Friday Photo: Thanksgiving Turkey

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 950-354

Are you ready for Thanksgiving dinner? I'd say this young man isn't. I hope your feast is filled with joy and free of regret.

P.S. The photo was taken by Evelyn Cameron.

Friday Photo: Cousin Jack Race Horses

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, ST 001.072

The description included with this stereograph states that: "A Cousin Jack is a person from Cornwall." Perhaps this is insight into the humor that photographer N. A. Forsyth intended in his caption. He took the photo in Butte between 1901 and 1911.

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.

Friday Photo: Family Portrait

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 90-87.31-1

Gusta Magnusen Braley and her children, Ida and Clare, sat for a portrait session with photographer Evelyn Cameron. Their choice to include the dog is somewhat unique, but he certainly looks dapper in profile.

Friday Photo: Happy 4th!

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, Lot 26 Box 8 Folder 5, Mines and Mining photograph collection

Happy Independence Day! This patriotic boy climbed into a bucket on the Montana Coal and Coke Company’s tram line in Electric, Montana.

Friday Photo: Dolls

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 82-19

World Doll Day is tomorrow. These children look ready to celebrate! Unfortunately, nothing is known about their identities, the photographer, or the location of the photo.

Growing up in Butte

Butte, the mining camp that became an industrial hub, was as unique for its children as it was an anomaly. Copper king W. A. Clark’s Columbia Gardens, which boasted one of the nation’s first Ferris wheels and a spectacular roller coaster, was his gift to the community, and children especially loved it. Mining camp ruffians and children of prominent mine officials rubbed elbows on the streetcar that took them all to the gardens each week for Children’s Day. Children by the hundreds enjoyed the entertainment. At the end of the day, they would pick huge bouquets of pansies to take home to their mothers.

Children pick pansies in Columbia Gardens. Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, ST 001.120

But it was not all fun and games. Butte boys who reached puberty and could chew a plug of Peerless tobacco without throwing up were considered man enough to work in the mines. In the 1930s, a sign on the fence around the red light district read “Men under 21 keep out,” acknowledgment that young boys in Butte became men long before they reached legal age. Of all the mining camps, Butte was probably the most dangerous place for youngsters. This made Butte’s children tough and unusually daring. They seemed to thrive in the polluted air and unsanitary conditions frequently noted in reports to the Board of Health.

When Maury Mulcahy was growing up in Butte in the 1930s and 1940s, mine officials came around to his elementary school and showed the kids what a blasting cap was, how to extract the explosive powder, and then warned them not to pick them up. After the lecture, every boy went out in search of caps. They would pour the powder into a bottle with a wick, put it on the train tracks, and try to explode it as a train passed by. Mulcahy knew children who lost limbs to this form of play. The extreme danger made the game that much more fun.

Friday Photo: Columbia Gardens Roller Coaster

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archvies, ST 001.135

Columbia Gardens in Butte boasted one of the nation’s first Ferris wheels as well as this spectacular roller coaster, built in 1906. Photo by N. A. Forsythe, circa 1906-1911.

Music and Pines

When Fred Kuphal was a little boy in Germany, he told his mother that his teacher took a goose down from the wall, stroked it with a stick, and made it sing. That began Kuphal’s love affair wih the violin. The Kuphals immigrated to Helena in 1883 where Fred became a promising violinist. He went back to study in Germany, returned to Helena to give music lessons and conduct his own orchestra and went on to join the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1919, newly organized under William A. Clark Jr. The affiliation lasted until he retired at the age of eighty. He died at the age of ninety-five in 1975. But Kuphal left a legacy he shared with hundreds of Helena school children. In 1899, before he left to study in Germany, a forest fire blackened the eastern slope of Mount Helena. School administrators organized an outing on Arbor Day. Students marched up the slope of Mount Helena, each carrying a basket of evergreen seedlings and an orange to reward their work. Fred Kuphal’s violin sang to them as they planted. Kuphal’s career and the trees flourished. Today the century-old grove stands out on the eastern slope. In 1966, the Helena City Commission commemorated the 1899 planting, proclaiming that the clump of trees in the ravine of Mount Helena be named the Fred Kuphal Grove. The grove honors the violinist whose beautiful music lightened the tasks of digging holes and watering seedlings after a long trek up the mountain. At the end of the school year in 2012, retiring Central School teacher Nancy Robinson, moved by this story, led her class up the same slope, planting seedlings, and planting a meaningful memory in the minds of her last students. Happy Arbor Day!

Photo by Eliza Wiley, Helena Independent Record 

Photo by Eliza Wiley, Helena Independent Record

Friday Photo: Skiing

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, H-3285

Children ski in Yellowstone National Park in 1894. F. Jay Haynes took the photo.

Christmas in Helena 1884

One of the coldest holidays on record in Montana was that of 1884 when temperatures dipped to 30 degrees below zero. That Christmas Eve there was a foot of new snow as some fifty children assembled at the Episcopal Church at Grand and Warren in Helena. They stood in awe of the Christmas tree decorated with ripe, golden fruit. With mouths watering, they anticipated distribution of the rare, precious treats. As Benjamin Benson arrived at the church late, he smelled smoke and saw telltale signs curling out the windows. Benson ushered the children to safety in a storefront at the Brown Block. The alarm sounded. Firemen came quickly with their hose carriage and the steamer named “City of Helena.” Firemen took water from a cistern at Fifth and Warren and pumped it through two hundred feet of hose. Although ice soon coated the firemen, the water miraculously did not freeze in the hose. The church was insured, but the Christmas tree with its delectable decorations was a total loss and the children were disappointed.

This map shows the location of the Episcopal Church (center). Library of Congress, American Memory Map Collection.

Christmas dinners at local eateries, however, were not a disappointment. At the Cosmopolitan Hotel, a grand Christmas tree sparkled and bouquets adorned the festive tables. The International Hotel served many who preferred the chef's traditional meal rather than one at home. The Bon Ton restaurant served the most expensive dinner adding quail and woodcock to traditional fare. And at Mrs. Norris' exclusive boarding house, guests enjoyed a Christmas feast finished with luxurious ice cream. But it was a tiny private restaurant that won the highest praise. The Nagle sisters at Porter Flats on Ewing Street—the first large apartment building in Helena with fully equipped kitchens in every unit—served the most impressive meal. The Herald praised everything from the oyster soup, roast turkey, and mashed potatoes to Philadelphia ice cream and Java coffee.  The Nagle sisters, said the reporter, “made us think that our lot was cast in pleasant places when we put our legs under their mahogany table for our Christmas dinner of 1884."

May your Christmas be just as pleasant.

Friday Photo: Toy Hospital

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 81-34.2732

Great Falls firemen brought joy to local children from their toy hospital in 1923. The photo was taken by the Anaconda Copper Company photographer. What would you have brought to Santa for repair?

P.S. Remember this adorable kid?

Daddy Reeves

A. I. “Daddy” Reeves came to Helena in 1892 and became a Christmas institution. The Reeves Music House brought many fine musicians and musical events to Helena. Reeves liked to tell the story about how he got his name. His parents weren’t much on naming their large brood of children, and when he went to school, the only name he had was Baby. The teacher suggested he needed a name, so he came up with initials he chose from the alphabet the teacher had hung on the wall. The A and I don’t stand for anything. In 1928, Reeves’s business and a huge collection of sheet music went up in smoke when lightning struck a rooftop and burned nearly an entire city block. Reeves did not lament. He started again and ran his shop until he retired in about 1945 and moved to the Masonic home in the Helena Valley. Reeves, known to hundreds of kids as Daddy, taught music lessons to hundreds of Helena youths. He organized Helena’s newsboys and the kids at Intermountain Children’s Home and St. Joseph’s Orphanage into choirs and harmonica bands.

Daddy Reeves stands at left with the Montana Deaconess School harmonica choir in 1929.
Photo courtesy Intermountain. L.H. Jorud, photographer

Most children did not suspect that for more than fifty years Daddy Reeves was the official Elks Lodge Santa Claus. He never duplicated his grand entrances. He arrived by steam automobile or horse-drawn sleigh and once hid for hours in a fireplace at the Montana Club before bursting out. In 1944, when Reeves played Santa for the fiftieth time at age eighty-two, the Helena Independent wished him the same amount of happiness to carry him over the trail of love, kindness, and joy he blazed for Helena boys and girls.

P.S. Christmas seems to inspire good works, even from the Anaconda Company.

Friday Photo: Little Pumpkin Creek

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 981-588

When he photographed these girls from a dryland farm on Little Pumpkin Creek, photographer L.A. Huffman noted that this was how the creek got its name. I hope your preparations for Thanksgiving are just as bountiful.

Friday Photo: The Bookmobile Comes to Fairfield

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 89-38 F5

During the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration funded library service demonstration projects—including this bookmobile—as part of the New Deal. These children are browsing through books in Fairfield, Montana.

Central School: Most Prized of the Lot

Red bricks mark two time capsules that lie beneath the sidewalk along Warren Street in front of Central School. Children ceremoniously placed them there a few years ago, confident that the school would still stand in 2055 for other generations of children to open. Central’s alumni brick project, begun a decade ago, illustrates how this historic school on its prominent vantage point is not just a building. The school itself is a time capsule of the memories of generations and the living heart of the Helena community. Bricks along the Warren Street sidewalk, bordered by small handprints, complement the time capsules and commemorate alumni and teachers from 1913 to the present time. Central’s importance, however, goes back much farther than 1913.

Officials broke ground for the first Central School, originally called the Helena Graded School, on July 29, 1875. City fathers put a great deal of thought into its location. Helena was still a rough-and-tumble gold camp, but its inclusion along the projected Northern Pacific Railroad’s route gave it new prestige. That fact, coupled with the locating of a federal assay office—one of only five in the nation—at Helena, helped wrest its designation as territorial capital away from Virginia City. In preparation for this honor, city fathers planned the best school in the territory on the most visible site. The location was so critical and the site they selected so perfect that it was worth the effort to relocate the city’s cemetery, established on that prominent ridge in 1865. Helena Graded School opened in January 1876, built with 350,000 Kessler bricks. It was the first school in Montana Territory with separate classrooms for the various grades, a high school curriculum, and a kindergarten.  By 1889, Central School was perhaps not the most architecturally pleasing, but of Helena’s seven public schools it was the “oldest and most familiar structure in the city and….the most prized of the lot."

Central School students pose behind the school circa 1910. Photo by Edward Reinig
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 74-104.292 GP

The current Central School, designed by George Carsley, opened in 1915, built just behind the older school. Sydney Silverman Lindauer was among its first students. Like many other native-born Helenans, she moved away but never forgot her roots. Born in 1909, Sydney carried memories of Helena with her all of her ninety-six years. As she embarked upon her life’s final chapter, she shared her fondest thoughts. Foremost among them were cherished memories of Central School. During her attendance, both old and new schools stood together for a time until the old Central was razed in 1921 and the two symmetrical wings were added to the new building.

At Central School, Sydney found memorable teachers and lifelong friends including classmate Marjorie Stewart, daughter of Governor Samuel Stewart. The Stewarts were the first executive family to occupy the Original Governor’s Mansion. Sydney credited Central with the foundation that molded her into a celebrated columnist. She wrote for the Red Bluff, California, Daily News for forty-five years.  Sydney recalled never wanting to miss a day of school. She walked to Central even when the snow was higher than the top of her head. Trustees at the Lewis and Clark County jail shoveled paths for the students. Sydney and her friends somberly watched the guards sit on piles of shoveled snow with guns drawn. And she never forgot the Central cheer that went something like “Strawberry shortcake, huckleberry pie, V-I-C-T-O-R-Y.” Shortly before she passed away in 2005, Sydney asked for a Central brick with her name and the date “1919.” She did not live to see her name set in the sidewalk, but she knew it was there along with the names of many other alumni she had known.

The present Central School will reach the century mark in 2015, when the first of the two time capsules is slated for opening. It would be the first existing Helena school to reach such a milestone. Central’s continued presence on its prominent ridge is more than a school board issue. It is a community concern. Not only does Central School maintain a place of honor as a historic cornerstone of Montana’s public school system, it is the ambassador for all Helena’s historic schools. What happens to it sets a precedent. And its fate affects not only the immediate Central neighborhood, but also the community and those who travel here to experience Helena’s historic landscapes.

Support the preservation of this community icon at www.savehelenaschools.com, and if you have a Central School memory, please share it on the Montana Historical Society's Facebook page.

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!

Childhood at Garnet

Elizabeth Farmer Smith wrote wonderful descriptions of her childhood at Garnet in the 1920s. Her father was a mining engineer and the family spent three summers at Garnet beginning when Elizabeth was ten. She recalled what fun it was to slide down the mine dumps on pieces of tin. She rode in the empty ore cars as the men pushed them back into the mine to reload and watched her father scrape the mercury tables at the end of the day. The balls of mercury caught the gold, and when enough had accumulated, the blacksmith would melt it in a vat, leaving a golden blob at the bottom.

Elizabeth and a friend sit precariously on top of a hydraulic elevator in Garnet.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

The Fourth of July dance was the summer’s highlight. Adults spread cornmeal on the oak floor in the dance hall. Elizabeth and the other children skated and slid to prepare it for dancing.

Elizabeth stands beside the family's 1922 Buick. Her mother is at the wheel, and her sister is in the back seat.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 79-60.6

The family had a 1922 Buick that Elizabeth’s mother learned to drive, an unusual feat for a woman at that time. But the horse-drawn stage to Bearmouth still operated, and three times a week it would bring the Farmers a gallon jug of sweet milk. By the time the stage reached Garnet, up the steep log-lined grade that reminded Elizabeth of corduroy, it had jostled so much that there was always butter on top.  Elizabeth remembered that the boys played mean tricks on Frank Davey, whose many properties and businesses included the general store. Mr. Davey guarded his merchandise to a fault. The boys would order candy that Mr. Davey kept behind a glass case, and when Mr. Davey plunked the sack on the counter, the boys would snatch it, put down rocks instead of money, and run away. Once, the boys found a three-piece suit like Mr. Davey always wore, stuffed it with straw, and hung the effigy on the hotel’s flagpole. The ultimate insult was that Mr. Davey also owned the hotel. Elizabeth’s colorful recollections can be found in the Montana Historical Society’s Research Center vertical files.

The Story of Sack Woman

Beloved Salish elder Louis Adams recently shared the story of Sack Woman with a group of high school students at Fales Flat in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. Centuries-old Ponderosa pines surrounded the group. These trees bore scars that Sack Woman herself had made more than a century ago in teaching her people how to gather nourishment.

Louis Adams tells stories in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness

Louis told the students that when he was a boy, Sack Woman was very old. But she was a powerful person. He and the other kids were afraid of her because it was her job to punish children. When a child misbehaved, parents would say, “I am going to tell Sack Woman.” If a child stole something or talked back to a parent or disobeyed, Sack Woman would come looking for the guilty child. She would catch him, put him in a gunny sack, and dunk him in the river. One day Louis did something that got him into big trouble. His mother told Sack Woman, and Louis was scared. Sometime later, the family was at a gathering and Sack Woman came after him. But she was elderly, and Louis moved much faster than she could. Although she chased him, Louis got away. And he thought he had escaped. Sometime later, Louis had forgotten all about his misdeed and figured Sack Woman had forgotten too. He was at a family gathering, and Sack Woman was there. She came up quietly behind him and threw the sack over his head. She had him, and Louis was so scared! Sack Woman dragged him screaming down to the water and dunked him. Later on, Sack Woman called Louis over to her side, invited him to sit down beside her, and talked with him for a long time. She gently explained why she had dunked him. Children have to learn to be good, she told him, and it was her job to make sure that children grew up to be good people. And to be a good person, you have to learn from your mistakes. After that, Louis greatly respected Sack Woman, and loved her for what she had taught him.

Mining Camp Dangers

Epidemics were fairly commonplace throughout the nineteenth century and knew no social boundaries. Rich or poor, no person was immune. Typhoid and cholera plagued mining camps because miners quickly polluted the water source. But measles, whooping cough and diphtheria also invaded the communities. The great silver camp of Elkhorn that flourished in the 1880s has a particularly pathetic legacy, reminding us that sometimes the sacrifices of parents—leaving home and family for new opportunities—were minor compared to the sacrifices they imposed on their children. Dr. William Dudley served as camp doctor but could do nothing when a diphtheria epidemic in 1889 claimed most of Elkhorn’s children. His wife was pregnant with their second child, and the Dudleys left Elkhorn abruptly, leaving their first born son, a casualty of the epidemic, buried in the hillside cemetery. During that same year, on September 27, Harry Walton, 9, and Albin Nelson, 10, found a quicksilver container full of black powder. Adults filled these containers to detonate for community celebrations like the Fourth of July, and had overlooked this one. The boys managed to explode it and blew themselves to bits. They share a grave in the small cemetery.

Young boy in a coffin. Illness knew no social boundaries in Montana’s mining camps.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

Mining-related accidents were a hazard to children, and explosives and mine shafts were not the only perils. Dredging created its own danger. At Bannack in 1916, three girls were enjoying the warmth of a summer afternoon, splashing and wading in Grasshopper Creek. Laughing and talking, they waded out into a pond created by the dredge boat, not realizing they had gone too far. Suddenly the girls stepped off a ledge into nine feet of water. None could swim. Twelve-year-old Smith Paddock heard the commotion and managed to pull two of the girls out, but the third girl, sixteen-year-old Dorothy Dunn, drowned.

Dorothy Dunn, second in line on the left, wading in the dredge pond at Bannack.
Courtesy of Kathie Stachler, Dorothy's great-niece.