Book Description
Martha Summerhayes (1844-1911), was a Nantucket, Massachusetts native who later on in life immigrated to Arizona. A well travelled and educated woman, Summerhayes spent two years, from 1871 to 1873, studying literature in Germany. Accommodations at Cooley's ranch were not up to the standards that Martha Summerhayes had grown used to, as a member of a rich family back in Massachusetts. She also found the fact that Cooley had two wives to be quite shocking, and she complained publicly about those two matters in particular. Her complaints were published in 1908 in an autobiography named Vanished Arizona. After her autobiography was published, Martha Summerhayes became a celebrity, receiving fan mail from hundreds of people, specially military men and students that valued her view of military life.Download Description
Recollections of life in the Old WestArizona by a "New England Woman" who becomes an Army officer's wife.Fascinating, funny, and touching. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Real History
Anyone that has traveled around Arizona (or most anywhere in the west)and wondered how the earlier travelers ever made it will enjoy Martha Summerhayes recollections.Her perspective and detail is fascinating and there are so many places (Ft. McDowell is now the name of the casino on the Ft. McDowell Indian Reservation, Ft. Apache can be visited in the White Mountains) that have immediate name recognition.

Fanciful Dreams to Harsh Reality
Infatuated with the military, Martha Dunham's romance with the parades, music and uniforms of splendid young soldiers began while studying literature in Hanover, Germany.She thrilled to the color and excited aura surrounding the events. Following her fanciful dreams, she married Jack Summerhayes in 1874 and lived with his regiment for four years in the Arizona Territories as they traveled from fort to fort through the wilderness. Reality thuds as this inexperienced, Nantucket born, upper class, 28 year-old woman struggled to survive.Martha Summerhayes kept a
journal and published this book in 1908, at the request of her children, Harry born in Fort Apache, 1875, and Katherine born in Boston, 1879.Vanished Arizona, a valuable history classic,gifts
readers with an account of those early territorial years through the eyes of a woman.Few 'her story' autobiographies exist among the many 'his story' tales of the cavalry, infantry and scouting battles to keep the Indians on the reservations.Indian hostilities were due to an influx of whites into empty land that native cultures needed for hunting grounds, homelands and basic survival.Martha's words describe a harrowing tale from a wife and mother's point of view.

Follow the map.It took two very long months for the lieutenant and his wife to travel from Fort Russell in Cheyenne to Camp Apache in Arizona, their first destination. They traveled by ambulance (vehicle with 4 mules and a driver)and then steamer from San Francisco down the coast to Yuma and on to Fort Mojave. Bad food, suffocating heat and misery accompanied their journey across the Mojave Desert by wagons and schooners drawn by mules. Martha called the experience a 'glittering misery'--natural beauty across the Mogollons and Tonto Basin but living hell of snakes, centipedes, spiders, tarantulas, lizards and scorpions.Her carefully packed possessions, including china, disappeared when a wagon went over the cliff.She never really lost her respect for the military, but the earlier quixotic romance transformed into a recognition of courage as the men dealt with dangerous, difficult and painful conditions.The women who accompanied them aided each other through the fearsome journey.

Martha Summerhayes had a mixed view of the Indian tribes. She feared their dances, the tomtoms, shouts, war whoops and wildness.But, she was fascinated by the Indian families she met when they came for allotments of food.She enjoy the wives, pretty young women and children.She wrote about the pretty girls,their black hair in long braids, dressed in moccasins, short skirts, bared legs, muslim camisas and bits of soft blanket or calico fastened in front. Totally incapable of dealing with pregnancy, birth, infant son,lack of nourishment and profound fatigue, the Indian women payed her a visit, coming to her aid with a pappoose cradle.

Vanished Arizona is packed full with such feminine perspectives.When her lieutenant husband accepted the dreaded Ehrenberg camp, she bathed in the river, preferred to live as the Mexican women did with simple clothes and eat tortilla and beans. She became an emaciated invalid, fearing for her son's life. On the other hand, the contrasted Fort MacDowell in Maricopa County on the Verde River offered improved quarters with a ramada, sidewalk and cotton wood trees as well and several good friends.An avid horse woman, she delighed in exercising the horses for the calvary.Throughout the text, Martha detailed each of the numerous forts and camps where the couple lived.She usually had a cook and laundress. Often feisty, she became furious at the blind obedience of her husband who never questioned orders.

During the Arizona years, Martha returned to Nantucket/Boston twice, once to recuperate from Ehrenberg and the other to give birth to her daughter, Katherine.On her return she was happy to see the soldiers again (that old romance with the military) and even the country looked attractive.She wrote, "I wondered if I had really grown to love the desert."Life got easier with the coming of the railroad.The old hardships, deprivations they had endured lost their bitterness when they became only a memory.

This review concentrates only on the Arizona experiences, but her book includes accounts of California, Nevada, San Francisco,San Antonio, Santa Fe, Devil's Island (the four happiest years of her life) and Fort Meyers near Washington DC.The book also centers on the many famous people they met along the way such as artist, Frederick Remington who remained a friend throughout their lives.The couple are buried together in Arlington National Cemetery.

Great Book, poor performance
Vanished Arizona is a wonderful book.Read it!Unfortunately the audio book verison does not do it justice.Both the abrigement and the narrator's performance serve to make Martha "Mattie" Summerhayes sound like an idiot.As a descendant of hers I take that very personally.In fact my whole family, including my sister Katharine Summerhayes Beale, named after Martha's daughter, listened to the book together and we had to turn it off we were so horrified with the production.I urge you to read the compelling book, but don't waste your time or money on the audio version.

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.

Superficial and without emotion
The second in the series, Living Voices of the Past, of diaries of the 1800s is the memoir of Martha Dunham Summerhayes' adventures of an Army wife as she follows her husband from post to post.

Born and educated in New England, Martha (Mattie) is a well-traveled young lady, having spent time in Europe, most notably Germany.The tales of her life begin with her marriage to Jack Summerhayes in 1874.She follows him to the Wyoming Territory and Fort Russell where she learns that Army wives don't have nurse, cooks, and maids.She is totally on her own and makes due with what she can.She learns to put up with sand storms, scorpions, wild coyotes stealing their food, Indians, Mexicans, and the Army protocol.

Mattie is a woman who is not used to hardship, but as the memoir is told from the early 20th century, the hardships and reality checks she faces do not seem so difficult as they must have been when she was enduring them.

Mattie follows Jack to more than ten posts during his 30-year career.Along the way she has two children, Harry and Katherine, but Mattie seems more concerned with her own comfort and illnesses along the way than she does about her babies.Most of the time she refers to Harry as her son, and it is a good hour and a half before listeners learn his name.

Jane Merrifield-Beecher is the voice of Mattie.She reads Mattie's memories so fast, that they are often difficult to decipher.Mattie's memories are rather superficial and while listeners learn about life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the adventure is more like a bad "B" movie than a real-life account of an Army wife. ... Read more

Book Description
First published in 1908, it is Perhaps the best known and most loved of the Arizona classics at the turn of the century

We reprinted this book in a library edition in 1970, adding a sorely needed index ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A frank tale of Arizona history
In the late nineteenth century, Martha Summerhayes and her younglieutenant 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 crossingrivers.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 - history as it happened!
This book is an excellent resource for the Early Arizona.When Mrs Summerhayes published it (at the urging of her family), she called it "Vanished Arizona" because a good portion (well over half) of the book deals with her time in Arizona before there were paved roads (or much of any roads in particular), air conditioning, or even ice (other than what formed naturally in the winter).

(Would Mrs Summerhayes be surprised at what has happened in the 90 years since she wrote this!)

An excellent first-hand account of life as an "army bride", Mrs Summerhayes takes you on a journey through Arizona as it used to be - army posts, mule teams, hot summer nights (those are still around), and wild, untamed country. ... Read more

Book Description
I have written this story of my army life at the urgent and ceaseless request of my children.For whenever I allude to those early days, and tell to them the tales they have so often heard, they always say: "Now, mother, will you write these stories for us? Please, mother, do; we must never forget them."Then, after an interval, "Mother, have you written those stories of Arizona yet?" until finally, with the aid of some old letters written from those very places (the letters having been preserved, with other papers of mine, by an uncle in New England long since dead), I have been able to give a fairly connected story. ... Read more

Book 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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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! ... Read more

Product Description
Hardcover is a unabridged copy of the 1908 edition.This Lippincott's first edition. The life of an Army wife who left New England in 1874 to follow her husband to his posts in Arizona, California, Nevada, Nebraska, and New Mexico ... Read more