Friday Photo: Milking

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 91-69.64

I hope that today's photograph gives you a chuckle. This woman is a talented milker, but unfortunately nothing is known about the picture or the photographer. Do you recognize who she is or where the picture was taken? Leave a comment and let me know.

Celebrate Woman Suffrage Today!

When Congress created Montana Territory in 1864, women had few opportunities. Not only could they not vote, they could not work in most professions and could not attend most colleges. Some women were against woman suffrage because they believed it threatened traditional views. Belle Winestine of Helena, a great campaigner for women’s rights, explained the controversy this way: Men said, “Women’s place was in the home. Women are on a pedestal. Why should they come down and mix in ‘dirty politics?'” Well,” we women replied, “who made politics dirty and how many women who worked in factories or labored on the farm are on pedestals?”

Between 1869 and 1871, seven western legislatures considered giving women the vote. Montana was not one of them. Only Wyoming and Utah granted women the right to vote. Men dominated Montana Territory seven to one, and this is partly why suffrage was slow in coming. One small victory came in 1887 when an amendment to Montana’s territorial constitution gave women the right to vote for school trustees if they paid taxes in that district. An important “first” came about upon statehood in 1889 when Ella Knowles Haskell became Montana’s first female attorney and, in 1892, the first woman in Montana to run for public office.

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 951-821

The Montana Woman Suffrage Association formed in 1895. Suffrage amendments repeatedly came before the Montana legislature. In 1911, Jeannette Rankin pled the cause. “Men and women are like right and left hands;” she said, “it doesn't make sense not to use both.” But the amendment failed again. Finally in 1913, Governor Sam Stewart took up the cause, and Montana’s suffrage amendment passed with only two dissenting votes in each house of the legislature. Put to public ballot on November 3, 1914, men voted 41,302 to 37,588 in favor of the suffrage amendment. Montana women won the right to vote in state elections and to hold state offices. In 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted all women citizens the right to vote in national elections.
Exercise your right to vote on November 4!

Lewis & Clark(e) County

At the top of the stone tablet carved into the north entrance of the Lewis and Clark County Courthouse in Helena, you’ll find the name Lewis and Clarke County. It’s the only county in the United States with the name of both explorers. But you’ll also notice that on the tablet, Clarke is spelled with an “e” at the end. That’s because our forebears often spelled their names in various ways. Captain William Clark couldn’t seem to make up his mind, and so sometimes he used the final “e” and sometimes he didn’t. Which spelling was the most correct became a matter of concern. In 1900, Montana Historical Society librarian Laura E. Howey settled the question, researching Clark’s official records.

Laura E. Howey. From Contributions to the Historical Society of Montana
with Its Transactions, Officers, and Members, vol. 6. Helena, 1907

Both as a military officer and as governor of Missouri Clark’s name has no final “e.” Further, publication of Lewis and Clark’s journals at the turn of the twentieth century regularized the spelling of Clark without the final “e.” That meant—oops—the county had the wrong spelling. It took an act of the Montana legislature to allow dropping of that final “e,” but the memory of the older spelling remains on the courthouse tablet.

Dearborn Cemetery Part 2

The deaths of Hattie and William Moore caused much speculation. The couple married in 1872 and ranched along the Benton-to-Helena Road where they also kept a stage station. In the fall of 1885, Hattie moved to Dearborn City, some ten miles from the ranch, so their three children could attend school. Teachers usually boarded with their students’ parents. Thus teacher J. C. McConnell came to board with Hattie. She and McConnell soon became the subject of scandalous gossip.

Hattie’s rented home suspiciously burned to the ground and the family barely escaped. Hattie and William quarreled over McConnell. William demanded that she and the children return to the ranch. McConnell gave Hattie a .44 British Bulldog “pocket” revolver to take with her for protection. In the meantime, a second arson fire destroyed the Dearborn City hotel. An investigation revealed that McConnell was the arsonist. However, he was never prosecuted.

Hattie Moore. Courtesy Charleen Spalding, via Gayle (Moore) Tadday

In February 1886, soon after Hattie’s return to the ranch, the Moores placed their children at St. Peter’s Mission, paid for three years’ tuition, and began divorce proceedings. On February 25, travelers discovered the bodies of William and Hattie amid the signs of a violent struggle. Hattie lay propped in a doorway. Her husband sprawled nearby on top of a Winchester rifle with one shot in the breast, another to the head.

William Moore. Courtesy Charleen Spalding, via Gayle (Moore) Tadday

The coroner theorized that during a quarrel, Hattie drew her revolver; William grabbed it and threw it outside. Hattie went for the Winchester, fired at her husband, missed, and fired again, hitting him in the breast. A struggle ensued. William shot his wife in the side, staggered toward her and embraced her. Hattie’s bloody finger prints were smeared across his shoulders. He then stood up and shot himself in the head. Widely publicized as murder-suicide, the coroner’s jury actually found the Moores died “by their own hands or at the hands of others.”

Several years later, on December 7, 1889, at a Helena hotel, J. C. McConnell put a .44 Bulldog to his temple. Was it the same gun he gave Hattie? McConnell may have had money troubles, but he was implicated in the two arson cases and there were suspicions about his complicity in the Moores’ deaths. McConnell took the answers with him when he pulled the trigger.

Friday Photo: Threshing Crew

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 90-87 4-3

Mabel Williams brings water to the threshing crew on her family's farm near Terry in September 1909. Her friend and neighbor Evelyn Cameron took the photo.

Frozen Charlotte

Here’s a story that will give you chills even on the hottest summer day. The story of Frozen Charlotte is a Maine folktale. A short notice in the New York Observer on February 8, 1840, told about a girl who froze to death on her way to a New Year’s ball. This was the beginning of a folk tradition that eventually included poems, a ballad, a doll, and even a dessert. The original poem, attributed to well-known editor Seba Smith, recounts in verse how it was New Year’s Eve and Charlotte was to attend a dance some miles away. It was a bitter cold night, and Charlotte, dressed in a beautiful gown, did not want to cover her dress with a heavy blanket that would wrinkle it. Instead, she wore a light cape and ignored her mother’s warnings that she would catch her death of cold. Charlotte and her beau drove off into the night. Several times on the journey the young man asked Charlotte if she was cold, and she, shivering, answered yes. The last time he asked, however, she said she was feeling warmer. When they arrived at the dance:

He took her hand in his—O, God! 'Twas cold and hard as stone,
He tore the mantle from her face, cold stars upon it shone;
Then quickly to the glowing hall, her lifeless form he bore,
Fair Charlotte's eyes were closed in death, her voice was heard no more.

From this tale, several other poems and ballads emerged. Little girls played with Frozen Charlotte dolls, and in 1896, Fannie Farmer’s Boston Cooking-School Cook Book published the recipe for Frozen Charlotte. Even today Martha Stewart has recipes for this popular dessert.

Frozen Charlottes made their way to Montana. On the flat plateau of First People’s Buffalo Jump, where one family tried unsuccessfully to make a go of homesteading, a Frozen Charlotte doll was discovered in the ruins.

You can read Seba Smith’s entire poem, “Young Charlotte,” here.

Friday Photo: Watermelon

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 82-23.42

Nothing says "summer" like a juicy watermelon. The women who enjoyed this one are, unfortunately, unidentified.

Marie Gibson

Sixteen-year-old Marie Gibson’s marriage was on the rocks, so she joined her parents on their homestead near Havre in 1914. With the encouragement of neighbors, including legendary cowboy Long George Francis, Gibson began trick riding in local fairs and rodeos for prize money to help support her children. Her professional debut came in 1917 at Havre’s Great Stampede. She married for a second time in 1919. Her husband, rodeo veteran Tom Gibson, retired to the family homestead and Marie went on to travel widely, busting broncs overseas and back East.

Marie Gibson (center) gambles with fellow rodeo riders. Date unknown.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 2002-32.17

During a performance in England she so charmed the Prince of Wales that he presented her with a prize horse. Gibson earned many titles including World Champion Cowgirl Bronc Rider in 1924 and 1927. In 1933, Gibson made a successful ride on a wild bronc in Idaho. The horse was still bucking as the pickup man approached to take her off. The two horses collided, and Gibson’s horse lost his balance and fell on her, fatally fracturing her skull. Her hobbled stirrups prevented her from kicking free. Her son Lucien, then twenty-three, rushed to her aid, but it was too late. Gibson is buried in Havre where locals rightfully claim her as one of their own.

15,000 Miles by Stage

Update: I originally titled this post "10,000 Miles by Stage" by mistake. The actual title of Carrie Strahorn's book is 15,000 Miles by Stage.

Carrie Strahorn wrote a wonderful book—still in print—about stagecoach travel in the West called 10,000 15,000 Miles by Stage. She and her husband Robert were newly married in 1878 when they traveled through Montana and other western states. Mrs. Strahorn’s astute observations about the characters they encountered, stage stops, hotels, and scenery are very entertaining.

Carrie Strahorn is the author of 10,000  15,000 Miles by Stage.
Photo courtesy Idaho Historical Society.

The Strahorns stayed at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Helena. The desk clerk gave them a room key, but they were astonished to discover that no one expected them to lock their door. Mrs. Strahorn writes that they encountered no tramps, no beggars, and no burglars. Unlike other towns along the railway routes where there was crime and poverty, Helena, although isolated, had none of that. Although citizens could not wait for rail service, “It seemed a pity,” Mrs. Strahorn writes, “to propose a railroad to such a happy community.” Among the characters she describes are two memorable women she encountered in the hotel dining room. They were angular in figure, tall, slim, with long features. Each had tried to outdo the other with tiny, elaborate spit curls from the center parts of their foreheads to their earlobes, and they were so prim and precise that they almost appeared to be machines.

The Cosmopolitan Hotel in Helena was one of the best in the region. The Helena Board of Trade published this sketch of the lobby in 1887. Montana Historical Society Research Center.

Mrs. Strahorn goes on the say that that there were so few women out west that military men begged their friends to send for sisters, cousins, and aunts. Sometimes, Mrs. Strahorn writes, they were weird specimens of the fairer sex like the two at the Cosmopolitan, but even they in their minority could reign as queens. They could dance, ride, and flirt to their hearts’ content and marry, too. The success of such women diminished as the population grew and single men had more choices. But in the 1870s, the frontier was a fact and not a fiction. A woman in the Far West was a blessing sent direct from Heaven, or from the East, which was much the same thing in those days.

St. Peter’s Hospital

Early Roman Catholic institutions in Montana included missions, schools, and hospitals. Many Protestants saw a great need to balance things out. This began in the 1880s in Helena when Helena Episcopalians planned a hospital to complement St. John’s, founded in 1870 by the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth. Episcopal Bishop Leigh Brewer suggested the idea to his board of trustees in 1883. Men made up the board, but it was the churchwomen who did the real work. Bishop Brewer’s wife Henrietta, Mary Pauline Holter, Dr. Maria Dean, and Georgia Young stand out stand as the cornerstones upon which today’s St. Peter’s Hospital rests. The hospital first located in the Holters’ former home at Jackson and Grand streets in 1884. Of the 225 patients treated that first year, 80 were East Helena smelter workers sick with lead poisoning. Henrietta Brewer and Mary Pauline Holter had no hospital training and hired Georgia Young, a graduate of the New Haven, Connecticut, nurses training school, as supervisor. She was Helena’s first professionally trained graduate nurse. Hospital conditions were horrific; at the end of her first day, Miss Young was covered with lice.

St. Peters Hospital, at Eleventh Avenue between present-day Cruse and Logan,  was built upon tailing piles in 1887.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives,  953-531.

Dr. Dean joined the cause to build a better hospital. In 1887, St. Peter’s moved to its longtime location at Logan and Eleventh Avenue. The first photographs show the building starkly resting upon tailing piles left over from the gold rush. Under Georgia Young’s supervision, Henrietta Brewer and Mary Pauline Holter organized their friends as “lady visitors” who cooked for patients, cleaned, and conducted weekly inspections. Nursing supervisor Georgia Young nurtured St. Peter’s for three decades. Dr. Dean, who specialized in women’s and children’s health, did the same. These four founders left a living legacy to the Helena community that continues at St. Peter’s present eastside location. Its women’s health facility is appropriately named for Dr. Maria Dean.

Easter Bonnets and Easter Eggs

The Culbertson Searchlight reported on March 25, 1910, that Easter customs have a long and colorful history. The idea that folks should wear something new is tied to the coming of spring and renewal of the fields. The custom of wearing something new evolved into the superstition that wearing a new item on Easter would insure good fortune in love affairs. Christian women often focused on hats as the new item. In times past, the Easter hat was the outward material expression of the joyous resurrection. “Of course,” said the Searchlight, “the connection between inner joyousness and the monstrosity that looks like an old wooden chopping bowl sprouting forth a truck garden may not be apparent to all.”  The great danger is that spring rains are notorious at this time of year. Many a woman has wept when the heavens poured forth on Easter morning and ruined the feathers and ribbons of the carefully chosen Easter bonnet.

This ad from the March 25, 1910, Daily Missoulian shows the styles of the time. Via Chronicling America.

After the Easter bonnet, colored eggs are the most familiar token of Easter. The custom of coloring eggs is much older than Christianity, and all ancient people including Romans, Egyptians, Jews, and Greeks used the egg as a symbol of universal life and renewal. Early Christians adopted it because the egg is the perfect symbol of resurrection. At first, eggs were only colored red to signify the blood of redemption. The Daily Missoulian on March 25, 1910, summed up the “modern” connection between Easter bonnets and eggs noting that the hen whose product is gaily colored contributes to the joy of Easter morning. She has not laid her egg in vain even if she has no chick to show for her trouble. However, some of the Easter hat decorations look as if they might have been hatched from Easter eggs.

P.S. Remember these delightful hats?

House of the Good Shepherd

A small colony of five Sisters of the House of the Good Shepherd arrived in Helena in 1889 at the invitation of Bishop John Brondel. He was keenly aware that many of Montana’s wild and wicked mining camps and urban areas supported thriving red light districts. The bishop was concerned that young girls might be enticed into an immoral lifestyle and wanted to offer these young girls (and women of the “profession”) sanctuary. The Sisters of the Good Shepherd fit the needs perfectly. The Catholic order, founded in France to convert prostitutes to a better way of life, spread into Europe and the United States in the first half of the 1800s. Residents under the sisters’ charge were called Penitents. They included women who wished to reform, reformatory children, and “children committed to the nuns’ care for preservation.” The sisters came to Helena from St. Paul, Minnesota, and settled into a convent prepared for them at Ninth and Hoback in a quiet South-Central neighborhood.

The complex at 9th and Hoback includes the convent (now apartments) and the dormitory at far left which is now the studio of artist Tim Holmes. SHPO photo.

The sisters supported their work with a state-of-the-art laundry operation in the basement of the women’s dormitory. The “inmates” (as they were called) did all the laundry for the major hotels in Helena and Great Falls. The complex included a large dormitory adjacent to the sisters’ convent and chapel. The home was always filled to capacity and soon outgrew the space. In 1909, the House of the Good Shepherd moved to expanded facilities in Kenwood west of the city. Eventually the emphasis shifted to teens at risk, and the sisters took in girls until 1967. The original Ninth and Hoback convent, dormitory, and St. Helena’s Church across the street are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The complex is a neighborhood curiosity. Nothing remains of the extensive Kenwood campus except for the former gymnasium. It survives as St. Andrew School.

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, Mulvaney postcard collection

Friday Photo: Pet Antelope

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 90-87 200

Netty Archdale feeds her pet antelope on her ranch in eastern Montana. The photo was taken by Evelyn Cameron on June 9, 1908.

P.S. Remember this strange pet?

The Death of Mrs. Spratt

Helenans may be familiar with the story of the sheriff’s wife who died in the Lewis and Clark County jail when her husband’s gun discharged. This story has long floated around, and here are the facts that go with it. The tragedy took place upstairs in what is now the Myrna Loy Center for the Performing Arts.

Lewis and Clark County Jail and Courthouse. Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 953-357

It was 8:30 on the morning of November 11, 1922. Sheriff Thomas Spratt was in his private office just off the family living quarters. Mrs. Flora Spratt sat three feet away at the desk, looking through the phone book. Sheriff Spratt had just completed cleaning one gun and was examining another when it accidentally discharged. The gun was a .38 caliber Smith and Wesson police special six-shooter. The trigger was slightly out of order and after cleaning the gun, the sheriff removed a side plate from it, thinking he had extracted all the shells, and was working the trigger when it discharged. The bullet entered Mrs. Spratt’s right armpit, passed through her chest, and came out under her left arm. She cried out and Sheriff Spratt asked if she had been hit. She replied “Yes,” and died instantly. Drs. O. M. Lanstrum and S. A. Cooney and the county coroner were immediately called to the scene. The coroner decided not to hold an inquest. The Spratts had been married for thirty-six years and had three grown daughters. Before a brief appointment as sheriff in 1921, Spratt was an accountant in the state auditor’s office, dairy owner, and County Hospital superintendent where Mrs. Spratt was matron. His previous employment raises the question whether Sheriff Spratt was adept at handling weapons. After his wife’s death, Spratt was custodian and purchasing agent at the county garage. He remarried two years after the tragedy and died in 1956 at age ninety-four.

P.S. Remember Montana's first woman sheriff?

Friday Photo: Esther Vance

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 82-88.2

Esther Vance was Montana's first licensed aviatrix. She received her pilot’s license July 17, 1928, and was a founding member of the Ninety Nines, the country’s first organization for female pilots.

Fannie Sperry Steele

On a homestead beneath the picturesque Sleeping Giant in the Prickly Pear Valley, Fannie Sperry’s mother taught her to ride almost before she could walk. As a teenager, Fannie rode the roughest horses with the best of the men. At a time when most women still rode sidesaddle, and riding astride was considered coarse and unladylike, Fannie earned a reputation for courage and sticking power on the backs of the wildest broncos wearing a scandalous divided skirt. In the summer of 1903, sixteen-year-old Fannie so awed spectators on a bucking white stallion that onlookers passed the hat. She made her first professional ride as a relay racer at the Montana State Fair in Lewis and Clark County in 1904. Inspired by Buffalo Bill’s “Pony Express Race,” the Montana relay featured only women riders who changed horses and saddles at top speed. Fannie and the popular Montana Girls—wearing bloomers that shocked the crowds—rode the very first relays at Helena, Butte and Anaconda and across the Midwest in 1905.

Relay racers in their shocking bloomers at the North Dakota State Fair in Bismarck, 1907.  L-R Anna Pauls, Christine Synness, Violet Keagle, Fannie Sperry. Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

Fannie rode in women’s bucking horse competitions and earned a gold medal in 1907 at Helena. At the Calgary Stampede in 1912, her ride on the killer bronc Red Wing went down in rodeo history earning her the title “Lady Bucking Horse Champion of the World.” Artist C. M. Russell commemorated that event with a sketch of Fannie’s prowess.

Rodeo Cowgirl on a Bucking Bronc, Charles M. Russell

She earned the title again in 1913. Unlike most bronc-busting women of the time, Fannie Sperry rode “slick” instead of hobbled. Hobbling, tying the stirrups together beneath the horse’s belly for stability in the saddle, was a concession allowed women contestants. Slick riding, however, demanded precision, balance, courage, and unusual strength. Fannie was the only woman rider among her contemporaries to ride her entire career slick, just like her male counterparts.  She was one of the first women inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.

P.S. Read more about Fannie here.

The WCTU

The Montana Chapter of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union or WCTU, formed in 1883. The national organization was primarily evangelical and protestant, and helped women become more involved in politics. Its purpose was to create a pure and sober world. Delegates from Butte, White Sulphur Springs, Helena, and Dillon met to organize the Montana chapter. The organization took up a number of causes and current social issues including labor, prostitution, public health, sanitation, and international peace. The organization especially advocated the prohibition of alcohol and tobacco. The Montana WCTU began with a strong leadership, but by 1886 its membership had dwindled. In that year, fifty-year-old Thomas Cruse of Helena married twenty-five-year-old Margaret Carter in the most lavish, extravagant wedding Helena had ever seen. Cruse spent an astronomical sum on the reception which officially took place at Helena’s Cosmopolitan Hotel. But the entire community celebrated the event, and saloons all over town offered free drinks. Thomas Cruse paid all the bar bills to the tune of $30,000. There was so much public drunkenness and so many hung over husbands that it reinvigorated the WCTU. The organization re-emerged. There were thirteen local chapters and departments, or committees. These included Social Purity, Unfermented Wine at Sacrament, and Purity in Literature and Art. By 1910, Montana’s WCTU had over 1,000 members and had taken up the cause of destitute mothers, the opposition to drinking Coca Cola which at that time was made with cocaine, and other causes. In 1913, the Montana WCTU had its own influential lobbyist and was instrumental in getting suffrage and eventually prohibition on the ballot. By 1916, more than 4,000 had joined. The WCTU continued to have substantial influence until the 1950s.

Etta Weatherson, Candace Shaw, Elizabeth Blakeman ride on a WCTU parade float on July 4, 1916, Columbus, Montana.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 951-822

Elizabeth Lochrie

The U.S. Treasury Department, the State of Montana, the Ford Motor Company, New York Life Insurance Company, and the First National Bank of Seattle were among the distinguished patrons of Deer Lodge native Elizabeth Lochrie. Formally trained as an artist at the Pratt Institute in New York City, she graduated in 1911 and settled in Butte. From the 1920s to the 1950s, Lochrie established herself as a fine portrait artist. She also painted local rural and urban landscapes and scenes. During 1924 and 1925, Lochrie painted eighteen children’s murals for the Montana State Hospital at Galen. She also created murals for several post office buildings.

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 80-61

In 1937 Lochrie won the U.S. Treasury Department’s competition for News from the States at the Dillon Post Office, depicting the historic arrival of mail in that community. At Glacier National Park, Lochrie studied under Winold Reiss and then served as artist for the Great Northern Railway from 1937 to 1939. While other artists documented the vanishing Indian lifeway, Lochrie did more than that. She immersed herself in Indian culture and learned to converse in various dialects. She traveled the lecture circuit and often used her fees to buy clothing and other items for needy tribal members, especially Blackfeet. In 1932, the Blackfeet Nation adopted her and named her Netchitaki, Woman Alone in Her Way. When she died in 1981, Lochrie left a legacy of more than one thousand paintings, murals, and sculptures. She was one of Montana’s most outstanding twentieth-century artists.

P.S. Have you seen the Women's History Project?

Friday Photo: Beta Sigma Phi

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 74-37 61

These women met in Helena for Montana's first state convention of Beta Sigma Phi in May of 1941.

The Kontinental Klan

Prohibition’s failure had some consequences no one seemed to anticipate. Illegal moonshine flowed more freely than legal booze either before or after the nation went dry. Illegal traffic in liquor fostered criminal activity which led to organized crime. But another rather bizarre consequence was the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan across the Pacific Northwest. The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan claimed a platform that claimed to be anti vice and corruption It was also pro patriotism in the wake of World War I. The Klan targeted blacks, Jews, Catholics, and foreign born people. In Montana, since there were very small African American and Jewish populations, the KKK targeted Catholics and foreign-born residents.
Montana’s leader, or Grand Dragon, was Lewis Terwilliger, a former mayor of Laurel. Terwilliger christened Butte the “worst place in the State of Montana” because of its cultural diversity and its many Catholics. Little wonder that Butte is where Montana’s first chapter organized in 1923. There were eventually some forty chapters in a number of Montana cities and towns during the depressed 1920s into the 1930s.
On September 10, 1925, Laurel residents were shocked to see a burning cross on a butte four miles west of the city. The Laurel Outlook reported that the fire lit up the night sky and "it looked like all the dragons, wizards, witches, ghosts—or whatever they are called—from all over the country had gathered there." Wearing their customary white flowing robes and peaked hoods, some 2500 members gathered on the butte. Fireworks announced the initiation of one hundred new members.
Nationally, the Klan organized in Georgia in 1915 retaining much of the dress, rules, and cross-burning of the original nineteenth century organization. In Montana and the Northwest, however, the Kontinental Klan, as it was called, was not as violent as its counterparts elsewhere. Prospective members had to be native born, white, Protestant, Gentile, and American citizens. Interestingly, many of Montana’s 5,000 members were women who belonged to separate women’s chapters of the Kontinental Klan.

Women of the Billings Ku Klux Klan  No. 7 gave this memorial marker in 1928. What is marked, however, is a mystery; only the stone remains. Courtesy of Harry Axline.