Customer Reviews

Vanished Arizona: Recollections of the Army Life of a New England Woman

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This type of narrative is a relative rarity in the history of the American border, and Arizona in particular. This is not only a woman's perspective but the views and memories of an army wife. The only comparable books that come to mind are the trilogy of Cavalry life by Libbie Custer. Mrs. Custer's books are more polished but more suspect as the information is filtered by her desire to glorify her husband. Mrs. Summerhayes account does not have this weakness and she is more concerned with how the events affect her children and herself. Her description of the Arizona landscape and conditions of Army life stays with you. In particular the sequence in which she is being transported through hostile territory when she is possibly in more danger from her husband than the Indians. This book adds much to the history of the Southwest and is justifiably considered a classic.

This is the story of a Nantucket woman who marries a cavalry officer and moves with him to various Army forts in the late 19th century. A very personal story of Army life in Indian country, raising children in very trying conditions, a travelog and adventure story. The tales of getting back and forth between Nantucket and Arizona is worth the reading alone.

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.

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.

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.

This true story is a gem of American history. Mrs. Summerhayes was a true frontiers-woman back when the West still belonged to Native Americans. She was the wife of an Army Officer just after the Civil war that went out West to serve in Arizona (mostly), Nevada, Nebraska, etc. at some very uncivilized Army posts. Vivid descriptions of Army life from 1870s through the 1890s. This is an easy read and readers will learn things they never knew. She even introduces readers to important Civil War Officers that continued their service to this great country. This book should be required reading for Americans and should make everyone thankful for the advantages that we all are blessed to have today!

The book is an excellent read on frontier Arizona, especially on Forts Whipple and Apache, Camp Verde, the General Crook Trail and travel on the Mogollin Rim.

I love this book and have re-read it on my Kindle, encourage you to read it if you love adventure,old military posts and forts and of course women who had the courage and stamina to survive them

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.

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.