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hustling the historydespite competition for things and documents, state groups cooperate to make sure somebody does something before it’s too lateby James E. CookSenator Aikartt’t cabin;would it have been lost ?The first newspaper published in Arizona, the Tubac Arizonian, Flourished for 22 weeks in 1859! Then It moved to Tucson. Now the old Washington hand press an which it was printed belongs to the Arizona Pioneers Historical Society in Tucson.But much of Tubac is in custody of the State Parks Board Dennis McCarthy, the parks director, said:'We hope eventually to rebuild that first newspaper office. They’ve been awfully good to us. let us have the press on loan for our Tubac museum. There's good natured competition for it. But as good natured as we are, we still want that press.”That’s how it is in the history business. There is competition for the old things and old documents. But overriding that is cooperation, horse trading and the urgent feeling that somebody — even the cither guy—must latch onto history before it’s too late.Historians say a lot of Arizona’s history hag been looted by out-of-state collectors or just plain rotted where It was left lying. There now is a proliferation of historical agencies, public and private, scrambling to save what’s left.Because of this visible scrambling, historians and curators were asked: ‘‘Isn’t history a pretty cutthroat field?”Unanimously they answered: ‘Not very often.” There have been some bitter moments, but the historians have a state agency now to sm*.ith feathers out of public view. They prefer to taik about the need to make up for iost time.Jo Ann Schmitt Graham, who runs Pioneer Arizona, said: ‘‘Most people realize that the job is too big for all of us combined.A couple of more academic historians, Sidney B. Brinckerhoff of the Arizona Pioneers Historical Society and Bert Fireman of the Arizona Historical Foundation, said the state was plundered until World War II.“There wag very little effort made by Arizona historians and citizens to attempt to collect within the state the historical records and artifacts which make up her past,” Brinckerhoff said.In this vacuum, a number of more enlightened and aggressive historiai agencies and individuals from outside of Arizona made this their prime collecting area. They picked up everything they could lay their hands on.Some of the more important documents of Arizona history — diaries, records, photographs — are now in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, at Yale University, and the Huntington Library and Southwest Museum in southern California. Brinckerhoff points out that this is not ail bad.“First of all, it was saved from being burned or eaten by rats or thrown out into the river or just simply forgotten,” he said.. “From an academic point of view ’ it’s good that it was saved. Bui ■ from the point of view of Arizona citizens and students who come i to Arizona, this material is re-« moved by some distance from the f environment in which it was i created.i “For a state to literally lose its 1 heritage through losing its documents and the artifacts is really tragic.”Now the historians think they have stopped the looting. And. as Fireman said: ‘‘We’re findingwhere there’s all kinds of Arizona f stuff scattered all over the country. We’d like to get some of it s. back, maybe by trading.”Fireman and Brinckerhoff are I friendly competitors and horse traders but sometimes they sound like echoes. Fireman said: “You can’t say anything about preserving history without giving £ supreme credit to Edith Kitt and Sharlet Hall. These women were |. out collecting at an early time.| Edith Stratton Kitt was direc-| tor of the APHS in Tucson. Shar-lot Hail was a Prescott poet and I historian, and her home there is now the Sharlot Hall Museum. Brinckerhoff said that at a time when many Arizonans were too close to their history to appreci-' ate it, the two women were out I gathering. They spent many hours ? in the field visiting ranches, mining towns and private individuals who had material, if for no other reason than to get the material into * safe repository where it could be preserved, even if it couldn’t be catalogued.|t“Until recent years the Legislature and the governors have shown very little public interest in doing anything about history,” Brinckerhoff said.He said that because of the looted or lost documents it would be almost impossible to write the histories of several governors or of major mining, ranching and mercantile operations in the state.Fortunately, the story of the Army in Arizona is possible largely because the federal government sent its records back to Washington where they’re in the National Archives,” he said.But now Arizona has stopped neglecting its history and there is an aggressive effort to nail down whatever is available.“I think we are now on the crest of the wave,” Brinckerhoff said. We have an aggressive program going We have arrived at the point that we should have reached fifty, sixty years ago.” APHS is the senior history agency and it is supported by state appropriations and by memberships and donations. Fireman is a member of its board.APHS is affiliated with 12 county historical societies which preserve and display the histories of their areas. There are new museums in Yuma, Kingman and Florence.There is the State Parks Board which restores or preserves historic sites. Fireman served on that board, too.Fireman directs the Arizona Historical Foundation, funded by Sen. Barry Gotdwater and others. He also is curator of the Arizona Collection at ASU’s Hayden Library. ,Pioneer Arizona is a private, non-profit ‘‘living history museum.” It collects buildings and artifacts, but not documents.The State Library and Archives is a repository not only for state documents but for newspapers and some private documents.The University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University have history collections. And the list goes on and on.“We've sort of reversed the trend of things going out of Arizona,” Fireman said. “The foundation came into existence partly because of this problem.”The foundation also prints scholarly history books, including one of Brinckerhoff’s. He said: “This foundation, because it is private, is in a very flexible position to help with a wide range of historical programs. They gave us (APHS) a grant for a photographic laboratory so that some of the photographs could be copied and made available to other institutions.Documents are loaned back and forth. When one institution“I think we are now on the crest of the wave.
Newspaper Details
Phoenix Arizona Republic
Phoenix, Arizona, US
Sun, Jul 12, 1970
Page 213
Full Page
Clipped by
Wikipedia U.
USA 11 Mar 2024
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