Helena’s First Decoration Day

Decoration Day, later called Memorial Day, was a tradition that sprang from the tremendous loses both the north and the south experienced during the Civil War. The tradition of decorating veterans’ graves took root in different states at different times from the 1870s through the early twentieth century. On May 30, 1883, Helena observed Decoration Day for the first time with a mile-long procession that assembled at Harmonia Hall on Broadway. It made its way out of the city to the cemetery on Benton Avenue. Nearly 1,500 people participated in the march, including some fifty veterans of the Civil War and a few veterans of the war with Mexico, accompanied by the Silver Coronet Band. Ladies and gentlemen in carriages joined the crowd at the cemetery, and flowers and evergreens were laid upon the graves of veterans. Wilbur F. Sanders gave a lengthy address while the Reverend T. V. Moore officiated as chaplain. This observance, the Helena Daily Herald pointed out on June 2, 1883, brought to light the deplorable condition of the city's protestant and Catholic cemeteries whose wooden head and foot boards had deteriorated and could not be deciphered:

Some of the noblest men and women... lie buried there; yet their resting places cannot be identified. After considerable inquiry, we do not find that plot of the lots… is kept. The county gravedigger keeps no record of interments. He digs a hole and covers a corpse and the name of the dead is buried in the same oblivion as is his body….

The only known historic photo of a Helena cemetery is this undated one of the Catholic Cemetery on Oakes, also known as St. Mary’s Cemetery. By the 1920s, it was abandoned. Robinson Park, created in 1972, covers some 1100 burials that still lie beneath the sod. Courtesy Charleen Spalding.

Only one-fourth of the graves in the city's several cemeteries were marked. This informal tally included the now-forgotten graves that remained in the old City Cemetery near the grounds of Central School and the Catholic Cemetery on Oakes, now Robinson Park. At this time in Helena’s history, the only well-tended burial ground was the Jewish Home of Peace, now tucked next to Capital High School.

African Americans in Montana

Several instances of the presence of African Americans in the territory before the major gold rushes are known. William Clark’s slave, York, traveled with the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805–1806, Henry “Negro Henry” Mills worked for the American Fur Company in Fort Benton from the late 1850s, James Beckwourth was a well-known trapper of the 1820s and 1830s whose life has been the subject of some interest, and Isaiah Dorman served as a Sioux interpreter for the army who fell with Custer at Little Bighorn. Blacks also often worked on the steamboats that traveled widely up and down the Missouri River and docked at Fort Benton.

James Beckwourth. Photo courtesy Nevada Historical Society.

With Emancipation in 1865, African Americans realized new opportunities and joined the westward migrations. While small in numbers, these pioneers contributed significantly to their communities. In 1870, the federal census counted 183 black people in Montana. The number doubled in 1880, reached 1,490 in 1890, and peaked in 1910 at 1,834. Western blacks, many of whom carried the burden of slavery, tended to settle in Montana’s larger urban areas and founded communities within a sometimes hostile and discriminatory larger society. Against the backdrop of the Civil War, blacks often found themselves caught in the bitter struggle between Democrats and Republicans who in theory supported African American equality, but did so in varying degrees. School segregation, black suffrage (achieved in 1867), and anti-miscegenation laws were controversial racial issues in Montana’s early territorial period. Finding consolation and community together, black citizens often established their own churches, benevolent societies, newspapers, and social clubs.

The Montana Federation of Negro Women's Clubs meets in Butte, August 3, 1921.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 96-25.2

Despite the proportionately small numbers, the 1870 census shows that blacks on the Montana frontier engaged in diverse occupations and mostly concentrated in towns, especially Fort Benton and Helena. More than half of males listed their occupation as laborers, domestics, servants, or cooks, and twenty-seven percent represented themselves as barbers. A smaller percentage proffered their occupation as ranch hands, cowboys, and miners, with one listed as a saloon keeper. A decade later in 1880, blacks still clustered in the larger communities of Helena and Butte where mining activities necessarily attracted service providers and laborers. Fort Benton’s African American population jumped from twenty in 1870 to fifty in 1880 because of the steamboat travel that brought in population from diverse places and because of the employment opportunities steamboats offered.

Canyon Hotel waiters, Yellowstone National Park, 1901. Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, H-4873.

African Americans who came to Montana in the nineteenth century include William Taylor, a teamster, Samuel Lewis, a highly successful Bozeman barber, John Gordon, a trained chef, and James Crump who worked as a miner. African American women also came to Montana with the first settlers and some assumed non-traditional roles. For example, sisters Parthenia Sneed and Minerva Coggswell ran a Virginia City restaurant, Sarah Bickford eventually owned the Virginia City Water Company, Mary Gordon owned a restaurant in White Sulphur Springs, and Mary Fields drove the stage and held the mail route between Cascade and St. Peter’s Mission.

Mary Fields. Photo courtesy Ursuline Convent Archives, Toledo, Ohio.

In an interview in 1979 for the Helena Independent Record, Norman Howard, grandson of James Crump, reflected on what it was like to be black in Montana. He believed that discrimination was tougher for blacks than for Indians. While Montana never posted signs for “Whites Only” as in the South, the same rules applied and most blacks found menial employment as waiters, janitors, and hotel workers. Blacks were excluded from restaurants, bars, and barber shops. By virtue of such exclusion, tightly knit black communities formed; however, as the civil rights movement brought changes for the better, these communities slowly disappeared. Maintaining a strong black community also proved difficult as the lack of job opportunities in the state drew second and third generation blacks elsewhere.
Although Montana has made small gains in the last decade, 2012 statistics show this ethnic group makes up only 0.6% of the state’s population compared to 13.1% nationally.

A Second Perspective on the Fourth of July in Alder Gulch, 1865

While yesterday's post presents one view, here is another recollection of the same celebration. In her reminiscence, Girl from the Gulches, Mary Ronan recalls the Fourth of July in Virginia City, 1865. The Civil War was finally over, and hostilities that pervaded even the most remote mining camps in Montana Territory had calmed and lessened. Mary remembers that it was “a day atingle with motion, color, and music.” People thronged on the board sidewalks and footpaths, and horses and wagons crowded the street, lining up to view the parade. Mary was proud to ride with thirty-six other little girls all dressed in white on a dead-ax wagon—that is, a wagon with no springs—festively decorated with evergreens and bunting. In the center of the “float,” if one could call it that, the tallest and fairest of the girls stood motionless, dressed in a Grecian tunic with a knotted cord at her waist. Her long blond hair flowing behind her, she represented Columbia, the personification of the United States. The other little girls sat arranged in groups at Columbia’s feet representing the States of the Union. Each wore a blue scarf fashioned as a sash across her chest. A letter on each sash identified the state represented.

Mary Ronan at the time of her marriage, 1873.
Courtesy Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library, University of Montana

For Mary, the memory was bittersweet. Her letter stood for Missouri, a state in which she had lived. But she wanted to represent Kentucky, the state of her birth. Some other little girl, however, had already taken the K. The other bitter pill was that Mary worried self-consciously about her appearance. She had suffered all night with her extremely long hair painfully done up in rags—one method girls back then employed to curl their hair. But the result was less than desirable. It left her hair much too bushy and kinky!

The Fourth of July in Alder Gulch, 1865

Much has been made of the lines of allegiance drawn in Montana over the Civil War. Mary “Mollie” Sheehan Ronan danced for joy with her southern friends upon Lincoln’s assassination, and Harriett Sanders wrote of celebrations Southern women planned over Lincoln’s death. But Julia Gormley tells a different tale about Civil War loyalties in Alder Gulch. When word reached the gold camps, about ten days after Lincoln’s assassination, stores closed and flags flew at half staff. There were appropriate speeches and a midnight procession with the band playing a march for the dead. Then, on the Fourth of July that year, with the Civil War over, Julia later recalled that Judge Lott asked her to sing at the Independence Day festivities. She declined, but suggested he ask the Forbes sisters, who were good singers. When Judge Lott asked them, they were indignant to have been asked to sing at such a celebration. They were Southerners from Missouri who had lost their home and suffered greatly at the hands of Union soldiers. Judge Lott retuned to Julia and asked her why she had sent him into the rebel camp unprotected. Julia replied that he should not complain since he was not taken captive. Julia confessed that they had a good laugh over the situation. And later, the Forbes sisters did too. Julia goes on to say that she took her children to see the Independence Day parade in Virginia City. “It was really a very fine thing,” she wrote, “to see the good feeling between the Southern and Northern people way out there and strangers to each other join so heartily together on that 4th of ’65.”

Harper's Weekly published this illustration, "Peace," on July 4, 1865.

Observing Memorial Day

The first Decoration Day, or Memorial Day as it came to be called, was formally celebrated in 1868 when the Grand Army of the Republic designated a day of observance honoring casualties of the Civil War. The idea caught on nationally and observances gained popularity during the 1870s. On May 30, 1883, Helena celebrated its first formal observance of Decoration Day with a mile-long procession from Broadway out of the city to Benton Avenue Cemetery. Nearly 1500 people marched in the procession, including some fifty Civil War veterans and a few veterans of the war with Mexico. The Silver Coronet Band provided music. Ladies and gentlemen in carriages joined the crowd at the cemetery, bringing flowers to place on the graves of their loved ones. This observance, the Helena Daily Herald pointed out on June 2, brought to light the deplorable condition of the city's protestant and Catholic cemeteries whose wooden head and foot boards had deteriorated and could not be deciphered.

Wooden grave markers in Helena's Benton Avenue Cemetery, 2003.
Photo courtesy Ric Seabrook and Charleen Spalding. 

Few burial records were being kept. The Herald noted that the county gravedigger simply dug a hole, covered the corpse, and the name of the dead was “…buried in the same oblivion as his body.” An informal tally taken at this time revealed that only one-fourth of the graves in the city's several cemeteries even had markers. Helena was not alone in this situation. If a grave had a wooden marker, it often deteriorated quickly, and until the mid-1880s, Montana had no stone monument makers. Tombstones had to be ordered from catalogs. A. K. Prescott, Montana’s first tombstone maker, did not begin taking orders until about 1885. Unmarked graves exist in nearly every Montana community.

With the moment of national remembrance, which comes at 3:00 p.m. local time on Memorial Day, consider all those forgotten dead that lie beneath the sod in your communities.

The Discovery at Alder Gulch

May 26, 2013, marks an important anniversary. On that date in 1863, Barney Hughes, Thomas Cover, Henry Rodgers, William Fairweather, Henry Edgar, and Bill Sweeney discovered gold along a stream fringed with alder trees. Word soon leaked out, and two hundred miners trampled the ground to the discovery site; many others quickly followed. Within two weeks, dwellings lined a crude road connecting numerous settlements, dubbed the “Fourteen-mile City.” Of these settlements scattered along the gulch, Virginia City and Nevada City rivaled each other. Virginia City became the largest and most permanent. At the height of this famous gold rush as many as 30,000 people flooded Alder Gulch. The first two hundred miners came from dwindling placers at Bannack. Some 10,000 disappointed miners came from the Salmon River area in present-day Idaho where the gold strikes there could not support so many people.

Scene in Virginia City, 1866. Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 956-100

Many of these prospectors were veterans of California and Colorado diggings. Other significant groups included Irish Catholic immigrants who were tied to the Union but supported the Democratic party; Southerners escaping the Iron Clad Oath; Republicans who were vehemently against slavery; and others who were tired of the divisions the Civil War created. These made the early community a place of complicated allegiances. A few weeks after the discovery, the Varina Town Company platted the townsite. Some company members, who supported Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy, intended to name the new town after Jefferson Davis’ wife, Varina. But the newly elected miner’s court judge, G. G. Bissell, was an equally stubborn Unionist. When it came time to file the official documents, he submitted the name Virginia instead. Thus Virginia City was born against the backdrop of the Civil War.

Virginia City in 1868 as drawn by A. E. Mathews. Montana Historical Society Research Center

P.S. This weekend, celebrate the anniversary of Montana’s great strike at Alder Gulch by attending the festivities at Virginia and Nevada cities.

Civil War Vets

In honor of our veterans...

Montana’s earliest African American population carried the very real memories of slavery and its associated implications. Most of the first black Montanans were born into slavery or had parents or ancestors who were slaves. Many of them saw service during the Civil War. Upon President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the Union stepped up its recruitment of black volunteers. By the end of the Civil War, roughly 179,000 black men, or 10 percent of the Union Army, had served as soldiers, and another 19,000 had served in the Navy. Nearly 40,000 black soldiers died over the course of the war—30,000 of them succumbed to infection or disease. Black volunteers did many necessary jobs and earned a salary of ten dollars a month, with three dollars deducted for clothing. White soldiers received thirteen dollars a month with no deductions. Three black Union veterans who later made their homes in Montana were Jack Taylor of Virginia City, Moses Hunter of Miles City, and James Wesley Crump of Helena. In the Union Army, Jack Taylor took care of officers’ horses and learned the craft of teamster. Moses Hunter reenlisted after the war, served in the Southwest, and by 1939, was eastern Montana’s only living Civil War veteran. James Crump lied about his age and joined the Union Army. When his superiors discovered he was only fourteen, he convinced them to let him serve out his three-year term as a drummer. Crump thus was the youngest Civil War veteran in Montana, and because of this, he often carried the flag in parades and proudly held the flag at the laying of the cornerstone of the Montana State Capitol in 1902.


A buffalo soldier at the dedication of the Montana State Capitol in 1902
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

P.S. Remember this invention by buffalo soldier William D. Davis?
P.P.S. What about Mingo Sanders and the soldiers of the Twenty-fifth Infantry?