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: Pet Cat

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 90-87.N041

Alma and Esther McMurray pose with their pet cat circa 1900-1910. But look past the cuteness in the foreground. The background captures wonderful details of life in a homestead cabin. Evelyn Cameron, photographer.

Commodity Cat

Del Leeson of the Helena Daily Independent  wrote a column in 1940 about the Commodity Cat. Now this cat was adept at breaking into the Lewis and Clark County jail. In fact she was so adept that one dark winter night the jailer put her out in the bitter cold seven times in a row, and still the cat stole back in. County auditor Bill Manning felt badly for the jailer and for the cat, and so he opened the door of the courthouse and invited her in. The cat’s whiskers twitched as she sniffed the stale courthouse air and made a beeline for the basement. In its dark depths the county stored surplus commodities—much like our present-day food bank—for distribution to needy families in the social welfare system. Somehow the cat knew that the ancient dungeon-like basement was overrun with mice, and she quickly earned her keep. Once she had cleaned up the basement mouse population, she was on the prowl for more. On the third floor she found a fertile field. WPA sewing classes met up there, and the ladies always brought their lunches. Crumbs and scraps tossed into a sack were tempting to mice. And the commodity cat soon crouched by the bag, waiting to pounce. Soon the third floor mouse population was also eliminated.  But then, the commodity cat lost her freedom to roam the lofty halls. This was because, cuddled in a soft nest of old pants down in the basement, the commodity cat gave birth to four kittens.

These tiny little creatures were miniature carbon copies of their mother, black as coal, sleek and shiny. Although courthouse staff willingly adopted them, welfare employees thought the commodity cat should apply for aid for her dependent children. But that required proof of paternity. And the commodity cat wasn’t talking.

Birdie Brown

The rutted road was a familiar one to Fergus County locals during the days of Prohibition. You had to be careful—bad hooch could cause blindness and even death. Those looking for a place to party knew to point their cars toward Black Butte and Birdie (or Bertie) Brown’s place. She was as nice a woman as they come, and her still—according to locals—produced some of the best moonshine in the country. Birdie was among a very small number of young African American women who homesteaded alone in Montana. She was in her twenties when she settled in the Lewistown area in 1898. She later homesteaded along Brickyard Creek in 1913.

Birdie Brown's Homestead in Fergus County. Courtesy Great Falls Tribune.

During Prohibition in the 1920s, Birdie carved a niche for herself. Her neat homestead where she lived with her cat was a place of warm hospitality. Birdie’s parlor was legendary. In May 1933, just months before the end of Prohibition and Birdie’s livelihood, the revenue officer came around and warned her to stop her brewing. But as Birdie multitasked, dry cleaning some garments with gasoline and tending what would be her last batch of hooch, the gasoline exploded in her face. She lived a few hours, long enough to request that someone take care of her beloved pet. But the cat that followed her everywhere was never found. Birdie’s once orderly homestead now lies in a state of collapse, tragically transformed into a ghost of its former self. Roundup artist Jane Stanfel, who has painted Birdie’s homestead, makes a strange observation. Although it’s been nearly eighty years since Birdie’s passing, every so often someone catches a glimpse of a black cat perched in her parlor window.

Finger in the Door

A house in Helena’s southeast neighborhood was long home to Annabelle Richards and her family. Annabelle loved the spirits that lived there, but others were not so tolerant. When the Richards moved to Washington, D.C., for a period of years, a series of tenants lived in the house.

Annabelle never learned exactly what the spirits did to frighten her tenants. Long after Annabelle moved out of the house, however, one of them related this incident. A mother and her five-year-old daughter briefly lived in the house. The mother was afraid the lock on her daughter’s bedroom door might malfunction, so she took the doorknob off the door leaving a hole where it had been. The child always slept with her cat curled up by her side. One night she awoke, and the cat wasn’t there. She searched the room and finally saw him at the foot of her bed staring at something. She saw that his eyes were fixed on something. The cat’s eyes got bigger and bigger, and her fright grew. She knew she would have to see what her cat was staring at so intently. So she gathered up all the courage she could and followed her cat’s gaze. What she saw gave her nightmares for years to come. The cat’s eyes rested upon the place where the doorknob used to be. Sticking through the hole was a finger, and it was pointing directly at her.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

Friday Photo: Spirit Cat

William Chessman built the Original Governor’s Mansion in Helena as a family home in 1887.  From 1913 to 1959, it served as the home of Montana’s governors.  By 1959, however, the mansion’s elegance had faded. Dark and shuttered, the old mansion sat quiet and empty. For several years during the 1960s, before it became a house museum, the city hired a caretaker who lived at the mansion. She was surprised at the number of visitors who rang the doorbell. She would often answer the door to find children of former governors, all grown up, standing on the porch. She always invited them in, let them poke around in the unused rooms, and listened with delight to their stories about growing up in the state’s executive residence. One story in particular was common among many of these former residents. It was about a little cat that roamed the mansion’s hallways. It was a friendly little kitty, and it always came to the children, begging for attention. It would come bounding down the hallway, and purring, rub against the children’s legs. Time and again, the lucky child who had the cat’s attention would bend down to scoop it up. But just as the child’s hands closed over its little body, the ghost cat would disappear. Several generations of tour guides have spent time alone in the mansion in the last thirty years. Today, they sometimes find shades pulled up when they were left down. Small things might be out of place. A picture, for example, might be turned to the wall. Or a closet door that is always kept shut might be discovered wide open. But no one has seen the cat. Evidence that a cat once lived in the mansion would help substantiate the children’s story, but how could one prove such a thing? An incredible find in the Montana Historical Society Archives offers just such proof. It shows the Chessman family in the 1890s on their front lawn. A professional photographer is taking a portrait of the family’s sleek black cat.

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

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.

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!