Speakers Bureau Speaker
Reba Wells Grandrud, Phoenix
Since retirement in 1998 as National Register Coordinator for the Arizona State Historic Preservation Office, and in 2000 as Director of the Arizona Historical Society Museum in Papago Park, Reba Wells Grandrud has continued her devotion to the preservation of history: local, state, and regional. She is currently a consultant in historic preservation and oral history, and is an active board member for a wide range of nonprofits, including the Arizona History Convention, Arizona State Committee on Trails, Anza National Historic Trail Advisory Council, Old Spanish Trail Association, Sunnyslope Historical Society, and Pioneer Cemetery Association. A native of New Mexico, Grandrud holds degrees from the University of New Mexico in education, Southwest history, and history of the American West. She has lived in Arizona since January 1982.
Arizona Women’s Hall of Fame
In 1979 the Arizona Women’s Commission and the Office of the Governor created the Women’s Hall of Fame, with the Arizona Humanities Council providing the first two years of funding. The Arizona State Library and the Arizona Historical Society took up the challenge of continuing the program. Seventy fascinating Arizona women have now been honored since the first induction ceremony in 1981—homemakers, educators, entrepreneurs, ranch women, legislators, judges, authors, potters, transplants from other states, a mayor, an architect—each one, a woman whose story is worth telling, and retelling. Each woman in the Arizona Women's Hall of Fame is different, but a common thread of courage weaves this group together. Whether they are breaking ground, taking action, or influencing their families and communities—we can be proud of each one.
• Host organization provides lighted (if possible) lectern and large screen.
Cora Viola Slaughter, Southern Arizona Ranchwoman
Viola Slaughter of Douglas and rural Cochise County was one of Arizona’s outstanding pioneer women, maturing from a prim, headstrong, pampered young woman into the capable mistress of the San Bernardino Ranch. In 1879, on a cattle drive in western New Mexico Territory, she married a widowed Texas cattleman with two small children. John Slaughter, a new Arizona resident, was twice her age, had a gunslinger reputation, and a penchant for gambling. But over the next forty-two years together, John and Viola reared his son and daughter, and brought love, care, and education to a dozen or so foster children, including at one time in 1896, four youngsters of different ethnic backgrounds: Apache, Hispanic, Black, and Anglo. At the same time, they developed the water and land resources of the old San Bernardino Land Grant into one of the largest ranches in southern Arizona. John served two terms as the sheriff, represented Cochise County at the Territorial Capital in Phoenix, and died at age eighty in Douglas. Viola outlived John by almost twenty years, dying in 1941 at the age of eighty-one, as much an Arizona legend as her famous husband.
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Historical Graffiti: Arizona’s Own "Independence Rock"
Jokingly named by famous scout and "mountain man" Kit Carson in 1846, Arizona's "Independence Rock" is actually the point of a bluff located on the south side of the Gila River floodplain, some thirty-five miles west of Gila Bend, where 19th century travelers carved their names and initials on the dark brown basaltic rock. Carson’s involvement has come down in history only through the journal entries of four members of Kearny’s Army of the West (Surgeon Griffin, Lt. Emory, Captains Turner and Johnston) as they marched to California in 1846. Many of the names carved through the desert varnish that covers the boulders are well-known in Southwestern history—scouts, guides, boundary commissioners, stagecoach operators, and others who crisscrossed Arizona between 1842 and the coming of the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1877.
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In Their Own Words: Diaries of 19th Century Women
What was it like to be a woman traveling on the Oregon Trail, the California Trail, or the Southern Route to California in the mid-19th century? Who were these women and how did they feel about uprooting their lives? Between 1840 and 1870, more than a quarter million Americans moved west across the continent. They were searching to find free land, to strike it rich, to provide a better life. Some went for adventure, for the new and exotic experience, "to see the elephant." But women often went because they had no choice but to follow their husbands, fathers, or brothers who had determined to leave settled areas behind and seek their fortune in the West. As shapers of families, women clung, almost possessively, to two things: traditional roles and traditional networks of support. They have been described as "ordinary women, caught up in a momentous event of history."
• Host organization provides lighted (if possible) lectern, and large screen.
