Friday Photo: Milking

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 91-69.64

I hope that today's photograph gives you a chuckle. This woman is a talented milker, but unfortunately nothing is known about the picture or the photographer. Do you recognize who she is or where the picture was taken? Leave a comment and let me know.

Friday Photo: Dry Cleaners

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, Mulvaney Collection, 1723

This Helena tailoring shop probably belonged to Miles York. The date on the calendar is, unfortunately, not legible. It might be July 1910.

Friday Photo: Threshing Crew

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 90-87 4-3

Mabel Williams brings water to the threshing crew on her family's farm near Terry in September 1909. Her friend and neighbor Evelyn Cameron took the photo.

Labor Day

The late nineteenth century was a time of national labor unrest when workers nation-wide protested deplorable working conditions. Labor unions in New York City celebrated the first Labor Day on Tuesday, September 5, 1882. Ten thousand workers took unpaid leave to march from City Square to Union Hall. The idea caught on, and many states followed New York’s lead. In 1891, Montana joined nine other states whose legislatures had previously designated the holiday: New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Colorado, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey and Ohio.

Early telephone operators often worked ten to twelve hour days for as little as thirty dollars per month. In 1907, Butte operators struck and were granted a minimum wage of fifty dollars per month, an eight-hour workday, and a closed shop. These operators are working in Helena in 1906. Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 75-43 folder 23

On September 7, 1891, flowers looked their prettiest and birds sang their sweetest when Montana celebrated that first Labor Day. Deer Lodge was the main center of celebration where people from all points gathered. They came from the country, from outlying camps, and on the train from Butte. Seventeen rail cars dispatched some two thousand visitors and two bands. They formed a procession and marched to a pavilion prepared for the occasion. Hon. E. D. Matts of Missoula, who authored the legislation making Labor Day a state holiday, addressed the crowd. Other speeches followed, filling two hours. The crowd listened intently. At four o’clock, rail cars brought five hundred more guests from Butte where all the labor organizations had marched in a huge parade. Revelers quietly scattered, some participating in races and games, others strolling the grounds among the trees and quietly enjoying the holiday. An evening of dancing brought the pleasant day to a close.

This photo by N. A. Forsyth, taken circa 1905, shows the dangerous working conditions in Butte's mines that contributed to labor strikes and unrest. Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, ST 001.168

Several years later in 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed legislation designating the first Monday in September a federal holiday. Congress passed the Labor Day act on the heels of a violent strike by employees of the American Railway Union in Chicago. Federal troops were called in and thirty-four workers lost their lives during vicious riots. Although President Cleveland was not favorable to unions, he signed the act in an attempt to mend damaged ties with American workers.
While we celebrate the workingman’s holiday today more as a symbol of summer’s end and the start of the school year, we should remember that it was a originally a workingman’s holiday born of national unrest.

Friday Photo: Working on the Railroad

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, Railroad Collection

Happy Labor Day weekend! Here's a classic photo of laborers. Japanese railroad crews like this one built hundreds of miles of track in Montana. These men are getting ready for the last spike celebration of the Chicago, Milwaukee, & St. Paul Railroad, better known as the Milwaukee Road, four miles west of Garrison, Montana. The photo was taken on May 19, 1909.

Friday Photo: Lumberjacks

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 949-126

Today's photo shows the Baker brothers with 16,130 feet of lumber near Whitefish circa 1900. Sledges like this one were used to transport logs to a nearby landing where they could be loaded on railroad cars or floated by water to a mill.

Friday Photo: Barn Raising

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 2008-23.9

Edith and Edelbert Morrissette built this barn on their homestead on Whittman Coulee northwest of Hardin circa 1912. On the back is written, "Mr. Gibbs, Edelbert and Mr. Curtis putting up the roof." Edith herself took the photo.

Friday Photo: Fort Peck Dam

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, Box 2 F11

These men are building the head walls of Fort Peck Dam. The photo was taken on January 10, 1935, by a Glasgow photographer named Ellis.

Friday Photo: Charlie Russell

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 944-703

Charlie Russell posed for this formal portrait in his Great Falls studio in 1912 while he was working on Lewis & Clark Meeting Indians at Ross' Hole. The painting hangs in the senate chambers of the Montana State Capitol.

Friday Photo: High Ore Mine

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, ST 001.144

N.A. Forsyth captured this stereoview of workers coming off shift at Butte's High Ore Mine circa 1909. Click the photo for a bigger version.

P.S. The same photographer snapped this humorous photo of "miners."

Evolution of the Drug Store

Butte druggist C. B. Hoskins had been in the pharmacy business more than forty years when he reminisced in 1931. When he started in the business in 1883, he had to make his own mixtures, fluid extracts, pills, and emulsions. He had to know his ingredients and the effects they would bring. There were not so many items in the inventory, but the reactions they caused were very well understood.  Physicians carefully monitored their patients, and if the prescribed drug did not work, physicians blamed the pharmacist for not correctly mixing the doctor’s prescription.

Hoskins's drug store would have looked much like this one.
Courtesy Montana State University Libraries

A druggist usually had an apprentice who learned the trade under him. Druggists were responsible for all aspects of their apprentice’s education. Many highly skilled druggists never saw the inside of a school. Hoskins pointed out how things had changed. Fifty years ago, he recalled, druggists made all the pills. But by 1930, there were so many manufacturers that druggists had become only servers. The shelves were stocked with pills of all kinds, ready made. All you had to do was count them out, and the druggist, once paid for his knowledge of mixing, now made only a small service charge. Radio advertising created a demand for a number of things, and unlike printed advertising that carried responsibility for the product, radio advertising could say anything with no consequence. Hoskins went on to lament that the student of today who went to pharmacy school learned all kinds of chemistry that really didn't help him in the job. He should be learning other skills, he said, like stocking notions, selling hardware, and making ham sandwiches.

Savenac Nursery

When the Forest Service celebrated its one hundredth anniversary, it recalled one historic site in Montana that played a major role in its history. Creation of the National Forest Service in 1905 brought Elers Koch, one of the nation’s first professional foresters, to inspect and evaluate the Forest Reserves of Montana and Wyoming. As Forest Supervisor of the Bitterroot and Lolo National Forests in 1907, Koch happened upon the abandoned homestead of a German settler named Savannach in Mineral County. He thought it a perfect spot to establish a tree nursery. Work began in 1908. As the first pine seedlings were ready for transplant in 1910, fire swept through the region, burning three million acres of timber and destroying the nursery. The disaster made fire prevention and conservation a primary mission of the Forest Service. Reforestation figured prominently in that goal, and so the Forest Service wasted no time in rebuilding the nursery. Savenac became the largest tree nursery in the Northwest, producing up to twelve million trees annually. Regional reorganization closed the nursery in 1969, but during its long service, Savenac pioneered much of the theory and practice of silviculture right here in Montana’s Mineral County.

Men from the Civilian Conservation Corps mix concrete for improvements to the nursery in 1934.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 2003-47.14

Friday Photo: Chuck Wagon

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 981-256

Rodrick "Butch" Munroe prepares to feed the cowboys on the LU Bar cattle roundup in eastern Montana in August 1904. The man on the right is LU foreman Ben Fleming. L. A. Huffman snapped the photo.

Friday Photo: Painting the Bleachers

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 94-59 folder 12/21

The men of Kalispell's Local 975 painted the bleachers at the baseball park as a community service project on April 26, 1958. Left to right brushing are Lee Barnes, Bob Casady, Ray Lincoln, and Perry Melton, while Bill Hagestad stands by.

P.S. Remember this baseball team?

A Miner’s Lunch

Among the many ethnic groups that came to Butte were miners from Cornwall, England. These miners brought beliefs and traditions with them. They feared the Tommyknockers, who were the spirits of departed miners. Their ghostly knocking warned of cave-ins. Like all miners, the Cornish carried their lunches on their shifts underground. Terry Beaver of Helena has a collection of lunch boxes and has made a study of them. Often they were oval shaped and usually contained two inner trays, dividing the lunch pail into three separate compartments.

The men poured their coffee in the bottom of the pail. The first tray fit over the coffee. This level contained a pasty, or meat pie. Made with bits of leftover meat and potatoes enclosed in a pastry envelope, this culinary staple had a tender nickname. Miners called it a “Letter from Home.” A second tray on top of the pasty made the third and final level for pie or cake. The lid fit on top of it all, and a coffee cup fit on top of the lid. Miners would light a candle, stick it in the tunnel wall, and hang their lunch pails over the flame to heat their coffee and warm their pasty. Miners would never eat the crimped edges of the pasty. This they crumbled and dropped on the ground to pacify the Tommyknockers and feed the rats that lived in the mines. The rats, they believed, deserved their respect and the miners took good care of them. Always present underground, rats sensed when a cave-in was imminent or if poison gas began to fill the tunnels. They would run out of the mine in droves, warning the miners of danger.

P.S. A traditional (and delicious) Cornish pasty recipe
P.P.S. Remember these cute little miners?

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.

Friday Photo: Victory Garden



Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 2005-4 A1 P.10

A Helena woman picks vegetables in her World War I "victory garden" in August 1918. Can anyone identify the street she's on?

Friday Photo: Filling the Water Barrel

This week's photo shows a chore done by thousands of Montana homesteaders.



Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

Genevra "Gene" Fornell fills the family water barrel at Leroy in eastern Montana in the spring of 1913.
I hope you get all your chores done so you can go play this weekend!

Friday Photo: Libby Logger Days

Libby Logger Days started yesterday and runs through the weekend. Are you going?

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 2002-62 E1B-10890

Competitors put muscle into the cross-cut saw (also known as the misery whip) at Libby Logger Days. Photo by Bill Browning. Date unknown.

Friday Photo: One-Room Schoolhouse

For the students and teachers who are finishing up the school year...


Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 90-87.63-3

The five students of Marsh in Prairie County, Montana, posed with their teacher on January 20, 1914. The photo was taken by Evelyn Cameron.

P.S. Remember the drama at Paris Gibson Junior High?