Vanished Arizona (1908), written decades later from her own letters and memories, recounts those years of army-post life with a directness and humor unusual in frontier memoirs of the period, and it remains one of the most widely read firsthand accounts of a woman's experience in the post–Civil War Army. She continued to live near military postings as her husband rose to the rank of colonel. She died in Nantucket at eighty-one.
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