Friday Photo: Stage Travel

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 2011-65.13

Today's photo shows women traveling by stagecoach, probably near Zortman, Montana. For our last post in honor of Women's History Month, here's one woman's experience traveling by stage.

Frances M. A. Roe wrote a lively account of a stage ride through the treacherous Prickly Pear Canyon in Army Letters from an Officer’s Wife. Frances describes why she dreaded meeting an oncoming ox train on the very narrow, boulder-strewn road. Sure enough, they had not gone far when a huge freighter lumbered toward them. A sheer precipice dropped on one side and soared skyward on the other. It seemed a hopeless situation. The driver barked, “Get the lady out!” Men from the freighters sidled over. With no words spoken, they knew exactly what to do. They lifted the stage—trunks and all—up, over, and onto some of the boulders and led the horses between others. The horses stood at the edge of the precipice without a twitch while three teams of eight yokes of oxen passed by. “It made me ill,” Frances wrote, “to see the poor patient oxen straining and pulling up the grade those huge wagons so heavily loaded. The crunching and groaning of the wagons, rattling of the enormous cable chains, and the creaking of the heavy yokes of the oxen were awful sounds, and above all the came yells of the drivers, and the sharp, pistol-like reports of the long whips.” After the wagons passed, the men returned and matter-of-factly set the stage on the road. The process was repeated six or seven times as the stage traveled through the canyon.

The Legacy of Lily Toole, Montana’s First First Lady

Springtime in Helena brings to mind Lily Toole and the gift she left her adopted community. Lily was a gentle soul. Born to the prominent family of Brigadier General William Stark Rosecrans of Civil War fame, Lily grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, in a devoutly Catholic family. The general’s brother was a Catholic bishop, and three of Lily’s siblings entered the religious life. On May 5, 1890, Lily married Joseph Kemp Toole, governor of the new state of Montana. The small, private wedding took place at the parsonage of St. Matthew’s Church in Washington, D.C. The New York Times explained that Governor Toole was not a Roman Catholic, and there was not time to obtain the dispensation required for a wedding in the Catholic Church. The service was informal. Lily wore a dark green traveling dress trimmed with elaborate black braiding and a black straw turban embellished with ribbons and velvet. Her father and two friends were the only guests. After a brief seaside honeymoon, the newlyweds were at home in Helena at 102 S. Rodney Street. Lily settled into her role as Montana’s first lady, but she was first and foremost a devoted mother.


Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 945-340

The Tooles’ first son, Rosecrans, named for his famous grandfather, was born in 1891. The couple had two more children, Edwin Warren in 1893 and Joseph Porter in 1896. In the yard of the Rodney Street house, Lily planted an apple tree for each boy, and she planted lilacs to remind her of Ohio. In 1898, when Rosecrans was seven, he was visiting his aunt and grandfather when he died of diphtheria. Two of the apple trees Lily planted for her boys still live. It is not known which of the three had a shorter lifespan. During his second term, Governor Toole presided over every interior detail during the building of Montana’s State Capitol. But the governor’s wife was the landscaping consultant. Lily saw to it that many lilac bushes were planted on the grounds. While those have since been removed, her lilacs still bloom in the yard on Rodney Street. From those bushes, cuttings produced many more. During that brief time every spring when lilacs spread their sweetness all over Helena, remember Lily Toole.

Scherlie Homestead

The Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909 lured many homesteaders to Montana and to an area in Blaine County called the Big Flat. One of these was thirty-two-year-old Anna Scherlie, who arrived in 1913 to file a claim near her brother’s place. Anna was one of many women homesteaders in Montana. In fact, in the four surrounding townships, women made up about one-fourth of the total homestead applicants. By 1916, Anna had forty acres planted in wheat, oats, and flax. Isolation on the Big Flat led many settlers to winter elsewhere, and Anna followed suit. Legend has it that she went to St. Paul to work for the family of railroad magnate James J. Hill. Over the decades, Anna made few changes to her small wood-frame shack, adding only a vestibule to use as a summer kitchen and laundry.

Photo by Nellie Cederberg, May 6, 1996. On file at Montana State Historic Preservation Office, Helena.

Droughts, depression, and two world wars passed. Anna’s neighbors built modern homes, but she insisted that she was too old for modern conveniences. Anna died in 1973, leaving an estate of more than one hundred thousand dollars to eighteen nieces and nephews. Her ashes were scattered beneath a lilac bush on the property. Leon and Nellie Cederburg purchased the homestead, but rather than return it to cropland, the Cederbergs maintain Anna’s home exactly as she left it.

P.S. Anna's neighbor Lois Imler Warren kept a detailed diary.

Friday Photo: Homestead Mom

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, Farms and Farming Collection

Our celebration of Women's History Month continues with today's photo of a mother and son posing with a wheat crop near Glendive, Montana, in 1911. I think she must have been awfully strong to raise a crop and a son at the same time.

P.S. Homesteading was a hard life! Remember Myrtle Hagadone Hledik?

St. Vincent’s in Billings

The Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kansas, came to Montana in 1869 to pioneer health, education, and social services in many Montana communities.  Billings was the Sisters’ final Montana frontier. In 1896, Father Clarence Van Clarenbeck and Billings mayor Dr. Henry Chapple traveled to Leavenworth to make an appeal to the Mother House. The need for a hospital in the bustling railroad town of 3,000 would soon be critical. The men were so persuasive that Mother Mary Peter Dwyer assigned two Sisters from St. John’s Hospital in Helena to assess Billings’ needs. Dr. Chapple, who was not Catholic, had lamented a chronic shortage of nurses throughout his career. He challenged the Sisters and they accepted, caring for patients first in makeshift quarters above Chapple’s drug store. The first patients were admitted to St. Vincent’s Hospital in 1898. In 1916, infantile paralysis afflicted at least 125 children in Billings. When Mother Irene McGrath, Superior of St. Vincent’s, established a children’s ward for these young patients, the overcrowding this caused underscored the need for a new building. The work was underway when World War I intervened. Mother Irene halted construction, deciding the Red Cross and Liberty Loan drives were more important. Her patriotic sacrifice won the hearts of the community.

Photo courtesy Western Heritage Center, Billings

When the new 200-bed hospital opened in 1923, Mother Irene opened a school for children whose deformities had heretofore prevented their education. It was the first school of its kind in the West. These efforts laid the groundwork for Billings’ modern medical and social services.  The Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health Care remains today St. Vincent’s parent system.

P.S. Remember these dedicated nurses?

Ruth Garfield

Ruth Lane was visiting relatives in Montana when she met Jesse Garfield, a Yellowstone County homesteader. The couple married in 1912 and later moved to a ranch near Ryegate. Jesse became the first sheriff of newly created Golden Valley County in June of 1920.

Photo courtesy Ford and Barbara Garfield, via Ancestry.com

He had been reelected to his first full term of office in November but had not yet been sworn in. On December 6, Jesse went out to the Snowy Mountains to investigate a complaint. When he knocked on the rancher’s door, the man fired his rifle, seriously wounding the sheriff. He made it to his car and tried to drive back to town, but the gas tank had been hit and he ran out gas. He walked back to the town of Franklin where a stopped freight train took him to Billings. Jesse died two weeks later. County commissioners appointed Ruth to fill out her husband’s term as sheriff.  She never carried a gun, but she earned the same salary as her husband: $166 a month. The couple’s son, Ford, was about seven at the time. Every day after school, he would wait at the jail in the Golden Valley county courthouse for his mom to finish work. Ruth served out her husband’s two year term. Upon his election in 1922, Sheriff Dick Carr appointed Ruth Garfield undersheriff and probation officer. She served in that capacity for two years before retiring from law enforcement. Ruth Lane Garfield was the first female sheriff in Montana.

P.S. Remember this gun-toting woman?

Friday Photo: Turning Sod

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 90-87-65.6

Evelyn Cameron snapped this photo of Rosie Roesler on a sulky plow in Prairie County in 1912.

P.S. Here's another iconic Cameron photo of homesteaders.
P.P.S This website showcases wonderful stories for Women's History Month.

Little Cowboy Bar

Musty, gnarly, and eclectic would be a good way to describe the Little Cowboy Bar and Museum, a landmark along Fromberg’s West River Road which is the tiny town’s main street. If you duck into the low slung bar where brands cover the green stucco storefront, you’ll be amazed at the Montana history hidden inside.

Courtesy Shannon Kaple, Center Avenue Imaging. Used by permission.

Longtime owner Shirley Smith has collected a mixture of oddities, autographs, artifacts, and memorabilia spanning more than a century. A. L. Anderson, writing about Shirley Smith in the Clark’s Fork Pioneer, noted that the bar is a local gathering place where the legendary outlaw spirit that you read about comes alive. Clippings and photographs define the renegade cowboys and cowgirls who dared to ride the toughest rodeo stock. Worn weapons, a beaver fetus pickled in alcohol, an insect collection, famed bronc rider Turk Greenough’s cowboy hat, native beadwork,  and acres and acres of other items all wonderfully displayed  remind the visitor that the West was a catch-all where people worked hard, played hard, and sometime broke the law.

Owner Shirley Smith. Photo courtesy Shannon Kaple, Center Avenue Imaging. Used by permission.

Smith has stories about everything from outlaws to artists and movie stars. She says that she’s done everything in the bar except birth a baby, and she’s come close to doing that too. She has set bones, pulled teeth, taken stitches out, and taken lots and lots of ticks of out of kids’ ears. The Little Cowboy Bar is, as one writer put it, “the real thing—a moving lament for the way it was, once upon a time in the West.”  Take a jog off the highway and experience the Little Cowboy for yourself. You won’t be sorry.

P.S. Add this place to your road trip bucket list, too.

Josephine Doody

On the way to isolated Harrison Lake, in the wilderness area on the southern border of Glacier National Park, lie the ruins of a secret cabin. The area is extremely difficult to access because you have to cross the Middle Fork of the Flathead and there is only a short time when it’s not frozen or deep. The remote cabin was home to Josephine Doody, a woman even more notorious than Calamity Jane. And unlike calamity, the events of her life are not disputed. John Fraley, in his book Wild River Pioneers, details Josephine’s adventures. Around 1890. Josephine shot a man in Colorado, she claimed in self-defense. Awaiting trial, she fled to MacCarthyville, Montana, a railroad town Montana along James J. Hill’s Great Northern Railway. There, as a dance hall girl, she met Dan Doody who fell for her. But Josephine had an opium addiction. So Dan kidnapped her, tied her to a mule, took her to his homestead on the Flathead River and locked her in to dry out.

Josephine Doody in front of her cabin on the Flathead. Photo courtesy Glacier National Park.

Josephine survived and took up moonshining. Dan kept a tiny cabin where she could hide when the revenue officers of Colorado lawmen came looking for her. James Hill built a siding to the Doody place, and the engineer would blow the whistle once for each quart of moonshine the engineers wanted. Dan was one of the first park rangers at Glacier, but was soon fired because he liked to poach the game.

Dan Doody. Photo courtesy Glacier National Park.

He died in 1919, and Josephine stayed in the two-story homestead, keeping guest rooms and leading occasional fishing parties. She died in 1936 after a long, colorful life.

Friday Photo: The Daily Grind

Happy Friday, history buffs!

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 77-94

In today's photo, bachelor Henry Syverud grinds coffee in his homestead shack in 1911.

Bonus: Speaking of coffee, Viola Fowler shared this recipe of coffee fudge in the YWCA Cook Book published by Montana State College circa 1916. If you try it, let me know how it turns out:
Two cupfuls of white sugar; one-half cupful of strong coffee, one cupful of chopped nuts. Boil the sugar and coffee together without stirring until stringy. Take off the fire, add nuts, and beat until creamy. Pour into a buttered pan to cool.

Julia Tuell

Today at noon I'll be telling stories about women homesteaders and ranchers, including Julia Tuell. It's a fundraiser for the Friends of the Historical Society, so bring your lunch and $5.00 to the Historical Society and join us! By the way, I posted an event calendar if you want to see what else is coming up.

Montana’s Northern Cheyennes and the Sioux of South Dakota in the early twentieth century are the subjects of Julia Tuell’s little-known photographic legacy. Through her camera lens, Tuell recorded details she must have known would someday be valued. She was sixteen in 1901 when she married forty-three-year-old teacher P. V. Tuell. The couple headed west, where P. V. had a job teaching Indian children.

Julia Tuell photographing tipi ribs. At the time this photo was taken, she was three weeks short of delivering her third child.
Photo from Women and Warriors of the Plains by Dan Aadland

By 1906, on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation at Lame Deer, Tuell had begun collecting images of the Plains Indians at a time of agonizing change when traditional skills were still part of reservation life. With her own small children in tow, Tuell captured intimate details: women scraping hides, dogs hitched to travois, chiefs in full regalia, and children at play.

Tuell hand colored this photo of Northern Cheyenne children.
Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming

Later, on the Sioux reservations of South Dakota, Tuell continued her photographic journal in a Model T, her camera on the seat. Her photographs parallel those of Evelyn Cameron, who so beautifully documented eastern Montana homesteading. But Tuell’s images capture a different perspective of those who saw their lives turned upside down with the tilling of the prairie sod. Her work is a pictorial tribute to the people of the plains. You can find Tuell’s poignant photographs in Dan Aadland’s book, Women and Warriors of the Plains.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

Methodist Deaconesses

Happy Women's History Month! Today's post celebrates some particularly dedicated women.

The Deaconess Movement rose from within the Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopal, and other Protestant denominations. It sought to incorporate professional women in ministerial duties. The Chicago Training School was the center of the movement and prepared its deaconesses to serve as missionary nurses, teachers, and social workers. Unlike Catholic sisters, deaconesses took no perpetual vows, but if a woman chose to remain a deaconess and single, she could count on care in times of illness and in old age. These dedicated pioneers earned no salaries, but rather worked in exchange for their living expenses and small stipends supplied by their institutional boards.

A procession of deaconesses and candidates, May 7, 1914, probably in New York
Bain News Service photo, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ggbain-15754

The first trained deaconesses came from Chicago to Montana in 1898 to staff a small twenty-bed hospital in Great Falls. Chicago-trained Augusta Ariss arrived in 1902 to found the nursing school there. Deaconesses from the Chicago School also arrived to take charge of the Montana Deaconess School in Helena.

The Montana Deaconess Preparatory School, Helena. The building was damaged in the 1935 earthquake and demolished.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 953-410

From 1910 to the 1940s, it was the only Protestant-based boarding school west of the Mississippi. (It survives today as Intermountain, a treatment center for emotionally traumatized children.) Until the 1930s, deaconesses staffed the Great Falls hospital, its nursing school, and other deaconess hospitals in Glasgow, Sidney, Bozeman, Billings, Havre, and Butte. The Great Falls Deaconess Hospital evolved into today’s Benefis Healthcare. The old Deaconess Hospital campus today serves a worthy purpose as an assisted living and memory care facility.

Friday Photo: Scobey's Baseball Team





Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 950-885

Here's a photo for all the baseball fans celebrating the start of spring training. Scobey's 1925 baseball team boasted an impressive 30-3 record. Left to right are batboy Charles Smith, Porky Dallas, Wally Hilden, Honey Guyer, Delno Cottingham, Happy Felsch, George Eastman, Joe Lupe, Johnny Meyers, Steve Mattick, and Swede Risberg.