Friday Photo: Duck Hunting

Duck hunting season opens this weekend, so this photo seems timely.


Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 948-572

This circa 1914 photo is simply titled "Duck Hunting on the Hi Line."

Bonus: Here's a recipe for duck from The Progressive Cook Book published by the Billings First United Methodist Church in 1893. It was written by Juliet Corson.

Roast Duck with Apples
Pluck and singe a duck, draw it, wipe with a wet towel and lay in a baking pan; wipe a dozen small sour apples with a wet cloth, cut the cores out and arrange around the duck. Put pan into the oven and quickly brown the duck; then moderate the heat of the oven and continue cooking until the apples are tender; baste both every five minutes until done, then serve both on the same dish.

Enjoy!

Caroline McGill

Dr. Caroline McGill came to Butte in 1911 to work at the Murray Hospital, returned to Johns Hopkins to complete her medical degree, and turned down an offer to stay at Johns Hopkins to return to Butte in 1914. She practiced there until she retired in 1956. Dr. McGill was a highly skilled physician, but she was also a friend to her patients through Butte’s ugly labor management strife, fires, explosions, and accidents that were common in the mining town. She made house calls to the crudest of miner’s shacks where she ministered to families under primitive conditions. She once said, “I made up my mind that I would never offend one of these good women by seeming to notice that their standards of sanitation were not mine. I couldn’t abide the habit of some of my colleagues of dusting off a chair with a clean handkerchief before daring to sit on it.” Dr. McGill was a familiar figure in saloons where stabbings, gunshot wounds, fractures, and concussions tested her skills. She frequently visited the women of Butte’s sprawling red light district, calling equally at low-rent cribs and high-class parlor houses. Small, attractive, and full of energy, Dr. McGill was a cut above the rest.

Dr. Caroline McGill relaxes on the front porch of a guest cabin of her 360 320 guest ranch in Gallatin Canyon.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

Robber’s Roost

Because events supposedly connected to Sherriff Henry Plummer and his suspected gang occurred near the Daly ranch in 1863 and 1864, mystery, legend, and mistaken identity have long been part of the history of the stage stop called Robber’s Roost. Although it never served as a gathering place for the road agents and no early-day murders have been documented there, the inn is historically important as a link between the two territorial capitals—Bannack and Virginia City—and one of few surviving log stage stations of this very early territorial period. Orlin Fitzgerald Gammell, who was born in 1846 and died in 1952, helped procure the logs that built Robber’s Roost. He says in his written reminiscence that ranch owner Pete Daly built the structure in the winter of 1866–1867, well after the vigilante hangings of Sheriff Henry Plummer and other suspected road agents.

From http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/

Robber’s Roost never served as a hideout for robbers during that turbulent time, but it did later serve as an inn and stage station along the busy road between Bannack and Virginia City. So-called Robber’s Roost is actually important for a different reason. It was the place where Bill Fairweather, credited as the discoverer of the vast Alder Gulch gold deposits, died in 1875. Mrs. Daly cared for him during the final stages of acute alcoholism. He died penniless at the age of thirty-nine.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

Friday Photo: Paradise Valley



Smoke aside, this is unseasonably lovely weather. Are you going to get out there and enjoy it like these folks?

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 81-65

A group of four men camp in the Paradise Valley near Yellowstone National Park in 1916. Click the photo for a bigger version to see if you can spot the fourth man.

Helena’s Paul Revere

I'll be doing a reading and book signing for my new book, More Montana Moments, at the Montana Historical Society Thursday evening at 6:30. It's free! I hope you can make it.

Here's a "moment" from the book:

Helena suffered numerous serious fires in the early years. Merchants sometimes had to rebuild their businesses more than once. Jacob Feldberg lost his clothing store to the fire of 1869 and understood the devastation it could cause. In 1871, another fire threatened Main Street. Jacob ran to help the firemen. “Go away, Jacob, and leave us alone,” they told him. “You are too small to be of any help.” Jacob was a man of very small stature, but he did not give up. He looked around to see what he could do. Wind was whipping through the gulch, and he saw burning embers flying up Broadway. Jacob yelled at the onlookers to follow him, and they ran up the street as firebrands stuck their backs and sizzled at their feet. There were few houses except for a row in the first block of Fifth Avenue behind the courthouse. The neighborhood men were all away fighting the fire on Main Street, and Jacob found women and children madly throwing buckets of water on their homes. Jacob and his followers led horses to safety and turned out the cows, pigs, and chickens to fend for themselves. They thought the fire was nearly under control when a burning ember flew into a woodpile, which burst into flames. Jacob leapt upon a barn roof just as it collapsed and found his way into a kitchen. He gathered all the pots he could find, organized a bucket brigade, and saved the neighborhood. Ever after that, Jacob Feldberg was a hero, and for spreading the word of the fire, he earned the nickname “Helena’s Paul Revere.”

The Fairy Steps

There is a very special place known to generations of Kalispell’s children as the Fairy Steps. This enchanting stairway leads up a very steep cliff from the heavily wooded banks of the Stillwater River. At the top, there is small grassy promontory overlooking the Flathead Valley. This promontory is part of the Charles Conrad Memorial Cemetery. It was on this scenic overlook in the early twentieth century that Alicia Conrad had her husband’s remains placed in the family mausoleum. The mausoleum today sits by itself on this dramatic outcrop, surrounded by dense forest and very steep terrain. Long ago there was a road that ran along the river bank at the base of the cliff.  It was the most easily accessible route for her to visit the remains of her dearly departed husband.

She had the cliff face buttressed with a stone retaining wall and sections of concrete to prevent erosion. The tiny stone steps switchback up the steep incline, and several stone benches along the way allow necessary resting places. Mrs. Conrad would have her coachman drive the carriage to the steps at the base of the cliff so that she could visit the gravesite. Local children have scampered up and down that treacherous stairway for the last hundred years, but adults find the climb challenging. Local legend has it that if you count the steps on the way down and again on the up, you will always come out with different numbers. It’s little wonder. Once you are midway down, you have already lost count. And on the way back up, you are so winded that keeping track of numbers—at least for me—was impossible.

Update: The cemetery has just been listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Here's an article about it.

Friday Photo: Terry's First Bicycle

Happy Friday, history buffs. Summer is winding down, but this weekend promises beautiful weather. Are you going to cram in as much play time as you can?



Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 90-87.G034-006

Lucille and Paul Burt owned the first bicycle in Terry, and they showed it off in this 1902 photo by Evelyn Cameron. Their father was a sheep rancher.

P.S. Cameron photographed kids in a one-room school, too.

Journey of the Scottish Rings

William Logan came from Scotland to the United States as a young man. Before he left home, his father gave him a signet ring carved with the family crest that had been in the family for generations.   Logan always wore this ring. He also wore a masonic ring he greatly treasured. William Logan served in both the Mexican and Civil Wars. As Captain in the Seventh Infantry, Company A, he came to Montana the day after Custer’s defeat at Little Big Horn.  A year later in August of 1877, Captain Logan died at the Battle of the Big Hole. Indians desecrated the bodies of the dead. Captain Logan’s fingers were cut off and the rings taken. Logan’s wife advertised in the papers to recover the rings, but had no luck. Three years later, a Nez Perce was killed near the Canadian border; he had the signet ring. It was traded and bartered until Bill Todd, a friend of Captain Logan’s, recognized it in the possession of an old trapper. He persuaded the trapper to give up the ring and took it to Captain Logan’s son. Sometime later, the son was living at the Blackfeet Agency when an Indian woman came into the post wearing his father’s masonic ring. He bought the ring from her. She told him that a few months after the Big Hole battle, the Blackfeet and Piegans fought the Nez Perce. Her husband took the masonic ring from a fallen Nez Perce and wore it until his death. It then passed to his wife who was wearing it when Logan’s son saw it on her finger. Those rings came full circle, but they had quite a journey getting there.

Thomas Walsh’s Mysterious Death

U.S. Senator Thomas Walsh of Montana became prominent as head of the senate committee exposing fraudulent oil leases in the 1920s. Walsh exposed the Teapot Dome scandals of President Warren G. Harding’s administration and sent Secretary of Interior Albert B. Fall to the penitentiary. In 1933, President-elect Franklin Roosevelt appointed Senator Walsh Attorney General. Just before the inauguration, on February 25, 1933, in Cuba, Senator Walsh married Mina Perez Chaumont de Truffin, widow of a wealthy Cuban sugar grower.

Photo by Harris & Ewing from www.old-picture.com

Cuba at this time was in political turmoil and Mina’s family was embroiled in dangerous diplomatics. Members of her family had even been assassinated. The marriage raised eyebrows. As the newlyweds traveled to Washington for Roosevelt’s inauguration and Walsh’s swearing in, Senator Walsh suddenly died of a heart attack. The press pronounced Walsh’s death a national misfortune, but his son-in-law, U.S. Navy Captain Emmit C. Gudger, believed that his father-in-law had been poisoned. Julio Morales, a successful Helena lawyer who fled Cuba with the advent of Castro, wrote that “...rumors were started by both parties, alleging that Senator Walsh had been poisoned.” It was no secret that Roosevelt opposed Cuba’s government. Walsh’s widow was very upset to learn that her half of the inheritance consisted of the senator’s Washington D.C. town house. She traded the property for other items, including a prized painting by C. M. Russell. The painting’s whereabouts today is unknown. Walsh’s longtime trusted employees had packed his files for delivery to his new office.  Among them were files in progress investigating the Harding administration and the American aluminum industry, against whom Walsh intended to proceed. These files disappeared and were never seen again.

Friday Photo: Rural Schoolhouse

Happy Friday! Here's a photo for all the kids and teachers who are back in school.


Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives PAc 98-24.17

The children of Betts School in Cascade County pose with their teacher circa 1917.

Charity Dillon

Priscilla Jane Allen is not the name she left behind when she died. She is known to posterity as Charity Jane Dillon, and her grave, high above Canyon Ferry Lake, is perhaps the most visited site in Broadwater County.

There are several accounts of her life and death, but the common threads recount how this young woman came west, alone and on horseback looking for her errant lover.  She came to Diamond City, twenty miles northeast of present-day Townsend, in the mid-1860s and eventually found him happily married to another woman and the father of several children. She kept her true identity and heartbreak to herself, and never revealed the man’s name. Under the assumed name of Jane Dillon, she settled near a spring on the stagecoach road between Hog ‘Em and Radersburg where she built a log cabin inn. The inn was not an overnight hostelry but rather a place where travelers could stop and have a drink or a meal. The hospitality of this half-way house was well known. Some old timers claim that she was called Charity because of her kindly acts, but others believe that her name came from the inn’s geographic location near Charity Gulch. In 1872, passersby found Charity Dillon dead in her bed, a bottle whiskey hidden underneath. While some conclude that she died an alcoholic, she may have simply stored the whiskey—which she kept for customers—there for safekeeping.  Others believe she died of ptomaine poisoning from contaminated canned goods, a fairly common occurrence. Still others insist that Charity Dillon died of a broken heart.  Whatever the cause, it is this poignant mystery that brings visitors to her grave.

Kidnapped!

Happy Labor Day! Montana has seen its share of strikes and turmoil between investors and laborers, but let's commemorate Montana workers with this humorous story...

Harry Child came to Montana in the early 1880s to learn the mining business from his uncle, wealthy investor A. J. Seligman. Child’s vast interests eventually included mines and smelters, the Flying D Ranch in the Gallatin valley, and Yellowstone Park’s hotel and transportation companies. One of Child’s many adventures has been recorded for posterity. Just before the Northern Pacific came to Helena in 1883, the two mining companies Child managed had stored their gold and silver bullion awaiting transport by rail. But the New York capitalists who financed the mining enterprises neglected the payroll and owed mine employees more than 125,000 dollars in back pay. The son of one of these millionaire investors had come out to Montana to learn the mining business under Harry Child. The angry miners decided the fastest way to get their money was to kidnap Child and the millionaire’s son. This they did and held the hostages in one of the mines. Child convinced the kidnappers to let him go to Helena to negotiate the ransom. Obtaining an open line through Western Union, Child succeeded in getting the money wired to Helena within twenty-four hours. Carrying the cash and fearful of bandits, Child made the hazardous twenty-five-mile trip by sleigh following a circuitous route. He later discovered that several parties of miners indeed had planned to rob him. Once paid, the miners returned to work. When the railroad finally came through, the first east-bound train out of Helena carried the gold and silver bullion to its investors, and everyone was satisfied.


Harry Child is pictured at left in Yellowstone National Park in 1894.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, F. Jay Haynes Collection