By Jan Cleere
Special to the Arizona Daily Star
By the time Mary Stacey arrived in Arizona territory, she claimed she had traveled across the continent six times. She often wrote to her mother about her adventures traveling from one military post to another and her mother sent Maryâs letters to the local newspaper for publication, particularly when her daughter headed across Arizonaâs weird and wonderful desert wilderness.
Petite, golden-haired Mary Henrietta Banks was born July 9, 1846, in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. She married soldier May Humphreys Stacey on Dec. 9, 1869, while he was on leave from Arizonaâs Fort Mojave. May Humphreys had been part of the Beale Road expedition that brought camels into the territory in 1857, a project that failed but left camels roaming the desert for several years.