Montana Articles

Trump & Hauser

5/3/2017

Today we’ll compare our current president with a governor that served Montana 130 years ago.

First though, let’s talk modern times.

I see there are two new stories up about Rob Quist, both saying about the same thing.

Democrats Make Huge Investment In Montana’s U.S. House Race:
The DCCC is more than doubling down on folk singer Rob Quist.

Dems Pour Another $400k into Very Losable Montana Special Election:
Meanwhile, the AP caught Democrat Rob Quist for inaccurately reporting his income by $57,000…

So the National Dems are throwing another $400,000 in on top of the $200,000 they threw in 2 weeks ago.

I guess this money is supposed get “invested in a program aimed at getting likely independent and Democratic voters to vote by mail, which accounts for approximately 60 percent of Montana’s voters, as well as to buy more TV ads.”

I don’t think it’s gonna do much good.

Someone told me his campaign is “toast very burnt.”

Mostly this has to do with yet another revelation that Quist isn’t forthcoming about his finances.

I don’t know about you, but no one I know makes an extra $50,000 and then forgets about it.

So much for living on Social Security, as earlier stories had us believe.

Oh…but I’m forgetting something.

This story comes to us from Tom Lutey of the Billings Gazette.

He’s been labeled as an ‘evil, ne’er-do-well’ by the Democratic mouthpiece blogs in the state.

I’m sure it’ll be another round of ‘kill the messenger’ from those two sites.

Boy, I’m glad I stopped readin’ ‘em.

For my part, I feel like voting for Mark Wicks now.

It was the debate that did it – Wicks just sounded the best and he said more of what I wanted to hear.

Loved the closing statement, too. I thought he nailed it.

So I really feel like voting for Wicks, and I could go down to the fairgrounds right now and do that.

But I’m not.

I’m holding off, waiting a bit longer.

Honestly, though…I don’t think anything is going to get better for Quist.

Things could get a lot worse, however.

I mean…what else don’t we know?

Moving along…

Hillary spoke at a women’s event yesterday, helping them raise $1.2 million for their cause.

Meryl Streep was also there.

While Hillary takes “absolute responsibility” for “losing the election,” she still whines that “the Russians and FBI Director James Comey” deserve the most blame.

Then she said that if the election would have been 10 days earlier she would have won.

So time, Russia, and the FBI are all to blame.

There was nothing in Hillary’s campaign, the way she presented herself, the issues she talked-up, or what the other candidate was saying that prevented her from winning.

It was all someone else’s fault.

And my how Democrats will lap that up!

Talk is growing that Hillary will be back in 2020, and if she and her close-knit band of hooligans have their way, she’ll begin fundraising for that toward the end of this year or early next.

God help us.

But…but…Trump’ll stop her in 2020, right?

Yeah, not so fast there.

I don’t see Trump going for a second term, myself.

To me, Trump is the exact same as Montana Territorial Governor Sam Hauser.

Territorial Governor Samuel Thomas Hauser (1885-7)

Samuel Thomas Hauser was born in Falmouth, Kentucky, on January 10, 1833. His father was a lawyer and judge, ensuring the family had connections and money.

Hauser began working for the Kentucky Central Railroad when he was nineteen and then moved on to Missouri in 1854, becoming a civil engineer for the railroads.

He moved about from company to company, working for the Missouri Pacific and Northern Pacific before becoming the chief engineer for the Lexington to Sedalia branch.

When gold was discovered in Montana he left the railroads behind and headed west, arriving first in Fort Benton and then Bannack.

He headed to the Yellowstone River where he hit it big. He proved so successful that he was able to partner up with Nathaniel P. Langford and open a bank in Virginia City in 1865. He followed that up a year later by founding First National Bank of Helena.

In 1866 Hauser drew on his family, business, and banking connections to form the St. Louis and Montana Mining Company.

With an initial investment of $36,000 the company set up the first silver smelter at Argenta. A short time later he’d construct the James Stuart Mill in Flint Creek with Philip Deidesheimer, the man Philipsburg was named after.

By 1867 there were more than 600 people living at Philipsburg, but the silver veins proved good for just one year and the Stuart Mill was forced to close its doors in 1868.

In 1870 Hauser joined the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition that travelled through Yellowstone. It made an impression on him, and Hauser was instrumental in getting Yellowstone National Park created

Hauser continued with his banking interests, eventually opening banks in Benton, Butte, and Missoula. He had a key role in overseeing the construction of the Utah & Northern Railway as it came into the territory, finishing in Butte in 1881. And his mining and ranching interests increased as well.

Hauser had come from both power and money and he knew how to create them for himself. A key component of that was politics, and in 1884 Hauser was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention.

When Grover Cleveland was elected later that year he vowed he’d clean up the spoils system which so dominated Washington politics at that time. Also, he vowed he’d not fire any Republican appointees that were doing their jobs well.

That didn’t apply to Benjamin Carpenter, although it’s hard to see how it could have. He’d only been in Montana serving as territorial governor for six months when Cleveland removed him. It seemed the spoils system was still bearing some influence.

One thing Cleveland’s critics couldn’t charge him with was putting unqualified men in office. That was especially true when it came to Samuel T. Hauser, who’d already been in the territory for years and had made quite a name for himself.

He was appointed on July 3, 1885, making him the first territorial governor that was actually living in Montana before he was appointed.

It’s likely Hauser would have made a great governor, if he wasn’t so consumed with his own business affairs. Banking, cattle, mining, railroads…all occupied him while in office, so much so that many of his official duties were in fact carried out by his secretary.

He largely followed the policies that had been put in place by previous territorial governors – Indian removal, cattle interests, spending – and didn’t make much of a splash.

He did set Montana on a dangerous precedent, one that afflicts the state today. Instead of establishing a territorial insane asylum to deal with mental health issues, people with problems were thrown into prison. Often this would just create more difficulties later, but at the time it saved money.

The job just wasn’t for Hauser, and instead of continuing on with the farce he resigned on February 7, 1887.

He had more time to focus on making money, which he continued to do until his death in Helena on November 10, 1914. He was 81 years old.

Trump & Hauser

After reading that I can’t help but draw parallels between Cleveland vowing to clean up the spoils system and Trump vowing to drain the swamp.

Anyways, I view Trump as the same as Hauser as both thought they wanted the job, but then when they got into it and saw what it entailed, they both realized they didn’t really want the job.

What tipped-me off most of all for Trump were the stories the New York Times ran a couple weeks ago about Kid Rock and others visiting the White House.

Supposedly Trump entertained them for over 4 hours.

The headlines hinted that Trump was bored, lonely, and feeling isolated in his new job.

And why not?

Many of the people he’s worked with for years are still in New York. His wife and young son are there too.

And then everyone in the press is attacking the guy, even the outgoing president wiretapped him.

There’s surely immense pressure from the arms dealers to go into Syria and North Korea. No one seems to want to build the wall anymore.

So it’s tough, and I think that’ll wear on Trump. Indeed, it already is.

That’s why I view him as a one-termer, someone that’s not even going to try for another.

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A History of Montana’s Early Chinese

1/31/2016

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MT and Qing flags

Montana has a rich history with China and her people.

In the mid- to late-19th-century, for instance, thousands of Chinese came to the Montana Territory.

Work was the biggest draw, and when many were through with their employment they left. Many stayed, however, and in this post we’ll tell their stories.

The Chinese Come to Montana

China was in turmoil from the late-1830s to the 1870s, and well beyond in most cases.

Many Chinese families had been disrupted by the Opium Wars of 1839-42 and 1856-60. Foreign powers came in and dominated a once-proud nation.

Another factor making life difficult was the Taiping Rebellion of 1851 and the 25 years of drought and famine that stretched into 1873. Both of those events caused the deaths of 60 million Chinese.

It’s no wonder that many sought out better opportunities, going from the rural, inland areas to the coastal cities. From there they boarded ships for America.

By 1854 California had more than 40,000 Chinese. Between 1850 and 1900 about 5 million people left China, most from those southern coastal areas. Of these, about 500,000 came to America.

Wiley Davis, in his essay called “Chinese in Virginia City, Montana” tells us that there were Chinese in Bannack in 1863 for there “was one or two Chinamen that left Bannack” that year, “headed for Alder Gulch.”

The Montana Post tells us of six Chinese arriving in Montana on June 3, 1865. It was the first mention of Chinese people in Montana.

These men were Ho-Fie, So-Sli, Lo-Flung, Ku-Long, Whang and Hong.

The Montana Gold Mining and Fluming Company was the main importer of Chinese into Montana. They did this because the Chinese worked hard for low wages.

The Montana Post was out of business by 1866 but the Chinese were still coming. By 1869 three businesses were owned by Chinese.

On January 24, 1866, an advertisement ran in a Helena newspaper telling the Chinese that they must:

“suspend the washing, or laundry business, immediately or they will be visited by a Committee of Ladies who have determined that they will not see the bread taken from the mouths of themselves and children by these celestial heathens and they will remain idle for want of employment.”

The letter was signed by “A Committee of Ladies.”

Mining was the big draw for the Chinese, and there were plenty of other places besides Helena.

For instance, we know that the “first caravan of Chinese came to Alder Gulch in 1867,” according to a 1976 Madison County History Association report. Lucille Dixon wrote the short article called “Chinese in Alder Gulch.”

In an essay called “Law and Chinese in Frontier Montana,” Texas historian John R. Wunder gives us a good look at the Chinese in the earliest times.

Mainly they came from “California, Colorado, Nevada, and other mining areas in the West, as well as from China.” The reason they came all the way across the ocean was:

“They had the reputation of working harder than whites and for lower wages, of working old mine tailings with success, and of working closely together to maximize their efforts.”

In 1870 the Chinese made up 10% of Montana’s population. Also that year, 25% of all miners in the American West were Chinese, though just a third of the Chinese population in the country was employed in that trade.

In 1870 there were 660 Chinese living in or around Helena. We know there were 452 Chinamen working the placer claims of Lewis and Clark County in that year.

What’s more, we know that Chinese employment in Lewis and Clark County broke down like so:

452 were placer miners, or 75%
56 were washermen, or 10%
31 were cooks or domestic servants, or 5%
7 were gamblers
6 were clerks
6 were grocers
5 were saloon workers
4 were bakers
2 were waiters
3 were doctors
1 was a restaurant owner
1 was a tailor
1 was a boarding house proprietor

Of these men, 56% were married and 44% were single. Their average age was 35-years old.

We know that in 1880 there were 19 Chinese women in Lewis and Clark County. All but two were listed as prostitutes, with another listed as wife. Their average age was 27-years old.

It was that 1880 census that told us the number of Chinese in Montana had slipped from 10% of the population to 5%. In 1890 it fell 1.9%.

Those numbers might seem small, but nationally Chinese made up just 0.2% of the country’s population during those decades.

A large reason for this decline was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that prohibited Chinese laborers from entering America for ten years.

When Congress passed the Scott Act in 1888 (something that strengthened the Chinese Exclusion Act), there were 20,000 Chinese laborers visiting China that weren’t able to return to America.

By 1902 all Chinese were banned from entering the country.

From 1882 to 1945 an average of 215 Chinese women were allowed into America each year. “Between 1924 and 1930, no Chinese wives legally entered the United States.”

The Alder Gulch “China War” of 1880

The 1880 Census had 265 Chinese living in Alder Gulch, the Madisonian Special Centiennial Edition in July 1989 told us.

The newspaper was based out of Virginia City and located on Wallace Street. It could also have been Wallace, Idaho. Either way, it went on to say that:

“By the turn of the century, with the dredges working the placer ground below Virginia City and diggings becoming scarce, the population began to dwindle quickly with many of them moving to Butte, Helena, Dillon or Bozeman to go into business.”

It was reported in October 1878 that “lots of Chinese had left for Butte.” The main reason for this was the drying up gold mining industry, at least for individuals. At the time, however, Butte wasn’t the friendliest place for Chinese.

In 1872 the territorial legislature had passed a law “charging fees to Chinese-owned laundries” and in 1883 it was “effectively illegal for Chinese to own mining claims in Montana.”

In her report, Dixon went on to mention the “China War” that raged in Alder Gulch in 1880 between the companies of Hi Chung and Sam Wah.

“It happened near the mouth of Water Gulch,” Dixon tells us, and it seems they were fighting over an area “just vacated by the Hop Lee Company.” We’re told that all the businesses in Virginia City and Alder Gulch had to go without meals or prepare their own because all the Chinese workers were gone, taking one side or another in the conflict.

In 1881 the “tong war broke out,” though whites were only affected by an increase in arrests for vandalism.

“This war actually didn’t amount to much although two were killed and there were numerous injuries from being banged about with a shovel. It ended with 11 in jail on charges of murder.”

The Montana News Association told us in June 1941 about the Chinese war in Alder Gulch in 1880. There were six Chinese companies at the time.

“Whether the companies were connected with the six great Chinese tongs in control of the Chinese colony in San Francisco is not known but the impression prevailed in Virginia City that the connection was fleeing down the gulch, closely pursued by a tall Chinese, armed with a sharpened shovel.”

The Madisonian was reporting that by 1907 there were no more Chinese in the city. By the 1920s the Chinatown there had been torn down to make way for the highway.

One Census list at the Montana Historical Society gives the following numbers for Chinese in Montana:

1870: 1,949
1880: 1,765
1890: 2,532
1900: 1,739
1910: 1,285
1920: 872
1930: 486
1940: 258
1950: 209

For Japanese in Montana, the numbers look like this:

1890: 6
1900: 2,441
1910: 1,585
1920: 1,074
1930: 753
1940: 508
1950: 524

The Eighth Report of the Bureau of Agriculture, Labor and Industry of the State of Montana came out in November 1902 and gave us some good numbers on minority populations in Montana.

For instance, in 1880 “there was not a Jap in Montana.” The report goes on to say that “ten years later there were six” and by 1900 that’d increased to 2,441. Chouteau County had the most Japanese, with 628 followed by Missoula County at 398.

In 1900 there were 1,739 Chinese in Montana, thirty-nine of whom were women.

Discrimination Against the Montana Chinese

Whether a man or a woman, life in Montana wasn’t easy for the Chinese.

In a letter to the editor of the Helena Daily Herald on July 7, 1870, we see what common citizens often thought of the Montana Chinese:

“living don’t cost them anything, if garden patches and chicken roost are anywhere in the neighborhood, for cleptomania [sic] is a chronic disease among all Chinamen.”

The letter goes on to say that:

“The Union party can make citizens and soldiers out of them, and Tammany Hall can manufacture Democrats out of them and in that manner they will become identified with us…”

“What early good, therefore, can there be in welcoming to our land a race of beings whose habits and customs are diametrically opposed to ours.”

The Anaconda Standard reported in January 1894 in an article called “Chinese are Registering” that the:

“Chinese residents of Livingston are all preparing to register under the provisions of the Geary act of Nov. 25, 1893. There are 37 almond-eyed Celestials in this city and about half of these have already had their photographs taken and the others are rapidly following suit. Deputy Internal Revenue Collector E. Butler of Miles City will arrive in Livingston in a few days and open a Chinese registrar’s office.”

“John Conley came in from Deer Lodge yesterday to round up the Chinese in his neighborhood,” the Anaconda Standard reported on January 12, 1894.

Conley was the special revenue agent “in charge of the Chinese branch of the service.”

“The celestials do not appear to like having their photographs taken and endeavor to disguise themselves as much as possible by wearing soft hats, which they pull down over their eyes, and on this account many photographs have been rejected.

Each Chinaman has to provide the government with two photographs one of which is filed in Helena with the revenue collector and the other sent to the treasury authorities at Washington.”

Mixed Marriages with Chinese

Despite these crackdowns on Chinese, people continued to come from China. What’s more, those that were living here continued to assimilate. A big part of that was marriage.

On February 23, 1908, the Butte Miner had a headline reading “St. Louis girl weds Deer Lodge Chinese.” The article says how William Troy, “a Chinaman, born in San Francisco, and educated in New York City,” married Miss Alice Waddell at a restaurant owned by Rev. George O. Jewett.

A similar report ran in the Helena Daily Independent on February 2, 1909, called “White woman weds Chinaman.” It profiled how Margaret Gillett, “a white woman, of English descent,” was married to Yee Hoe Joe by Terrence O’Donnell in the “basement of the county court house.”

The article goes on to say that “the oriental says he has lived in Helena for ‘longee time’ and has been engaged as a cook for the family of George Tracy.” Gillett came to Helena twelve months before from St. Paul and seems to have been employed as a maid or domestic servant.

Early Chinese Businessmen in Montana

Many Chinese got out of mining and washing and into some real business, the kind that the white citizens envied. One of these men was named Chin.

Chin Hin Doon was a Chinese man that came to Montana. He’d been born in southeast China in 1856 and came to America in 1875. By 1894 he was in Butte where he became a partner in the Wah Chong Tai Company, a mercantile business.

Chin came from Guangzhou Province and the city of Canton, or today’s Guangzhou/Shenzhen. He, like many Chinese families, had been disrupted by the Opium Wars and the Taiping Rebellion.

We’re told by historian Richard I. Gibson that Chin had special privileges as a merchant, which allowed him to send for his son in the 1880s, well after the bans on Chinese entering the US were in effect.

We know that in 1910 Chin was the leading investor in the Wah Chong Tai Company, with $5,000 put in. The next highest investor was Chin’s son, Chin Yee Fong, who put in $2,000.

The company had been created in 1868 in Seattle by a man named Chin Chun Hock, who came to the city in 1860, “probably the first Chinese to settle in Seattle.” At that time there were but 302 people in Seattle’s King County.

Following the establishment of the company, Chin Chun Hock was referred to as Wa Chong. His business was so successful that he expanded to “two other metropolises in the Northwest: Portland and Butte.”

Wa came to Butte in October 1898 and the Miner reported him saying it was “a great city and I always like to come here.” He let his political views be known as well, saying, “I look for a revolution in China in the very near future. The people who know anything at all over there will lead the more ignorant masses against the officials, and I look to see the present government overthrown.”

Wa’s Butte building was completed in 1899 on 49 West Galena Street and in 1909 he came back to build another company building at 15 West Mercury, or at the corner of China Alley. In 1911 the buildings on Mercury Street were worth $25,000 and Wa owned $8,000 of that.

Montana’s Chinese in the Early-20th-century

Chinese people continued to come to America and Montana long after the initial burst in the late-19th century.

By 1920 just 101 Chinese lived in Helena. By this point the employment broke down like so:

18% were truck farmers
18% worked in restaurants
15% owned a business of some sort
15% were laborers
10% worked in laundries

In 1930 there were 88 Chinese in Helena. By 1940 there were 50 and by 1970 there were only 31. Those numbers went up slightly so that by 1980 there were 49 Chinese in Helena and in 1990 a total of 50.

We know that in 1900 a total of 91% of the Chinese could read and write and 70% could speak English. By 1920 80% could speak English.

One Chinese man that came to Montana was named Wong Sun.

He came in 1927 and established the Wong Sun Company in Billings. It was an herbs shop and Sun had 22 years of experience “absorbing the knowledge of old China, and studying the science of herbology,” according to newspaper article from September 1938.

The going was tough at first and Sun “received little more than existence from his business that year.” Eventually word got around that Sun’s herbal remedies were good cures for what ailed you and business picked up. By 1937 he’d opened shops in Missoula and Great Falls.

Not all Chinese-Americans were as successful or stayed as long as those in Montana. A good example of this is the Chung family.

Mrs. Wah Chung, early 20th-century Chinese

That’s an image of Mrs. Wah Chung holding her infant son Sammie. She was the wife of Wah Chung, who in the late 1880s was a prosperous Southern Pacific labor contractor in Ashland, Oregon.

He supplied the railroad with Chinese laborers. Mrs. Wah Chung came as a mail order bride and was an exotic figure around Ashland, dressed in Chinese silks and brocades.

After her husband died, Mrs. Wah Chung and Sammie moved to Portland. Later Sammie apparently drowned in the Willamette River and his mother made plans to return to China.”

Montana’s Chin Family Runs Into Problems

In 1921 the Tong Wars erupted in Butte and they stretched on into 1922. The two gangs that were fighting were the Hip Sing and the Bing Kong. The issue was trading rights and several murders took place.

In November 1937 there were raids by the Feds in Butte and other major US cities. They were looking to break up the opium smuggling ring and Wa’s son was arrested.

By this time Chin Yee Fong was known as Albert Chinn and the feds alleged that he’d been running “the hub of the distribution system controlled by the Chinese tong” that distributed opium.

Albert Chinn was known as Chin Joo Hip when he sold drugs and his son, Chin Joo Hop the younger (Howard Chinn to everyone else) was also in on it.

Both father and son were released on bond though Albert was convicted of the charges and served two years at California’s Terminal Island federal prison. When he got out in October 1939 he went back to Butte and opened the Mai Wah Noodle Parlor in 1942.

It’s not known when this new business or the Wah Chong Tai mercantile company were closed, but it’s assumed it took place between 1943 and 1945. When Albert Chinn died is also uncertain, though it’s suspected it was around the time his son William Chinn was fighting for the U.S. Army in the war. William came back to Butte in 1945.

The Chinese of Blackfoot City

Poker Jim

The story of Montana’s Chinese in the 20th-century continues…I just know it.

Unfortunately, there’s not much more in the Montana Historical Society files to prove this.

One thing they do have, however, are stories from Blackfoot City.

Blackfoot City was an area of today’s Powell County that was thriving as a gold mining community in the 1880s. One woman named Hattie McIntosh – called “Toots” by those who knew her – lived there. Years later Toots told her daughter in law her stories.

One involved two Chinamen that lived in Blackfoot City named Ah Soo and Ah Jim. The two usually were called Soo and Poker Jim. They lived on Carpenter’s Bar, an area that was mined at that time, though they never talked to one another. “The popular explanation was that they belonged to different Tongs and this was the reason for their enmity,” we’re told.

Soo was a friendly man that liked to laugh and when he did so you could see his two teeth, one upper and one lower. “A traveling dentist had persuaded Soo to have all of his teeth pulled and had promised to come back and finish the job, but he never returned.”

Soo did laundry and “mined some in his later years,” though never had much money. When he couldn’t work any longer he received $8 a month in welfare from the county commissioners. We’re told this was “more than adequate” as Soo could buy 100-pound bags of rice which he “supplemented with wild game and vegetables.”

As the years wore on so did Soo. He lived to be 100-years old and was looked after by both the McIntosh family and the Allen family. On one occasion Soo heard a neighbor’s daughter was having nosebleeds so he took some firecrackers over and “set them off on the front lawn to drive the evil spirits away.”

When Soo finally died in 1926 or 1927 he did so in his “cabin near the road.” He had set aside “five or six welfare checks for his burial,” which took place in Deer Lodge.

Poker Jim, on the other hand, “was not very friendly and rarely spoke.” He was a miner that worked for someone named Jim Allen. We’re also told that Poker Jim had a wife named Katie.

Jim originally lived in a dugout 300 yards down the mining bar though later moved to Blackfoot City “and lived in a cabin south of town near the dump.”

Frontier Town’s Jon Quigley knew Poker Jim well and often took some food to the old man.

Quigley was but a teenager at the time but Jim trusted him and “showed John his opium pipes and his daggers and even showed him the proper way to use a dagger.”

Here’s how Poker Joe’s end is recorded:

“When Poker died [in 1927 or 1928] John was in Deer Lodge going to high school. John couldn’t get home right away, but when he did he went to Poker’s cabin. It had been completely ransacked and nothing of value was left.

John was terribly disappointed, but then he remembered that people often hid their valuables under the floor of their cabins. He began to kick the dirt and rubble aside and found a loose board. Under the floor he found a tin box. When he opened it it appeared to be full of fine dirt.

He began to poke around in it and discovered there were various objects in the box. Then he picked out a stout stick which was near the top of the box and began to move things around with it. He noticed the stick had little gold dots along one side.

He found the daggers and the opium pipes and some Chinese coins. Then he dumped the whole thing out on the floor. He put the daggers, opium pipes, coins and the stick back in the box and took it home. The stick turned out to be Poker Jim’s gold scale.”

John Quigley put those items in his museum for everyone to see. The museum was called Frontier Town.

That, however, is a story for another day.

Notes

Anaconda Standard, 12 January 1894.

Bik, Patricia. “China Row: A report on the Chinese burial ground at Forestvale Cemetery for the Forestvale Cemetery Board of Lewis and Clark County.” Montana Historical Society report, December 1993.

Billings Newspaper (no name listing), 19 September 1938

Gibson, Richard I. “The Chinn Family Butte, Montana.” Montana Historical Society report, January 2013.

“Gold Mountain.” The Madisonian. Special Edition: July 1989.

Helena Daily Herald, 7 July 1870.

Helena Daily Independent, 2 February 1909,

Helena newspaper (name not listed), 24 January 1866

Medford Mail Tribune, 9 April 1989

Montana News Association, 9 June 1941

“Tales of Blackfoot City as Heard by Alice McIntosh.” Oral history at the Montana Historical Society, Chinese in Montana folder #2.

The Butte Miner, 23 February 23 1908

The Eighth Report of the Bureau of Agriculture, Labor and Industry, November 1902

The Montana Post, 3 June 1865

Wunder, John R. “Law and Chinese in Frontier Montana.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History. Vol. 30, No 3. July 1980.

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Tales from the Benton Avenue Cemetery

3/30/2015

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The Benton Avenue Cemetery has been in Helena since 1870.

The original Helena city cemetery was on Warren Street, where today’s Central School is. It came about in 1865 but the growth of the city required its removal by 1870. They didn’t get all the bodies, however. In fact, bodies were still being pulled out from under the school in 1893 when floods occurred or the ground shifted.

The bodies that had originally been buried in the Warren Street cemetery had been dug up in 1870 and moved to the Benton Avenue Cemetery. It’s a nice place, one that has tombstones you can walk around and get stories from. Some of those stories are below.

You can get a good perspective on the cemetery when you walk down Benton Avenue, right across from Carroll College. This is what it looks like:

Some wooden boards for headstones. The one in the upper left is of a 5-week-old boy

The view gets a little clearer the closer you get, and if you do some research or have the right books, you can get great stories.

Kemp family plot in the Benton Avenue Cemetery, Helena

One of those stories involves the Kemp family, all four members. It’s a tragic story, perhaps one of the most tragic in the whole place.

Cyrus Kemp had been born in Pennsylvania in 1831. In 1868 he moved to Helena and became an assayer and “conscientious, unassuming businessman.” He was about 37 years old at the time, and was likely already married. His wife was named Mollie and she’d been born in 1840 in Missouri. Two years after the pair arrived in Helena they had a daughter, named Annie. She died four years later, just a few weeks into January, 1875. She’d been fighting cerebro spinal meningitis, a battle she waged for twenty hours before she could fight no more. The death must have been a blow to the family, especially the mother. It was January 23 that Cyrus bought the plot in the Benton Avenue Cemetery for his daughter. The ground must have been tough.

Life went on for the Kemps, until 1884 when another tragedy struck. This time the circumstances are a bit unclear, but what is known is that Cyrus and Mollie’s second daughter died. Her name was Ella and she’d been trying to prevent her mother from killing herself.

It happened on June 30 when Mollie had been “laboring under a fit of temporary insanity,” according to the coroner’s jury. Cyrus was in another room of their Edwards Street home. He heard a gunshot in the bedroom, and rushed in to see Ella with “blood oozing from a bullet hole in her left temple.” She was lying on the floor by the bed, and he looked over to see his wife holding his Smith & Wesson pistol.

“Oh, have I shot Ella?” Mollie called out as he entered the room.

“Yes,” Cyrus said. “How – why did you do it?”

“I wanted to shoot myself, and Ella was trying to prevent me from doing it. It can’t be that she is much hurt. She will surely be better after awhile?”

At that point “the poor woman wrung her hands in anguish,” according to the reports. Cyrus called for help and by the time doctors came Mollie was “wild with grief” and they gave her an opiate. Ella died two hours later, never regaining consciousness. When Mollie later woke up from her drug-induced sleep, she was told Ella had died from falling out of a carriage. She refused to believe that Ella could be dead, though on July 1 Ella was buried.

The family continued on, this time until 1889 when tragedy struck again. Mollie kept it together for more than five years before August 24 of that year. Cyrus had made sure his wife had been kept on medicine, which was likely laudanum or some other form of opium. It seemed on that August day she argued with him over it and never took it. After a time she settled down, or so Cyrus thought. When he went to the other room he saw she wasn’t there, and that the kitchen door had been left open. He went out, and realized his wife had gone. Search parties were organized, and eventually Mollie’s body was found in the Chessman ditch, “a stream of about twelve inches deep.” It was clear it was suicide, for on her body was found a note that read: “My body and mind are giving away; don’t leave me alone for a moment.”

Cyrus kept on for two more years, until he married one Anna Wood. It was 1891 and he was 60 years old. The pair had a son the next year, which no doubt joy to the remaining years of Cyrus’s life. He died in 1896 at the age of 65.

Not all the tales coming from the cemetery are sad. Oh sure, everyone dies in the end, but some do so in more…entertaining ways than others. One such was Elijah Dunphy, though his life too was marked with tragedy.

The Dunphy Family Plot in the Benton Avenue Cemetery, Helena

Elijah Dunphy was born on March 25, 1833 in New Brunswick, Canada. He got married to Mary Small in 1858 and then in 1862 he moved to Grasshopper Creek in Montana, no doubt looking for gold. He was 29-years-old. The Dunphy’s were members of the Fisk Expedition that came through in that year and they moved from one mining camp to another, hitting up all the hotspots – Benton, Alder Gulch, and Bannack. Finally they came to Helena, where Elijah got involved in “the mercantile business, sawmill and lumber, hotel and stables.”

Elijah and Mary lived happily in Helena until Mary died in 1885. It was a shocking affair, coming on Christmas Eve, and as Mary was nursing the children of some friends. They’d had diphtheria, and she caught it and was buried that same day. It must have been a cold and heartless holiday that year.

Elijah kept on with his business interests, but life had no doubt become listless. Four years later, in 1889, he married Susan Barwell, who was 27 years of age to his 56 years of age. They were married in August and Elijah held out for just over a month before succumbing to a heart attack. The coroner ruled he was a victim of “constant over stimulation.”

That may have been due to his young and likely beautiful wife. Elijah had been worth quite a bit of money at the time, and didn’t have a will. His holdings were large – the Dearborn Avenue house was $10,000 alone, and besides that there was a “half interest in the Sweitzer Bank” and the entire Dunphy Block located on Main Street. All told, Dunphy’s worth was $150,000. Both the Helena Daily Herald and the Helena Independent speculated on what had killed him, from “heart disease” in the former and “a fit of epilepsy” in the latter. In the end it’s likely he went out just as he’d planned – on top.

Notes

Spalding, Charleen. Benton Avenue Cemetery. Pioneer Tales Publishing: Helena, 2010. p 63-4, 121-2,

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Two Montana Territorial Representatives

4/28/2014

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Note: This is an excerpt from my book Braves and Businessmen: A History of Montana, Volume 3

Montana Territory in 1879

From 1864 until 1889 Montana was a territory and had one at-large congressional district. There were just six men that served in that post, and most did little more than two years. Those were men like William H. Clagett, who served from 1871 to 1873. Others served a bit longer, such as four years, or even longer than that. Martin Maginnis, for example, served from 1873 to 1885.

The majority of Montanans today have no idea who those two men are, nor do they care. It’s unfortunate, and it’s probably one of the reasons we have so many out-of-state interests pulling our purse strings and choosing which candidates we’ll vote for.

Things weren’t a whole lot different in the 1870s and 1880s, back when the territorial legislature was still putting officials in office. But that system also led to breakdowns, such as when Montana had no senator for several years in the 1890s. The 17th Amendment finally did away with the practice altogether, allowing voters to choose who’d represent them.

Before then, however, it was still the days of the good ‘ol boys, and that’s why men like these were chosen to represent common Montanans.

William Horace Clagett (1871-3)

William Horace Clagett was born in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, on September 21, 1838. By 1850 he’d moved to Iowa with his father and eventually started to study law there before attending a law school in Albany, New York.

He passed the bar in 1858 and returned to Iowa to practice, then headed west to Nevada in 1861. He became a member of the Nevada Territorial House of Representatives in 1862 and then the Nevada Assembly in 1864.

By the mid-1860s he headed up to Montana Territory and once again practiced law. He was popular enough that the people chose him to represent them in Washington, and he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1870 as a Republican.

It was while serving in the House that Clagett probably did the most for Montana. On December 18, 1871, he introduced the Act of Dedication bill, which led to the creation of Yellowstone National Park.

The park wasn’t very popular in Montana at the time, however, and Clagett lost his reelection bid to Martin Maginnis in 1872. He headed back to Montana but suffered some serious wanderlust and practiced law in most of the western states. In 1889 he was president of the Idaho Constitutional Convention and tried to get elected to the U.S. Senate from Idaho in both 1891 and 1895, but failed each time.

He finally settled down in Spokane, Washington, and worked at the law until his death on August 3, 1901. He was 62 years old.

Martin Maginnis (1873-85)

Martin Maginnis was born in Pultneyville, New York, on October 27, 1841. His family moved to Minnesota in 1852 and attended Hamline University there, becoming a forceful voice on the schools Democratic newspaper.

When the Civil War broke out Maginnis joined the Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment and rose all the way to major by war’s end. In 1866 he and his brothers moved to Helena and got started in mining. Maginnis’ newspaper skills got him with the Helena Daily Gazette, and his and Wilbur Fisk Sander’s Helena Herald battled it out for the hearts and minds of the citizenry.

Maginnis proved better at it, and he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1872, a position he’d be reelected to five times, finally stepping down in 1885. He tried again for the seat in 1890, but lost to William Dixon. Instead he was given the Commissioner of Mineral Land of Montana position, which he held until 1893.

He stayed in Montana until 1915 when his health forced him to warmer climes. He moved to Los Angeles, California, where he died on March 27, 1919. He was 77 years old.

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Paris Gibson and Great Falls

3/9/2014

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Note: This is an excerpt of my upcoming book, Braves and Businessmen: A History of Montana, Vol. 3

Great Falls, 1891

Great Falls has a long history, much of it going back to prehistoric times. The first people to arrive in the area were Indians, and quite early. Salish started out, but later on the Blackfeet took over.

Whites came in the early 1800s and beginning in the 1880s the city of Great Falls was laid out and planned. Most of that work could be put at the feet of one man, Paris Gibson, the founder of Great Falls, Montana.

A Watery Origin

Great Falls was originally covered by a large proglacial lake called Lake Great Falls.

The lake has its origins around 1.5 million years ago. During that time the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets were formed. Over time these would push southward until around 15,000 to 11,000 BC when they blocked off the Missouri River and created Lake Great Falls.

The lake was 3,900 feet above sea level and beginning around 13,000 BC the ice sheets and glaciers retreating eventually caused Lake Great Falls to burst out of its confinement and tear through the Highwood Mountains, about twenty-three miles from the current city of Great Falls, creating the Shonkin Skag.

The Shonkin Skag is a prehistoric meltwater channel that runs 100 miles from Highwood, Montana, to the Judith Basin. It’s 500 feet deep and reaches a width up to two miles in some spots, and just 0.25 in others.

People Begin to Arrive

Jim Bridger

We know that the first Indians were around the Great Falls area between 9,500 and 8,270 BC from carbon dating. The Salish would become the dominant tribe in the area, until around 1600 when the Piegan Blackfeet entered the area from the west, pushed there by white incursions into their own land further east.

The area saw the first whites, probably with European explorers in the late 18th century, and then Lewis and Clark in 1805. Jim Bridger explored the area quite a bit around 1822, and it was there on the Andrew Henry Expedition of April, 1823, that he and many others came under attack from Blackfeet Indians.

In 1838 Jim Bridger guided a mapping expedition to the area at the behest of the federal government, and he’d go on to spend four years in the area. Not much happened after that until 1859 when the first steamboat came up to where the city would lay.

Settlers began coming to the area, although not in large numbers. When the Hellgate Treaty was signed with the Blackfeet in 1855 fewer attacks against whites occurred, so more came, but still not in any great numbers. It wouldn’t be until someone from Maine came through in 1880 that all of that would change.

Paris Gibson: The Founder of Great Falls

Paris Gibson, 1901

Paris Gibson was born on July 1, 1830, in Brownfield, Maine. He attended Bowdoin College and graduated in 1851. Just two years later, in 1853, he was elected to the Maine legislature.

After a time he moved to Minnesota, where he once again became active in his community. First he built the North Star Woolen Mill at St. Anthony’s Falls, and even served on the University of Minnesota Board of Regents from 1871 to 1879.

By 1880 things weren’t going that well in Minnesota so he headed even further west from his native Maine, reaching the Great Falls of the Missouri River later that year.

Gibson convinced his friend James J. Hill to invest in a townsite there at the falls, as well as to steer his railroad through. Both actions ensured a city would spring up, and by 1883 the city of Great Falls was founded.

Things moved quickly after that. The first citizens arrived in 1883 and in 1884 a flower mill, several stores, and a number of houses were built. That July the post office was established, with Gibson serving as the first postmaster. By 1885 a lumber yard and planning mill had been constructed, as well as a bank, school, and newspaper, the Great Falls Tribune.

All of those changes encouraged people to come, but perhaps not as much as the Great Northern Railway moving through the city, which occurred in 1887. This linked Great Falls by rail to the other emerging metropolises of the territory, Butte and Helena. The main line that Hill had built, however, was far to the north of Great Falls.

Still, because of those changes, and just four years after its start, Great Falls had 1,200 citizens. The next year saw the city officially incorporate, on November 28, 1888.

Efforts were soon underway to harness the might of the river. In 1890 the Black Eagle Dam was built. That same year saw the city reach a population of 3,949 residents according to the U.S. Census.

More dams would follow, including the Rainbow Dam in 1910 and Volta Dam in either 1912 or 1915. Volta Dam would be renamed Ryan Dam in 1940 in honor of Montana Power Company Founder John D. Ryan).

The city made do, finding other ventures. It became a hub for farmers, traders, and ranchers and the hydro power of the river was soon harnessed as well. Processing plants for ore and mills for grain were soon in operation.

The people of Great Falls and Montana recognized the work Gibson had done for them, and elected him to fill the seat of William A. Clark when he resigned his seat on May 15, 1900, to avoid charges of election fraud. The seat would remain vacant for nearly a year until Gibson was appointed to fill it.

Gibson served in the Senate from March 7, 1901, to March 3, 1905 and never sought re-election, instead spending the rest of his days in Great Falls. He died on December 16, 1920. He was 90 years old.

Notes

Alt, David and Hyndman, Donald W. Roadside Geology of Montana. Mountain Press Publishing: Missoula, 1986.

Axline, Jon and Bradshaw, Glenda Clay. Montana's Historical Highway Markers. Montana Historical Society: Helena, 2008.

Federal Writers' Project. Montana: A State Guide Book. Federal Works Agency, Work Projects Administration: Washington, D.C., 1939.

O'Neal, Bill. Fighting Men of the Indian Wars: A Biographical Encyclopedia of the Mountain Men, Soldiers, Cowboys, and Pioneers Who Took Up Arms During America's Westward Expansion. Barbed Wire Press: Stillwater, 1991.

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Trump & Hauser

Territorial Governor Samuel Thomas Hauser (1885-7)

Trump & Hauser

A History of Montana’s Early Chinese

The Chinese Come to Montana

The Alder Gulch “China War” of 1880

Discrimination Against the Montana Chinese

Mixed Marriages with Chinese

Early Chinese Businessmen in Montana

Montana’s Chinese in the Early-20th-century

Montana’s Chin Family Runs Into Problems

The Chinese of Blackfoot City

Tales from the Benton Avenue Cemetery

Two Montana Territorial Representatives

William Horace Clagett (1871-3)

Martin Maginnis (1873-85)

Paris Gibson and Great Falls

A Watery Origin

People Begin to Arrive

Paris Gibson: The Founder of Great Falls

MT Book 7

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Trump & Hauser

Territorial Governor Samuel Thomas Hauser (1885-7)

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A History of Montana’s Early Chinese

​The Chinese Come to Montana

​The Alder Gulch “China War” of 1880

​Discrimination Against the Montana Chinese

​Mixed Marriages with Chinese

Early Chinese Businessmen in Montana

Montana’s Chinese in the Early-20th-century

​Montana’s Chin Family Runs Into Problems

The Chinese of Blackfoot City

Tales from the Benton Avenue Cemetery

Two Montana Territorial Representatives

William Horace Clagett (1871-3)

Martin Maginnis (1873-85)

Paris Gibson and Great Falls

A Watery Origin

People Begin to Arrive

Paris Gibson: The Founder of Great Falls

MT Book 7

​Montana Blog

​Popular Posts

Categories

Archives

​My MT History Books

My Montana Novels

My Montana Short Fiction

Trump & Hauser

The Chinese Come to Montana

The Alder Gulch “China War” of 1880

Discrimination Against the Montana Chinese

Mixed Marriages with Chinese

Montana’s Chin Family Runs Into Problems

Montana Blog

Popular Posts

My MT History Books