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Title
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Hall, Sharlot Mabridth
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birthday
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1870-10-27
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Birthplace
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Lincoln County, KA
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Death Date
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1943-04-10
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Occupation
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Author
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Biographical Text
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Sharlot Mabridth Hall was an American writer who was the first woman to hold an office in the Territory of Arizona's government. At the age of eleven years old she and her family took the Santa Fe Trail to move to Arizona. Along the trip Hall was thrown from a horse which resulted in injury to her back and hip that she would experience for the rest of her life. Hall attended public school in Arizona where she grew a love for poetry. Hall would go on to receive an Honorary Bachelors of Arts degree from the University of Arizona in 1921. With a strong interest in writing and poetry, Hall wrote and sold her first article to a children's magazine at the age of twenty. She continued as an essayist, journalist and poet for numerous magazines such as Land of Sunshine. Hall was promoted to associate editor of the magazine in 1906. In 1905 Hall wrote a poem titled "Arizona" in response to legislation which called for the admittance of Arizona and New Mexico territories under one singular territory. Hall fought for the independence of the Arizona Territory through her poem. The poem was published in several magazines and handed out to each member of Congress. In 1909, Arizona Governor Richard Sloan appointed Sharlot Hall as the Territorial Historian in the Arizona Territorial Government. She would resign from the position in 1912 to return home and care for her parents.She continued her career as an author, publishing an expanded version of Cactus and Pine: Songs of the Southwest in 1923. In 1925, Hall was selected as a presidential elector for the Electoral college where she supported President Calvin Coolidge's election. Later, after losing her father, Hall moved into the "Governor's Mansion" she acquired and used the space as both her personal home and home of her historical artifacts. Sharlot Hall was a founder of the Prescott Historical Society in 1928. Also in 1928, she opened the Old Governor's Mansion Museum which has since been renamed the Sharlot Hall Museum. Hall spent the following years expanding the museum and spreading the history of her artifacts through speeches and visits to local schools.
Sharlot M. Hall never married. In a letter written to her friend she was quoted to say “In all the homes I knew, then and over most of my life … I saw women crucified by the insatiable passion of men so dull and stolid and stupid that it was a calamity to the race that they were able to reproduce their kind … I tell you honestly that the very thought of love became an abomination to me.” She also never had any children. Sharlot M. Hall died on April 10, 1943 in Arizona Pioneers Home Hospital a week after suffering a heart attack.
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Contributor
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Pryor, Erin
