Montana Articles

A History of Black Eagle

11/12/2016

A view of the B&M Smelter in Black Eagle

It’s been more than a year since someone emailed me wanting to know about Black Eagle, Montana.

Well, what they really wanted to know about were the bars there.

Those bars had their heyday around WWII, though the community that housed them had seen its heyday come and go long before that.

Let’s talk about Black Eagle today, and it’s long and interesting history.

The Early Communities that Became Black Eagle

Little Chicago began in 1888 when the Boston and Montana Consolidated Copper and Silver Mining Company, or B&M Smelter, was set to begin construction on the north bank of the Missouri.

This was a few years after the town of Great Falls started.

Ads were put out in national newspapers for copper workers to come.

B&M Smelter in Black Eagle

Calumet, Michigan, supplied many of those workers and soon Little Milwaukee rose up east of the smelter.

The residents were largely Italian and Croatian, with a good mix of Yugoslavians, Czechoslovakians, Greeks and Norwegians thrown in too.

Around 200 people eventually settled there, though there were as many as 500 shacks at one point.

Little Milwaukee lasted until 1903 when company officials ordered the families off the land. They moved to Little Chicago.

The main reason for the move was because of the smelter expansion, but also because “rail magnate James Hill was appalled by the sight of the shanty town.”

North Great Falls

A new community called North Great Falls soon developed 200 yards north of the Anaconda wire mill as well. About 150 people lived there in the 1890s, working for the B&M Smelter.

“It was not uncommon for the breadwinner to work at least 10 hours a day, seven days a week, for $2.50 a shift. However, it must be remembered work shoes sold for $2 a pair or less, overalls, 40 cents a pair; bread 5 cents a loaf, and beef, as low as 5 cents a pound.”

One famous resident of North Great Falls was Alex Remneas, “an outstanding baseball pitcher” in the early-1900s.

Residents of North Great Falls had to cross the Missouri using the First Avenue North toll bridge. Then the 15th Street Bridge was built in 1892 and the community began to move away.

In 1895 and 1896 there were several fires that destroyed homes. By 1906 there was nothing left of North Great Falls except for a few shacks.

Black Eagle is Chosen

The biggest change to the area happened in 1891 when the Black Eagle dam was built.

It was the first hydroelectric dam on the Upper Missouri River, and this video has a good history of it.

By 1916 the whole area was renamed Black Eagle when postmaster August Cor added a post office to his small grocery store located at 1517 Smelter Avenue.

No licenses were required to start a business in Black Eagle, and that’s how most of the bars started up.

There was an Irish saloon, a Swedish saloon, an Italian saloon, and a German saloon, as well as Malmberg saloon and Johnson’s saloon. The 40-room Flatiron Hotel also had a saloon, though the building was destroyed in 1900.

The people of Black Eagle lived simply in shanty-like houses with no running water or sewers. “Most homes tossed their wastewater into their yard or in the street.” Even as late as the 1920s water was drawn directly from the river, and came out “soupy.”

Black Eagle’s Schools

The town’s school, Hawthorne School, was located where the Anaconda golf course eventually sat. The school burned down in 1909 and a $26,000 bond measure was passed to build a new one. The vote was 99 to 3 in favor.

The new school was built that same year and renamed Copper Smelter School until sometime in the 1940s when the name changed to Collins School.

The name came from Fannie B. Collins, who worked at the school as a teacher and principal from 1909 to 1942.

She made $902.50 a year to run the school, with four other teachers helping. The teachers made between $740 and $900 a year.

Miss Collins taught the children of Anaconda Company employees, “smelter workers and big bosses alike.”

Amelia Polich, a first-grader in 1909, remembered that unruly children would go home at noon and line their pants with shingles, the better to ease the spankings their parents would give for such behavior.

Another student remembered that the nearby brick yard was very loud from the sound of dropping bricks. When a kid in class was asked a question they’d sometimes “wait for the bricks to drop – the noise gave him a little more time to come up with an answer.”

Collins School lasted until 1979 when it was closed as a cost-savings measure by the Great Falls school board. Declining enrollments and rising costs were the main reason.

Black Eagle’s Bar Troubles

“GIs were banned from the old Oasis bar in the 1940s after a shoot-out,” the Great Falls Tribune reported in 1997. “The town was known during the war for its bars.”

A big problem at that time were underage drinkers and how late the bars stayed open.

The Miami Café got into trouble for selling liquor after 2 AM and was denied their liquor license renewal sometime in the 1940s.

On December 26 (I don’t know the year as the newspaper clippings had none), Great Falls high school athlete Bud Kirwin charged that military police had attacked him in the Black Eagle night club without provocation. The military prepared court martial proceedings against two soldiers.

Supposedly Kirwin told the two MPs that “another boy at the bar was not a soldier,” whereupon they “slapped Kirwan several times, and when Kirwan was removing his coat the soldier clubbed him with his gun.”

There was a big problem at the time with minors going to the nightclub, so law enforcement officials were often on-edge.

Shortly after this a “mass-meeting of Black Eagle residents” was held to discuss “plans to curb and stop the growing unbearable nuisance caused at night by some undesirables from Great Falls.”

One of the main proponents of cleaning up the town was Black Eagle’s mayor, Ed Shields. He decried “a few beer hall owners or operators who were not patriotic enough “to close down at midnight, as Malmstrom’s General Dewitt wanted.

A big problem was how Black Eagle was looked down upon by the military men from Great Falls.

“For many years past the residents of Black Eagle have keenly suffered under gibes relative to their national origin, insults as to their mental capacity, etc., until today they have become utterly sick and annoyed at these uncalled for and un-American taunts.”

At that point residents had been trying to institute earlier closing times for the bars for 8 to 10 years, with no help from local or state authorities.

Conclusion

Whatever happened to the problems is unknown. The Historical Society in Helena has a folder filled with old clippings on Black Eagle.

Most pertain to the early days, with the rest talking about the 2010 superfund listing.

“Streets were muddy and many alleys contained piles of manure,” back in Black Eagle’s early days as a smelter town, but the real problems couldn’t be seen.

You could see the shit in the street, but what residents couldn’t see were the high levels of contamination they were living upon.

Between 1893 and 1980 copper smelting and metal refining created “elevated levels of lead and arsenic” in the soil of 375 homes, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency studies found in 2010. This was from the contaminants coming out of the 502-foot stack the refinery operated.

“Millions of tons of waste” were also dumped into the nearby Missouri River during this time. The EPA figured that “950,000 tons of slag and tailings were released in the river in 1907 alone.”

In 1977 Atlantic Richfield Co. bought up the site.

In 2010 it was designated an EPA Superfund cleanup site. Atlantic Richfield paid the EPA $1 million for cleanup. BNSF Railway Co. was also ordered to “investigate pollution in a railway bed in the community.”

We don’t get a lot in between the early days and the superfund days, but what we do know I’ve told you.

I hope this gives you a bigger picture of Montana and her history.

Notes

“Collins plans last ‘hurrah’ as it becomes a memory.” Great Falls Tribune. 1979.

Ecke, Richard. “Black Eagle listing advances: 60-day public comment period begins Thursday.” Great Falls Tribune. 3 March 2010.

“Highlights of history.” Great Falls Tribune. 12 June 1994.

Palagi, Guy. “North Great Falls’ Heydays Described by Ex-Sheriff.” Great Falls Tribune. 2 April 1967.

Polich, Rudy. “Town became Black Eagle – when it got a post office.” Montana Tribune. 25 March 1984.

Puckett, Karl. “’In the Shadow of the Big Stack’: Black Eagle group collects old memories.” Great Falls Tribune. 20 November 1997.

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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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From Sweden to America: A History of the Strandberg Family

9/7/2015

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Barnes, Lichtwardt, and Strandberg Threshing machine, 1918

“Please, father, let me stay!”

Hilda Germundson would have begged and begged her father to let her stay in Sweden, but the old man would not budge.

“But father, I love him!”

Magnus Germundson was firm – the answer was no. He’d be taking his third-youngest daughter to America with him, the same as the whole family.

The family would be staying together, unlike so many other Swedish families at the turn of the 19th century. Many were ripped apart by deteriorating economic conditions in the home country, forced to split up and head to neighboring cities or even other Scandinavian countries.

Magnus Germundson was not going to let that happen to his family. His daughter Hilda would be coming to America despite her protestations.

Six months later she’d be dead.

Strandbergs Coming to America

At least 1.3 million literate Swedes came to American between 1850 and 1900. In 1890 the U.S. Census reported 800,000 Swedish living in the country. Most immigrant families headed west to Chicago and the northern plains. My family was one of them.

Distribution of Swedish Americans in the United States according to the 2000 census

There are many people with the last name “Strandberg,” though the Strandbergs I’m writing about are the Montana and Kansas Strandbergs. A quick search of Google will tell you that there are a lot more, however.

The problem quickly becomes where to look. For instance, Ancestry.com has 72,193 historical documents with “Strandberg” in the records. There are 1,479 pages of names.

One of those is Nils Strandberg. You’ll get a record of his birth and death and that’s about it, and that only if you sign up for the service.

Number of Strandberg Families in America in 1920

If you look up the name “Strandberg” on Wikipedia you’ll get a short list of famous and semi-famous and pretty much forgotten individuals. I know none of them.

Perhaps I don’t know any because most are from Sweden. That’s where my ancestors came from, and the earliest I can trace them back is to is the early 17th-century.

Source Material for Strandberg Family Genealogy

The reason I can trace my family’s history back so far is because my own grandfather went to Sweden in 1977 and spent about two weeks going through the records of his family.

Hardie Strandberg had gone to Sweden because his son, Nels Strandberg – my father – bought him a ticket as a gift for paying his first year at Carroll College.

So Hardie Strandberg went over there and compiled quite a bit of history which largely remained forgotten until Wadonna Becker Ashcraft came along 1992. She put our family’s history together with other histories she’d written or collected from people like my grandfather.

The book was called Our Swedish Ancestors: Magnus Germundsson and Teadora Andersdotter (Strandberg).

Our Swedish Ancestors Book for Strandberg

Another book that is invaluable in tracing the history of Helena Valley families is the book Valleys of the Prickly Pear: Twenty Miles Each Way From the Little Red Schoolhouse, 1888-1988.

Valleys of the Prickly Pear Book for Helena

You can get the book on Amazon, though it costs $75. It’s in most libraries, some local bookstores have it, and I know local historians know where to get a copy. It’s an invaluable resource.

The book was largely put together by Floy Synness Peterson and Francis Isham Synness and then edited by Vivian A. Paladin.

Floy Synness Peterson was the person that restored the Little Red Schoolhouse in the Helena Valley.

Little Red Schoolhouse in Helena, Montana

In honor of that Governor Ted Schwinden awarded her the Montana Historic Preservation Commendation in the mid-1980s.

I remember going to a big get-together at the Little Red Schoolhouse in 1988 or so. It’s a pretty cool place and worth taking a drive toward Lincoln Road for.

Småland, the Ancestral Lands of the Strandberg Family

The Strandberg family comes from the historical Swedish province of Småland, which translates as “small lands.”

Province of Smaland in Sweden

Småland’s coat of arms depicts a rampant red lion on a golden shield carrying a crossbow.

Småland coat of arms and Strandberg

The arms first came about in 1569, though an earlier version from 1560 had featured roses.

Oftentimes the arms may appear with a ducal coronet, or crown. The blazon reads: “Or a lion rampant Gules langued and armed Azure holding in front paws a Crossbow of the second bowed and stringed Sable with a bolt Argent.”

There are some legends around the Småland area of Sweden where the Strandberg family of Montana hails from. One involves God creating the Smalanning people who were “strong ambitious, stubborn and shrewd.” Because the pieces of tillable ground in this area were so small the land was called “Smaland.”

In the 20th century, Småland has been known for its high level of entrepreneurship and low unemployment.

Old Swedish encyclopedia Nordisk familjebok describes the inhabitants of Småland as “by nature awake and smart, diligent and hard-working, yet compliant, cunning and crafty, which gives him the advantage of being able to move through life with little means.”

In Sweden today Smålandians are viewed as very economical, “ranging from modestly frugal to utterly cheap.” The Smålandian have also been called the “Scotsmen of Sweden.”

Much of this temperament no doubt comes from the land. Smaland was full of stones so the people there had to clear the land by hand, hauling the stones to make large walls. This caused their arms to grow longer, it was believed.

If anyone was to blame for the condition of the land it was St. Peter. Here’s the story of how that went:

“The Lord was occupied with the creation of Skane, making it beautiful and rich when he directed St. Peter to bring order to the land north of Skane. St. Peter began to place a layer of soil on the many rock and stone formations. He planted pine, spruce and birch trees between the streams and lakes. He was proud of his work, but before the Lord had a chance to inspect his work a heavy rainstorm washed away the soil and made bare the long stretches of rock and boulders. When the Lord saw the stony boulders in the ground, he said to St. Peter, “I have just created a rich fruitful land to the south, you go and create men to live there. I have a much harder task here.”

Vikings from Norway raided the area of Småland around the 900s AD and their contact brought new ideas to the land. Christian thinking rose up and this clashed with the pagan beliefs. Warfare was common and the 1100s were a particularly bloody time for Småland.

Smålanders believed in the pagan gods of Thor and Odin until 1120 AD when the Norwegian king led a crusade against Småland shortly after returning from Jerusalem.

Serfdom was abolished in Sweden in the 1200s. Potatoes came to the country in the mid-1700s. It wasn’t long before herring and potatoes graced even the poorest of tables as the common fare of the country.

The Montana Strandberg Family

Long before the 19th-century Swedish migrations our ancestors were living in Småland near the town of Almhult. The Strandberg family can trace its history back to Almhult, Sweden.

In 2010 the town had less than 9,000 residents. Its major claims to fame are being the home of botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1707 and the first IKEA store in 1958.

There are two main branches of the Montana and Kansas Strandberg families. First is the Magnus Germundson branch, which we can trace back to his great-great-great-great-great grandmother, Bengta Tijlsdotter. I’m going to estimate her year of birth at between 1595 and 1600. We know that her one of her grandsons was born as early as 1658.

The second branch is that of Teodora Andersdotter and we can trace her ancestors all the way back to her great-great grandmother, Lisbeth Mattisdotter. I’ll put her year of birth between 1660 and 1700. We know her son Bolla was born in 1689 at the earliest, though possibly as late as the 1750s. Most of his children were born in the 1710s and 1720s, however.

The accepted date for the start of the Strandberg family as we know it is 1620. Over time the family was able to buy up a full mantle of land, which made them quite prosperous compared to others. Just a sixteenth of a mantal was thought sufficient to support a family.

That mantle contained a farm. That farm was called Stranghult. Strangult means “string grove” or “a grove of trees” in Swedish.

The earliest date the family can be traced to Stranghult is to the early 1700s when the Anders Mattisson family is first mentioned as owning Stranghult.

Stranghult Strandberg home in Sweden, c 1977

Anders Mattisson married Bengta Jonsdotter on December 26, 1828.

Anders had six men and three women operating the farm that he had on the land. In May 1839, however, Anders died of a fever. The farm went to Bengta and her children, though it had three mortgages on it. Still, it was valued at $4,000 and had 22 head of cattle.

On September 14, 1840, Teodora was born. It was sixteen months after her mother had been widowed. So…who was the father?

Teodora was given the name Andersdotter, so we know that her father was named Anders, even though it wasn’t likely the man that had owned Stranghut and died.

It’s likely it was Anders Nilsson, who had been working at a nearby farm. We don’t know who the father was, truth be told, but the church did know that they had an illegitimate birth on their hands. Bengta had to pay a fine on October 31, 1840. In 1845 we know that 45% of the children in Sweden were born out of wedlock.

Anders Nilsson came back to the farm in 1843 to live and died there in 1854. He’d only been 35 years old and had complained of stomach pains for years.

Life wasn’t easy in Sweden. Nils Strandberg used to tell how:

“The tailor came to Stranghult each year, staying with the family while he made clothes from the woolen and linen fabric that had been spun and woven during the year. A cobbler came and stayed while he made the shoes and boots from animal skins killed and cured during the year. Nils told how as a child he soaked and laid the flax on the bank of the lake to bleach. Another story of Nils tells about how Magnus Germundsson acquired the expertise of using the new invention of dynamite. He used his knowledge and ability to blow up some large boulders from other farms in the area. Since it was such a specialized business, he was paid well and much in demand.”

In 1860 severe weather conditions hit Sweden and drastically changed agriculture. Between 1868 and 1873 more than 100,000 people left the country as crops failed and harvests became substantially less than they were before.

This was when the mass migrations from Sweden began.

Some Strandberg Children Leave Sweden

Magnus Germundsson was born in 1831 in Sweden and despite his skills with dynamite, the family was losing ground as the Swedish economy suffered. For the older children, it was clear that better opportunities lay elsewhere.

Magnus Germundsson and Teodora Andersdotter, c 1890 in Sweden

The oldest child of Magnus and Teodora was named Ingrid Magnusdotter, born in February 1861, and she’d actually come to America in 1888. She was travelling with sixteen others from the same area and upon arriving in America they all headed west. Twelve of them went to Anaconda, three went to Denver, and the rest ended up in Hutchinson, Kansas.

Ingrid didn’t much care for Kansas, probably because she wanted to be in Montana. That’s where John Benson was, whom she’d known in Sweden. He’d gotten work in the Anaconda smelters and later the coal docks for the railroads. The latter proved intolerable, for in winter “his hands would freeze to the shovel tearing flesh from his bones.”

Nonetheless, he worked and the two were married in Anaconda in February 1889. There were so many “Bensons” that John Benson changed his name to John Magnus. They managed to save up enough money over time to get a stretch of land on Willow Creek, near Silver City, which is north of Helena.

By 1916 they had 100 head of cattle and Ingrid’s butter was renown throughout the area. Sadly, their son Henry was killed by lightning while working in the garden in 1920. John Magnus died in 1926 though Ingrid hung on until 1951.

“She was well known and loved in Helena. Her brother Nils Strandberg often made the remark the town people kept the road warm to her ranch. A former Governor and the Attorney General of Montana spent many days at the ranch while they were growing up.”

The Kansas Strandbergs can really trace their lineage back to Magnus and Teodora’s third child, Anna Magnusdotter. She was born in April 1865 and left Sweden on March 3, 1886. She travelled to New York, arriving on April 3. The trip cost her 167 kr.

Four others from the Virestad area of Sweden accompanied her. In New York “a black porter tried to help Anna with her luggage,” my grandfather wrote. “She refused, feeling he wasn’t clean. She had never seen a black person before.”

Ingrid married Carl Orth and took that name. In 1904 she bought 160 acres in Fargo, Oklahoma. By 1915 she rented the farm out and headed back to Kansas. She lived there until her death on September 3, 1933.

Gustaf Magnusson left Sweden on March 25, 1887. He sailed from Malmo and the reason was simple – he wanted to avoid the Swedish draft. He paid 164 kr to travel to New York on the wooden schooner Ceres, a ship that had been built in 1859.

He made it to Kansas and worked in the salt mines for three years, taking English classes at night. He eventually got married – to a woman he often walked 28 miles to see – and they moved to Oklahoma. There was a sod home on 160 acres and the first year Gustaf brought in kafir corn, the second broom corn, and the third year wheat.

Gustaf died in Billings. He’d been taking a bus up to Montana to visit his sister and two brothers when he became ill and went to the hospital. Something happened and Gustaf was stabbed multiple times while a patient there. It’s unknown what happened, but that led to his death in July 1945.

The Strandberg Family Leaves Sweden

Magnus Germundson and his wife Teodora left Stranghult with their five children on March 23, 1891. They headed 85 miles south to Malmo. There on April 23 they boarded the packet steamer Argo and headed up past Denmark into the North Sea and then back south to Hull, England. The voyage typically took two days.

The trip from Sweden was pretty standard. Those leaving the country usually did so from Gothenburg, taking a steerage ticket most likely, which would cost 105 kr in 1880, or $1.14. (105 crowns is $28 today)

It was very hard to save up this money, as the average yearly earnings for a Swedish farmer in the 1880s was 138 kr, or $1.50. The good news is that room and board were typically included with this.

People would first head across the North Sea to England, usually the city of Hull. From there it was an immigrant train to the docks in Liverpool, 126 miles across the country. Passengers were expected to furnish their own food for this whole leg of the journey.

After that it was aboard ship for twelve days to New York and then it’d be on another immigrant train to Chicago. The train ride took five days and there were interpreters for passengers, something that likely helped on meal stops.

My family came over before Ellis Island was the main point of entry. They were processed at Castle Garden, but before getting off the boat they and all other passengers had to tear up their mattresses and throw them overboard, as well as provide the keys to their trunks.

Why did they leave Sweden? At that time the family owned just a quarter of a mantal of land. Stranghult had been reduced in size and may have been inadequate for a family of their size.

While coming over on the boat from Liverpool the parents were adamant that they were going not because of financial reasons but to keep the family together. Considering they travelled first class and not the more common steerage, there’s validity in this, although they’d just sold the farm as well, so that could be the reason for their sound finances.

Whatever the reason, they were moving, and not all were happy. Hilda Germundson wanted to stay back in Sweden with her true love. The family insisted she come to America, however, and she obeyed. Upon arrival the family discovered that she was pregnant.

It’s not known if Hilda knew this before leaving Sweden or not, though she would have been about 6 to 8 weeks pregnant at the time, so it’s likely.

By the time the child was due the family had reached Hutchinson, Kansas. The childbirth was difficult and both Hilda and the young baby died on October 12, 1891.

Hilda was just 20 years old. Magnus later said that if he’d known she was pregnant he “would have brought the young man along with the family.”

Whether it would have made a difference is unknown. It likely would have made Hilda’s time in America better, and perhaps that would have been the psychological boost she’d needed to get through the childbirth. The cause of death was listed as “heart trouble.” Sadly, it wouldn’t be the first tragedy that befell the family while in Kansas.

Two years after Hilda died her mother followed. Perhaps it was the untimely death of her daughter, or the strange new land she called home. Whatever the case, Teodora Magnusson died in October 1893.

The family settled into farming, primarily at a place called Pretty Prairie. They rented their land and moved about a bit. They also changed their name to “Strandberg.”

Where does the name “Strandberg” come from? Here’s the common telling:

“It is uncertain where the name Strandberg comes from. Gertrude Strandberg Peterson told of its coming from the farm Stranghult. In Sweden the name is a military name, and translates or means ‘shore mountain.’ Hardie Strandberg remembered his father Nils telling him it came from a railroad siding in Kansas. There is a railroad siding at the end of Swede Road in rural Reno County, Kansas with the name of Strandberg. We could not definitely assign a positive reason for the choice of names.”

Nils Strandberg and the Modern Montana Strandbergs

Peter Johan Strandberg came with the family in 1891 and stayed in Kansas. Here’s what a granddaughter remembered of him”

“Peter was one of the most fascinating men she had known. A hyperactive in all likelihood, he slept for 3 or 4 hours a night. Read his Bible often and was very proud of his Masonic 32nd degree. He had great knowledge of the stars and Viking Mythology, a grace and balance of movement. He started his children on gymnastics early in life.”

Peter was “among the first in the community to experiment with new technologies. He liked fast cars. Pictures in 1928 show Peter giving President Harding a ride on his tractor.”

Peter would die on July 18, 1932, from injuries he received while repairing his tractor.

The real meat and potatoes of the Strandberg family, as far as I’m concerned, is my great-grandfather, Nils Strandberg.

Nils Strandberg was born on March 10, 1879, and was the 8th child of Magnus and Theodora Germundson. He left Sweden with the family in 1891. He likely would have stayed in Kansas had he not had a brief and tumultuous love affair with the 21-year old Ada Gillett in 1900. He’d been working as a laborer on her mother’s farm, and their tryst likely didn’t sit well with the family.

There wasn’t much reason for Nils to stay as his father Magnus had died on November 30, 1901. Nils hopped on a train for Montana in early-1902 and was soon working on a ranch outside Helena and then later the gold mines. He got caved-in on several times and also developed lung problems. Still, the work was so good that in October he headed back to Kansas to get his brother Henry.

Nils stayed in the mines until 1907 “when a doctor told his brother to get him out of that kind of work or he wouldn’t live another year.”

It was easy to get out as Nils and his brother had started a small ranch in Canyon Creek in 1904. They also “batched” on the “Greaser place” and the “Geir place.” They also leased excess land to the Gans and Klein Company, on what is known as today’s Settle Ranch.

In 1916 Nils married Violet Hardie of Helena. They would have five children between 1917 and 1926.

By 1919 the Strandberg brothers had 4,480 acres. That summer was dry and hay was scarce. Many ranchers lost their herds, or would have had they not sold.

Each of the brothers had $100,000 in cash and their banker advised them to buy up as many head of cattle as they could. They did, and had a lot of money in those fields north of Helena come the winter of 1919. The following summer, however, was hot and dry.

It looked like the brothers might be able to make it if they could just get the crop in. Before that could happen “hail came and took everything.” The brothers were broke and had no way to feed their cows. Nils was heard to say he wished the animals would go drown themselves in the lake, so heartrending were the starving animals’ cries for food.

The brothers lost everything, but they didn’t give up. Nils moved up to the Taylor Ranch, or what’s today’s Charlie Vulk ranch. That lasted two years before he moved on to the Opheim ranch, which eventually became Allen Shumate’s ranch.

It was there that Nils Strandberg ran the dairy business of Montana Savings Bank, milking 125 head of Holstein Freisen cows. At that point in time the Opheim ranch was managed by Thomas Marlow, C.A. Broadwater’s nephew.

Nils was never able to get back into business for himself. Perhaps he didn’t want to after the horrendous losses of 1920. He continued to help out area farms and ranches in the Prickly Pear Valley, such as the “Picotte place for a year” and then “north of Glass Drive” for ten years.

The latter was Michels and Synness land, which would come to be owned by Dick Wolstein. Also during this time Nils drove the school bus for Helena’s School District 30, a job he held from 1925 to 1930.

By the 1930s economic hard times were had by all, and the brothers decided to start a dairy business in the Helena Valley. By 1933 Nils had enough money to buy up 230 acres “of good irrigated land” there. He continued to work the land until heart trouble forced him to retire.

He settled into his home at 6145 North Montana Avenue. He died there on November 9, 1954. Nils’s brother Henry died in 1969, likely from lung problems brought on from smoking.

Nils’s wife Violet Strandberg lived on in the North Montana Avenue home until April 20, 1987. The home is now a church, the Mountain Fellowship.

Home of Nils Strandberg in Helena

Stranghult was sold in 1891 to Karl E. Bengtsson. It was sold again in 1916 and then in 1918 and then in 1921.

That last saw it come back to the family, Albert Astrom. His son Ole’ Astrom bought it in 1956 and the farm saw the wooden house replaced with a brick house in 1962. The barn still remains, or at least had been there in 1977.

Stranghult is 2.4 miles south of the town of Almhult, then 3 miles east on a side road, then another 1.8 miles down a country lane to the main house.

Looking at Google Maps, this is about where I think the general area for Stranghult is.

Location of ancestral Strandberg home

There are also property records for Stranghult, with one house currently on the market. The asking price is 795,000 kr, or $94,000.

Stranghult Home in 21st Century

Conclusion

“We can be proud of our ancestors,” Hardie Strandberg wrote in 1977.

He had no doubt they were “hard working, highly respected, and devout Christian people,” for “without exception” the clergy “wrote nice things praising our family.”

Strandbergs could read and write as early as the 1600s. Even though “during the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries people died young,” Strandbergs would “live into their seventies and eighties.” When death did come it was usually due to “chest illness” or old age.”

Strandbergs epitomized the Smålandian work ethic and brought it to Montana with them. The state has been better for it.

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A Short History of Oil in Montana

10/23/2014

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The Lucas Gusher at Spindletop Hill, South of Beaumont, Texas, January 10, 1901

Oil was first discovered in Montana in 1892, at least if you go by the first claims. They were filed by prospectors in the Kintla Lake area of the Flathead Valley.

People in the area, especially Indians, knew that something was there for a long time, perhaps hundreds of years. The nearby Tobacco Plains always had a kerosene smell to it, something noted in early accounts of the area.

First well drilled at Kintla

Oil production moved up into the northern states during the Civil War, into New York and the Ohio River valley. The early businessmen to get into the growing oil industry were Charles Pratt with the Astral Oil Works, on the lamp oil side of things.

By 1867 Henry H. Rogers had come along and the two formed the Charles Pratt and Company, although Standard Oil bought them up by 1874.

Mark Twain and H.H. Rogers in 1908

It doesn’t sound like too serious a setback, not when there’s oil under the ground, but back then there was so much of it and so little demand that the cost of making a new well just didn’t make sense. Another company had entertained notions of building a well nearby, but gave up in 1903 due to funding. So Kintla Lake remained quiet once again.

In 1902 the Montana Swiftcurrent Oil Company started up after miner Sam Somes found oil instead of the minerals he was hoping for, primarily gold. By 1906 the area had been staked out and stretched sixteen by fifteen miles, with wells on each acre. Oil drilling in Glacier had begun.

Oil production had begun in California in 1865 but remained localized until larger wells came in during the 1880s and 1890s. It wasn’t until 1921 with the Long Beach Oil Field that the state really got on the map as one of the largest oil producers in the country.

In Montana it was clear that if there was oil there was money. Butte Oil Co. got interested in the Kintla oil fields in 1900 and started construction on an eight-foot wide wagon road the next year. The company got its drilling equipment shipped in from Pennsylvania using that road. They were able to drill a 1,400-foot deep well right near the shore of Kintla Lake until disaster struck in the form of a fire over the winter of 1902-3.

Edwin L. Drake and his well in Titusville, Pennsylvania, 1859 (touched up in c 1890s)

In 1912 a young college student named W.T. Thom, Jr. was working for the U.S. Geological Survey around eastern Montana and the Dakotas. He found coral there, a clear indication that a vast and mighty sea once covered the area. Knowing his geology, Thom figured that crude oil was probably there now.

Thom made that point clear nearly a decade later when he was now a professor at Princeton when he presented his findings in a Geological Society of America paper in 1923, using the term the Williston Basin for the first time.

If there was oil there’d be men to come and try their hand at getting it out, and several attempts were made during the 1920s, primarily around Baker and Glendive. Starting in 1924 the area around Williston, North Dakota first began to see drilling, primarily by Clarence Iverson on his farm south of Tioga.

A new chapter in the history of Montana had begun, and the state didn’t even know it yet.

The Appalachians prove the real winners, becoming the top oil-producing region of the country until 1904. Well before that Gulf Coast oil production was beginning to gain ground, with most wells beginning in the 1890s. Oklahoma became a destination for oilmen in 1897 and by 1905 the state took off. In 1901 the Spindletop oil field was first drilled in Texas, giving rise to Texaco and Gulf Oil. Still, by the time 1900 rolled around, Standard Oil had a virtual monopoly on production, an 85% control.

Kintla Lake

It wasn’t the only area of the state, either. Settlers coming over the Bozeman Trail sometime in the mid-1860s recorded collecting some kind of “crude scum” along the Big Horn River that they used to oil their wagon wheels. In the 1870s a rancher just north of the Musselshell River wrote that there were “petroleum indications all through here and some day Montana will produce oil.” (Daily Interlake)

The first oil rush to happen in America occurred in Pennsylvania in 1859, which is when the nation’s first well was drilled, the Drake well. Oil was marketed to consumers as kerosene lamp oil for their houses; to painters and cleaners as naptha and benzine; and of course to anyone that needed gasoline for a motor, of which there were still very few.

Mining in the Swiftcurrent Valley, c 1870-80

Notes

“Explorers and Exploiters.” National Park Service. Web. Retrieved 22 October 2014. http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/glac2/chap3a.htm

Malone, Michael Peter; Roeder, Richard B.; Lang, William L. Montana: A History of Two Centuries. The University of Washington Press: Seattle, 1976. p 314-28

Malone, Michael P. Montana Century: 100 Years in Pictures and Words. Falcon Publishing, Inc.: Helena, 1999. p 9-11.

“Montana’s first oil well was drilled at Kintla Lake in 1901.” Daily Interlake. 20 December 2011. Web. 22 April 2014. Retrieved 21 September 2014. http://www.dailyinterlake.com/news/local_montana/article_5d37faf6-2b84-11e1-975e-001871e3ce6c.html

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Ella Knowles: Montana’s ‘Portia of the People’s Party’

9/20/2014

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

Populism and progressive political ideals found fertile ground in Montana during the 1890s. The death knell of silver with the Fourth Coinage Act of 1873 had spurred many people that might not otherwise have been politically active to seek redress for their grievances. Although largely made up of farmers in other states, Populism took hold in Montana with disenchanted miners and other workers that felt the rich were getting too much in the way of handouts and government representation.

In June 1892 a disparate group of laborites, prohibitionists, Greenbackers, farmers, and silver miners met in Butte to nominate candidates for that year’s election. Most were concerned about the growing power of business, especially the railroads and the fees and rates they charged. Silver was another issue and the party put forth candidates for the legislature, governor, congressman, and attorney general. That last was a woman named Ella Knowles, one that drew crowds and got people excited, so much so that she was called the “silver tongued orator of Montana.”

The excesses of the rich and the role they played in bringing about the Panic of 1893 were leading reasons for the rise of the Populist Party in America. Silver prices collapsed and suddenly many miners found themselves out of work. The Populist Party lent a willing ear to their plight and gained new converts in the process. Things were getting more radical, and by 1894 a group of angry miners hijacked a train car and started it toward Washington, hoping to meet up with Jacob S. Coxey and his army of disenchanted.

Jacob Coxey, 1914

They didn’t make it, but many of the candidates that held similar views did. That November three Populist candidates were elected to the state Senate while thirteen made it to the House. It may well have played a large part in William Clark not getting his Senate in 1893.

The future seemed bright for the group, especially in 1896 when William Jennings Bryan embraced many of their ideals, including free silver, while running on the Democratic ticket for president. Montana was with him all the way, in no small part to Marcus Daly, who contributed $50,000 to his election campaign, more than any other individual in the nation.

Jennings lost the election, but the overwhelming amount of votes he got in Montana translated into local Progressive and free silver candidates becoming elected. Robert B. Smith won the governor’s office while Charles S. Hartman changed his party affiliation to Silver Republican so he could continue on in Washington. What’s more, the state House of Representatives was now in control of the Democrats and Progressives, who had uneasily entered into a power sharing deal.

The Progressives may have lost power over time as those political winds changed and politicians gradually eased back into their own predilections, but they had lasting consequences. Montana and many other western states remained wary of the power two parties could hold, and legislation was enacted that made it more difficult for them to make gains. This translates today in the much smaller amounts of money political candidates can gather, regardless of their party.

Their message was easily identifiable to many, with an emphasis on workers, safety, women’s equality, and a fair day’s work. Their ideas infected the populous and all candidates for some time afterward would have to bend a little toward those ideals. In Montana Caldwell Edwards would be elected as Montana’s representative in 1900, and he did so on the Populist ticket.

He would be the only one from Montana that could say that. The Democrats and Republicans would still be the dominant parties, and they would continue to push Montana where they felt it should go in the 20th century.

Ella Knowles

One woman that didn’t get pushed around too much was Ella Knowles. It’s rare for individuals to emerge that have the power to change everything, but Ella Knowles was one. She worked tirelessly, courageously…magically. Through sheer perseverance against what others would view as insurmountable odds, Knowles broke down barriers and altered the course of a state.

Ella Knowles, c 1890s

Ella J. Knowles was born in Northwood, New Hampshire, on July 31, 1860. Knowles’ mother died when she was fourteen, ending the source of her early education. She enrolled in the Northwood Seminary then switched over to Plymouth State Normal School after a year. The next few years were spent teaching until she had enough money to take one of the few colleges in the country that accepted women, Bates College in Maine.

Bates College, 1857

Knowles excelled at the university, participating on the debate team, serving on the college magazine’s editorial board, and generally making a name for herself in what was still a male-dominated institution, and world. Few women had such opportunities in the 1880s. Most weren’t getting much more than common schooling, and they certainly weren’t going to college. If they did, it was often with the understanding that they’d meet the right man while there, settling down to start a family afterward. Careers were frowned upon, and politics was simply out of the question.

The only place in the country that allowed women to vote was the Utah Territory, which gave them the right on December 10, 1869. It was really a charade – the whole point was to garner more voting age adults to gain statehood. The federal government had allowed it in the hopes it would do away with polygamy, but most women voted for the practice. The federal government threw up its hands in 1884 with the Edmunds-Tucker Act, which took away women’s right to vote.

It was into that atmosphere that Ella Knowles entered the world as a freshly minted rhetoric and English literature major. She started looking for work immediately, and found a position with Burnham and Brown, a law firm back in New Hampshire. She worked there until 1887 when her health took a turn for the worse. Knowles would have health problems for the rest of her days, all stemming from these first early episodes.

Heading West

Dryer climates were what was needed, her doctor urged, so Knowles moved west. She made it to Iowa, doing a stint at Western Normal College. Her health problems returned, however, so she headed to Salt Lake Academy in Utah. That wouldn’t do either, so north it was to Montana. She arrived in Helena in 1888 and got a job teaching at Helena Central School, then a year later at West Side School, where she was appointed principle.

Helena's Central School, c 1900

Not bad for a woman not yet thirty and intent on making it in the world, and on her own terms. And being a principle of a school was not Ella Knowles’ main desire in life. She declined the appointment, much to the dismay of everyone that knew her, and instead found a job at a law office run by Joseph Kinsley, another transplanted New Englander.

It was clear Knowles wanted to be a lawyer – you just didn’t work in law offices in the 1800s without that intent. Nearly all of Montana’s representatives at both the territorial and federal levels had gotten started just the same way, and Knowles felt that the route should be open to her as well.

But Montana didn’t allow women to vote, and it didn’t allow them to practice law. On that last point they weren’t alone, but not everyone felt the same. Arabella A. Mansfield had passed the bar in Iowa in 1869, making her the first female lawyer in the country. By the late 1880s there were dozens of women lawyers in America, perhaps fifty at most.

Arabella A. Mansfield, c 1870

Still, the chances of becoming one were slim, especially since the only way Montana was going to allow women to become lawyers was by changing the law. That meant Knowles would have to come before the legislature.

She did so, finding an ally in Walter M. Bickford. The Missoula senator sponsored a bill that would allow women to take the bar exam. Knowles spoke before the assembled legislature, the first woman to do so, and persuaded enough members. After a lengthy debate that saw some supporting her while others said she should be at home, the bill passed. Knowles could now take the bar exam, something she did on December 26, passing with flying colors.

Ella Knowles Jumps Into Montana Politics

By 1892 she felt confident enough to open her own practice. It worked out, and she was quickly making thousands of dollars a year, and besting some of the more capable male lawyers in the process. She routinely won her cases, in large part because her male counterparts underestimated her.

Some folks that didn’t underestimate her were the Progressives. Indeed, this nascent political party knew an ally when they saw one, as well as a gifted speaker that could lend credence to many of their issues. They nominated Knowles for state attorney general on the Populist ticket, marking the first time a woman was nominated for a statewide office in Montana and the country.

Like the rest of the nation, however, Montana’s women couldn’t vote for Knowles, or any candidate. Women’s Suffrage was still a hot issue in the state, and the only time it was allowed was for school board elections. Yet another question was raised as to whether it was even legal for a person to run for an office they themselves could not vote for.

The race could have ended right there on a technicality. Aid came from an unlikely source, however – Knowles’ Republican opponent in the race, Attorney General Henri J. Haskell.

Henri J. Haskell, c 1890s

Haskell had been born in Palmyra, Maine on July 20, 1843. He joined up with the 1st Maine Cavalry Regiment in 1862 and found himself at Gettysburg the following year. His service was up on March 11, 1865, after receiving wounds in battle. He returned to the family farm in Maine before moving to California in 1867. He studied law and passed the bar there in 1875, practiced for a year, then returned to Maine in 1876. Six years would go by before he felt restless and decided to head west again. He settled in Montana in 1882 and quickly got to work practicing law in Glendive, ten miles east of Yellowstone.

The next year he married Nellie Towle, a native of the town and then set about making connections. One such was with Wilbur Fisk Sanders, who gave him a job representing the Northern Pacific Railroad. He was also appointed deputy clerk of the 3rd District Court in 1883, a position he’d hold until 1887. During that time Nellie had two children, both of whom died in infancy. Complications following the second pregnancy took her life as well, and by 1886 Haskell was a widower.

In 1887 he was serving as county attorney for Dawson County and in 1888 was elected to the final territorial House of Representatives as well as the constitutional convention in 1889. When Montana became a state later that year he was an obvious choice for the first attorney general, and was just entering into his first reelection campaign in 1892 when Knowles suddenly entered his life.

The 1892 Montana Attorney General’s Race

Haskell was one over by something – Knowles’ charm, legal sense, or perhaps looks – and gave his official opinion that she could run for the office, despite not being able to vote.

Perhaps he underestimated her, much like the men that went up against her in court, but Knowles was expecting that. To win over voters she studied up on the issues, and settled upon free silver, a plank in the platform of the Progressives, and one many in Montana identified with.

She crisscrossed the state, delivering more than a hundred speeches that many found to be “replete with reason, gilded with rhetoric and clothed with eloquent passages which stamped them as efforts creditable to the most gifted of Montana’s orators.” (Morrison, 50).

Knowles was quickly labeled the “Portia of the People’s Party,” in reference to Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. In the 1598 play, Portia is depicted as being intelligent, quick of wit, and above all, strong. Ella Knowles projected a strength that many curiosity-seekers were quite surprised by when they came to see her speak. Other candidates quickly realized the power she had to draw and keep a crowd, and she typically spoke last so the more ‘boring’ candidates could be heard by someone.

Voters may have heard Knowles, but they didn’t vote for her. She placed third in the race, garnering 11,464 votes. It wasn’t a landslide; Haskell had won with just 16,606 votes. What’s more, she had a better showing than the other losing Progressive candidates on the ballot that year, Kennedy for Governor and Edwards for Congress. They received less than 5,000 votes each.

A Progressive Union

Haskell developed feelings for Knowles during the campaign, and they continued long after. While in Butte in 1895, Knowles had broken her ribs in a driving accident. Sent off to recuperate in the more hospitable environs of San Francisco, one likes to imagine that Haskell missed her, perhaps felt he couldn’t do without her. He went to California and the two were married on May 23.

They returned to Montana as soon as Knowles was able and she got right back to work with the law. There would be no more political races for Knowles, but she would remain active in politics.

Times were changing and the economy was recovering after the Panic of 1893, although slowly. Many politicians that had embraced Populist causes were now not so adamant. By 1896 most were back in the Democratic fold and the election came down to gold versus silver, with Republican William McKinley supporting high tariffs and gold against the Democrat William Jennings Bryan and his pro-silver stance.

William Jennings Bryan, 1896

McKinley won and could claim economic victory as well when the economy began to rebound the next year. Although largely due to increasing confidence after gold was discovered in the Klondike, the people accepted that the change in political leadership had solved their ills. Perhaps it had, but those ills would return again in 1907 when the same types of issues resurfaced to put the American economy into a tailspin once again.

In 1896, however, Ella Knowles was intent upon doing all she could to help the cause and attended both the state and national Populist conventions, and even went on the campaign trail for William Jennings Bryan that year.

That same year saw Haskell ready to retire, and he chose not to run again. C.B. Nolan was elected as attorney general and on January 4, 1897, Haskell was once again a private citizen, the first time since before Montana had been a state. And since he didn’t need to be a part of government anymore he wanted to get away from it, and the hustle and bustle it included.

Knowles, however, wanted nothing else. She loved being in the action, and the practice they had together in Butte was what she wanted to continue with. Haskell wanted to head back to Glendive, so being two independent-minded and rational folks, they did what was still uncommon, they got a divorce.

It isn’t hard to understand that a driven woman like Knowles would want more than the quiet life Glendive had to offer. She wasn’t yet forty, and still had a lot to do. While men may have been coming around to the idea of women working and holding professional positions, many still thought they should be subservient when it came to the household. Knowles felt otherwise, and was once again on her own.

She joined just about every women’s organization there was, perhaps to forget about the marriage. Her interests in theosophy and Asian philosophy grew. Travel also became important, and she journeyed around the world in 1910. By then she’d become rich from representing the mining interests of others, as well as her own. Suffragist leaders hailed her previous work and the people of Butte marveled at her speeches.

But her dogged health problems remained, something that’d always been the case since she’d first moved west more than twenty-five years before. They caught up to her following the stress of her overseas journey and she died in Butte on January 28, 1911. She was 50 years old.

Henri Haskell spent much of the rest of his life in Glendive. His interest in politics was piqued once again later in life and he was elected to the Montana House of Representatives in 1920. He was just two months into the legislative session when he died on March 11, 1921. He was 77 years old.

Ella Knowles, c 1890s

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Popular Posts

Categories

Archives

My MT History Books

My Montana Novels

My Montana Short Fiction

A History of Black Eagle

​The Early Communities that Became Black Eagle

North Great Falls

​Black Eagle is Chosen

​Black Eagle’s Schools

​Black Eagle’s Bar Troubles

​Conclusion

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

From Sweden to America: A History of the Strandberg Family

Strandbergs Coming to America

Source Material for Strandberg Family Genealogy

Småland, the Ancestral Lands of the Strandberg Family

The Montana Strandberg Family

Some Strandberg Children Leave Sweden

The Strandberg Family Leaves Sweden

Nils Strandberg and the Modern Montana Strandbergs

Conclusion

A Short History of Oil in Montana

Ella Knowles: Montana’s ‘Portia of the People’s Party’

Ella Knowles

Heading West

Ella Knowles Jumps Into Montana Politics

The 1892 Montana Attorney General’s Race

A Progressive Union

MT Book 7

​Montana Blog

​Popular Posts

Categories

Archives

​My MT History Books

My Montana Novels

My Montana Short Fiction

The Early Communities that Became Black Eagle

Black Eagle is Chosen

Black Eagle’s Schools

Black Eagle’s Bar Troubles

Conclusion

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