Virginia City Mansion

On a gently sloping plateau overlooking Alder Gulch, J. S. Rockfellow built the fanciest, most modern home yet constructed in Montana Territory. It was completed in time for his wedding, an affair attended by more than 150 guests in January of 1867. James Knox Polk Miller, who clerked for Rockfellow’s grocery business, described the wedding which took place at the home of W. Y. Lovell in Virginia City. Miller observed that the room was very small, the bride very little, and the ceremony very short. Carriages then conveyed the guests in their silks and finery to the mansion on the hill. The house, described in the Montana Post, had seven well-warmed, well-lit, and well-ventilated rooms, a luxury for sure at that time. Designed with an eye to convenience and beauty, the wall paper and furnishings were in the best of taste. The parlor was furnished in walnut, the dining room in oak, and the bed chambers in rosewood. There were frescoed ceilings and mountain scenery in water colors painted on the walls that, according to the reporter, spread through the house like “oriental pearls of random string.” There was a system of delightfully pure spring water piped directly into the house—the first running water in Montana. The same water source fed a beautiful fountain in the yard. The house, with its tidy outbuildings perched upon the hill, appeared to locals as a grand estate like no other. Unfortunately, within a year, Rockfellow died and the house on the hill fell into other hands. It still stands in Virginia City above Cover Street, an unoccupied eerie relic reminiscent of a tragic past.

Friday Photo

What are you up to this weekend, history buffs? I have a batch of "History on the Go" radio scripts to write, but I'm hoping to find time for a little horseback riding. Nothing this fancy, though...


From Montana Views. Original in Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 95-68 A-183. Used by permission.

Horsemen from the M Troop, Sixth Cavalry—considered the U.S. Army's finest trick riders in 1903—perform the pyramid. Top to bottom, left to right, are Pvt. Vessey, unidentified, Corp. Dick Hill, Sgt. Chase, Corp. Hunker, unidentified, Sgt. Harry Chartran, Corp. Singeltary, unidentified, and Sgt. Jonnie May. Photo by Christian Barthelmess.

Extra Extra!

My publisher just sent me a tentative cover for my next book! They decided to use Charlie Russell's Laugh Kills Lonesome. What do you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts! Feel free to critique it in the comments section.

Unearthing Chinese History

Distinctly Montana recently published my article on Montana's Chinese history. Here's a tidbit:

The story of Montana’s Chinese pioneers has almost entirely escaped the state’s written history. By 1870, Chinese comprised ten percent of Montana’s population, but by the mid-1950s, few remained. Their homes and businesses fell victim to urban renewal programs. Time erased their remote mining and railroad camps. Traces of their culture disappeared, and their stories have become the stuff of myth and legend. In 2008, Big Timber gave up some information about its Chinese residents.  University of Montana archaeology graduate students, led by Justin Moschelle and Chris Merritt, uncovered a Chinese restaurant and laundry next to a brothel. Historic maps confirm that Chinese businesses and a “female boarding house”—the euphemism for prostitution—operated in the neighborhood in the early 1900s. Western red light districts and Chinese settlements, both housing outcast populations, were often adjacent. Volunteers working on the Big Timber project unearthed 35,000 artifacts, which comprise Montana’s only known Chinese deposit of the 1930s and 1940s. Among the artifacts are shards of pottery and porcelain, a bluing ball used in laundry operations, Chinese game pieces, and one very curious item. Intentionally placed beneath the doorframe of the entryway was a domestic cat’s paw. Likely some kind of talisman, its placement remains a mystery.

The crew also accessed Big Timber’s tunnels, which locals insist are Chinese. But in Big Timber as in other communities, passageways dubbed “Chinese tunnels” provide convenient access or under sidewalk storage. While they might have been used by Chinese residents, others used them too, and nothing makes these passageways exclusively Chinese.

Steve Reeves

I hope you all had a lovely weekend, history buffs! Did you celebrate Steve Reeves's birthday on Saturday? He was born here in Montana 86 years ago.

Steve Reeves, the famous body builder of the 1950s, was a native Montanan, born in Glasgow in the mid-1920s. He became famous, winning the titles of Mr. America, Mr. World, and Mr. Universe. His parents met and married in Scobey. When he was only months old, Reeves won Healthiest Baby of Valley County, the first title in a lifetime of awards. In 1927, when he was not yet two years old, Reeves’ father was killed in a threshing accident. His mother, Goldie, worked as a cook and soon took her son to live in Great Falls. When Reeves was ten, they moved to California. But the youngster spent his summers in Montana on his uncle’s ranch. He served in World War II and began body building. After winning the most prestigious body-building titles, Reeves took acting lessons and landed the leading role in Hercules. The movie skyrocketed him to fame. Reeves went on to star in other films. Despite his Hollywood connections, Reeves never forgot his eastern Montana roots. He returned to Scobey several times to visit his father’s grave and become acquainted with family friends. Reeves had a remarkable physique and many regarded his appearance as “godlike.” Although his fans believed the legendary Mr. Universe would live forever, he died at age seventy-four in 2000.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

P.S. Thanks to The Film Archive, you can watch the movie that made Reeves famous.

Stained Glass Artistry

Update: More photos and info in my article in Signature Montana here.

The fifty-nine stained-glass windows in the capital city’s St. Helena Cathedral are a rare and irreplaceable collection of imported German art. The firm of F. X. Zettler, whose exquisite “Munich style” glasswork is found in St. Peter’s Basilica at Vatican City in Rome, crafted the windows between 1908 and 1926. These windows tell the stories of historical events and recall the middle ages when most could not read. Pictures of Christian teachings served as the “Bible of the Poor.” But the exquisite pictorial style Zettler’s studio blended nineteenth-century Romantic and German Baroque styles with Italian Renaissance artistry. Painting on large sheets of glass and firing them at high heat allowed fantastic portraiture and detail. The leaded seams of the Munich style do not interrupt the scene but are part of it. Zettler’s paintings are multi-dimensional. Even the plants have such miniscule detail that the flowers and foliage can be botanically identified. Zettler windows are still in place in many American cathedrals, but the artist himself believed that St. Helena’s windows were the finest his company ever turned out. In 1982, stained glass expert Father Dan Hillen began restoration of St. Helena’s windows. The glass had suffered damage, especially in 1935 when earthquakes rattled the area. Father Hillen uncovered and repaired over one hundred broken pieces that had been patched with window glass and touched up with house paint.  Careful maintenance remains ongoing. Many artists copied Zettler’s work, and without a signature it is difficult to authenticate. The company signature of F.X. Zettler, however, appears in the first panel to the left in the cathedral’s foyer, authenticating St. Helena’s irreplaceable treasures.



Cats

Exciting news this morning, history buffs! I had a meeting with my publisher last week, and they've accepted my new book! It's tentatively titled "More Montana Moments" and will be a collection of quirky tidbits like I've been posting here. Here's a sneak peek:

When did the first cats come to Montana? Rats came to the trading posts and camps very early, hitching rides in the staples and goods brought for consumption and for trade. Protection of precious supplies from invading pests was critical. Jesuit priests made the same discovery. Father Nicholas Point, one of the founders of St. Mary’s Mission in the Bitterroot Valley in 1841, drew a sketch of the Jesuits in a primitive grass shelter. The lively scene shows 6 priests and lay brothers surrounded by their boxes of goods. A dog and two black cats frolic among the men.



From Sacred Encounters by Jacqueline Peterson

 This early scene suggests that the Jesuits brought the first cats to Montana when they founded St. Mary’s Mission. In 1850, the Jesuits closed the mission but returned to rebuild it in 1866. Father Anthony Ravalli had been with the founding Jesuits in the1840s. He also returned to the Bitterroot to design a new church. Ravalli was a physician, pharmacist, talented architect and artist. He also had a great fondness for cats. As he worked on the interior furnishings of St. Mary’s Mission Church—the one that still stands at Stevensville today—he often improvised materials. From his writing we know that Father Ravalli made the brushes for his paintings in the church from the tail hair of Tomaso, his favorite cat. These were not Montana’s only early feline residents. Pierre Chouteau’s inventory of possessions and supplies at Fort Benton in 1851 lists horses, mules, bulls, oxen, and pigs. Last on the list is one cat, valued at $5. Translate that into modern currency, and the indispensible cat was worth $129!

William D. Davis and his Innovative Saddle

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day! Let's celebrate with a post on some of the African American heroes in Montana history—buffalo soldiers.

There were some 5,000 African American Buffalo soldiers who served in the all-black 9th and 10th Cavalry and 24th and 25th Infantry Regiments. Buffalo soldiers made up about 10% of the total troops who guarded the vast borders of the Western frontier in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. These highly skilled, courageous, and patriotic soldiers served in Montana at forts throughout the state including Fort Missoula, Fort Keogh and Fort Assinniboine.  White officers commanded these black troops. In 1895, famed general “Black Jack” Pershing took his first command of the 10th Cavalry, Troop H, at Fort Assinniboine. Pershing’s men participated in a 600-mile journey to flush Cree Indians out of the coulees and draws for their deportation to Canada. This grueling military expedition required patience and stamina and Troop H accomplished it without the firing of a single shot. One of Pershing’s men, William D. Davis, had a novel idea to make such long expeditions more comfortable. Black soldiers typically were issued the roughest stock, and he invented a special type of improved saddle designed to render an easier ride on hard-trotting horses. Davis filed a patent on his improved saddle in 1896. His idea was to add springs beneath the seat and at the tops of the stirrups. While Davis did not invent the use of springs on saddles, the type of spring, its longevity, and its placement were his own. Although never standard army issue, Davis saddles provided a smoother ride for cavalry, cowboys, and gentlemen riders.

U.S. Patent Office, 568,939

P.S. More resources on African Americans in Montana.

P.P.S. Historian Ken Robison of the Overholser Research Center has done extensive research on Montana's black community. Check out a sample here.
And last but not least, Montana has long had a small but vibrant black community.

Friday Photo

Happy Friday the 13th! Any misfortunes so far today? If so, look on the bright side and remember that Montana has weathered some pretty tough circumstances, as today's photo goes to show...

From Montana Views. Original in Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 90-87 42-7. Used by permission.

Olga Wold and her stepfather, Norman Wold, stand outside her homestead shack at Marsh, Montana, on December 28, 1912. Photo by Evelyn J. Cameron.

Missed Christmas

Mrs. Frances Barton won the Glasgow Courier’s Christmas Memory Contest in 1959 for a story about her family’s missed Christmas. In 1924, Frances, her husband, and their six-month-old son lived in a two-room tarpaper homestead shack in northern Valley County near the Canadian border. Since early December, bad weather had kept the Bartons from making the fourteen-mile trip to the little general store and post office at Genevieve. Their reading material was worn out, their food supplies dwindling, and they had had no mail or contact with the outside world for weeks. The Bartons hoped the weather would permit their team to get through, but Christmas morning dawned without the opportunity. They had a poor Christmas meal, sang a few hymns, and wished each other Merry Christmas, but it was a day like any other. Finally two weeks into in the new year, 1925, the weather broke, and a January thaw came to the homestead. On a sunny morning, Frances’ husband made the trip to Genevieve. He returned with a month’s worth of letters, cards, gifts, magazines, newspapers, and supplies. Christmas finally came to the Barton family,” Frances wrote, “and once again we felt in touch with the outside world.”

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

Chicago Joe

What are you up to this week, history buffs? Tomorrow I'll be presenting a fun and informative program: “Helena on the Light Side,” a humorous view of the city's past including Helena’s love affair with the hangman’s tree, its bawdy ladies, and its earthquake-resilient citizens. Details in Friday's Independent Record here or call Patti Shearer 202-1766.

And speaking of Helena's past...
Josephine “Chicago Joe” Hensley was one of Helena’s several well-known madams. Her infamous Coliseum Theater in the 1880s and early 1890s carried a payroll of one thousand dollars a week. Hensley earned her nickname because of the attractive girls she imported from Chicago to work for her. At the height of her success, Hensley owned more than $200,000 worth of real estate, helped many financially, contributed to local causes, and anonymously educated two younger sisters, two nieces, a nephew, and a half brother.

From No Step Backward by Paula Petrik. Original in the Montana Historical Society collection.

In later years she cut quite a figure presiding over her cash register wearing an enormous Elizabethan collar and a dark, flowing velvet robe of purple or green, her ample waist encircled by a jewel-studded golden sash. Jewels sparkled everywhere on her person that one could be pinned. Hensley died of cirrhosis of the liver following surgery in 1899. E. W. Toole, brother of the governor, rode behind her coffin in an open carriage, an unheard-of gesture. Hensley’s generosity was admirable, and so was her intelligence. She accomplished what few others could, especially when you consider her handicap: she could neither read nor write. Hensley’s remains lie in an unmarked grave beneath modern-day Robinson Park where the Catholic cemetery used to be.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

Friday Photo

Happy Friday! Here's a gem from the Historical Society's collection. Just look at that outfit! That sled! Did you ever have one like it?

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives catalog PAc 89-119 #52. Used by permission.

Thelma Riley of Dillon, Montana, takes a break from sledding to pose for this 1905 picture by an unidentified photographer.

Stagecoach Mary

Stagecoach Mary Fields, a colorful character familiar to early-day residents of Cascade, packed a Smith and Wesson, smoked cigars, weighed two hundred pounds, and stood six feet tall. Cowboy artist Charlie Russell sketched her, and actor Gary Cooper wrote about her fondly for Ebony magazine in 1959 (reprinted here). Fields, born a slave in Tennessee, made her way to Ohio where she befriended the Ursuline sisters in Toledo. Mother Superior Amadeus Dunn and Fields became good friends. In 1884, Mother Amadeus came to Montana to work among the Blackfeet. When she fell victim to pneumonia, Fields came west to nurse her friend back to health. Fields became a fixture at St. Peter’s Mission, where she did all the heavy freighting, bringing supplies through blizzards and dangerous situations. Fields was fearless and had quite a temper. After an altercation, Bishop John Brondel of Helena ordered the Ursulines to banish her. But Mother Amadeus appealed to federal authorities, securing her as the driver of the mail route between Cascade and the mission.


Photo courtesy Ursuline Convent Archives, Toledo, Ohio.

Fields became the second woman stage driver in the United States. For eight years she drove the stage. When the horses couldn’t get through, she carried the mail on her back. Fields died in 1914, a pioneer who helped tame the West, beloved by all, except perhaps the Catholic bishop.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

Cooke City

Happy New Year, history buffs! I hope your holiday celebrations were as memorable as Mrs. Ingeborg Reeb's.

Some years ago, eighty-eight-year-old Mrs. Ingeborg Reeb recalled life in the camp at Cooke City where her husband was a silver miner. She fondly remembered that even in the coldest, deepest winter, parties were frequent. Miners would come by the Reebs’ place and each would take one of the Reebs’ eight children under his arm—with legs dangling out the back—and head for the designated saloon. Pool tables pushed into the corners made comfortable and safe beds for the children. While they slept, the grownups danced. There was always plenty of coffee and wonderful food. Sometimes deep snow forced residents to move to lower elevations and the Reebs would winter in Joliet. One spring as they returned to Cooke City, they traveled from Gardiner through Yellowstone and stopped to rest at Soda Butte.  A troublesome rogue buffalo from the park’s herd, dubbed “Old Johnson” in honor of the park superintendent, loved to terrorize humans. As the Reebs all jumped down from the buckboard, a man ran toward them shouting, “Get the children on the barn roof. Hurry. Old Johnson is coming!” Everyone raced to climb to the roof. Old Johnson came charging and buffaloed the family for two hours before finally giving up and wandering off. Sometimes, though, isolation in winter was grim. In 1914, the roads to Cooke City were impassable and snow melt washed out the Lamar River Bridge. With no way in or out, a severe food shortage forced the community to survive on oatmeal for six weeks. But Mrs. Reeb recalled with nostalgia that despite bad times, the warmth of good neighbors bred the sweetest lifetime memories.

Mining Camp New Year’s

Martha Edgerton Plassman wrote in 1926 about early New Year’s celebrations in Montana and how they evolved as times changed. On New Year’s Day at Bannack in 1863, fourteen-year-old Martha and two other young girls set out to keep the custom of visiting. There were few women in the mining camp, and no proper houses to call upon, and so the three stopped at George Chrisman’s cabin, then moved down the street to Thompson and Swift’s general store. Inside they found Henry Plummer—later hanged by the vigilantes—in an argument with another fellow, both quite inebriated. The conversation was heated, and Mr. Thompson put a hand on Plummer’s shoulder, pointing him to the back door.  The three teenagers, caught in the middle, made a hasty retreat out the front. Martha was so frightened that she never again stepped inside a store in Bannack. In Virginia City, between Christmas and New Year’s of 1867, things were different. The streets were gay with fashionable ladies, visiting from house to house. Music and dancing were easy to find, and spirits flowed freely under many hospitable roofs. Nearly ten years later in Helena on New Year’s Day 1877, the New York tradition of ladies receiving gentlemen acquaintances was the practice. The newspaper listed the names of ladies receiving callers; several usually went together as hostesses. Dressed in their most beautiful gowns, they received guests throughout the afternoon. Tables were set with the best china and silver and heaped with many kinds of cakes and rolls. But Martha recalled that unlike rough and raw Virginia City, in Helena coffee usually took the place of strong spirits.