Wednesday, November 25, 2015

The smoking guns

Prior posts established beyond any doubt that the AHS is presenting a false history about itself. The remaining question was why. Is it the result of incredible historical incompetence, or is it a lie? Two documents now in the possession of this blog answer that question. It is a lie.

As late as December of 2005, the AHS letterhead displayed the following just to the right of the logo:


Arizona Historical Society
founded by Arizona pioneers in 1884


Then, in February of 2009, the following appeared at the bottom of an internal memo:


Visit us at www.arizonahistoricalsociety.com
Established by an Act of the First Territorial Legislature on November 7, 1864, the Arizona Historical Society is Arizona’s oldest historical society


The 2005 letter head is correct, and the 2009 memo is not. Whoever fabricated the lie did so sometime during an interval of just over three years.

How can this happen?  How can a state historical society, a state agency funded by taxpayers, promote such a fabrication and then celebrate a fake 150th anniversary a few years later?

Why should the people of Arizona continue funding this agency to preserve Arizona history?

A thorough investigation is called for.  This fraud cannot be allowed to continue.

5 comments:

  1. It is either poor scholarship/research or it is a fabricated lie to curry favor from the legislature. The person who did this is either a fool or a liar. They also must think everybody is stupid beyond belief.

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  2. So I guess Dr. Ann Woosley is a better historian than Leland Sonnichsen? Or she found some undiscovered source material in the archives that refuted everybody? How would you explain that to the staff of the AHS who celebrated the 100th anniversary in 1984 and had their publications chief and well known historian Leland Sonnichsen write the history of the society/agency where he said it was 1884.
    Dr. Woosley has written how many books? Leland Sonnichsen how many? Judge yourself.

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  3. Have any of the AHS Board members even questioned any of this? What is their views? Do they even know what is going on? If I was a Board member I would be very interested in this.

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  4. So what does the Governor think? He knows by now. This is a State of Arizona agency.

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  5. So this director of the AHS has spent $1,400,000 of taxpayers money for the Rio Nuevo mess where nothing got built. All while the City of Tucson spent $210,000,000 for very little. Nice gravy train.
    She destroyed an active Mineral Museum --all for nothing. Went through four versions and nothing has been done. Spent some serious money for designs--again got nothing.
    Has not really raised any money for the agency. Not hard to figure when she never leaves her office. All while the agency suffers through major cuts.
    Now fabricating this silly lie about the founding of the Arizona Historical Society. I wonder what new historical documents have been turned up? Can't wait to see what they are.

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