A Gruesome Legacy

Violence in Montana’s mining camps affected everyone, and Helena’s Hangman’s Tree was a community icon. Mary Ronan recalled in her memoir, Girl from the Gulches, that one morning she and her classmates saw a man hanging from the tree. She never forgot  “…that pitiful object, with bruised head, disarrayed vest and trousers, with boots so stiff, so worn, so wrinkled, so strangely the most poignant of all the gruesome details.” Nearly seventy years later as she dictated her memories to her daughter, Mary still remembered.

David Hilger recalled climbing the tree’s dead branches as a youngster and examining rope burns on its lower limbs. He and his friends played marbles beneath it. On April 30, 1870, vigilantes interrupted their game for the lynching of Arthur Compton and Joseph Wilson. Once the double hanging was over, according to Hilger, the boys resumed their game. These were the last two recorded hangings on the Hangman’s Tree.

Records show that some of the tree’s victims were buried in various Helena cemeteries, but the burial places of others are unknown.  At least two coffins have surfaced in the neighborhood where the Hangman’s Tree once stood. In 1900, a workman digging a foundation for an addition in a backyard uncovered one coffin. A crew hit the other working on gas lines on Davis Street in 1931. Were these victims of the Hangman’s Tree? Both burials were in close proximity to the spot where the tree once stood.

This photo of James Daniels' hanging in 1866 clearly shows his high-topped boots.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 948-124

David Hilger examined the contents of the pine box discovered in 1931. Along with shreds of clothing were the remains of the victim’s unusual high topped boots. Hilger compared the boots with a photograph of the 1866 hanging of James Daniels. The boots, further described as “wrinkled,” seemed to match those in the photograph. If the remains were those of Daniels, the boots could be the ones that Mary Ronan described.  

Thomas Dimsdale’s School

Health was among the many reasons that people came west to the booming gold camps. They believed that the high mountain climate could cure tuberculosis, but they did not realize that primitive living conditions and brutal winters could neutralize healthful benefits. Thomas Dimsdale was one of those pioneers afflicted with tuberculosis who came west for the mountain climate. He opened a private school in the winter of 1863-1864. Students paid two dollars a week to attend classes in this tiny cabin, which stood on Cover Street in Virginia City.

Thomas Dimsdale. Courtesy Yanoun.org

Later, as editor of the territory’s first newspaper, the Montana Post, Dimsdale wrote an account of the vigilantes in installments for the newspaper. It became Montana’s first published book, The Vigilantes of Montana, and is still in print. Mary Ronan was a student of Dimsdale's, and she later recalled in Girl from the Gulches, “Professor Dimsdale was an Englishman, small, delicate looking, and gentle. I liked him. It seemed to me that he knew everything. In his school all was harmonious and pleasant. While his few pupils buzzed and whispered over their assignments, the professor sat at a makeshift desk writing, writing, always writing. When, during 1864, The Vigilantes of Montana was being published at the Montana Post, I thought it must have been the composition of those articles that had so engrossed him. We children took advantage of Professor Dimsdale’s preoccupation and would frequently ask to be excused. We would run down the slope into a corral at the bottom of Daylight Gulch. We would spend a few thrillful moments sliding down the straw stacks.” Dimsdale was appointed the first territorial superintendent of schools in 1866, but he died soon after from the tuberculosis that brought him west. The tiny cabin, in ruins in a Virginia City back yard, was moved out of harm’s way to Nevada City in 1976.

The Dimsdale School in its present location in Nevada City

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!

Extra! Extra! The Story of Mary Ronan

I have exciting news, history buffs! As of this morning, you can download Girl from the Gulches: The Story of Mary Ronan as an eBook. (Update: Kindle users can get the book here.) Mary Ronan grew up in the early Montana gold camps. In 1865, her father moved the family from Virginia City to Helena. They settled into a cabin on Clore Street (now Park Avenue), just up the block from the Pioneer Cabin. In this excerpt from the book, Mary remembers going to school in Helena.

Professor Stone and his brother opened a private school in August 1867, on Academy Hill not far above the first little Catholic Church where the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart was later built. At one end of the long room Professor Stone taught the primary grades. We sat in prim rows on long, rough benches. This was the largest and most interesting school I had ever attended. Professor Stone began a Latin class and I was a member. This gave me a feeling of great importance; I felt I was standing on the edge of real intellectual achievement! Most stimulating was the lesson each day in Webster's school dictionary, with strange sounding words to spell and define. Before school closed each afternoon the older students would pronounce words; we would each in turn rise, repeat the word, spell it, and sit down. Sallie Davenport always spelled down the school. One day Professor Stone's brother was conducting this drill. It was Raleigh Wilkinson's turn. Raleigh was the son of E. S. Wilkinson, Peter Ronan's partner in the Rocky Mountain Gazette. He misspelled the word.

"Try it again, Raleigh," said Mr. Stone.
"I don't think I can spell it," Raleigh replied.
"Well, try it," insisted Mr. Stone.
"I told you I don't think I can spell it," growled Raleigh.
Mr. Stone, himself young, large, and athletic looking, flushed angrily and repeated his command. "Well, try it, I tell you." Raleigh repeated his refusal. For several times more command and refusal were bandied back and forth in rising crescendo until a tempestuous climax came in an exchange of blows. Suddenly up jumped all the big boys and precipitated a melee. We girls fled from the schoolhouse to our homes. This free-for-all fight was the occasion of much talk among the patrons of the school for many days.
Professor Stone encouraged dramatic reading. One of my boy schooolmates and I practiced a dialogue, without any coaching, which we gave at a public "entertainment" in the schoolroom. Our stage was the little platform where the teacher had his desk. I was a Roman matron encouraging her husband:
"Have the walls ear? I wish they had an tongues, too, to bear witness to my oath and tell it to all Rome."
"Would you destroy?" my opposite intoned.
Fervently I picked up my cue, "Were I a thunderbolt! Rome's ship is rotten! Has she not cast you out?" The applause thrilled me and fired my ambition to be an actress. Professor Stone added fuel to the flame by complimenting me warmly.
I learned the part of Lady Anne in Richard III. I practiced at home in the little sitting room before the mirror, trying a variety of interpretations from mincing to flamboyant. My stepmother, who often admonished me for my vanity, became now positively alarmed for the salvation of my soul and forbade me to go on with the practices or to present at school what was to have been my "big performance."

From Girl from the Gulches: The Story of Mary Ronan

Sledding Down Broadway

The forecast is calling for a good chance of snow through the weekend. Are you going sledding?

Sledding in frontier Montana was a lively sport enjoyed by boys and men wherever there was snow and a hill. They built sleds in all shapes and sizes, painted them in bright colors, and gave them fanciful names. But Mary Ronan in her reminiscence, Girl from the Gulches, recalls a very memorable adventure she had on Christmas Eve 1864 on a vehicle that was entirely makeshift. Sledding was a sport absolutely forbidden to girls. Even on discreet sidestreets, it was not regarded as a ladylike activity since long skirts and petticoats and coasting downhill didn’t mix. An accident, upending a young lady, could ruin her reputation forever.  On this memorable Christmas Eve, Mary and her friends brought evergreens to the Catholic church that stood on Catholic Hill, where the Tower Hill Apartments on South Ewing Street are today. The sun was about to set when the young people were finished decorating. They came out into the frosty air. Charlie Curtis took hold of one of the branches of a large fir tree they had cut. He invited Mary to step aboard and to coast down Broadway. Without a moment’s hesitation, she stepped on one of the thick branches. A young man on each side took her hand to steady her. Charlie pulled the tree into the street, hopped on, pushed off and away they went with Mary and Charlie hanging onto the sturdy branches. The cold wind rushed past as they flew down the hill. For Mary, that forbidden ride was an exhilarating adventure she never forgot, and the best Christmas present ever.