The Sad End of Major John Owen: Part 1

John Owen came west as a sutler—or provisioner—for the army. He was in the Bitterroot Valley in 1850 when Jesuits closed St. Mary’s Mission and offered it for sale. Owen’s purchase for $250 was reputedly Montana’s first recorded legal document. Relocating a short distance north of the mission, Owen built a trading post. In 1856, he was appointed special agent to the Flathead Indians, hence the honorary title, “Major.” Owen openly criticized the government and advocated passionately for the Indians.

Montana’s first written conveyance of property is this bill of sale.
Joseph Joset, S. J., to John Owen, recorded in Missoula County. MHS Archives.

Elected to both the first and second territorial legislatures, Owen attended neither. Yet even in his absence, Owen was named a charter member of the Montana Historical Society. Among the twelve original members, which included W. F. Sanders, Granville and James Stuart, and C. P. Higgins, Owen was the first to reside in Montana.

Owen’s hospitality at Fort Owen became widely renowned. Travelers and guests enjoyed excellent hospitality and fine wines, delectable meals, even iced lemonade. Owen’s library was, according to Lt. John Mullan, the finest in the Northwest. However, Owen’s status in the territory was tenuous. The government viewed his position as Indian agent and trading post proprietor as a conflict. Legality of the title to his land was in question even in the 1850s, and the boundaries were disputed. By the late 1860s, financial troubles forced Owen to mortgage his property. Worse, he began to suffer deteriorating mental capabilities and lapses of memory. Then in 1868, Nancy, Owen’s beloved Shoshone wife, died. This event escalated his diminishing mental health.

Fort Owen was an oasis in the wilderness from the 1850s through the 1860s.
Special Collections, Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library, The University of Montana-Missoula

In 1871 or 1872, friends committed Owen to St. John’s Hospital in Helena where the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth cared for the indigent “mentally deranged.” Owen’s fort was abandoned. Most blamed his dementia on alcoholism. Future president James A. Garfield, then a congressman, passed a night at Fort Owen and noted in his  journal that the major was a “bankrupt and a sot.” Father Lawrence Palladino, however, contended that “it may not have been so,” since Owen appeared robust but “his memory continued slowly to fail.”

Chinese Altar

Preparations are underway for the Montana Historical Society’s latest major exhibit, The Chinese in Montana: Our Forgotten Pioneers. The exhibit will feature Chinese textiles, ceramics, and cultural treasures that have never been on public exhibit. Items  include a sixteen-foot hand written banner from the Chinese Masonic Temple in Virginia City, a noodle machine from the Mai Wah Noodle Parlor in Butte, and traditional clothing. But one especially exciting item is an altar from the Chinese Masonic Temple in Helena.

The Chinese altar from Helena’s Chinese Masonic Temple is currently undergoing conservation.

When the conservator laid the altar on its back, the address “206 Clore” was discovered penciled on its underside. From the 1870s to about 1892, the address belonged to a small log cabin on what is now Park Avenue, immediately next door to the Pioneer Cabin. The tiny dwelling was one of a row labeled “Chinese.”  Whoever the occupant of the cabin was must have played some role in the altar’s installation in the Helena temple.

The altar is not only beautiful art, but it is also richly symbolic of the land left behind.  Worship in the temple was a solace to these sojourners who kept their customs, their beliefs, and adapted their lifestyles to the western frontier. Rich green, red, and gold paint is typical of Chinese furnishings.  Intricate characters flanking the altar’s sides, according to our translators, poetically glorify some long ago military hero. Carvings in the wood across the top poignantly represent the Chinese homeland. Golden silkworm moths, wings outspread, flutter among flowers; pairs of bats, their expressions peculiarly menacing, symbolize good luck.

Bats appear menacing in the altar carving but represent good luck.

The altar was a gift in 1973 of Helenan Doris Marshall who, with her husband Walter, founded the Brewery Theatre.  The altar was purchased at auction when the temple fell to urban renewal. Mrs. Marshall likely used it in a stage production and then donated it to the Montana Historical Society. And it is fortunate that she did. This rare object will be a focal point in Forgotten Pioneers, scheduled to open in May 2015.

Friday Photo: St. Labre

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 981-220

These nuns served at St. Labre Mission in Ashland, Montana. Left to right: Sisters Gertrude, Barbara, and Monica, Mother Mary of the Angels, sisters Thecla and Hildegarde, Father Vermaat. Photo by L. A. Huffman

Holy Trinity Orthodox Christian Church

Butte was home to a large population of Serbian immigrants who came from the area at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe in what was formerly eastern Yugoslavia. Thirty-five families attended the first Serbian Orthodox services, conducted by a visiting Orthodox priest in 1897. They built the first Holy Trinity Orthodox Church at Porphyry and Idaho streets in 1905. Archbishop Tikhon of Moscow, who headed the Orthodox Church in the United States, came to Butte form New York City to dedicate the church in 1906. According to Richard Gibson, author of Lost Butte, Montana, it was the second Serbian Orthodox church built in North America. By 1910, Butte’s Serbian population numbered more than four thousand and eventually grew to ten thousand.
By the 1950s, shallow underground operations of the nearby Emma Mine had begun to harm the church, and the Hebgen Lake earthquakes in 1959 caused further structural damage. The church was razed in 1964 and a new one built at 2100 Continental Drive.  The new church was consecrated on July 25, 1965. The architecture is modern yet traditional. Its three graceful onion domes are readily visible from the interstate. The church today is Pan Orthodox and proudly counts among its members many whose backgrounds reflect Butte’s multi-cultural community.

Holy Trinity Church is especially remarkable for the fabulous frescoes depicting the major Feast Days of salvation history that grace the interior. Stunning art covers literally every inch of the sanctuary. Six iconographers from Belgrade, Serbia worked a total of fourteen months from 2003 to 2006 to complete the colorful and intricate project. Iconographers are holy persons in God’s service who are not allowed personal expression in their artwork, but rather are expert theologians who convey the connection between heaven and earth in their painting.

In centuries past, when most people were illiterate, iconography served educational purposes as the Bible of the poor.  The magnificent frescoes at Holy Trinity preserve this visual tradition. They are breathtaking, inspiring, and well worth a visit next time you are in Butte.        
To see more photographs, visit www.holytrinitybutte.org.

St. Ignatius

St. Ignatius Mission on the Flathead Reservation was founded in 1854. At one time—from 1875 to 1900—the mission had a shop with a printing press which produced "Narratives from the Holy Scripture” in the Kalispell language and a Kalispell dictionary. A lumber mill, an agricultural and industrial school for boys, and a boarding school for girls and the mission church once sprawled across the landscape on the Flathead Reservation. Church officials laid the cornerstone of the present mission church in 1891. The quaint little church has a surprising treasure. Its walls and ceilings have sixty-one original paintings done by Brother Joseph Carignano, an Italian Jesuit who was the longtime cook and handyman at the mission. Although he had no formal art training, Brother Carignano painted the interior with murals of scenes from the Old and New Testaments and portraits of some of the saints. He did this magnificent work all in the little spare time he had from his many duties at the mission. His paintings are so astonishing that they have been described as miraculous. The beautiful Mission Mountain Range forms a spectacular backdrop behind the Mission Church.

Some believe the art Brother Carignano created at St. Ignatius Mission was a miracle.

Peter Ronan, for whom the town of Ronan was named, was superintendent on the Flathead reservation from 1877 to 1893. He and his wife, Mary, were devout Catholics and often employed graduates of the mission school in their household. The Ronans and their eight children visited the mission on special feast days. Mary looked forward to these visits. The seventeen-mile journey took several days. Peter and the boys would stay in the house of the Jesuits while the Sisters of Providence welcomed Mary and her daughters. The sisters were good friends. It seemed to Mary that the efficient and selfless mother superior embodied all that a mother should be. “Those visits,” Mary wrote, “shine in my memory as bright incidents and precious…”

The Sisters of Providence built this convent where Mary Ronan found respite in 1864.

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.

St. Helena Cathedral

On Christmas morning in 1914 at 10 o’clock, the fifteen bells in the St. Helena Cathedral spire rang out for the first time inviting all to the dedication mass. Fifteen hundred people filled the sanctuary to capacity. The service culminated a six-year building project, and the cathedral was still unfinished, but the community did not seem to notice the lack of stained glass windows and statuary familiar today. The Right Reverend Bishop John B. Carroll conducted a memorable service, noting the absence of the two major contributors. Peter Larson, who died in 1908, was one major donor, and Thomas Cruse was the other. Cruse, who had died a few days before, gave $100,000 toward the building costs and paid for the fifteen bells in memory of his daughter, Mamie. The day after Christmas, the first Requiem Mass in the new cathedral was sung for him. Cruse’s life was a rags to riches tragedy. An Irish immigrant, he rose from poverty with the discovery of the Drumlummon Mine near Marysville. Cruse’s wife died in 1886, leaving him to raise an infant daughter. An overprotective and domineering father, he nearly smothered her.

Mamie Cruse. Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 941-807

Strong-willed Mamie was her father’s match. Three times married, twice divorced, and estranged from her father, she lived a life of dissipation and died in 1913 at twenty-seven. Each of the Cathedral bells is inscribed to Mamie and so they are sometimes called “Mamie’s Bells.” Montana historian Richard B. Roeder intended to write about Mamie's Bells but died in 1995 before he could fulfill that desire. Roeder’s obituary appeared on the Independent Record’s front page on Christmas Eve. By the strangest coincidence, next to his picture was Martin Kidston’s story of Mamie's Bells.

St. Mary's Mission Historic District

Jesuit priests and lay brothers founded St. Mary’s Mission—the first mission in the Northwest—in 1841. The Jesuits closed the mission in 1850, returning in 1866. For the next quarter century, they helped the Salish adapt from hunting to farming as the buffalo disappeared. The priests supported and advocated for the Salish people and provided medical services and spiritual guidance to both Indians and whites. When the U.S. government forced the impoverished Salish to leave their beloved Bitterroot Valley for the Flathead Reservation in 1891, St. Mary’s closed. An influx of homesteaders prompted the creation of St. Mary’s Parish in 1910, and the old mission church reopened. In 1911, the Salish returned to St. Mary’s for the first time since 1891 to celebrate their Bitterroot heritage. They still maintain this tradition.

A group of Salish visit St. Mary's circa 1955
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 950-754

The historic district includes the 1866 church and pharmacy, designed by the multi-talented Father Anthony Ravalli. Ravalli, also the architect of Idaho’s famed Cataldo Mission, employed log building techniques, ingeniously adapting European ecclesiastical architecture to the remote frontier. St. Mary’s historic church reflects his talents—the carpentry, paintings, and sculpture were all his handiwork.

The interior of historic St. Mary’s Mission Church shows Father Ravalli’s artistic skills

Adjacent is St. Mary’s Cemetery and Father Ravalli’s final resting place. Chief Victor’s log home and the Indian burial ground recall the Salish presence. Two gnarled apple trees provide living evidence of Jesuit agriculture. Father Ravalli planted one of the trees in 1869, and it is the oldest living apple tree in the Bitterroot Valley, where settlers later planted orchards during the Apple Boom. The tree is all that remains of Father Ravalli’s extensive garden. Salish elder Mary Ann Combs recalled her grandmother picking apples from the tree. Its aged trunk still puts forth shoots, and its buds, grafted onto rootstock, have produced numerous offspring in the Stevensville area.

This crabapple tree planted by Father Ravalli is one of two apple trees listed in the
National Register of Historic Places at St. Mary’s Mission in Stevensville. 

The new St. Mary’s Church, built in 1954 with donations from Montana and beyond, represents an unprecedented preservation effort to save the endangered mission church from deterioration through constant use. Today, St. Mary’s churches—old and new—define the historic complex as a place of significance to both Indian and white communities.

Methodist Deaconesses

Happy Women's History Month! Today's post celebrates some particularly dedicated women.

The Deaconess Movement rose from within the Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopal, and other Protestant denominations. It sought to incorporate professional women in ministerial duties. The Chicago Training School was the center of the movement and prepared its deaconesses to serve as missionary nurses, teachers, and social workers. Unlike Catholic sisters, deaconesses took no perpetual vows, but if a woman chose to remain a deaconess and single, she could count on care in times of illness and in old age. These dedicated pioneers earned no salaries, but rather worked in exchange for their living expenses and small stipends supplied by their institutional boards.

A procession of deaconesses and candidates, May 7, 1914, probably in New York
Bain News Service photo, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ggbain-15754

The first trained deaconesses came from Chicago to Montana in 1898 to staff a small twenty-bed hospital in Great Falls. Chicago-trained Augusta Ariss arrived in 1902 to found the nursing school there. Deaconesses from the Chicago School also arrived to take charge of the Montana Deaconess School in Helena.

The Montana Deaconess Preparatory School, Helena. The building was damaged in the 1935 earthquake and demolished.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 953-410

From 1910 to the 1940s, it was the only Protestant-based boarding school west of the Mississippi. (It survives today as Intermountain, a treatment center for emotionally traumatized children.) Until the 1930s, deaconesses staffed the Great Falls hospital, its nursing school, and other deaconess hospitals in Glasgow, Sidney, Bozeman, Billings, Havre, and Butte. The Great Falls Deaconess Hospital evolved into today’s Benefis Healthcare. The old Deaconess Hospital campus today serves a worthy purpose as an assisted living and memory care facility.

African Americans in Great Falls

Great Falls’ African American community and its prominent black citizens have amply contributed to the state’s history. African Americans established the Union Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1890. The small 40-member congregation raised funds door to door to build the current church in 1917. It became the religious and social heart of Great Falls’ black community. The church offered institutional support for those who took leading roles in the fight against segregation.

Union Bethel Church today. Photo courtesy State Historic Preservation Office.

In 1953, the Cascade County Community Council appointed a committee to study discrimination against black soldiers stationed at nearby Malmstrom Air Force Base. Although Montana had no Whites Only signs as there were in some places, blacks were not allowed in most businesses. An exception was Great Falls’ far-famed Ozark Club. From the 1940s until it burned in 1962, the Ozark Club was Montana’s only social club that employed integrated jazz bands and welcomed an interracial clientele. Great Falls’ black community made other important contributions. Among them, Alma Jacobs was elected the first black president of the Pacific Northwest Library Association in 1957. She was a founder of the Montana Committee for the Humanities, helped build the modern Great Falls Library, and became Montana’s State Librarian in 1974. Geraldine Travis of Great Falls was elected to the Montana House of Representatives, the first black person to serve in the legislature. Currently Great Falls has Montana’s largest African American population, partly because many black soldiers are stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base. And after a period of declining membership, the Union Bethel Church—listed in the National Register of Historic Places—is now a vital part of the interracial community.

Grandstreet’s Ghost

Happy Halloween!

Helena’s Grandstreet Theatre began in 1901 as the Unitarian Church. Unitarians were a progressive group who believed churches should serve the community, so the building doubled as a public auditorium and theatre. Reverend Stanton Hodgin and his wife Clara arrived as a team in 1903. Clara was a former kindergarten teacher, full of energy and eager to work with Helena children. Fiercely devoted to her small charges, Clara was adored by the children and she loved to direct them in dramatic presentations. The Sunday school grew from 20 to 100 children in a matter of months. But Clara’s time was short. She became ill and died in January 1905; she was only 34. Her husband found boxes of notes detailing things she had wanted to do, and her students remembered that Clara’s smile was like sunshine. The church became the public library in the 1930s. Then in 1976, its adaptive reuse as Grandstreet Theatre brought the building back to one of its original functions. Grandstreet has earned a top-notch reputation for its highly professional productions and its creative theatre school where young thespians gain hands-on training and experience. Students, actors, and patrons of all ages report an electric energy in the building. Lights and equipment turn on without assistance. A misty apparition occasionally hovers in the balcony. And the light plays oddly around Clara’s memorial Tiffany window.

Courtesy Grandstreet Theatre

The dedicatory portion sometimes appears as if someone smudged the words. Is this Clara’s handiwork? Certainly her essence, or “sunshine”—in the form of youngsters’ vibrant enthusiasm for the theatre—lingers. Some believe that Clara herself never strays far.

Stained Glass Artistry

Update: More photos and info in my article in Signature Montana here.

The fifty-nine stained-glass windows in the capital city’s St. Helena Cathedral are a rare and irreplaceable collection of imported German art. The firm of F. X. Zettler, whose exquisite “Munich style” glasswork is found in St. Peter’s Basilica at Vatican City in Rome, crafted the windows between 1908 and 1926. These windows tell the stories of historical events and recall the middle ages when most could not read. Pictures of Christian teachings served as the “Bible of the Poor.” But the exquisite pictorial style Zettler’s studio blended nineteenth-century Romantic and German Baroque styles with Italian Renaissance artistry. Painting on large sheets of glass and firing them at high heat allowed fantastic portraiture and detail. The leaded seams of the Munich style do not interrupt the scene but are part of it. Zettler’s paintings are multi-dimensional. Even the plants have such miniscule detail that the flowers and foliage can be botanically identified. Zettler windows are still in place in many American cathedrals, but the artist himself believed that St. Helena’s windows were the finest his company ever turned out. In 1982, stained glass expert Father Dan Hillen began restoration of St. Helena’s windows. The glass had suffered damage, especially in 1935 when earthquakes rattled the area. Father Hillen uncovered and repaired over one hundred broken pieces that had been patched with window glass and touched up with house paint.  Careful maintenance remains ongoing. Many artists copied Zettler’s work, and without a signature it is difficult to authenticate. The company signature of F.X. Zettler, however, appears in the first panel to the left in the cathedral’s foyer, authenticating St. Helena’s irreplaceable treasures.



Cats

Exciting news this morning, history buffs! I had a meeting with my publisher last week, and they've accepted my new book! It's tentatively titled "More Montana Moments" and will be a collection of quirky tidbits like I've been posting here. Here's a sneak peek:

When did the first cats come to Montana? Rats came to the trading posts and camps very early, hitching rides in the staples and goods brought for consumption and for trade. Protection of precious supplies from invading pests was critical. Jesuit priests made the same discovery. Father Nicholas Point, one of the founders of St. Mary’s Mission in the Bitterroot Valley in 1841, drew a sketch of the Jesuits in a primitive grass shelter. The lively scene shows 6 priests and lay brothers surrounded by their boxes of goods. A dog and two black cats frolic among the men.



From Sacred Encounters by Jacqueline Peterson

 This early scene suggests that the Jesuits brought the first cats to Montana when they founded St. Mary’s Mission. In 1850, the Jesuits closed the mission but returned to rebuild it in 1866. Father Anthony Ravalli had been with the founding Jesuits in the1840s. He also returned to the Bitterroot to design a new church. Ravalli was a physician, pharmacist, talented architect and artist. He also had a great fondness for cats. As he worked on the interior furnishings of St. Mary’s Mission Church—the one that still stands at Stevensville today—he often improvised materials. From his writing we know that Father Ravalli made the brushes for his paintings in the church from the tail hair of Tomaso, his favorite cat. These were not Montana’s only early feline residents. Pierre Chouteau’s inventory of possessions and supplies at Fort Benton in 1851 lists horses, mules, bulls, oxen, and pigs. Last on the list is one cat, valued at $5. Translate that into modern currency, and the indispensible cat was worth $129!