Ring Out Montana’s Sesquicentennial (1864-2014)

When Montana’s birth year ended and the first day of 1865 dawned, the Montana Post heralded the milestone with a long poem, perhaps penned by editor Thomas Dimsdale. It is addressed to the paper’s subscribers, commemorating the territory’s eventful first year that included the Civil War, the Vigilantes’ work, and laying the cornerstones of religion and education.

By 1864, Virginia City was Montana's first commercial and social hub. This photo was taken circa 1866.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

As Montana’s sesquicentennial comes to an end, here is a much-shortened version, taken with quite a bit of poetic license, of a celebratory epic:

Wake up! Wake Up! This New Year’s morn.
The Old Year’s dead—the New is born!
Wake up! The carrier’s heart is stirred
To emulate the early bird,
This birthday dawn of ‘Sixty-five,
And let you know he’s still alive.

And while you hear him gladly sing,
Toss him your New Year offering,
Nuggets are welcome to his hand
With good fair dust without much sand;
For Greenbacks, too, his fingers itch,
Since Jeff is nearing that “last ditch.”

What mighty burdens of the Past
Has the Old Year behind him cast;
Good old Uncle Sam—the rare old chap—
Has blazoned on his ample map
Another name—Montana fair—
And promises a future rare.

She’s put her servants all to work
To find where golden treasures lurk—
They’ve torn the gulches, burrowed far
In mountain, hill and rocky bar;
They’ve bound the waters to their use,
To turn the wheel and run the sluice.

The Vigilantes, staunch and true,
Have done a useful thing or two.
And smiling farms in valleys fair
Are made to team with riches rare.
They’ve builded towns with magic art
Where Traffic holds her humming mart.

Another year! How like an eagle’s flight—
How like a vision of the Summer’s night,
Its dying months have swiftly sped—
And great events put to bed.
The mighty page of History seldom bore
A nobler tablet than old Sixty-four.  

Happy New Year, Montana, and here’s to 150 more!

P.S. You can view the original poem on Chronicling America.

Happy Birthday MHS!

2014 has been the year of both territorial Montana’s and Helena’s 150th anniversaries. The New Year brings yet another 150th milestone celebration: the birthday of the Montana Historical Society. The organization is the second oldest such organization west of the Mississippi, founded when a group of prominent and farsighted men gathered early in 1865 at the Dance and Stuart Store in Virginia City. They included pioneer brothers James and Granville Stuart; vigilante prosecutor Wilbur Fisk Sanders; Territorial Chief Justice Hezekiah Hosmer; territorial legislator F. M. Thompson; and mapmaker Walter DeLacy. Territorial Governor Sidney Edgerton signed the incorporation on February 2, 1865. Unlike most other historical societies, the Montana Historical Society was born while historic events were occurring, and not created as a nostalgic look backwards. Its initial purpose was “to collect and arrange facts in regard to the early history” of the territory. It does that and much, much more.

The Montana Historical Society was founded in the Dance and Stuart Store, Virginia City, in 1865.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

In 1873, the society moved its collection of first-run territorial newspapers and other documents to Helena. Soon after, on January 9, 1874, fire destroyed most of it when Wilbur Fisk Sanders’ law office burned. In 1887, rented quarters in the new territorial capitol at the Lewis and Clark County Courthouse became a more permanent home. Reorganized in 1891, the society became a state agency. In 1902, it moved into its second home in the basement of the new Montana State Capitol.  Reorganized again in 1949, the Veterans and Pioneers Memorial Building became the society’s current home in 1953. Collections of all kinds fill its galleries, its library, its and storage facilities.
Today the society’s six programs are committed to education, research, and preservation that reach across the state in many ways. The research center includes 95 percent of all newspapers published in Montana; 18,000 reels of microfilm; 14,000 maps; 32,000 books and pamphlets; and 350,000 photographic images. The museum houses over 48,000 artifacts as well as textiles and extensive art collections. And the building is bursting at the seams.
The Montana Historical Society is the steward of our stories and belongs to all of Montana. On its 150th anniversary year, we invite you to visit us, become a member, and support your history.

George Bartholomew and the Great Western Circus

Theatrical troops and circuses traveled to Montana from the earliest times. The first circus performed at Bannack, Virginia City, and Helena in 1867. The Montana Post reported on July 6 that George Bartholomew’s Great Western Circus drew a crowd of eight hundred at Virginia City. Mary Ronan remembered the much anticipated event in Helena and that the only animals in Bartholomew’s circus were horses. There were bareback riders, equestriennes, acrobats, tightrope walkers, and clowns. These earliest traveling circuses, as Mary correctly recalled, were limited to performing horses. Bartholomew’s horses, however, were highly skilled and later brought him fame.

In Virginia City, residents lined the major thoroughfares as the performers paraded along the main street to the rousing music of the circus band.  The next evening, the audience thrilled at the “perch act,” the trick ponies Napoleon and Zebra, the hurdle chase, and expert bareback riding. There was, however, one mishap. As Mademoiselle Mathilda entered the ring, the band stopped to switch music and the horse followed suit coming to an abrupt stop. Mademoiselle sailed off and crashed against the outer ring-boards. Despite her violent fall, she hopped up and gracefully skipped out of the arena. She did not return to perform, but the Post speculated that she was not seriously hurt.

 
Circus owner George Bartholomew was a colorful character and an uncanny horse trainer who traveled the West with his Great Western Circus between 1867 and 1869. Bartholomew was perhaps the first professional “horse whisperer.” Several times his fortunes were reversed until 1879 when his horses performed in Oakland, California, in front of an audience of ten thousand. The performance cemented his fame. The valuable horses in Bartholomew’s Equine Paradox traveled in a special train car across the country. The sides of the boxcar advertised gentleness and kindness toward helpless creatures. Bartholomew’s horses performed a play in which horses played the major characters. Bartholomew believed horses could be trained like children and treated his horses thus. They performed incredible feats. According to their trainer, the only difference between horses and children was that horses couldn’t talk, or talk back.

Captain James Williams

Pennsylvania native James Williams was the son of Irish and Welsh immigrants. The West lured him as a young man. In 1856, Williams was involved in the violent Border Wars in Kansas where he was a “Free State” man. He followed the rush to Pikes Peak in 1858 and came to Bannack with a wagon train from Denver in 1862. In the absence of a leader, the travelers elected Williams to lead the train and thereafter he was known as Captain, or Cap, for short. Cap Williams followed the rush to Alder Gulch in 1863. Then during those dark turbulent days of lawlessness, he again served as captain, this time of the vigilantes. When robberies and murders terrified citizens, Cap Williams stepped forward to lead the vigilantes in the capture and hanging of some two dozen suspected road agents during winter of 1863-1864.

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 945-626

When this work was finished, Cap married and settled down in the emerald green ranchlands of Madison County’s Ruby Valley. But in March of 1887, searcher’s discovered Cap’s body hidden in a thicket. The newspapers reported that Cap had laid out his mittens and scarf as a pillow. He took a fatal dose of laudanum. He lay down knowing sleep would take over and the cold winter weather would do the rest. Some speculated that Virginia City banker Henry Elling was about to foreclose on his ranch. Others believed that his role as a vigilante weighed so heavily upon him that he could no longer live with the burden. Some however, had a different theory. Cap was a man of integrity, and he would never have willingly left his wife and seven children. Some believe that sentiments against Cap were still rife, and that he had enemies. Perhaps, they speculated, someone came along in the cold and offered him a fatal drink. A tombstone in a tiny burial ground today marks Cap’s grave. We will never know for sure what put him there.

The Gypsy Fortune Teller

Reigning over the Gypsy Arcade in Virginia City, the famous Gypsy Fortune Teller is the most unusual and rarest treasure among the hundreds of thousands of artifacts and antiques that fill the state-owned buildings there. Charles and Sue Bovey were inveterate collectors who bought whole inventories of antiquated goods. They bought the gypsy in the 1950s, and until the 1970s, tourists could drop a nickel in the machine and hear their fortunes read. The gypsy would flash her creepy eyes, click her teeth, and tell fortunes through a speaking tube.
When the gypsy eventually no longer worked so well, the Boveys placed her at Bob’s Place—a local restaurant—where she gathered dust for decades. The State of Montana inherited her with the Bovey properties purchased in 1998, and her real value only slowly was realized. The Montana Heritage Commission removed her from public display. In 2004, renovations of the gypsy’s internal mechanisms and appearance began. Completed in 2006, the gypsy was then exhibited in the Arcade where she remains today. During her restoration, word got out that Montana had a very valuable item. Famous illusionist David Copperfield tried to talk the state into selling her. He reportedly offered around $2 million, but the state fortunately refused. Copperfield, who is an avid collector of penny arcade games, claims the gypsy is one of a kind, the last of about ten that were manufactured. Other mechanized fortune teller machines dispensed cards, but the gypsy’s fortunes were recorded on a hidden player at the back.

The Virginia City Fortune Teller, one of ten manufactured in the early nineteenth century, may be the only one left.
Courtesy MHC.

The Mills Novelty Company of Chicago made the gypsy around 1906. The Mills Company also manufactured the first slot machines in the 1890s and the first refrigerated Coca Cola vending machine in 1935. It was one of few companies to deal in both vending and gambling machines. Between 1905 and 1930, the Mills Company was the world’s leading manufacturer of coin operated machines, including slot machines, vending machines, and jukeboxes.

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream!

Summer makes you think of ice cream, but have you ever wondered where it came from?
It has a longer history than you might think. The Roman emperor Nero used ice brought down from the mountains to mix with fruit. In the seventh century A.D., the Chinese introduced milk and ice mixtures which were then brought to Europe. Sorbets and ices were popular at French and Italian courts. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Dolly Madison served “iced cream” at their tables. Home cooks and ice cream parlor confectioners would put a bowl of sweetened cream into a larger bowl of salt and ice and stir until it froze. The invention of the wooden bucket freezer and rotary paddles was a major breakthrough, and along with the first hand-cranked freezers patented in 1846 and 1848, ice cream making became easier.
 

An early advertisement for an ice cream freezer.

Ice cream was made from the very earliest days on the frontier. In 1865, the Montana Post advertised a Ladies' Ice Cream Saloon in Virginia City.

Advertisement from the Montana Post, August 5, 1865. Via Chronicling America.

In 1868, ice cream was a major part of the Fourth of July in Helena. On May 11, 1869, as the steamer Nile made its way to Fort Benton, the crew acquired a load of ice from Fort Peck. The steamboat stopped at the mouth of the Musselshell to buy cordwood from woodchoppers “Liver Eating” Johnson and X. Beidler. As was customary, the woodchoppers were invited aboard. It was Captain Grant Marsh’s birthday, and the cook made ice cream to celebrate. Neither Johnson nor Beidler had ever heard of it. They were suspicious of its coldness on a hot day, but they bravely ate their portions. And in 1872 at Urgam’s Occidental Restaurant in Deer Lodge, a plate of ice cream cost twenty-five cents. But it wasn’t until the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904 that “walk away” ice cream was introduced. We have been enjoying ice cream cones ever since.

Mining Camp Architecture

Bannack, Virginia City, and Helena each had a turn as Montana’s territorial capital, but each was destined for a different future. Today Bannack is a state park whose empty buildings mostly date to the 1880s and later. Helena owes its survival beyond the mining phase to the Northern Pacific which linked the town to distant markets in 1883. Few 1860s gold camp remnants survive in Helena. But Virginia City has a remarkable fifty-one 1860s gold rush-era buildings. Virginia City’s buildings retain their antiquated storefronts. Only small panes of glass, packed in sawdust, could survive transport over rough terrain. So merchants used French doors that allowed maximum light into their stores. Helena once sported the same type of storefront, but with the advent of the railroad, storefronts were remodeled with big display windows. Lack of rail transportation is partly why most of Virginia City’s storefronts escaped remodeling. Virginia City’s 1860s buildings illustrate how frontier architecture was all about illusion. As the town transitioned from a temporary mining camp to a more permanent settlement, shop keepers began to add false fronts to the log cabins. False fronts were architecturally important to mining camps because they made buildings seem taller, larger, and grander than they really were. This offered residents a sense of security in remote places like Alder Gulch.  To the false fronts, shopkeepers began to add half-columns, arches, and medallions. These, crafted in wood on the frontier, mimicked the stone and brick ornamentation in the buildings of cities far away. Inside, muslin stretched smooth and tacked down over the rough log walls gave the illusion of plaster. Then, wallpaper applied over the muslin made primitive interiors seem like tastefully decorated rooms.

Muslin stretched smooth over log ceiling and walls, seen here in the McGovern Store,  made interiors seem like finished rooms.

Virginia City’s first substantial buildings, like Content’s Corner and the Kiskadden Barn, were of rubblestone. A layer of plaster scored to look like stone blocks covered the rough stones. The effect was dramatic. These survivors and historic photographs of them give us a real sense of early residents’ attempts at civilization.

The Kiskadden Barn sports a tall false front and a on the ground level, plaster  scored to look like cut stone.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 956-249

Mathilda Dalton

Epidemics were a terrible danger in all mining camps. Not only were diseases and their causes not well understood, but miners were careless with their water sources and the streams needed for placer mining quickly became polluted. Typhoid, spread through contaminated water, was particularly common. The Dalton family learned about this danger firsthand. The Daltons were natives of Maine and came west from Wisconsin traveling with the first Fisk expedition in 1862. The family of six settled at Bannack. Granville Stuart nicknamed Mathilda “Desdemona” after the character in Shakespeare’s Othello because “she was beautiful and so good.” Edwin Ruthven Purple in his gold rush narrative Perilous Passage describes “Dez” as tall and magnificently formed, and one of the belles of Bannack. One smitten lad supposedly blew out his brains for her. Another spurned lover, however, said that everything she ate went to her feet which were unusually large.

Mathilda Dalton, Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

 The Daltons moved to Virginia City the following year in 1863. Mathilda Dalton, at twenty, was the oldest child; her three siblings were much younger than she. The family had hardly settled at Virginia City when Mathilda fell victim to typhoid. Mrs. Dalton nursed her daughter through the illness, but then fell ill herself. Her husband also contracted the disease. Mathilda was still recovering in January 1864 when both her mother and her father died. There were few options for single women, and men greatly outnumbered them in the gold camp. Mathilda was left to care for her three younger siblings, and so she decided to marry. She and her husband, Zebulon Thibadeau, returned to Wisconsin and later relocated to Wallace, Idaho.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Dalton are buried on Boot Hill, Virginia City’s first cemetery. The Daltons’ lonely graves are the only marked burials, except for the five road agents. Because of the stigma attached to the five, most families moved their loved ones’ graves to Hillside Cemetery across the ridge. By that time there was no one to move the Daltons, or who remembered where they were buried. It was not until the 1920s that Mathilda’s children returned to Virginia City to mark their grandparents’ graves.

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.

Hydraulicking

Placer gold is that which is loose in the soil and closest to the surface. Placer mining requires water to wash the dirt, perseverance, and a strong back. Gold is the heaviest material in the soil, and so in the process of washing, the heavy gold is the residue remaining in the pan or the sluice box. The rich goldfields that drew miners to Montana in the mid-1860s only held so much placer gold. Miners wanted to be sure to extract all of it, and so when that closest to the surface was depleted, they resorted to other methods of extraction. Hydraulic mining, or power washing, was one method. The Romans used a similar technique. They filled a reservoir or tank above the area to be flushed and allowed the water to flow down the hillside to expose the veins of gold. The first hydraulic mining in the West was done in California in 1853. Using a hose made of rawhide and a wooden nozzle to channel the water into elevated flumes, gravity created enough water pressure to move large rocks and boulders. Miners employed much the same method at Bannack, Alder Gulch, and Last Chance. They created a reservoir, and then water wheels channeled water under tremendous pressure into huge hoses. These were then directed to the hillsides to power wash the soil down to the bedrock. A series of sluices filtered the dirt. This destructive mining method drastically changed the landscape, reducing once-timbered hills to bare rock.

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, Lot 26 B7 F6

Mining Camp New Year’s

Martha Edgerton Plassman wrote in 1926 about early New Year’s celebrations in Montana and how they evolved as times changed. On New Year’s Day at Bannack in 1863, fourteen-year-old Martha and two other young girls set out to keep the custom of visiting. There were few women in the mining camp, and no proper houses to call upon, and so the three stopped at George Chrisman’s cabin, then moved down the street to Thompson and Swift’s general store. Inside they found Henry Plummer—later hanged by the vigilantes—in an argument with another fellow, both quite inebriated. The conversation was heated, and Mr. Thompson put a hand on Plummer’s shoulder, pointing him to the back door. The three teenagers, caught in the middle, made a hasty retreat out the front. Martha was so frightened that she never again stepped inside a store in Bannack.

This photo of the governor's official residence shows what Bannack looked like in 1863.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 

In Virginia City, between Christmas and New Year’s of 1867, things were different. The streets were gay with fashionable ladies visiting from house to house. Music and dancing were easy to find, and spirits flowed freely under many hospitable roofs. Nearly ten years later in Helena on New Year’s Day 1877, the New York tradition of ladies receiving gentlemen acquaintances was the practice. The newspaper listed the names of ladies receiving callers; several usually went together as hostesses. Dressed in their most beautiful gowns, they received guests throughout the afternoon. Tables were set with the best china and silver and heaped with many kinds of cakes and rolls. But Martha recalled that unlike rough and raw Virginia City, in Helena coffee usually took the place of strong spirits.

P.S. Remember when Henry Plummer hosted Thanksgiving dinner?

Thanksgiving in December

The first official observance of Thanksgiving after the creation of Montana Territory came in 1865. Although President Lincoln had established the last Thursday of November as Thanksgiving Day, following Lincoln’s assassination, President Johnson chose December 7 as the day of official observance.

President Andrew Johnson, courtesy Library of Congress

Residents of the mining camps paused in their relentless search for golden treasure and gave thanks for their good luck and for the end of the Civil War. Virginia City businesses closed. There were private celebrations and culinary preparations in many homes and restaurants. The Montana Post reported that sleighs were gliding merrily around town all day, men hobnobbed at the bars, and there was a singing party in the governor’s office. The next year, 1866, at Last Chance, celebrations were more community oriented. Young ladies put on their pretties and attended the Firemen’s Ball on Thanksgiving Eve at the Young America Hall. Markets were well supplied for Thanksgiving Day feasts. Shoppers could choose elk, deer, bear, sage hens, grouse, and pheasant. There was no mention of turkeys, however, at Thanksgiving tables on that particular holiday.

This Helena meat market on Bridge Street offered mostly wild game in 1869.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 954-179

Ghostly Visitors at the Bonanza Inn

Halloween is over, but I can't resist sharing one last ghost story.

The Bonanza Inn in Virginia City dates to the mid-1860s. It was built as the Madison County Courthouse, but three Catholic Sisters of Charity arrived from Leavenworth, Kansas, to convert it to St. Mary’s Hospital for miners in 1876. Mining waned, and the sisters moved on in 1879, but they, and some of their patients, left unusual legacies.

From the 1950s, guests have reported ghostly visits. A female spirit soothes the sick and comforts the depressed. Some claim to have seen the shadowy nun moving along Idaho Street or sitting in a pew in the Episcopal Church. I set out to discover her identity. One of the sisters was Irene McGrath, an 18-year-old novice who endeared herself to Virginia City. Community women, concerned about her safety among the rough miners, made a pact to secretly follow her whenever she went out alone. Years later as superior at St. James Hospital in Butte, Mother Irene cared for a patient who had known her at Virginia City. From her Mother Irene was overwhelmed to learn of this service. It’s not surprising that she might come back to repay the debt.

Not all encounters at the Bonanza Inn are comforting. In the summer of 1975, the Bonanza Inn housed the production crew filming The Missouri Breaks with Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson. The occupant in Room 1 was ill and declined dinner in Ennis. As he dozed alone in the building, a loud knocking jolted him awake. He flung open the door to find no one there. Then behind him came a sharp knock at the window.  He whirled around, pulled up the shade: no one was there. Then at the door, at the window, at the door—he gathered his belongings and thereafter slept in his car.

Room 1 sat locked and unused for twenty years. In 1997, the State of Montana acquired the building for housing state workers and others. Fear paralyzed one of the first overnight guests in Room 1. She awakened to see a male figure looming at the foot of her bed, wearing a wide brimmed hat and duster. She watched him fade away. Another guest in Room 1 felt someone watching her through the window. Drawing back the curtain, she found a figure wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a duster, staring at her.  During renovations to the building, another worker spent a scary night as something under his bed plucked at the bedsprings.
I stayed in Room 7 in the summer of 2000. Coming out of the steamy bathroom after a shower, a strong unpleasant odor hit me, like that of the geriatric ward where I worked as a candy striper in high school. The cloying smell lingered then dissipated. Another guest in Room 7 awakened to the sound of water splashing, as in a bowl. Later she discovered that the sisters used basins for washing wounds and bathing patients.

One hot and still August afternoon I lay down to rest in Room 2, thinking about my lecture that evening. I had the Bonanza Inn all to myself. At first they were so soft I didn’t notice. Then I could hear the small female footsteps in sturdy shoes at the far end of the hallway. She came closer, pausing midway down the hall. I clearly heard a key turn in a lock. The door clicked open and softly closed. I heard a few bumps and clunks, and then more footsteps behind the closed door. Slowly they grew faint and then faded away. I felt honored that Sister Irene visited me.

Ghostly Encounter

I heard voices in the empty kitchen and the air felt strangely heavy. I had stayed in the 1860s Daems House before, but never alone. It was once home to an early-day Virginia City physician. The spacious house, actually two houses joined together, originally served as both the physician’s office and family’s home. It is now under state ownership. On this particular evening, something was off-kilter. I had recently written about Martha Daems—married back in 1913 to a grandson of the doctor. My writing brought some scandalous family skeletons out of the closet. It occurred to me that maybe the house was unhappy with me. I pushed that idea aside. I loved this historic home’s timeworn rooms and the state’s valiant efforts to restore them. So I took advantage of the solitude. I made a sweep of the house with my digital camera.

Scrolling through the photos, I noticed orbs—bubbles of light that some believe are evidence of the supernatural—in a number of the frames. Odd, I thought. I struggled to shut and lock the back door in the adjoining room. The lock was difficult, so I made double sure that it was secure, pulled down all the shades, turned out the lights, and fumbled my way to bed in the dark. I awoke with a start around 1 a.m. The house was utterly silent, but something wasn’t right. What was it? Then it dawned on me that the room was no longer dark. I crept out of bed, stepped into the back room, and a scream stuck in my throat. The back door that I had so carefully secured stood wide open; silver moonlight flooded into the house, touching everything with an eerie metallic glimmer. I instantly knew that the heaviness—whatever it was—had gone out the door.
Later that same week, in August of 2009, I again stayed alone at the Daems House.  I took more photographs, but none included orbs. Virginia City has its secrets, and locals have their stories. And I have my own story about the Daems House to add to the list.

Jim Kiskadden’s Famous Connection

James Henry Kiskadden and his older brother were well known in the earliest days in Virginia City, Montana. Before they came to Montana, the brothers operated mercantiles in Kansas, Denver, and Salt Lake City. Kiskadden & Co transported the First Regiment of Colorado Volunteers from Denver to Fort Union in the Territory of New Mexico in 1862 for one of the few major military engagements between the Confederacy and the Union in the west. James accompanied the forced march and served as informant to the newspapers. The Kiskadden brothers built the Kiskadden Barn, one the key early buildings on Wallace Street in Virginia City, and opened a grocery/mercantile there. The building has recently been one of the state’s major stabilization projects. James Kiskadden was several times on the fringes of fame. On March 22, 1865, he married Virginia Slade, the widow of Jack Slade, the last man hanged by the Virginia City vigilantes. The couple was divorced in 1868. In 1870, Kiskadden married famous actress Annie Adams. Their daughter, Maude, born in in 1872, was only eleven when her father died in of pneumonia in San Francisco. He is buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Salt Lake City. Maude Kiskadden, under the stage name of Maude Adams, became one of the most famous and highly paid actresses of the early twentieth century.

Maude Adams as Peter Pan, October 1916
From Charles Frohman: Manager and Man via Wikipedia

One of her best-loved roles was that of Peter Pan in the first American production of the play, The Boy That Would Not Grow Up. It opened on Broadway in 1904, and until her retirement in 1916, she often recreated that role in theaters across the country.

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!

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.

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.

J. L. Campbell’s Guide to Idaho

J. L. Campbell’s travel guide to the Territory of Idaho, Idaho: Six Months in the New Gold Regions, was intended to aid would-be emigrants contemplating a journey to the new gold fields. Campbell traveled the region in 1863, but by 1864 when his guide was published, it was already outdated. Montana Territory had been carved out of the vast chunk of Idaho. Campbell’s guide, however, was a useful tool because it described the route from Omaha, Nebraska, to the diggings at Bannack and Virginia City. Campbell offers advice, suggests items to take on the journey, and lists good campsites. His description of the Bannack mines includes a fascinating historical tidbit. He claims that he saw an ancient mine shaft where the miners presumably dug down to gold. A large pine tree, one foot in diameter, had grown in the mine shaft, attesting to the age of the mine. A couple of ancient timber huts stood nearby. Campbell noted that in the dry climate, timber exposed to weather could last a very long time. He theorized that the mines were the work of Spaniards who came north from Mexico exploring in the 1700s as some chronicles suggest. Most modern historians agree, however, that Spanish explorers did not venture this far north. A more likely explanation for this anomaly is that the mine was a stone quarry where Native Americans dug for chert to make weapons.

A Shoshone wickiup. Image from explorebigsky.com

Certainly the timber huts are Native American wickiups, not shelters of Spanish origin. These temporary shelters do survive to great age and—along with tipi rings, rock cairns, and other manmade features—are part of Montana’s archaeological record.