By Ken Robison
For The River Press February 29, 2012
This continues a monthly series commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War. A special thanks to Edward J. Snider of Harlem, MT for sharing photographs and information on his ancestor, Chapman Pennock.
Many foreigners fought on both sides during our American Civil War. Chapman Pennock, a Canadian, fought for the Union, later came west to Montana and today rests at Riverside Cemetery, Fort Benton. Pennock was born March 24, 1843 in South Crosby, Leeds County, Ontario, Canada. He was the eldest of seven children born to Arthur W. and Phoebe Ann Woodard Pennock. As a young man he worked on a farm and learned the carpentry trade. He found employment in a sash and door factory at Sandy Creek, New York, and when President Abraham Lincoln issued a call for 300,000 volunteers to serve for the duration of the Civil War, Pennock quit work at the factory and at the age of 20 enlisted into the Union Army on June 17, 1863. Chapman was enrolled as a Private in Company C 18th Cavalry Regiment New York, just two weeks before the Battle of Gettysburg.
Pennock’s company was sent to Camp Dudorf on New York’s Staten Island for basic training. Upon completion of training, Chapman’s regiment saw action almost immediately in New York in helping to quell draft riots. The draft riots of July 13-16, 1863 have been described as the worst outbreak of urban unrest in U.S. history. On Monday, July 13th five days of mayhem and bloodshed began that would be known as the Civil War Draft Riots. The rioters initially targeted only military and governmental buildings, symbols of the “unfairness” of a new conscription law. Mobs attacked only individuals who interfered with their actions, but by afternoon of the first day, some of the rioters turned to attacks on African Americans, and on all things symbolic of black political, economic, and social power. As the violence escalated, armed mobs of white workers rampaged throughout the streets and fought police, the remaining militia still in New York, and the newly trained 18th Cavalry in pitched battles. They burned government buildings, the Colored Orphan Asylum, many businesses, and attacked black men and women, with special violence for black workers including eleven lynchings.
The 18th New York Cavalry then deployed to Camp Stoneman near Washington D. C. for further training and to perform patrol and guard duty in the capital city. Chapman Pennock saw President Abraham Lincoln several times, and he recalled seeing “Lincoln, passing in review of Union Troops, riding a white horse with his feet barely off the ground and his tall hat bobbing as he nodded to the troops. Quite a comical site [sic]!”
Leaving Washington under command of General Nathaniel Prentiss Banks, the 18th Cavalry received orders to the Department of the Gulf of Mexico on February 16, 1864 and then to the Red River Campaign [March 10-May 22, 1864]. The Red River Campaign had several goals: confiscate southern cotton for New England mills; destroy Confederate supply lines; deter the threat of a French-Mexican military force and supplies from joining the Confederates; protect any loyal Union population in Texas; and finally bring Texas back into the Union.
Following the course of the Red River, the Union Army and Navy progressed with little opposition through Alexandria reaching Natchitoches by early April 1864. At Natchitoches the Army veered away from the Red River, going toward Shreveport by way of Mansfield, which left them without naval support. This and another tactical blunder on the part of General Banks and a series of skillful maneuvers by General Richard Taylor (son of President Zachary Taylor), who commanded the Confederate forces, were decisive factors to the final outcome of the battle.
Pennock later described this campaign and what it was like to endure combat action:
“I cannot recall the exact dates of those minor fights but I was in all of them and came thru unharmed but wished many times I was honorably out of it. After leaving Natchitoches, Gen. Banks thought to reach Shreveport, La. Without much fighting and after several days marching and a few skirmishes and loosing [sic] but a few men, on the morning of April 8, 1864 at Pleasant Hill we were suddenly faced by the main Rebel Army and a fight was on. We had several men killed, two by my side, namely, Thos. Oliver and John Fay. I was badly frightened and excited. I felt as tho I had all the war I wanted but had gotten into it and was determined to make the best of it. Expecting to be killed any minute causes strange feelings to come over one that no can realize until he has been there.
“Our next fight was at Mansfield and both parties were determined to hold the field. After noon the Rebels began to weaken and fall back towards the Cross Roads, and tho they were beaten, some fighting was continued all night. The rebels, during the night, had received reinforcements and outnumbered us by many hundreds. The battle continued all day and men lay dead in some places two deep. As night came we had to return to Pleasant Hill were we got some rest but by daybreak the fight was on for the second day and by night we were badly beaten. Our supply train and everything was gone. Gen. Banks was discouraged. We were short about six thousand men, all our supplies and artillery. Banks ordered a general retreat and turned our faces towards New Orleans. Ragged, dirty and hungry before we reached the Mississippi River across from Baton Rouge, there we got new supplies of food and clothing and were thankful to be alive.
“After resting a few days at Baton Rouge, Company C’s horses were turned over to the government and we were ordered to New Orleans to do guard and patrol duty in the city, not mounted. After about ten days, Company C was sent up to Fort Carey to drill, both infantry and artillery. I got very tired of that kind of drilling, but that was orders and had to be done, regardless of our feelings. We remained there four weeks, and were then returned to New Orleans, mounted and put on patrol duty in and around the city.
“At this time some of the boys were applying for furloughs, or leave of absence. I, not feeling very well, sent in my application and received my furlough and transportation to Watertown, New York, good for thirty days. I left New Orleans, September 15th on board the S. S. Campana, had good weather and landed at New York, six days and six hours from the time I left New Orleans. I arrived at Watertown two days later. I met with many old friends, all eager to know about the war. After a few days, I turned my attention to getting over into Canada, to the home of my parents. I met with many difficulties but finally reached home where I remained until time to return to Watertown where I got my transportation papers and passport to New York. On arriving, I found I could not get a boat to New Orleans for several days, so went to the Soldiers Home and the officer in charge wired headquarters that I was there.
“On my return, waiting for the transport ship, after about ten days I was put aboard the S. S. Continental. I had a very rough voyage to New Orleans. On arriving, I found the 18th Cavalry was then at Thipodox [Tribodaux], some seventy miles, from there. I went to headquarters and got transportation on the Algers R. R. which run near Thipodox. On arrival there, I was furnished with a horse and equipment and again took up duty with Company C, 18th New York Cavalry. I cannot recall the exact date but in the year of 1864, after being on duty at Thipodox for several days in continual cold rain, the Regiment was ordered back to New Orleans, where we were dismounted and sent eight miles into winter quarters and remained there thru cold and rainy weather until about the middle of January 1865.”
In a reorganized command under General Edward Richard Sprigg Canby, who had relieved General Banks, Private Pennock took part in another march on Shreveport in January, 1865, but the news of General Lee’s surrender came before they reached that city. The rigors of the campaign, especially the cold, damp weather, having weakened his health, Pennock was confined in a hospital in New Orleans for sometime after the close of the war, and he was honorably discharged January 14, 1866.
Following his discharge Chapman Pennock returned to Canada and married Clarissa Brown in Ontario in 1866, and to this union eight children were born. At this time he engaged in the mercantile business at Fort Williams, Ontario. He sold out there, tried faming in North Dakota for two years, and in 1888 came to Montana to work on the St. Paul, Minneapolis, & Manitoba [later Great Northern] railway. Two years later Pennock located at Fort Benton, and for a time was employed by Henry J. O’Hanlon as manager for the O’Hanlon Livestock Company. On April 16, 1907, Clarissa Pennock died of cancer and was interred in Riverside Cemetery.
Shortly after the death of his wife, Chapman Pennock moved from Fort Benton to the Ralph B. Snider Ranch, thirteen miles southwest of Hogeland, then part of Choteau County [now Blaine County]. He lived with his daughter Elizabeth Ann Pennock Snider and her husband Ralph until the latter’s death in 1910. Chapman helped his daughter raise her three small children and manage the cattle and horses on the ranch. For three more decades Chapman lived with his daughter, and she cared for him. On Memorial Day 1937 at the Snider Ranch, American Legion Posts #59 Hogeland and #109 Turner and a large gathering of friends and neighbors honored Private Pennock as the last remaining Civil War veteran in Blaine County.
On February 10, 1940 Chapman Pennock, age 97, passed way at the Snider Ranch. A military funeral service was held at the Hogeland Lutheran Church with Harlem and Big Flat ex-servicemen attending. An escort accompanied the remains to Fort Benton where the American Legion Post held graveside services. Chapman Pennock, Civil War veteran rests next to his wife, Clarissa Brown Pennock and son, Richard, in Fort Benton Riverside Cemetery.
Sources: [Photos and Family History provided by Edward J. Snider; FBRPW 14 Feb 1940, p. 1; 21 Feb 1940, p. 8; FBRPW 17 Apr 1907, p. 5; Thunderstorms And Tumbleweeds 1887-1987 East Blaine County, pp. 232, 442, 513; Riverside Cemetery Records; U.S. Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles; American Civil War Regiments 18th New York Cavalry; New York Civil War Muster Roll Abstracts; A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, Vol. 2]
Note: If you have Civil War veterans in your family who settled in this area, we would be pleased to hear from you with copies of stories and photographs that we can share with our readers. Send your Civil War stories to mtcivilwar@yahoo.com or to the Overholser Historical Research Center, Box 262, Fort Benton, MT 59442.
Photos:
1. Young Chapman Pennock. [Courtesy of Edward J. Snider]
2. New York Draft Riots, July 13-16.
3. Chapman and Clarissa A. Brown Pennock. [Courtesy of Thunderstorms And Tumbleweeds]
4. Civil War Veteran Champman Pennock, age 94, Memorial Day 1937 at the Snider Ranch in Blaine County. [Courtesy of Edward J. Snider]
5. Chapman Pennock Civil War Gravestone, Riverside Cemetery.
Showing posts with label Fort Benton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fort Benton. Show all posts
28 February 2012
28 January 2012
Larger Than Life Frontier Character, Colonel John J. Donnelly
Remembering Our Civil War Heritage and Heroes:
1861-1865
Larger Than Life Frontier Character, Colonel John J. Donnelly
By Ken Robison
For The River Press
January 25, 2012
This continues a monthly series commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War.
Frontier Fort Benton was a town of colorful characters, but they broke the mold with John J. Donnelly. In the span of six decades, Colonel Donnelly fought with distinction through the Civil War, led Irish Fenian Army invasions of Canada, led a civilian army in the Nez Perce War, served as Fenian agitator, Louis Riel advisor, attorney, county clerk and recorder, and probate judge, and was elected Speaker of the Montana House of Representatives. After this extraordinary career, even in the end, he died a uniquely spectacular death.
Who was this man of triumph and tragedy in frontier Montana? John J. Donnelly was born November 15, 1838 at Providence, Rhode Island of Irish immigrant parents. He was educated in schools of Providence and the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts. Moving west to Michigan, he studied law in the office of Sylvester Larned, of Detroit, Michigan, and was admitted to practice in November 1860 on the eve of the Civil War.
On November 18, 1861 at the age of 23, John J. Donnelly enlisted in the service of the United States and raised an infantry company. As Captain of Company G, his regiment, the Fourteenth Michigan Infantry, with 925 officers and men, was mustered into service February 13, 1862 at Ypsilanti, Michigan under Colonel Robert P. Sinclair.
The Fourteenth left Michigan on the 17th of April 1862 for St. Louis, Mo., and joined General Grant's army at Pittsburg Landing. It participated in the siege of Corinth, Miss., and when the enemy evacuated, the Fourteenth formed a part of
General Buell's army in the famous race with the Confederate army under General Bragg, to Louisville, Ky.
At Nashville, Tenn., the Fourteenth Michigan Infantry Regiment was assigned to the First Brigade, Second Division, Fourteenth Corps of the Army of the Cumberland, and served in that corps for the rest of the war. In November the regiment had a sharp encounter with Alabama troops at Lavergne, Tenn., when it captured a fort and took a large number of prisoners. After a series of marches and victories the regiment was at Stone River, Tenn., in January 1863 when it took part in that engagement.
Captain Donnelly led Company G until he was appointed engineer officer on the staff of Major General George H. Thomas, Commander of the Fourteenth Corps. Promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, Donnelly served with General Thomas during 1863-64, while Thomas was gaining fame with his stout defense at the Battle of Chickamauga in 1863, saved the Union Army from being completely routed, earning him his most famous nickname, the "Rock of Chickamauga." General Thomas followed soon after with a dramatic breakthrough on Missionary Ridge in the Battle of Chattanooga. In the Franklin-Nashville Campaign of 1864, he achieved one of the most decisive victories of the war, destroying the army of Confederate General John Bell Hood, at the Battle of Nashville.
By 1864, Major General John M. Palmer had taken command of the Fourteenth Corps, and on August 5th, Lieutenant Colonel Donnelly was promoted to Full Aide-de-Camp on General Palmer’s staff. In the Civil War an Aide-de-Camp was a confidential officer appointed by general officers to their staffs. An aide-de-camp reported directly to his commander and took orders only from him. In a position of great responsibility, an aide was required to write orders, deliver them personally if necessary, and be thoroughly knowledgeable about troop positions, maneuvers, columns, orders of corps, routes, and the locations of officers’ quarters.
General Palmer effectively commanded the 14th Corps of the Army of the Cumberland in the Atlanta Campaign. Palmer's corps was a part of General William T. Sherman’s March to the Sea and the actions to capture Savannah, Georgia, late 1864. During the March to the Sea, Colonel Donnelly was appointed assistant general superintendent of the military railway service in General Sherman’s department.
Throughout the war until his discharge March 14, 1865 Colonel Donnelly took part in many of the principal engagements of that great conflict, and was twice wounded, at Corinth and Resaca. One of his obituaries reads, “A braver soldier never drew his sword in any cause, and such is the testimonial of his superior officers and of the men who served under him.”
As the Civil War drew to an end, Treasury Secretary Chase appointed Colonel Donnelly as special agent of the Treasury department. During reconstruction days he settled all war claims against the United States government in the Carolinas and part of Georgia and handled enormous sums of money without any suspicion of malfeasance.
Little is known of this period in Donnelly’s life, except that Colonel Donnelly engaged in the wholesale grocery and commission business at Savannah, Georgia. In 1866 Colonel Donnelly closed out his business and came north to Michigan on account of the death of his wife, to whom he was married but a few days before entering the service in 1861.
Entering a new phase of his life, Colonel Donnelly plunged headlong into the Fenian movement, which was then at its highest, becoming one of the most prominent figures in the subsequent “invasions” of Canada. The Fenian Brotherhood was an Irish republican organization founded in the United States in 1858 by John O'Mahony and Michael Doheny. Members were commonly known as "Fenians". O'Mahony, who was a Celtic scholar, named his organization after the Fianna, the legendary band of Irish warriors led by Fionn mac Cumhaill.
In 1866 together with many other Irish Civil War veterans Colonel Donnelly joined the Fenian movement to invade Canada to punish the English for their occupation of Ireland. The Fenians dreamed of capturing Canada, forcing the English to free Ireland in exchange for return of Canada. A thousand strong force of Fenian troops took the field in June, 1866, crossed the Niagara River into Ontario, defeated a company of Queen’s Own Rifles of Toronto, and captured Fort Erie. Shortly afterward the Battle of Pigeon Hill practically ended this outbreak. In this battle Col. Donnelly had 200 men in his command, and was able to hold his position from 9 o’clock a. m. until sundown, with 2,300 men opposing him. He had twelve men killed and seventeen wounded, with Donnelly among the wounded. He was captured, but escaped, and a large reward was offered for him.
We are the Fenian Brotherhood, skilled in the arts of war,
And we're going to fight for Ireland, the land we adore,
Many battles we have won, along with the boys in blue,
And we'll go and capture Canada, for we've nothing else to do.
— "Fenian soldier's song"
After the defeat at Pigeon Hill, Col. Donnelly drifted west and had a role in the Red River Rebellion of 1870, in which Louis Riel was the leader of the Metis and Cree. This collapsed as did another Fenian raid at Pembina, N. D. the next year. Donnelly came to Montana from Pembina, at the time of the boundary line survey, traveling with the survey party but not part of it. He settled in Fort Benton in 1872 to resume his practice of law.
In Fort Benton Colonel John J. Donnelly became a spokesman for the many Irish Democats of the town that included among others the Healy brothers, Matthew Carroll, John Tattan, and John Evans. Donnelly played a prominent part in the aftermath of the Cypress Hill massacre of 1873, when in 1875 Bentonites were arrested by federal officials and troops for an extradition hearing in Helena. The so-called “Extradition Prisoners” were released, and upon their triumphant return to Fort Benton, were welcomed by Colonel Donnelly with an eloquent speech, condemning governmental actions to surround the town and patrol the streets with armed soldiers, “while five of its most respected citizens were seized, chained together, and thrown into a military prison.”
In 1877 as Chief Joseph’s Nez Perce turned north from the Musselshell in their flight toward Canada, trader James Wells from Fort Claggett raised the alarm in Fort Benton. Col. Donnelly, warrior and leader of men, raised a company of 50 civilian mounted volunteers to hasten down the Missouri to the Cow Island. The men of Donnelly’s Company were tough men, experienced in the hard and dangerous life of frontier Montana. At least four, and likely more, of Donnelly’s men had extensive Civil War service, and three had recent service in the Seventh Infantry. At least three were Army scouts.
Donnelly’s Company arrived at Cow Island just after the Nez Perce had crossed the Missouri and were moving up Cow Creek. On September 27, 1877, Donnelly’s men engaged elements of the Nez Perce in a three-hour battle, with one man, African American Edmund Bradley killed. Fortunately for Donnelly’s Company the main Nez Perce camp was moving northward toward their fate at Snake Creek.
Popular and capable, Col Donnelly served Choteau County as Clerk and Recorder and Probate Judge, and was elected a member of the Twelfth Montana Territorial Legislative Assembly in 1881, being chosen Speaker of the House of Representatives. Throughout his time in Montana, Donnelly engaged in the practice of the law, and his last law partner in the 1890s became the talented young Charles N. Pray.
By 1885, Fort Benton was home for many Civil War veterans, and in early August of that year, Union veterans signed a petition to form a Grand Army of the Republic (G. A. R.) post. Among those signing this list was “J. J. Donnelly, Lieut. Colonel, 14th Michigan.”
Although not well documented, during 1883-84 when Louis Riel, leader of the Canadian Metis, was in exile in Montana, he spent time with Col. Donnelly. According to writer Joseph Kinsey Howard, Donnelly offered his support and advice, and the two met several times in Fort Benton. Donnelly advised him on the wording of petitions and military strategy and told Riel that he considered Riel’s dream of Metis freedom in western Canada a splendid dream. Riel’s 1885 invasion, defeat, and hanging must have been very hard on the old Fenian Donnelly.
Donnelly never remarried, and as he advanced in age his memories of battles lost and won in the Civil War, loss of his young wife, defeats in his glorious Fenian cause, loss of many of his Fort Benton Irish friends, the defeat of the Metis and loss of Riel, all must have weighed heavily on his mind. In November 1897, Donnelly was found lying in his bedroom with his throat badly cut and unconscious from loss of blood. Although he eventually recovered, the end was nearing for the old warrior. Yet, his drinking increased.
Two years later, in September 1899, friends became concerned over his strange absence from his usual haunts for several days. A search began, and Finlay Tower discovered footprints leading down to the water’s edge at the wing-dam at the end of Whalen bottom, and could find no place where anyone had come out. When last seen Donnelly had been drunk, and friends became concerned that the Colonel had met with some mishap. For weeks the search continued, but it was about a month later that remains were found on a sandbar on the south side of the Missouri river at the upper end of the Lansing ranch, having floated some 60 miles from the place where the tragedy occurred. Although badly decomposed, the remains were recognized as Donnelly. The remains indicated a determined case of suicide. He had filled his pockets with about 14 pounds of rocks, cut his throat from ear to ear, and completed his work of self-destruction by drowning. The coroner’s jury returned a verdict of death by drowning and self-inflicted injuries.
After a special requiem mass, the remains of the late Col. John J. Donnelly were interred in Riverside cemetery by pallbearers Judges DuBose and Tattan, Jere Sullivan, H. J. O’Hanlon, and G. A. R. veterans T. A. Cummings and R. S. Culbertson. A large number of his old friends attended the simple ceremonies at the graveside.
Joseph Kinsey Howard, in Strange Empire, eulogized Civil War veteran and Fenian leader Colonel Donnelly, “In September, 1899, the last of the Pembina plotters, last of the irreconcilables, perhaps last of the Fenian fighting men, joined his comrades. General Donnelly walked down to the Fort Benton levee, filled his pockets with fourteen pounds of rocks, slit his throat from ear to ear, and marched unfalteringly into the Missouri river.” And we might add, Colonel John J. Donnelly, Civil War hero, marched into history.
Note: If you have Civil War veterans in your family who settled in this area, we would be pleased to hear from you with copies of stories and photographs that we can share with our readers. Send your Civil War stories to mtcivilwar@yahoo.com or to the Overholser Historical Research Center, Box 262, Fort Benton, MT 59442.
Photos:
1. The goal of the Fenian Brotherhood is reflected in this patriotic lithograph, "Freedom to Ireland," by Currier & Ives, New York, ca 1866.
2. The Battle of Eccles Hill was part of a Fenian raid into Canada in May 1870. This scene is located near the site of the Battle of Pigeon Hill where Colonel Donnelly was wounded in the 1866 Fenian invasion.
3. This portrait of John J. Donnelly is the only image of the famed Irishman in the Overholser Historical Research Center.
4. Civil War Gravestone of Captain John J. Donnelly at Highland Cemetery.
1861-1865
Larger Than Life Frontier Character, Colonel John J. Donnelly
By Ken Robison
For The River Press
January 25, 2012
This continues a monthly series commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War.
Frontier Fort Benton was a town of colorful characters, but they broke the mold with John J. Donnelly. In the span of six decades, Colonel Donnelly fought with distinction through the Civil War, led Irish Fenian Army invasions of Canada, led a civilian army in the Nez Perce War, served as Fenian agitator, Louis Riel advisor, attorney, county clerk and recorder, and probate judge, and was elected Speaker of the Montana House of Representatives. After this extraordinary career, even in the end, he died a uniquely spectacular death.
Who was this man of triumph and tragedy in frontier Montana? John J. Donnelly was born November 15, 1838 at Providence, Rhode Island of Irish immigrant parents. He was educated in schools of Providence and the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts. Moving west to Michigan, he studied law in the office of Sylvester Larned, of Detroit, Michigan, and was admitted to practice in November 1860 on the eve of the Civil War.
On November 18, 1861 at the age of 23, John J. Donnelly enlisted in the service of the United States and raised an infantry company. As Captain of Company G, his regiment, the Fourteenth Michigan Infantry, with 925 officers and men, was mustered into service February 13, 1862 at Ypsilanti, Michigan under Colonel Robert P. Sinclair.
The Fourteenth left Michigan on the 17th of April 1862 for St. Louis, Mo., and joined General Grant's army at Pittsburg Landing. It participated in the siege of Corinth, Miss., and when the enemy evacuated, the Fourteenth formed a part of
General Buell's army in the famous race with the Confederate army under General Bragg, to Louisville, Ky.
At Nashville, Tenn., the Fourteenth Michigan Infantry Regiment was assigned to the First Brigade, Second Division, Fourteenth Corps of the Army of the Cumberland, and served in that corps for the rest of the war. In November the regiment had a sharp encounter with Alabama troops at Lavergne, Tenn., when it captured a fort and took a large number of prisoners. After a series of marches and victories the regiment was at Stone River, Tenn., in January 1863 when it took part in that engagement.
Captain Donnelly led Company G until he was appointed engineer officer on the staff of Major General George H. Thomas, Commander of the Fourteenth Corps. Promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, Donnelly served with General Thomas during 1863-64, while Thomas was gaining fame with his stout defense at the Battle of Chickamauga in 1863, saved the Union Army from being completely routed, earning him his most famous nickname, the "Rock of Chickamauga." General Thomas followed soon after with a dramatic breakthrough on Missionary Ridge in the Battle of Chattanooga. In the Franklin-Nashville Campaign of 1864, he achieved one of the most decisive victories of the war, destroying the army of Confederate General John Bell Hood, at the Battle of Nashville.
By 1864, Major General John M. Palmer had taken command of the Fourteenth Corps, and on August 5th, Lieutenant Colonel Donnelly was promoted to Full Aide-de-Camp on General Palmer’s staff. In the Civil War an Aide-de-Camp was a confidential officer appointed by general officers to their staffs. An aide-de-camp reported directly to his commander and took orders only from him. In a position of great responsibility, an aide was required to write orders, deliver them personally if necessary, and be thoroughly knowledgeable about troop positions, maneuvers, columns, orders of corps, routes, and the locations of officers’ quarters.
General Palmer effectively commanded the 14th Corps of the Army of the Cumberland in the Atlanta Campaign. Palmer's corps was a part of General William T. Sherman’s March to the Sea and the actions to capture Savannah, Georgia, late 1864. During the March to the Sea, Colonel Donnelly was appointed assistant general superintendent of the military railway service in General Sherman’s department.
Throughout the war until his discharge March 14, 1865 Colonel Donnelly took part in many of the principal engagements of that great conflict, and was twice wounded, at Corinth and Resaca. One of his obituaries reads, “A braver soldier never drew his sword in any cause, and such is the testimonial of his superior officers and of the men who served under him.”
As the Civil War drew to an end, Treasury Secretary Chase appointed Colonel Donnelly as special agent of the Treasury department. During reconstruction days he settled all war claims against the United States government in the Carolinas and part of Georgia and handled enormous sums of money without any suspicion of malfeasance.
Little is known of this period in Donnelly’s life, except that Colonel Donnelly engaged in the wholesale grocery and commission business at Savannah, Georgia. In 1866 Colonel Donnelly closed out his business and came north to Michigan on account of the death of his wife, to whom he was married but a few days before entering the service in 1861.
Entering a new phase of his life, Colonel Donnelly plunged headlong into the Fenian movement, which was then at its highest, becoming one of the most prominent figures in the subsequent “invasions” of Canada. The Fenian Brotherhood was an Irish republican organization founded in the United States in 1858 by John O'Mahony and Michael Doheny. Members were commonly known as "Fenians". O'Mahony, who was a Celtic scholar, named his organization after the Fianna, the legendary band of Irish warriors led by Fionn mac Cumhaill.
In 1866 together with many other Irish Civil War veterans Colonel Donnelly joined the Fenian movement to invade Canada to punish the English for their occupation of Ireland. The Fenians dreamed of capturing Canada, forcing the English to free Ireland in exchange for return of Canada. A thousand strong force of Fenian troops took the field in June, 1866, crossed the Niagara River into Ontario, defeated a company of Queen’s Own Rifles of Toronto, and captured Fort Erie. Shortly afterward the Battle of Pigeon Hill practically ended this outbreak. In this battle Col. Donnelly had 200 men in his command, and was able to hold his position from 9 o’clock a. m. until sundown, with 2,300 men opposing him. He had twelve men killed and seventeen wounded, with Donnelly among the wounded. He was captured, but escaped, and a large reward was offered for him.
We are the Fenian Brotherhood, skilled in the arts of war,
And we're going to fight for Ireland, the land we adore,
Many battles we have won, along with the boys in blue,
And we'll go and capture Canada, for we've nothing else to do.
— "Fenian soldier's song"
After the defeat at Pigeon Hill, Col. Donnelly drifted west and had a role in the Red River Rebellion of 1870, in which Louis Riel was the leader of the Metis and Cree. This collapsed as did another Fenian raid at Pembina, N. D. the next year. Donnelly came to Montana from Pembina, at the time of the boundary line survey, traveling with the survey party but not part of it. He settled in Fort Benton in 1872 to resume his practice of law.
In Fort Benton Colonel John J. Donnelly became a spokesman for the many Irish Democats of the town that included among others the Healy brothers, Matthew Carroll, John Tattan, and John Evans. Donnelly played a prominent part in the aftermath of the Cypress Hill massacre of 1873, when in 1875 Bentonites were arrested by federal officials and troops for an extradition hearing in Helena. The so-called “Extradition Prisoners” were released, and upon their triumphant return to Fort Benton, were welcomed by Colonel Donnelly with an eloquent speech, condemning governmental actions to surround the town and patrol the streets with armed soldiers, “while five of its most respected citizens were seized, chained together, and thrown into a military prison.”
In 1877 as Chief Joseph’s Nez Perce turned north from the Musselshell in their flight toward Canada, trader James Wells from Fort Claggett raised the alarm in Fort Benton. Col. Donnelly, warrior and leader of men, raised a company of 50 civilian mounted volunteers to hasten down the Missouri to the Cow Island. The men of Donnelly’s Company were tough men, experienced in the hard and dangerous life of frontier Montana. At least four, and likely more, of Donnelly’s men had extensive Civil War service, and three had recent service in the Seventh Infantry. At least three were Army scouts.
Donnelly’s Company arrived at Cow Island just after the Nez Perce had crossed the Missouri and were moving up Cow Creek. On September 27, 1877, Donnelly’s men engaged elements of the Nez Perce in a three-hour battle, with one man, African American Edmund Bradley killed. Fortunately for Donnelly’s Company the main Nez Perce camp was moving northward toward their fate at Snake Creek.
Popular and capable, Col Donnelly served Choteau County as Clerk and Recorder and Probate Judge, and was elected a member of the Twelfth Montana Territorial Legislative Assembly in 1881, being chosen Speaker of the House of Representatives. Throughout his time in Montana, Donnelly engaged in the practice of the law, and his last law partner in the 1890s became the talented young Charles N. Pray.
By 1885, Fort Benton was home for many Civil War veterans, and in early August of that year, Union veterans signed a petition to form a Grand Army of the Republic (G. A. R.) post. Among those signing this list was “J. J. Donnelly, Lieut. Colonel, 14th Michigan.”
Although not well documented, during 1883-84 when Louis Riel, leader of the Canadian Metis, was in exile in Montana, he spent time with Col. Donnelly. According to writer Joseph Kinsey Howard, Donnelly offered his support and advice, and the two met several times in Fort Benton. Donnelly advised him on the wording of petitions and military strategy and told Riel that he considered Riel’s dream of Metis freedom in western Canada a splendid dream. Riel’s 1885 invasion, defeat, and hanging must have been very hard on the old Fenian Donnelly.
Donnelly never remarried, and as he advanced in age his memories of battles lost and won in the Civil War, loss of his young wife, defeats in his glorious Fenian cause, loss of many of his Fort Benton Irish friends, the defeat of the Metis and loss of Riel, all must have weighed heavily on his mind. In November 1897, Donnelly was found lying in his bedroom with his throat badly cut and unconscious from loss of blood. Although he eventually recovered, the end was nearing for the old warrior. Yet, his drinking increased.
Two years later, in September 1899, friends became concerned over his strange absence from his usual haunts for several days. A search began, and Finlay Tower discovered footprints leading down to the water’s edge at the wing-dam at the end of Whalen bottom, and could find no place where anyone had come out. When last seen Donnelly had been drunk, and friends became concerned that the Colonel had met with some mishap. For weeks the search continued, but it was about a month later that remains were found on a sandbar on the south side of the Missouri river at the upper end of the Lansing ranch, having floated some 60 miles from the place where the tragedy occurred. Although badly decomposed, the remains were recognized as Donnelly. The remains indicated a determined case of suicide. He had filled his pockets with about 14 pounds of rocks, cut his throat from ear to ear, and completed his work of self-destruction by drowning. The coroner’s jury returned a verdict of death by drowning and self-inflicted injuries.
After a special requiem mass, the remains of the late Col. John J. Donnelly were interred in Riverside cemetery by pallbearers Judges DuBose and Tattan, Jere Sullivan, H. J. O’Hanlon, and G. A. R. veterans T. A. Cummings and R. S. Culbertson. A large number of his old friends attended the simple ceremonies at the graveside.
Joseph Kinsey Howard, in Strange Empire, eulogized Civil War veteran and Fenian leader Colonel Donnelly, “In September, 1899, the last of the Pembina plotters, last of the irreconcilables, perhaps last of the Fenian fighting men, joined his comrades. General Donnelly walked down to the Fort Benton levee, filled his pockets with fourteen pounds of rocks, slit his throat from ear to ear, and marched unfalteringly into the Missouri river.” And we might add, Colonel John J. Donnelly, Civil War hero, marched into history.
Note: If you have Civil War veterans in your family who settled in this area, we would be pleased to hear from you with copies of stories and photographs that we can share with our readers. Send your Civil War stories to mtcivilwar@yahoo.com or to the Overholser Historical Research Center, Box 262, Fort Benton, MT 59442.
Photos:
1. The goal of the Fenian Brotherhood is reflected in this patriotic lithograph, "Freedom to Ireland," by Currier & Ives, New York, ca 1866.
2. The Battle of Eccles Hill was part of a Fenian raid into Canada in May 1870. This scene is located near the site of the Battle of Pigeon Hill where Colonel Donnelly was wounded in the 1866 Fenian invasion.
3. This portrait of John J. Donnelly is the only image of the famed Irishman in the Overholser Historical Research Center.
4. Civil War Gravestone of Captain John J. Donnelly at Highland Cemetery.
03 August 2010
The End of the Fort Benton Chinese: The Celestial Kingdom on the Upper Missouri—Part IV
By Ken Robison
This continues the series of frontier historical sketches by historians at the Joel F. Overholser Historical Research Center in Fort Benton.
Published in 28 July and 4 August 2010 Fort Benton River Press
In one of the few positive articles on the Chinese ever to appear in the Great Falls Tribune, the January 4, 1893 edition carried this editorial:
“The Chinese have a beautiful custom which they religiously observe on New Year day--that of paying promptly every cent they owe. Perhaps the custom would be quite as beautiful for Caucasians as Chinese and a few days after New Year better than never.”
Meanwhile, the Great Northern Depot in Great Falls bore a sign that read, “Chinaman don’t let the sun set on you here.” On occasion the racist Great Falls Tribune even tried to stir up trouble for Chinese in Fort Benton. In March 1902 the Tribune was not only urging exclusion of Chinese from Great Falls but also headlining, “Chinks Must Go. Citizens of Fort Benton Will Establish a Steam Laundry and Force Them Out . . . A movement is on foot here to put in a steam laundry at an early date. Investigations which have been made by a number of business men who are heading the movement show that the Chinese laundries here take in about $1,000 per month, if anything a little over that sum. This is sufficient to make a steam laundry pay from the start, if its work is good and the charges reasonable . . . Chas. H. Green has been placed in charge of the canvas of the town, and hopes to be able to report definite results in 10 days.”
The local Fort Benton “exclusion” operation drew a headline in the River Press “To Banish The Chinese” adding that the two Chinese laundries in Benton employed 15 to 18 men at different times of the year and urged “the manifest benefit to the town from having white labor employed in place of Chinese is patent to everyone.” Apparently nothing came of this scheme for the press quietly dropped the matter, and the Chinese laundries of Fort Benton continued for many more years.
Despite the growing anti-Chinese mood in the county, life for Chinese in Choteau County went on. The first Chinese marriage to occur in the county was solemnized at Havre when Mr. Y. P. Yup, a resident of Havre, and Miss Low Dey Gum, of Portland, Oregon were married April 7, 1902, by Reverend Stringfellow in the Presbyterian Church.
Benton law enforcement and courts played a relatively even hand with the Chinese in town during this period. Cornelius Manning assaulted a waiter in a Chinese restaurant and was arrested. Judge Sullivan ordered Manning held to await the outcome of the Chinese man’s injuries since it appeared possible that Manning had fractured the man’s skull by a blow with a pitcher. In early May 1902, Marshal Sneath reacted to an altercation between the Chinese manager of Lee Hing restaurant and a white customer over the price of a meal. The customer drew a six-shooter, “giving him the best of the argument until the marshal appeared. Judge Sullivan imposed a fine of $25. Later that same day Marshal Sneath was attracted to a shack next to the Sam Lee laundry “by weird and awesome howls which indicated murder, at the least. But after forcing the door he was greeted with the bland assurance: ‘Dat all right. China boy got bellerake.’”
Ah Fong, resident of Fort Benton for almost 25 years, died in May 1902 with the River Press covering his funeral. “The funeral of Ah Fong took place this afternoon, interment being in Riverside cemetery for the present. Deceased has been a resident of this city most of the time for nearly a quarter of a century, but at one time had a restaurant at Havre. He was able to read and write English and was quite well off some years ago, owning some real estate here but during his sickness for two years past has been supported by his countrymen.”
After the turn of the century and perhaps in reaction to the increased anti-Chinese sentiment in the community, news coverage about Fort Benton’s small Chinatown and Chinese decreased in the River Press. Except for occasional arrests for registration lapses and rare incidents with the law, the Chinese became almost invisible in Fort Benton society. Even Chinese New Years passed with scant mention in the press.
In early February 1903, the River Press reported simply that Chinese New Year was being celebrated with “considerable enthusiasm by the Mongolian race. Besides witnessing their display of fireworks, all who pass their places of business are invited to partake of Chinese nuts, candy, and a cigar.”
Ung Wing, the cook at the Overland hotel was arraigned before Judge Sullivan during the afternoon of February 10, 1903, on a charge of assault with intent to kill. The case was set for 2 o’clock but J. E. Stranahan, attorney for the defendant, asked for a postponement of 24 hours to prepare the case, which was granted on the receipt of a $50 cash bond. The River Press reported, “It appears that orders (at the Overland) got mixed, which is done occasionally at the best regulated hotels, and as raw eggs and coffee cups accompanied by plates seemed to be the principal articles of the order that was mixed this morning, the cook and waiter made targets of each other with the order. The cook served the first of the order, this being a raw egg followed closely by a coffee cup, and the waiter returned a volley of cups and dishes, after which the cook took to the alley and left the order as it was. Judge Sullivan will rehash the served order tomorrow.” The feuding parties came to court the next day. Ung Wing, the defendant charged with assault, was fined $20. Luther Bain, who took the “poke” at the Chinaman, was fined $7.
Fire was a constant threat in frontier towns. Fort Benton had wisely positioned water wells along Front Street (marked now by brick circles) and consequently had few fires there. Main Street and other parts of town were not so fortunate. In March 1903, the Chinese laundry building near the sawmill at Fort Assinniboine burned down and about $1,000 worth of soldier’s laundry was destroyed.
Chinese New Year in Fort Benton in 1904 was celebrated February 17 with the usual festivities. In China the “years” number from the beginning of the reign of each emperor, and the present monarch, Quong Sue, was crowned about thirty years ago. One week later, in Havre an unidentified man was arrested for making a murderous assault upon a Chinaman. The man had been eating at a Chinese restaurant, and when asked to pay up he drew a knife and inflicted a wound on the Chinaman’s head that required surgical attention.
Lee Sing was taken into custody in late February 1904, because he could not produce his residence permit. He was taken to Helena March 2 by a deputy United States marshal to have a hearing before the federal authorities. In April eight Chinese were arrested at Fort Assinniboine because they could not produce the necessary residence papers. They were to have hearings before U. S. Commissioner McIntyre, and probably were deported.
James Soo, a Chinese patient, died of consumption in mid August 1904, at St. Clare hospital. Soo was formerly a resident of Harlem. In September 1905, fire destroyed a Chinese log cabin on the corner of St. John and Main Streets.
In a sobering report in the Great Falls Tribune in November 1905 under the headline, “Back to China to Die. ‘Many people have a mistaken idea about Chinamen,’ said Deputy United States Marshal Young, who passed through Great Falls last night, en route from Helena to Port Townsend, Wash., where he will deport one of the yellow race.
‘’The impression generally prevails that the average Chink has plenty of money, or, at least, is seldom ‘broke.’ That is a mistake. It has fallen to me to arrest scores of Chinamen, principally upon the charge of living in this country without the proper credentials, in violation of the exclusion act. I have found, in a majority of cases, that they were short of money and frequently in destitute circumstances.’
“In company with Emil Schmidt, a Helena saloonkeeper, Deputy Marshal Young was on his way to Havre, where a Chinaman named Wah Lee was arrested several days ago, charged with not having papers in his possession to show that he was entitled to remain in Uncle Sam’s domain.
“Wah Lee was on his way to the coast from Minot, N. D. Upon reaching Havre, a federal inspector ordered the almond-eyed traveler detained until such time as the case could be investigated. Lee appeared to be sick, and has since been able to sit up only at intervals.
“It is believed that Lee was taken ill at Minot and decided to return to his old home in the Flowery kingdom, probably to die. Deputy Marshal Young thinks that the Chinaman will be fortunate if he crosses the Pacific Ocean alive.”
On May 29, 1907, Jim Charlie, proprietor of the O. K. restaurant in Havre, was assaulted in his kitchen early Sunday morning by Charles Woods, a Black American, and badly beaten up. The Chinaman was rendered unconscious and Woods then rifled a trunk, stealing about $35, and made his getaway. There were two assailants, one from whom watched the dining room while the other went back into the kitchen. Woods was captured a short time later by Chief Bickle. No money could be found on him.
Lee Sing had escaped deportation in 1904, and was now a gardener, when he was arrested and required to pay a small fine for selling the ever present opium in 1907.
Across the Medicine Line in Canada, riots occurred in Lethbridge against the Chinese in December 1907. A dispatch from Lethbridge reported: “Because they believed that a prominent citizen had been murdered in a Chinese restaurant, 1,500 men raided the Oriental quarter late Christmas night and left a wreck behind.
“Restaurants and laundries were smashed; doors and windows and entire fronts of buildings were reduced to splinters.
“The regular police of the town were powerless and a brigade of mounted police had to be called out to quell the riot.
“It was just after 9 o’clock that the mob began to form.
“The story had got abroad that Harry Smith, one of the best known ranchers of the cattle district of which the city is the center, had been fatally wounded in a restaurant.
“Curiously enough, neither Smith nor anyone else had been hurt, but even the police were misled by the tale, and two Orientals were placed under arrest and charged with his murder.
“An indignant mob gathered opposite the eating house and there was talk of lynching.
“Suddenly some one threw a rock that smashed a front window. In a moment the crowd was beyond control.
“Bricks and stones were hurled and when the doors had been broken the tables and chairs and dishes inside were smashed.
“The Columbia and Alberta restaurants were literally wrecked. What could not be conveniently smashed by the few who could get inside was passed out to the street to the howling mob in waiting and there demolished.
“At 10 o’clock a detachment of the mounted police appeared and the crowd scattered. Hundreds of the rioters merely shifted the scene of the pillage. Three blocks away, opposite the Arlington hotel, they cleaned out another Chinese restaurant and mishandled two Orientals who were captured within.
“Mayor Galbraith and Magistrate Townsend both addressed the mob and urged it to disperse, and as all possible damage had been done, it obeyed.”
In late 1908 the Enterprise Restaurant was still operating under a succession of proprietors, Lee Gee in October, Lee Shone & Brother in November, and Lee Hong & Company in December.
In late January 1909, the River Press barely mention Chinese New Year saying only, “The Chinese residents of this locality are celebrating their New Year today, the festivities being of the usual kind.”
Later that year the Press reported, “ A Chinese cook, who was known by the name Charlie Kong and who has been employed by various residents of this vicinity, was found dead in his room this morning by one of his fellow countrymen. The deceased had been on the sick list the past three weeks, and death is supposed to have resulted from pneumonia.”
The old time Chinese were dying off. In December 1909, Ah Que, the Chinese who has made his home in Armington for so many years, died Tuesday night, December 7th. He was an old timer in this part of the country having lived in Fort Benton, Neihart and Armington for the last 30 years. The remains were taken to Helena by John Gray where burial will be made.
By 1910 the Chinese presence in Chouteau County had decreased to 40 with just 12 in Fort Benton, 18 in Havre, 2 in Chinook, 6 at Harlem, 1 on the lower Teton, and 1 on Eagle Creek. Dick Lee, a 49 year-old single man born in China and in the U.S. since 1876 served as cook on a ranch near Eagle Creek, probably the McMillan Ranch. Lewis Luna, a 63 year-old man born in China and in the U.S. since 1865 worked as cook on the sheep ranch where Charles Schwandt was manager.
In September 1910, the River Press headlined, “Attempted to Commit Murder. A man who gives his name as John Smith, and who has been employed in the Grand Union hotel kitchen as dishwasher, was arrested by the city marshal Sunday morning on a charge of attempting to commit murder. The prisoner is alleged to have assaulted a Chinese cook, generally known by the name of Toy, apparently without provocation. “The victim of the assault was struck several times with a cleaver, one of the blows fracturing the skull and causing a wound that may have serious results. He is under the care of a physician, and in the event of death the prisoner will face a charge of murder.”
In mid November, the jury term of the district court opened, with the first criminal case of the term being that of John Smith, the defendant charged with assault with intent to kill. The alleged assault took place in this city in September, the victim being a Chinese cook named Lee Chung.”
The trial progressed as reported in the Press, “The trial of John Smith, accused of a murderous assault upon a Chinese cook employed at the Grand Union hotel was in progress in the district court today, William Toy, of Helena, acting as interpreter during part of the testimony. The latter was to the effect that there had been no trouble between the men, and that the assault was without provocation. The defendant, in testifying on his own behalf, declared he had no knowledge of striking the Chinaman with a cleaver, his mind being a complete blank as to the incident. The case was given to the jury at a late hour this afternoon.” The jury in the case of John Smith returned a verdict of guilty, and sentence was pronounced: “John Smith, convicted of assault in the first degree, was given a sentence of eight years.” Despite the trend toward increased violent against the Chinese, they continued to receive even-handed justice in Chouteau County courts.
Chinese New Year January 1911 was ushered in at midnight by the usual firing of firecrackers, and for two days the Celestials kept open house, entertaining their friends with various kinds of Chinese delicacies.
For the first time since the passage of the bankruptcy law in 1910, a Montana Chinese took advantage of its provisions. In December 1911, Charlie Wang Luk, proprietor of the Chicago cafe at Havre, filed a petition for bankruptcy in the federal court at Helena. The Chinaman gives his liabilities at $589.50 and his assets at $1,280, the greater part of which, however, are of doubtful value.
The local Chinese residents celebrated their New Year February 1912 in the usual quaint style Saturday, this celebration probably being the last of a series that dates back hundreds of years. It has been the custom in China to regulate their calendar by the changes of the moon, making 360 days in the year, but under the new form of government recently adopted it is believed this will be changed to the Julian calendar.”
Lee Kim, a Chinaman against whom the county attorney had filed a charge of assault in the first degree, and who has been held in jail about six months, was allowed to plead guilty to assault in the third degree. In view of his long confinement in jail the court fined the defendant $150, which was paid.
In 1917 the River Press carried advertisements for The Enterprise Restaurant, which was still in business on Front Street with Quan Shol, Proprietor. Jack Lepley remembers hearing that as a boy George Veilleux and other boys “explored” the basement of this building to find a series of upper and lower bunks arranged for opium smokers in this very old opium den. Today, this is today’s the Liquor Store portion of R J’s Toggery.
In January 1919, the Great Falls Tribune reported, “Noted Bar Goes to Chinese Firm. Old Havre Saloon’s taxidermy specimens to Be Retained; Cafe Changes Hands.
“The Mint saloon building, owned by C. W. Young, has been leased until February 15, 1924, by Wong Kim, Wong Sam and William W. Lee, a firm of Chinese residents of Havre who now operate the California cafe, and they will take possession on or about February 15. It is their intention to remodel entirely the interior, but retain the present fancy decorations and famous specimens of taxidermy of which Mr. Young was always very proud. In Havre’s palmy days the Mint was considered the finest bar in the city and the new proprietors are to pay a monthly rental of $225 for the building.”
Even the new town of Geraldine had a Chinese resident. Lou Wong came to Geraldine from Lewistown to open a laundry. In November 1919, Lou Wong died in his laundry in Geraldine. His body was taken back to Lewistown where a funeral was held. His short obituary reported that Wong was an old man who was well known in both Montana and Utah.
Montana attitudes toward the Chinese ranged from total exclusion in Great Falls to toleration in Helena, Butte, and Fort Benton. The prevailing feeling in Fort Benton seemed most influenced by economic conditions and by 1920 Chouteau County homesteads was suffering hard times. By then the Chinese population in Fort Benton had declined to six, although they were still in demand as cooks. In that year young 27-year-old China-born Owen G. Fat owned and operated a restaurant on Front Street with Lew Shu as cook. This restaurant was located in the Culbertson House block, between Black American Peter Burnett’s shoe repair shop and Japanese-American Tommy Matsumoto’s restaurant. Matsumoto, born in Japan in 1874, had come to the U. S. in 1900, and operated the Club Café on Front Street for about twenty years before moving to Great Falls to open the popular Club Cafeteria on Central Avenue.
Two other Chinese residents in Fort Benton in 1920 were Chow Heery, who operated a restaurant on Front Street and elderly 75-year-old Tom Mun, who served as cook at Jere Sullivan’s popular Choteau House hotel. The final two Chinese resident in Fort Benton were young American-born Chinese, Wong G. Ham and Young Yen, who were the cooks at Charles Lepley’s Grand Union Hotel.
In January 1922, a fire that was caused by hot ashes dumped near a wooden fence would have developed into serious proportions had it not been for prompt action by Henry Hagen about 3:00 o’clock Tuesday morning. The blaze was discovered by one of the tenants of the Hagen block who gave the alarm, and when Mr. Hagen reached the scene of trouble in the rear of the Chinese restaurant, the flames were creeping toward a block of frame buildings that it would have been difficult to save.
The last Chinese in Fort Benton operated the Quan Café until February 1923, when cook Wong Ming hung himself. As reported in the River Press:
“Wong Ming Hangs Self. Wong Ming, cook at the Quan Café hung himself sometime during Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning. Upon opening up Wednesday morning, the proprietor, Tom Mum, noted Wong’s absence from his accustomed job and went upstairs to call him and upon opening the door found him, hanging from the door casing. Wong had driven a nail into the casing and used a small rope to carry out his purpose. No cause is known to exist for his act, more than that he was of a morose disposition and was given to times of despondency. He came here from Butte about two years ago and was 23 years of age. The body will be taken to Butte Thursday for burial, relatives of the Chinaboy living there.
“Tom Mum, who has conducted the Quan Café during the past few years, came here about eight years ago. He has decided to close the restaurant for the present at least and will go to Butte where he will secure employment. Mr. Mum is well liked and will be greatly missed by his patrons.”
Another perspective on this incident came from the Great Falls Tribune under the headline, “Cook Scolds Helper For Absence From Tasks But He Only Shivers In Answer; He Talks to Dead Man.
“Wong Ming, cook’s helper at the Quam restaurant here, was not on hand to help prepare breakfast Wednesday morning. The cook stormed around a while, did some of the odd jobs Wong was supposed to do, then went to Wong’s room fully determined to give the late sleeper a large fragment of his mind.
“Wong was standing just inside his room when the cook opened the door. He appeared to be shivering violently, a fact which the cook credited to the cold weather. All the cook said may not be translated here, but in substance his remarks were to the effect that Wong could warm himself by getting down into the kitchen and rustling about a fit.
“Wong made no reply, but kept on shivering. Thoroughly exasperated, the cook attempted to grab him by the arm. With the touch, Wong floated away from him a little ways and seemed to sort of stay suspended in the air. The cook was conscious of a prickling feeling along his spine, but he needed help in the kitchen. With a silent appeal to his ancestors, he tip-toed closer to Wong and this time took a grip on Wong’s arm that no shiver could break.
“Wong tumbled in a heap at the cook’s feet. Sometime during the night he had mounted a chair, driven a nail into the casing above the door, attached one end of a small rope to the nail and the other to his neck, kicked the chair away. He had been suspended, his feet just off the floor, when the cook opened the door and set the body to “shivering.” The cook did not notice the rope until the body fell.
“Employes of the restaurant say that Wong was in a cheerful mood when he finished up his work the night before and retired. His father and brother live in Butte, and it is expected that the body will be taken there for burial.”
Speculation at the time indicated that Wong Ming was hanged to scare-off the remaining Chinese in the town. Although never proven, the incident led Manager Tom Mun and staff to close the café the same day and leave for Butte. This sadly ended the era of the Celestial Kingdom in Fort Benton.
Despite the ending of the Chinese presence in Fort Benton in 1923, that was not the last word. The real ending appears to be the return of a Chinese man to the town about four years later, in 1927. Wally Morger, who was four years old at that time and the only son of the Fort Benton Town Marshal Earl Morger, remembers that a Chinese man named Chow Hoy approached Marshal Morger and asked if he would be interested in buying his home. The house had been built in 1912 in the Delatraz addition, and Chow Hoy had bought it in 1917. Chow Hoy wanted $500 for the house and four 35 ft. by 120 ft. lots. He indicated that the ethnic situation in town directed against the Chinese had fomented threats against him, a sentiment not unique to Fort Benton.
Marshal Morger approached his two uncles, Ed and Henry Davis, merchants in town, and managed to secure the money to seal the deal. Although the house was a small one bedroom, one bath home, it was well built and remains in the family today. Randy Morger purchased the home, at 1810 Franklin Street, three years ago. Wally concluded his story by saying, “The home holds many special memories for the Morger family.” To which we might add, the early Chinese on the Upper Missouri left many memorable stories we can all enjoy.
[Sources for all four parts: U.S. Census; Great Falls Yesterday, p. 12; Benton Record Weekly 20 Sep 1978; BRW 13 February 1880; BRW 27 February 1880; BRW 19 March 1880; BRW 2 Jun 1881;BRW 16 Jun 1881; BRW 18 August 1881; BRW 23 February 1882; BRW 16 March 1882; BRW 23 March 1882; BRW 17 August – 14 September 1882; BRW 5 October 1882; BRW 12 October 1882; BRW 2 June 1883; BRW 25 August 1883; Fort Benton River Press Weekly 2 April 1884; FBRPW 3 September 1884; FBRPW 4 February 1885; Great Falls Tribune Weekly 26 Dec 1885; FBRPW 20 Jan 1886; FBRPW 24 Feb 1886; FBRPW 15 January 1887; FBRPW 16 Nov 1887; FBRPW 8 April 1890; FBRPW 8 April 1891; FBRPW 24 Jun 1891; Great Falls Leader Daily 6 August 1891; FBRPW 10 Feb 1892; FBRPW 20 Jul 1892; FBRPW 12 August 1891; FBRPW 26 August 1891; FBRPW 29 June 1892; GFTD 4 Jan 1893; FBRPW 21 Feb 1894; FBRPW 6 March 1894; FBRPW 3 April 1895; FBRPW 28 August 1895; FBRPW 4 Feb 1900; FBRPW 27 Feb 1900; FBRPW 20 Mar 1901; FBRPW 2 Oct 1901; FBRPW 16 Oct 1901; Great Falls Leader Daily 24 Oct 1901; FBRPW 29 Jan 1902; FBRPW 5 Feb 1902; FBRPW 26 Feb 1902; GFTD 29 March 1902; FBRPW 2 Apr 1902; GFTD 7 Apr 1902; FBRPW 9 Apr 1902; FBRPW 30 Apr 1902; FBRPW 7 May 1902; FBRPW 14 May 1902; FBRPW 4 Feb 1903; FBRPW 11 Feb 1903; FBRPW 25 Mar 1903; FBRPW 17 Feb 1904; FBRPW 24 Feb 1904; FBRPW 2 Mar 1904; FBRPW 13 Apr 1904; FBRPW 17 Aug 1904; GFTD 3 Nov 1905; GFLD 4 Nov 1905; GFTD 30 May 1906; GFTD 30 Dec 1907; GFLD 11 Dec 1909; FBRPW 14 Sep 1910; FBRPW 16 Nov 1910; FBRPW 23 Nov 1910; FBRPW 24 Feb 1912; FBRPW 31 Jul 1912; GFTD 20 Jan 1919, p. 7; GFTD 13 Nov 1919; FBRPW 4 Jan 1922; GFTD 15 Feb 1923; FBRPW 21 Feb 1923; Ltr Sing Lee to C. E. Conrad 28 Oct 1898, Small Collection 185 Mansfield Library, U of M]
This continues the series of frontier historical sketches by historians at the Joel F. Overholser Historical Research Center in Fort Benton.
Published in 28 July and 4 August 2010 Fort Benton River Press
In one of the few positive articles on the Chinese ever to appear in the Great Falls Tribune, the January 4, 1893 edition carried this editorial:
“The Chinese have a beautiful custom which they religiously observe on New Year day--that of paying promptly every cent they owe. Perhaps the custom would be quite as beautiful for Caucasians as Chinese and a few days after New Year better than never.”
Meanwhile, the Great Northern Depot in Great Falls bore a sign that read, “Chinaman don’t let the sun set on you here.” On occasion the racist Great Falls Tribune even tried to stir up trouble for Chinese in Fort Benton. In March 1902 the Tribune was not only urging exclusion of Chinese from Great Falls but also headlining, “Chinks Must Go. Citizens of Fort Benton Will Establish a Steam Laundry and Force Them Out . . . A movement is on foot here to put in a steam laundry at an early date. Investigations which have been made by a number of business men who are heading the movement show that the Chinese laundries here take in about $1,000 per month, if anything a little over that sum. This is sufficient to make a steam laundry pay from the start, if its work is good and the charges reasonable . . . Chas. H. Green has been placed in charge of the canvas of the town, and hopes to be able to report definite results in 10 days.”
The local Fort Benton “exclusion” operation drew a headline in the River Press “To Banish The Chinese” adding that the two Chinese laundries in Benton employed 15 to 18 men at different times of the year and urged “the manifest benefit to the town from having white labor employed in place of Chinese is patent to everyone.” Apparently nothing came of this scheme for the press quietly dropped the matter, and the Chinese laundries of Fort Benton continued for many more years.
Despite the growing anti-Chinese mood in the county, life for Chinese in Choteau County went on. The first Chinese marriage to occur in the county was solemnized at Havre when Mr. Y. P. Yup, a resident of Havre, and Miss Low Dey Gum, of Portland, Oregon were married April 7, 1902, by Reverend Stringfellow in the Presbyterian Church.
Benton law enforcement and courts played a relatively even hand with the Chinese in town during this period. Cornelius Manning assaulted a waiter in a Chinese restaurant and was arrested. Judge Sullivan ordered Manning held to await the outcome of the Chinese man’s injuries since it appeared possible that Manning had fractured the man’s skull by a blow with a pitcher. In early May 1902, Marshal Sneath reacted to an altercation between the Chinese manager of Lee Hing restaurant and a white customer over the price of a meal. The customer drew a six-shooter, “giving him the best of the argument until the marshal appeared. Judge Sullivan imposed a fine of $25. Later that same day Marshal Sneath was attracted to a shack next to the Sam Lee laundry “by weird and awesome howls which indicated murder, at the least. But after forcing the door he was greeted with the bland assurance: ‘Dat all right. China boy got bellerake.’”
Ah Fong, resident of Fort Benton for almost 25 years, died in May 1902 with the River Press covering his funeral. “The funeral of Ah Fong took place this afternoon, interment being in Riverside cemetery for the present. Deceased has been a resident of this city most of the time for nearly a quarter of a century, but at one time had a restaurant at Havre. He was able to read and write English and was quite well off some years ago, owning some real estate here but during his sickness for two years past has been supported by his countrymen.”
After the turn of the century and perhaps in reaction to the increased anti-Chinese sentiment in the community, news coverage about Fort Benton’s small Chinatown and Chinese decreased in the River Press. Except for occasional arrests for registration lapses and rare incidents with the law, the Chinese became almost invisible in Fort Benton society. Even Chinese New Years passed with scant mention in the press.
In early February 1903, the River Press reported simply that Chinese New Year was being celebrated with “considerable enthusiasm by the Mongolian race. Besides witnessing their display of fireworks, all who pass their places of business are invited to partake of Chinese nuts, candy, and a cigar.”
Ung Wing, the cook at the Overland hotel was arraigned before Judge Sullivan during the afternoon of February 10, 1903, on a charge of assault with intent to kill. The case was set for 2 o’clock but J. E. Stranahan, attorney for the defendant, asked for a postponement of 24 hours to prepare the case, which was granted on the receipt of a $50 cash bond. The River Press reported, “It appears that orders (at the Overland) got mixed, which is done occasionally at the best regulated hotels, and as raw eggs and coffee cups accompanied by plates seemed to be the principal articles of the order that was mixed this morning, the cook and waiter made targets of each other with the order. The cook served the first of the order, this being a raw egg followed closely by a coffee cup, and the waiter returned a volley of cups and dishes, after which the cook took to the alley and left the order as it was. Judge Sullivan will rehash the served order tomorrow.” The feuding parties came to court the next day. Ung Wing, the defendant charged with assault, was fined $20. Luther Bain, who took the “poke” at the Chinaman, was fined $7.
Fire was a constant threat in frontier towns. Fort Benton had wisely positioned water wells along Front Street (marked now by brick circles) and consequently had few fires there. Main Street and other parts of town were not so fortunate. In March 1903, the Chinese laundry building near the sawmill at Fort Assinniboine burned down and about $1,000 worth of soldier’s laundry was destroyed.
Chinese New Year in Fort Benton in 1904 was celebrated February 17 with the usual festivities. In China the “years” number from the beginning of the reign of each emperor, and the present monarch, Quong Sue, was crowned about thirty years ago. One week later, in Havre an unidentified man was arrested for making a murderous assault upon a Chinaman. The man had been eating at a Chinese restaurant, and when asked to pay up he drew a knife and inflicted a wound on the Chinaman’s head that required surgical attention.
Lee Sing was taken into custody in late February 1904, because he could not produce his residence permit. He was taken to Helena March 2 by a deputy United States marshal to have a hearing before the federal authorities. In April eight Chinese were arrested at Fort Assinniboine because they could not produce the necessary residence papers. They were to have hearings before U. S. Commissioner McIntyre, and probably were deported.
James Soo, a Chinese patient, died of consumption in mid August 1904, at St. Clare hospital. Soo was formerly a resident of Harlem. In September 1905, fire destroyed a Chinese log cabin on the corner of St. John and Main Streets.
In a sobering report in the Great Falls Tribune in November 1905 under the headline, “Back to China to Die. ‘Many people have a mistaken idea about Chinamen,’ said Deputy United States Marshal Young, who passed through Great Falls last night, en route from Helena to Port Townsend, Wash., where he will deport one of the yellow race.
‘’The impression generally prevails that the average Chink has plenty of money, or, at least, is seldom ‘broke.’ That is a mistake. It has fallen to me to arrest scores of Chinamen, principally upon the charge of living in this country without the proper credentials, in violation of the exclusion act. I have found, in a majority of cases, that they were short of money and frequently in destitute circumstances.’
“In company with Emil Schmidt, a Helena saloonkeeper, Deputy Marshal Young was on his way to Havre, where a Chinaman named Wah Lee was arrested several days ago, charged with not having papers in his possession to show that he was entitled to remain in Uncle Sam’s domain.
“Wah Lee was on his way to the coast from Minot, N. D. Upon reaching Havre, a federal inspector ordered the almond-eyed traveler detained until such time as the case could be investigated. Lee appeared to be sick, and has since been able to sit up only at intervals.
“It is believed that Lee was taken ill at Minot and decided to return to his old home in the Flowery kingdom, probably to die. Deputy Marshal Young thinks that the Chinaman will be fortunate if he crosses the Pacific Ocean alive.”
On May 29, 1907, Jim Charlie, proprietor of the O. K. restaurant in Havre, was assaulted in his kitchen early Sunday morning by Charles Woods, a Black American, and badly beaten up. The Chinaman was rendered unconscious and Woods then rifled a trunk, stealing about $35, and made his getaway. There were two assailants, one from whom watched the dining room while the other went back into the kitchen. Woods was captured a short time later by Chief Bickle. No money could be found on him.
Lee Sing had escaped deportation in 1904, and was now a gardener, when he was arrested and required to pay a small fine for selling the ever present opium in 1907.
Across the Medicine Line in Canada, riots occurred in Lethbridge against the Chinese in December 1907. A dispatch from Lethbridge reported: “Because they believed that a prominent citizen had been murdered in a Chinese restaurant, 1,500 men raided the Oriental quarter late Christmas night and left a wreck behind.
“Restaurants and laundries were smashed; doors and windows and entire fronts of buildings were reduced to splinters.
“The regular police of the town were powerless and a brigade of mounted police had to be called out to quell the riot.
“It was just after 9 o’clock that the mob began to form.
“The story had got abroad that Harry Smith, one of the best known ranchers of the cattle district of which the city is the center, had been fatally wounded in a restaurant.
“Curiously enough, neither Smith nor anyone else had been hurt, but even the police were misled by the tale, and two Orientals were placed under arrest and charged with his murder.
“An indignant mob gathered opposite the eating house and there was talk of lynching.
“Suddenly some one threw a rock that smashed a front window. In a moment the crowd was beyond control.
“Bricks and stones were hurled and when the doors had been broken the tables and chairs and dishes inside were smashed.
“The Columbia and Alberta restaurants were literally wrecked. What could not be conveniently smashed by the few who could get inside was passed out to the street to the howling mob in waiting and there demolished.
“At 10 o’clock a detachment of the mounted police appeared and the crowd scattered. Hundreds of the rioters merely shifted the scene of the pillage. Three blocks away, opposite the Arlington hotel, they cleaned out another Chinese restaurant and mishandled two Orientals who were captured within.
“Mayor Galbraith and Magistrate Townsend both addressed the mob and urged it to disperse, and as all possible damage had been done, it obeyed.”
In late 1908 the Enterprise Restaurant was still operating under a succession of proprietors, Lee Gee in October, Lee Shone & Brother in November, and Lee Hong & Company in December.
In late January 1909, the River Press barely mention Chinese New Year saying only, “The Chinese residents of this locality are celebrating their New Year today, the festivities being of the usual kind.”
Later that year the Press reported, “ A Chinese cook, who was known by the name Charlie Kong and who has been employed by various residents of this vicinity, was found dead in his room this morning by one of his fellow countrymen. The deceased had been on the sick list the past three weeks, and death is supposed to have resulted from pneumonia.”
The old time Chinese were dying off. In December 1909, Ah Que, the Chinese who has made his home in Armington for so many years, died Tuesday night, December 7th. He was an old timer in this part of the country having lived in Fort Benton, Neihart and Armington for the last 30 years. The remains were taken to Helena by John Gray where burial will be made.
By 1910 the Chinese presence in Chouteau County had decreased to 40 with just 12 in Fort Benton, 18 in Havre, 2 in Chinook, 6 at Harlem, 1 on the lower Teton, and 1 on Eagle Creek. Dick Lee, a 49 year-old single man born in China and in the U.S. since 1876 served as cook on a ranch near Eagle Creek, probably the McMillan Ranch. Lewis Luna, a 63 year-old man born in China and in the U.S. since 1865 worked as cook on the sheep ranch where Charles Schwandt was manager.
In September 1910, the River Press headlined, “Attempted to Commit Murder. A man who gives his name as John Smith, and who has been employed in the Grand Union hotel kitchen as dishwasher, was arrested by the city marshal Sunday morning on a charge of attempting to commit murder. The prisoner is alleged to have assaulted a Chinese cook, generally known by the name of Toy, apparently without provocation. “The victim of the assault was struck several times with a cleaver, one of the blows fracturing the skull and causing a wound that may have serious results. He is under the care of a physician, and in the event of death the prisoner will face a charge of murder.”
In mid November, the jury term of the district court opened, with the first criminal case of the term being that of John Smith, the defendant charged with assault with intent to kill. The alleged assault took place in this city in September, the victim being a Chinese cook named Lee Chung.”
The trial progressed as reported in the Press, “The trial of John Smith, accused of a murderous assault upon a Chinese cook employed at the Grand Union hotel was in progress in the district court today, William Toy, of Helena, acting as interpreter during part of the testimony. The latter was to the effect that there had been no trouble between the men, and that the assault was without provocation. The defendant, in testifying on his own behalf, declared he had no knowledge of striking the Chinaman with a cleaver, his mind being a complete blank as to the incident. The case was given to the jury at a late hour this afternoon.” The jury in the case of John Smith returned a verdict of guilty, and sentence was pronounced: “John Smith, convicted of assault in the first degree, was given a sentence of eight years.” Despite the trend toward increased violent against the Chinese, they continued to receive even-handed justice in Chouteau County courts.
Chinese New Year January 1911 was ushered in at midnight by the usual firing of firecrackers, and for two days the Celestials kept open house, entertaining their friends with various kinds of Chinese delicacies.
For the first time since the passage of the bankruptcy law in 1910, a Montana Chinese took advantage of its provisions. In December 1911, Charlie Wang Luk, proprietor of the Chicago cafe at Havre, filed a petition for bankruptcy in the federal court at Helena. The Chinaman gives his liabilities at $589.50 and his assets at $1,280, the greater part of which, however, are of doubtful value.
The local Chinese residents celebrated their New Year February 1912 in the usual quaint style Saturday, this celebration probably being the last of a series that dates back hundreds of years. It has been the custom in China to regulate their calendar by the changes of the moon, making 360 days in the year, but under the new form of government recently adopted it is believed this will be changed to the Julian calendar.”
Lee Kim, a Chinaman against whom the county attorney had filed a charge of assault in the first degree, and who has been held in jail about six months, was allowed to plead guilty to assault in the third degree. In view of his long confinement in jail the court fined the defendant $150, which was paid.
In 1917 the River Press carried advertisements for The Enterprise Restaurant, which was still in business on Front Street with Quan Shol, Proprietor. Jack Lepley remembers hearing that as a boy George Veilleux and other boys “explored” the basement of this building to find a series of upper and lower bunks arranged for opium smokers in this very old opium den. Today, this is today’s the Liquor Store portion of R J’s Toggery.
In January 1919, the Great Falls Tribune reported, “Noted Bar Goes to Chinese Firm. Old Havre Saloon’s taxidermy specimens to Be Retained; Cafe Changes Hands.
“The Mint saloon building, owned by C. W. Young, has been leased until February 15, 1924, by Wong Kim, Wong Sam and William W. Lee, a firm of Chinese residents of Havre who now operate the California cafe, and they will take possession on or about February 15. It is their intention to remodel entirely the interior, but retain the present fancy decorations and famous specimens of taxidermy of which Mr. Young was always very proud. In Havre’s palmy days the Mint was considered the finest bar in the city and the new proprietors are to pay a monthly rental of $225 for the building.”
Even the new town of Geraldine had a Chinese resident. Lou Wong came to Geraldine from Lewistown to open a laundry. In November 1919, Lou Wong died in his laundry in Geraldine. His body was taken back to Lewistown where a funeral was held. His short obituary reported that Wong was an old man who was well known in both Montana and Utah.
Montana attitudes toward the Chinese ranged from total exclusion in Great Falls to toleration in Helena, Butte, and Fort Benton. The prevailing feeling in Fort Benton seemed most influenced by economic conditions and by 1920 Chouteau County homesteads was suffering hard times. By then the Chinese population in Fort Benton had declined to six, although they were still in demand as cooks. In that year young 27-year-old China-born Owen G. Fat owned and operated a restaurant on Front Street with Lew Shu as cook. This restaurant was located in the Culbertson House block, between Black American Peter Burnett’s shoe repair shop and Japanese-American Tommy Matsumoto’s restaurant. Matsumoto, born in Japan in 1874, had come to the U. S. in 1900, and operated the Club Café on Front Street for about twenty years before moving to Great Falls to open the popular Club Cafeteria on Central Avenue.
Two other Chinese residents in Fort Benton in 1920 were Chow Heery, who operated a restaurant on Front Street and elderly 75-year-old Tom Mun, who served as cook at Jere Sullivan’s popular Choteau House hotel. The final two Chinese resident in Fort Benton were young American-born Chinese, Wong G. Ham and Young Yen, who were the cooks at Charles Lepley’s Grand Union Hotel.
In January 1922, a fire that was caused by hot ashes dumped near a wooden fence would have developed into serious proportions had it not been for prompt action by Henry Hagen about 3:00 o’clock Tuesday morning. The blaze was discovered by one of the tenants of the Hagen block who gave the alarm, and when Mr. Hagen reached the scene of trouble in the rear of the Chinese restaurant, the flames were creeping toward a block of frame buildings that it would have been difficult to save.
The last Chinese in Fort Benton operated the Quan Café until February 1923, when cook Wong Ming hung himself. As reported in the River Press:
“Wong Ming Hangs Self. Wong Ming, cook at the Quan Café hung himself sometime during Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning. Upon opening up Wednesday morning, the proprietor, Tom Mum, noted Wong’s absence from his accustomed job and went upstairs to call him and upon opening the door found him, hanging from the door casing. Wong had driven a nail into the casing and used a small rope to carry out his purpose. No cause is known to exist for his act, more than that he was of a morose disposition and was given to times of despondency. He came here from Butte about two years ago and was 23 years of age. The body will be taken to Butte Thursday for burial, relatives of the Chinaboy living there.
“Tom Mum, who has conducted the Quan Café during the past few years, came here about eight years ago. He has decided to close the restaurant for the present at least and will go to Butte where he will secure employment. Mr. Mum is well liked and will be greatly missed by his patrons.”
Another perspective on this incident came from the Great Falls Tribune under the headline, “Cook Scolds Helper For Absence From Tasks But He Only Shivers In Answer; He Talks to Dead Man.
“Wong Ming, cook’s helper at the Quam restaurant here, was not on hand to help prepare breakfast Wednesday morning. The cook stormed around a while, did some of the odd jobs Wong was supposed to do, then went to Wong’s room fully determined to give the late sleeper a large fragment of his mind.
“Wong was standing just inside his room when the cook opened the door. He appeared to be shivering violently, a fact which the cook credited to the cold weather. All the cook said may not be translated here, but in substance his remarks were to the effect that Wong could warm himself by getting down into the kitchen and rustling about a fit.
“Wong made no reply, but kept on shivering. Thoroughly exasperated, the cook attempted to grab him by the arm. With the touch, Wong floated away from him a little ways and seemed to sort of stay suspended in the air. The cook was conscious of a prickling feeling along his spine, but he needed help in the kitchen. With a silent appeal to his ancestors, he tip-toed closer to Wong and this time took a grip on Wong’s arm that no shiver could break.
“Wong tumbled in a heap at the cook’s feet. Sometime during the night he had mounted a chair, driven a nail into the casing above the door, attached one end of a small rope to the nail and the other to his neck, kicked the chair away. He had been suspended, his feet just off the floor, when the cook opened the door and set the body to “shivering.” The cook did not notice the rope until the body fell.
“Employes of the restaurant say that Wong was in a cheerful mood when he finished up his work the night before and retired. His father and brother live in Butte, and it is expected that the body will be taken there for burial.”
Speculation at the time indicated that Wong Ming was hanged to scare-off the remaining Chinese in the town. Although never proven, the incident led Manager Tom Mun and staff to close the café the same day and leave for Butte. This sadly ended the era of the Celestial Kingdom in Fort Benton.
Despite the ending of the Chinese presence in Fort Benton in 1923, that was not the last word. The real ending appears to be the return of a Chinese man to the town about four years later, in 1927. Wally Morger, who was four years old at that time and the only son of the Fort Benton Town Marshal Earl Morger, remembers that a Chinese man named Chow Hoy approached Marshal Morger and asked if he would be interested in buying his home. The house had been built in 1912 in the Delatraz addition, and Chow Hoy had bought it in 1917. Chow Hoy wanted $500 for the house and four 35 ft. by 120 ft. lots. He indicated that the ethnic situation in town directed against the Chinese had fomented threats against him, a sentiment not unique to Fort Benton.
Marshal Morger approached his two uncles, Ed and Henry Davis, merchants in town, and managed to secure the money to seal the deal. Although the house was a small one bedroom, one bath home, it was well built and remains in the family today. Randy Morger purchased the home, at 1810 Franklin Street, three years ago. Wally concluded his story by saying, “The home holds many special memories for the Morger family.” To which we might add, the early Chinese on the Upper Missouri left many memorable stories we can all enjoy.
[Sources for all four parts: U.S. Census; Great Falls Yesterday, p. 12; Benton Record Weekly 20 Sep 1978; BRW 13 February 1880; BRW 27 February 1880; BRW 19 March 1880; BRW 2 Jun 1881;BRW 16 Jun 1881; BRW 18 August 1881; BRW 23 February 1882; BRW 16 March 1882; BRW 23 March 1882; BRW 17 August – 14 September 1882; BRW 5 October 1882; BRW 12 October 1882; BRW 2 June 1883; BRW 25 August 1883; Fort Benton River Press Weekly 2 April 1884; FBRPW 3 September 1884; FBRPW 4 February 1885; Great Falls Tribune Weekly 26 Dec 1885; FBRPW 20 Jan 1886; FBRPW 24 Feb 1886; FBRPW 15 January 1887; FBRPW 16 Nov 1887; FBRPW 8 April 1890; FBRPW 8 April 1891; FBRPW 24 Jun 1891; Great Falls Leader Daily 6 August 1891; FBRPW 10 Feb 1892; FBRPW 20 Jul 1892; FBRPW 12 August 1891; FBRPW 26 August 1891; FBRPW 29 June 1892; GFTD 4 Jan 1893; FBRPW 21 Feb 1894; FBRPW 6 March 1894; FBRPW 3 April 1895; FBRPW 28 August 1895; FBRPW 4 Feb 1900; FBRPW 27 Feb 1900; FBRPW 20 Mar 1901; FBRPW 2 Oct 1901; FBRPW 16 Oct 1901; Great Falls Leader Daily 24 Oct 1901; FBRPW 29 Jan 1902; FBRPW 5 Feb 1902; FBRPW 26 Feb 1902; GFTD 29 March 1902; FBRPW 2 Apr 1902; GFTD 7 Apr 1902; FBRPW 9 Apr 1902; FBRPW 30 Apr 1902; FBRPW 7 May 1902; FBRPW 14 May 1902; FBRPW 4 Feb 1903; FBRPW 11 Feb 1903; FBRPW 25 Mar 1903; FBRPW 17 Feb 1904; FBRPW 24 Feb 1904; FBRPW 2 Mar 1904; FBRPW 13 Apr 1904; FBRPW 17 Aug 1904; GFTD 3 Nov 1905; GFLD 4 Nov 1905; GFTD 30 May 1906; GFTD 30 Dec 1907; GFLD 11 Dec 1909; FBRPW 14 Sep 1910; FBRPW 16 Nov 1910; FBRPW 23 Nov 1910; FBRPW 24 Feb 1912; FBRPW 31 Jul 1912; GFTD 20 Jan 1919, p. 7; GFTD 13 Nov 1919; FBRPW 4 Jan 1922; GFTD 15 Feb 1923; FBRPW 21 Feb 1923; Ltr Sing Lee to C. E. Conrad 28 Oct 1898, Small Collection 185 Mansfield Library, U of M]
20 November 2009
Montana's Bridge to Nowhere
Do you know about this "bridge to nowhere"?
This steel truss bridge over Shonkin Creek in the Highwood Mountains in North Central Montana is located about 13 miles west of Geraldine and just off the county road. Historian Jon Axeline, Montana Department of Transportation, believes it is unique in the state of Montana. If you know when the bridge was built or have other details about it, please contact the Ken Robison or Hank Armstrong at the Overholser Historical Research Center in Fort Benton at riverplains@mtintouch.net
09 November 2009
"Aliens Alive and Aliens Dead": The Celestial Kingdom on the Upper Missouri Part II
“Aliens Alive and Aliens Dead”: The Celestial Kingdom on the Upper Missouri: Part II
By Ken Robison
This continues the series of frontier historical sketches by historians at the Joel F. Overholser Historical Research Center in Fort Benton.
This continues the story of the Chinese in historic Choteau County and Fort Benton. Despite the derision of “Chinamen,” “Mongolians,” and “Heathen Chinese,” the Benton Chinese were tolerated, owned businesses, gave testimony in courts, and maintained their distinct cultural identify within the community—often to the delight, and sometimes to the disgust, of other Bentonites. In March 1881 Ah Sing operated the Benton Wash House at Main and St. John, where the Hagen block is today. Two years later, the Record reported on another laundry, “The house used by Mr. Culbertson as a dining hall during the time he was building his new hotel--and which is on St. John street on the opposite side of the street from the Pacific Hotel, has been rented by a Chinaman said to be Quong Lee, for a laundry, and he is making a sewer on the edge of the sidewalk from his laundry to the Missouri river, running along the sidewalk past Miller’s saloon, which he expects to have completed to-day or to-morrow.”
Chinese Laundryman on the Streets of Fort Benton
In August and September 1882 advertisements appeared in the Benton Record for the “Oriental Saloon Bakery and Restaurant with Choice Wines and Liquors Constantly on Hand Open Day and Night, Hop Lee, Proprietor.” In February 1883 Chung Kee opened another Saloon Bakery and Restaurant. The Benton Record noted in April 1883 “Chinamen seem to be the best, or at least the most successful vegetable gardeners in this vicinity. One of those industrious pig-tails is already hawking young onions and spinach, and had a good stock of celery as late as the first of February. They are not very modest in charging for their produce, however.”
In June 1883 five Chinese arrived in Benton by the Helena stagecoach intending to start a Chinese store in William Foster’s old Phoenix Exchange saloon building on Main Street—Foster, himself, was well remembered for skipping town and leaving lots of unpaid bills. The Benton Record reported their arrival and playfully added, “They are reported to be plentifully supplied with the condign, and will probably carry a good stock. This has long been a great want in Benton. No place can hope to flourish unless it contains a store where you can purchase fans painted with hump-backed Chinamen and impossible swans, or blue vases with green lizards crawling over them, and other things to suggest the horrible possibility that you’ve got ‘em again.”
The Chinese in Montana in the 1880s were a mobile population ranging out from the larger Chinese centers in Helena and Butte to outlying areas such as Fort Benton, Sun River, and Fort Assinaboine. In addition, the Montana Chinese traveled to and from San Francisco and even to and from China with surprising frequency. Perhaps the best insight into this mobility comes from a report in October 1882 in the Benton Record, headlined “A Celestial Returning to the Flowery Kingdom:
“Ah Too leaves to-morrow morning for China. He and Char Lee in partnership carry on the laundry opposite Murphy, Neel & Co. on Front Street [today’s site of the Grand Union]. Ah Too has been a resident of this country for a little over eighteen years, more than two years of which he has lived in Benton, and the remainder of the time in San Francisco.
“During the time he has sojourned in this country he has returned to China four times and he is now going back for the fifth, and is uncertain whether he will ever return again to this country or not, but will be governed by circumstances in that respect after he returns from China. He expects to go direct from Benton to San Francisco, and there take one of the ocean steamers to Hong Kong and from thence to Canton, and there he will embark on one of the boats peculiar to that country and go up the Canton river about 500 miles to his native place, Wam Boo, a town of about 3,000 inhabitants, immediately upon the river, and in the Province of Canton, and where he expects to arrive about the tenth of next November.”
Chinese Temple in Virginia City, Montana
The next week, October 12, 1882, Sim Sing, who had just arrived in Benton a few weeks previously to form a partnership with Hop Lee at the Oriental Saloon, presented the editor of the Benton Record with “a newspaper printed in the
celestial kingdom, at Canton, as a token of acknowledgment of the obligations which he is under to us for noticing the departure this morning for China of his friend Ah Too. He assured us that the paper contained news of the highest importance and interest, and everyone connected with the establishment examined it until they almost become cross-eyed, and attempts at deciphering it will have to be suspended until a more fitting opportunity.”
The Benton Chinese followed events closely in other communities in Montana. In March 1882 the Record reported from Fort Assinaboine that “Ah Wan, a Chinaman who has been working for one of the officers of this post was found this morning in a cellar of the house hanging dead from a beam, having committed suicide. The cause of the act was that John could not rest easy knowing that his father had killed another Chinaman. The Chinamen at the post say the Devil came after him . . . The body of Ah Wan, the Chinaman who committed suicide by hanging at Assinaboine the other day, has been sent to Helena for burial.”
The Benton Record, always fascinated by the Chinese, became more harshly racist in its later years, writing in 1883 “The Chinese must go. Ah Hay, or Gee Whiz, or some other euphoniously titled Celestial, left by the Helena stage this morning to make his home hereafter among his Mongolian brethren at the Capital.” In June 1883, the Record reported with horror and alarm on “The public sale to a Chinaman of a squaw in our very midst, for the trifling compensation of two sacks of flour. Does slavery exist amongst us in this year of universal enlightenment? Are human beings to be bought and sold upon our public streets, and at so small a price as that mentioned? Are Chinamen not only to pauperize our working classes, but enslave the original owners of this splendid continent. Why, where will they stop? If they would buy a squaw for two sacks of flour soon they will not hesitate to buy a white woman for four sacks, and so on until they will have us all in a condition of servitude.”
Most Chinese in Fort Benton were unmarried, and few Chinese women lived there. In April 1884 the more tolerant Fort Benton River Press reported on the marriage of Ah Son, of Benton, and his bride Ah Hou, of Bozeman in Helena at the Mount Helena House. The couple was married “melican fashion” by Judge Sterling. The Press continued, “Mr. Ah Son and wife, formerly the handsome and charming Miss Ah Hou, of Bozeman, who were recently married at Helena, arrived in the city on yesterday’s coach, and have now quietly settled down to the enjoyment of domestic affairs.”
A party of hungry travelers on Montana’s Benton Road arrived at the 28-Mile Springs stage stop late one evening in September 1884. Asking proprietor Colonel Andrew Jackson Vance if they could get anything to eat, he replied, “I don’t know; it depends on the Chinaman. If you can get him up, all right.” The travelers went to the Chinese man’s room, awakened him, and were informed they could get nothing at that time of night. The group reported back to Vance, but he kept deferring to the party to find a means to get the cook up. Finally, a traveler told Vance, “Well, you are the boss.” Vance replied, “You bet I am,” and proceeded to the room, roused the sleeping Chinaman, and raised him by the hair. “Throw him out of the window,” shouted the travelers. So “John” was thrown out into the night. The unhappy Chinese cook went into the kitchen, and the guests had a good supper. But, “the Chinaman got even by giving them in the morning the most execrable breakfast they ever sat down to.”
At 28-Mile Springs Proprietor Vance raised his “Chinaman” by his hair. Sketch in 1901 Anaconda Standard.
In February 1885 the River Press reported that an unusual event occurred at McDevitt & William’s saloon when a prize fight was arranged in the morning and the fight occurred in the afternoon between “Nosey, the Kid” and “Chung Lung, a Chinaman, under the rules of the London prize ring.” Later that month the Chinese residents of Fort Benton “commenced celebrating their New Year to-day in good style with the firing of immense fire crackers and other harmless but noisy amusements. The crackers made as much noise as a mountain howitzer, and caused many of our citizens to think the reservation bill had passed.” The next week on a typically wild evening in Benton “a shooting scrape took place in the Chinese saloon on Main street, during which John Lloyd, who is well known here, was shot through the hand and in the leg, shattering that member above the knee, by a Chinaman, known as Arthur.” Meanwhile, in January 1886 Lee Gee opened the Enterprise House in the new Cummings Building.
By the mid 1880s attitudes toward Chinese in some communities in Montana were hardening. From its founding in 1884, workingmen in Great Falls, with support of town leaders, had established a “don’t let the sun set on you in our town” Chinese exclusion policy. That harsh policy prevailed in Great Falls prohibiting settlement of any Chinese in the city until the mid-1930s.
Some years later Worden P. Wren, the agent for Murphy-Maclay & Company in the village of Great Falls, recalled the incident with the first Chinese in Great Falls:
“Chinese were good laundrymen, but did collars and cuffs so poorly that Mr. Wren sent his to Troy, New York to be laundered while he was in Fort Benton and even after he came into the Falls. In 1884 and 1885 other laundry was sent from the Falls to Fort Benton or Sun River, but early in 1885 an intrepid young Chinaman came from Sun River to start a laundry. Soon after he hung his shingle, several boys with a strong antipathy for the yellow race tried to persuade him to leave town. Pat Hughes led the crowd. He refused to comply with their request. They told him they were going to hang him with a long rope they had with them. He was led to the river, placed in a skiff with two men at the oars, and started for the opposite shore. The crowd on the bank yelled ‘Hang him’ ‘Hang him!’ It was getting dark; the Chinaman was so frightened he jumped overboard in the middle of the stream. The men at the oars and on the bank feared he had been drowned and the next morning they were not to be found. The streets were deserted. The Chinaman however, reached shore, went to the Townsite office, knocked on the door, and was admitted by Jim Matkin who gave him dry clothes to wear until his had dried sufficiently to put on again. The next day he left secretly for Sun River. The news was well circulated around the country, and Great Falls was visited by no more Chinese. Whenever one came to town, he carefully avoided the hotel, and spent the night locked in Murphy-Maclay’s store until Mr.Wren let him out the next morning. This was the first labor trouble in Great Falls.”
In January 1886 the River Press brought news to the Benton Chinese that “the Chinamen at Maiden received notice to quit the camp and not having complied with the same were last week escorted out of town by a band of masked men and instructed to keep right on going. They went.”
Anti-Chinese sentiment throughout the United States was building with the first Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. In February 1886 the River Press reported that Howell Harris had returned from Oregon with news that “there is great excitement over the Chinese question and the recent troubles in Seattle. There is a general feeling against the Chinese, who are controlled by the companies in San Francisco, although Mr. Harris is of the opinion that the habits of the Celestials in that section has probably more to do with the determination to rid the country of them than anything else. The citizens have tried every peaceable means to rid themselves of Chinese, but without avail, and it has been the general belief that agitation or legislation would bring no relief, and the people took summary measures to compel them to go, feeling sure that this would be the only means of calling public attention to the evil. That something must be done, and that speedily, is evident.”
One year later, in 1887, a Chinese man was held up and robbed in Benton. Zack Larsen and Rube Houser were arrested on the strength of damaging circumstantial evidence. The two were examined before Judge Crane and bound over to await action by the grand jury. More White-Chinese violence, almost unheard of in earlier years in Montana, occurred later that year when the River Press reported, “Chinaman Hong, who assaulted a man the other day with deadly weapons, two beer bottles and a tack hammer, was bound over by Judge Luke in the sum of $500 to appear before the grand jury. Hong is congratulating himself over the fact that in his excitement he did not make the fatal mistake of hitting his man with two bottles of Benton China whiskey. If this had occurred he is satisfied he would have gone to jail without benefit of bail, on a charge of murder in the first degree. As it is Hong furnished bail and is holding just as good hands as ever in the great American game of poker.”
In 1905 The Great Falls Leader carried a humorous story about the “Resignation of Chinese Cook” in 1887. The Leader wrote, “As one of the souvenirs of the old army post at Fort Shaw, which was abandoned by the war department for such purposes a number of years ago, Mr. F. Geo. Heldt, who during the days of that post was situated there as a member of the J. H. McKnight company and was in charge of its business at that place, retains a letter which was written by a Chinese cook employed by the company in its restaurant at the post. The latter complains of the methods by which the man in charge of the restaurant, Mr. Ferg, conducted the place. The cook was able to read and write in English, but the letter which he addressed to Mr. McKnight was so peculiarly constructed that it is evident the writer made use of a dictionary and employed words far beyond his grasp to express himself. The letter [which may drive you batty] follows:
‘November 10th, 1887, Fort Shaw, Montana.
Messrs. McKnight.
Dear Sir
I am very gratefully to you and every gentlemen and ladies, so kindness, and so nice place to work for. I am very glad to have it, but Mr. Ferg so grudge and manifest at frequently make me very hard to stay, the only trouble he is, but I tend to the place never had any not well of it and did to try how I possible, to do all boarders satisfy and rejoice. just work at every things take what they want whole day I never say a word and continually the meals in time and the morning he get up at 7 o’clock or half past 7 and take his breakfast then he way out and I wait on the table, some day in afternoon he went out to supper time nor come back and I wait on also, never speak a word to him. I suppose probably was a dutition, and some times may be I feel not well, he will say I get made and since in last Sunday morning make some cocoa for breakfast to boil over sat on the stove keep warm, then he take a cup put some cool milk on it and put little cocoa to it mix up and he say what is so cold, and I say the cool milk make so if put some ice on it more cold too and he just so fierce and he say G___ d____ wish to hold a log wood to lick me, so bottom and speak so many nonsence. I could not stay with and so for I refuse my place in 15th this month. If he was a good man I will stay a long time and when I go will send a good man to take my place before I way, but he was such circumstances I prefer not to stay. I am very sorry to say. I use to explication what do I be, and he was so highton and so lazy. on to do any work then. So and so I let to know
Yours respectfully servant
AH WAI’
At the bottom of the letter was the notation of Mr. McKnght, made before sending the letter back to Mr. Heldt at Fort Shaw, which read as follows: “What is the matter with the Chinaman?—if Ferg is not attending to his business better stir him up.”
Worden P. Wren recalled another incident involving Chinese burial bones in early Great Falls, and his story was written in Great Falls Yesterday.
“Murphy-Maclay and Co. were agents for the stage line to Lewistown and had a quantity of bedding and other things in the basement awaiting shipment elsewhere. Some of it got wet, so Mr. Wren had the store porter take a coal oil lamp to the cellar, sort out the packages, and throw in the river any that were badly damaged. The porter asked what should be done with one box he found. Mr. Wren told him to open it up and see if it was of any value. In the box were Chinese papers, incense, Chinese candies, paper covered with Chinese writing, and at the bottom, a skull. The articles were returned to the box, and Joe McKnight of Fort Shaw brought a Chinaman to the store to interpret the writing. A Chinese had been murdered at Lewistown--knocked in the head with an axe--and the remains were to go to China via San Francisco, for burial. Mr. Wren wrote Chinese headquarters in San Francisco telling them a box was held here awaiting money for express from Lewistown to China, but no reply was ever received to the letter so the box was taken to the warehouse and put on the crossbeams where it stayed for five years. Some boys found it, took it down, and no one knows what eventually became of the poor Chinaman’s remains.”
Chinese Section of Fort Benton in 1888 with two Chinese restaurants on Front Street and a Chinese Laundry near today's Hagen Building. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map 1888.
The absence of the 1890 U. S. Census [long ago destroyed by fire] precludes detailed analysis of the Chinese in Choteau County at that time. Some insight into the Chinese community in Fort Benton in the late 1880s comes from licenses paid and issued by the Choteau County treasurer during 1889. Wun Ling held both gaming and saloon licenses, while Hop Ling and Chin Hin held gaming licenses. King Faun held licenses to operate both saloon and gaming. Wah Soo operated a laundry, and Wah Sing held both saloon and gaming licenses. Sing Lee owned both a laundry and a restaurant. Wong Quot bought the Enterprise Restaurant from Sing Lee, while Sam Lun ran the White Elephant on Front Street.
The River Press made clear the sentiment of much of the Benton community in April 1891, editorializing “We understand that a Chinese resurrection will take place here next Saturday. The remains of a Chinaman, who died here several years ago, will be exhumed, his bones carefully secured and polished up--even to the smallest bone in the body--when they will be carefully packed, in the smallest square box that will hold them, and sent back to China. These people--the Chinese-- will not allow even their bones to rest in American soil. They are aliens alive and aliens dead, and have nothing in common with our people. It would be better for them and better for our people if every one of them could be sent back within the next twelve months to their own land.”
By Ken Robison
This continues the series of frontier historical sketches by historians at the Joel F. Overholser Historical Research Center in Fort Benton.
This continues the story of the Chinese in historic Choteau County and Fort Benton. Despite the derision of “Chinamen,” “Mongolians,” and “Heathen Chinese,” the Benton Chinese were tolerated, owned businesses, gave testimony in courts, and maintained their distinct cultural identify within the community—often to the delight, and sometimes to the disgust, of other Bentonites. In March 1881 Ah Sing operated the Benton Wash House at Main and St. John, where the Hagen block is today. Two years later, the Record reported on another laundry, “The house used by Mr. Culbertson as a dining hall during the time he was building his new hotel--and which is on St. John street on the opposite side of the street from the Pacific Hotel, has been rented by a Chinaman said to be Quong Lee, for a laundry, and he is making a sewer on the edge of the sidewalk from his laundry to the Missouri river, running along the sidewalk past Miller’s saloon, which he expects to have completed to-day or to-morrow.”
Chinese Laundryman on the Streets of Fort Benton
In August and September 1882 advertisements appeared in the Benton Record for the “Oriental Saloon Bakery and Restaurant with Choice Wines and Liquors Constantly on Hand Open Day and Night, Hop Lee, Proprietor.” In February 1883 Chung Kee opened another Saloon Bakery and Restaurant. The Benton Record noted in April 1883 “Chinamen seem to be the best, or at least the most successful vegetable gardeners in this vicinity. One of those industrious pig-tails is already hawking young onions and spinach, and had a good stock of celery as late as the first of February. They are not very modest in charging for their produce, however.”
In June 1883 five Chinese arrived in Benton by the Helena stagecoach intending to start a Chinese store in William Foster’s old Phoenix Exchange saloon building on Main Street—Foster, himself, was well remembered for skipping town and leaving lots of unpaid bills. The Benton Record reported their arrival and playfully added, “They are reported to be plentifully supplied with the condign, and will probably carry a good stock. This has long been a great want in Benton. No place can hope to flourish unless it contains a store where you can purchase fans painted with hump-backed Chinamen and impossible swans, or blue vases with green lizards crawling over them, and other things to suggest the horrible possibility that you’ve got ‘em again.”
The Chinese in Montana in the 1880s were a mobile population ranging out from the larger Chinese centers in Helena and Butte to outlying areas such as Fort Benton, Sun River, and Fort Assinaboine. In addition, the Montana Chinese traveled to and from San Francisco and even to and from China with surprising frequency. Perhaps the best insight into this mobility comes from a report in October 1882 in the Benton Record, headlined “A Celestial Returning to the Flowery Kingdom:
“Ah Too leaves to-morrow morning for China. He and Char Lee in partnership carry on the laundry opposite Murphy, Neel & Co. on Front Street [today’s site of the Grand Union]. Ah Too has been a resident of this country for a little over eighteen years, more than two years of which he has lived in Benton, and the remainder of the time in San Francisco.
“During the time he has sojourned in this country he has returned to China four times and he is now going back for the fifth, and is uncertain whether he will ever return again to this country or not, but will be governed by circumstances in that respect after he returns from China. He expects to go direct from Benton to San Francisco, and there take one of the ocean steamers to Hong Kong and from thence to Canton, and there he will embark on one of the boats peculiar to that country and go up the Canton river about 500 miles to his native place, Wam Boo, a town of about 3,000 inhabitants, immediately upon the river, and in the Province of Canton, and where he expects to arrive about the tenth of next November.”
Chinese Temple in Virginia City, Montana
The next week, October 12, 1882, Sim Sing, who had just arrived in Benton a few weeks previously to form a partnership with Hop Lee at the Oriental Saloon, presented the editor of the Benton Record with “a newspaper printed in the
celestial kingdom, at Canton, as a token of acknowledgment of the obligations which he is under to us for noticing the departure this morning for China of his friend Ah Too. He assured us that the paper contained news of the highest importance and interest, and everyone connected with the establishment examined it until they almost become cross-eyed, and attempts at deciphering it will have to be suspended until a more fitting opportunity.”
The Benton Chinese followed events closely in other communities in Montana. In March 1882 the Record reported from Fort Assinaboine that “Ah Wan, a Chinaman who has been working for one of the officers of this post was found this morning in a cellar of the house hanging dead from a beam, having committed suicide. The cause of the act was that John could not rest easy knowing that his father had killed another Chinaman. The Chinamen at the post say the Devil came after him . . . The body of Ah Wan, the Chinaman who committed suicide by hanging at Assinaboine the other day, has been sent to Helena for burial.”
The Benton Record, always fascinated by the Chinese, became more harshly racist in its later years, writing in 1883 “The Chinese must go. Ah Hay, or Gee Whiz, or some other euphoniously titled Celestial, left by the Helena stage this morning to make his home hereafter among his Mongolian brethren at the Capital.” In June 1883, the Record reported with horror and alarm on “The public sale to a Chinaman of a squaw in our very midst, for the trifling compensation of two sacks of flour. Does slavery exist amongst us in this year of universal enlightenment? Are human beings to be bought and sold upon our public streets, and at so small a price as that mentioned? Are Chinamen not only to pauperize our working classes, but enslave the original owners of this splendid continent. Why, where will they stop? If they would buy a squaw for two sacks of flour soon they will not hesitate to buy a white woman for four sacks, and so on until they will have us all in a condition of servitude.”
Most Chinese in Fort Benton were unmarried, and few Chinese women lived there. In April 1884 the more tolerant Fort Benton River Press reported on the marriage of Ah Son, of Benton, and his bride Ah Hou, of Bozeman in Helena at the Mount Helena House. The couple was married “melican fashion” by Judge Sterling. The Press continued, “Mr. Ah Son and wife, formerly the handsome and charming Miss Ah Hou, of Bozeman, who were recently married at Helena, arrived in the city on yesterday’s coach, and have now quietly settled down to the enjoyment of domestic affairs.”
A party of hungry travelers on Montana’s Benton Road arrived at the 28-Mile Springs stage stop late one evening in September 1884. Asking proprietor Colonel Andrew Jackson Vance if they could get anything to eat, he replied, “I don’t know; it depends on the Chinaman. If you can get him up, all right.” The travelers went to the Chinese man’s room, awakened him, and were informed they could get nothing at that time of night. The group reported back to Vance, but he kept deferring to the party to find a means to get the cook up. Finally, a traveler told Vance, “Well, you are the boss.” Vance replied, “You bet I am,” and proceeded to the room, roused the sleeping Chinaman, and raised him by the hair. “Throw him out of the window,” shouted the travelers. So “John” was thrown out into the night. The unhappy Chinese cook went into the kitchen, and the guests had a good supper. But, “the Chinaman got even by giving them in the morning the most execrable breakfast they ever sat down to.”
At 28-Mile Springs Proprietor Vance raised his “Chinaman” by his hair. Sketch in 1901 Anaconda Standard.
In February 1885 the River Press reported that an unusual event occurred at McDevitt & William’s saloon when a prize fight was arranged in the morning and the fight occurred in the afternoon between “Nosey, the Kid” and “Chung Lung, a Chinaman, under the rules of the London prize ring.” Later that month the Chinese residents of Fort Benton “commenced celebrating their New Year to-day in good style with the firing of immense fire crackers and other harmless but noisy amusements. The crackers made as much noise as a mountain howitzer, and caused many of our citizens to think the reservation bill had passed.” The next week on a typically wild evening in Benton “a shooting scrape took place in the Chinese saloon on Main street, during which John Lloyd, who is well known here, was shot through the hand and in the leg, shattering that member above the knee, by a Chinaman, known as Arthur.” Meanwhile, in January 1886 Lee Gee opened the Enterprise House in the new Cummings Building.
By the mid 1880s attitudes toward Chinese in some communities in Montana were hardening. From its founding in 1884, workingmen in Great Falls, with support of town leaders, had established a “don’t let the sun set on you in our town” Chinese exclusion policy. That harsh policy prevailed in Great Falls prohibiting settlement of any Chinese in the city until the mid-1930s.
Some years later Worden P. Wren, the agent for Murphy-Maclay & Company in the village of Great Falls, recalled the incident with the first Chinese in Great Falls:
“Chinese were good laundrymen, but did collars and cuffs so poorly that Mr. Wren sent his to Troy, New York to be laundered while he was in Fort Benton and even after he came into the Falls. In 1884 and 1885 other laundry was sent from the Falls to Fort Benton or Sun River, but early in 1885 an intrepid young Chinaman came from Sun River to start a laundry. Soon after he hung his shingle, several boys with a strong antipathy for the yellow race tried to persuade him to leave town. Pat Hughes led the crowd. He refused to comply with their request. They told him they were going to hang him with a long rope they had with them. He was led to the river, placed in a skiff with two men at the oars, and started for the opposite shore. The crowd on the bank yelled ‘Hang him’ ‘Hang him!’ It was getting dark; the Chinaman was so frightened he jumped overboard in the middle of the stream. The men at the oars and on the bank feared he had been drowned and the next morning they were not to be found. The streets were deserted. The Chinaman however, reached shore, went to the Townsite office, knocked on the door, and was admitted by Jim Matkin who gave him dry clothes to wear until his had dried sufficiently to put on again. The next day he left secretly for Sun River. The news was well circulated around the country, and Great Falls was visited by no more Chinese. Whenever one came to town, he carefully avoided the hotel, and spent the night locked in Murphy-Maclay’s store until Mr.Wren let him out the next morning. This was the first labor trouble in Great Falls.”
In January 1886 the River Press brought news to the Benton Chinese that “the Chinamen at Maiden received notice to quit the camp and not having complied with the same were last week escorted out of town by a band of masked men and instructed to keep right on going. They went.”
Anti-Chinese sentiment throughout the United States was building with the first Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. In February 1886 the River Press reported that Howell Harris had returned from Oregon with news that “there is great excitement over the Chinese question and the recent troubles in Seattle. There is a general feeling against the Chinese, who are controlled by the companies in San Francisco, although Mr. Harris is of the opinion that the habits of the Celestials in that section has probably more to do with the determination to rid the country of them than anything else. The citizens have tried every peaceable means to rid themselves of Chinese, but without avail, and it has been the general belief that agitation or legislation would bring no relief, and the people took summary measures to compel them to go, feeling sure that this would be the only means of calling public attention to the evil. That something must be done, and that speedily, is evident.”
One year later, in 1887, a Chinese man was held up and robbed in Benton. Zack Larsen and Rube Houser were arrested on the strength of damaging circumstantial evidence. The two were examined before Judge Crane and bound over to await action by the grand jury. More White-Chinese violence, almost unheard of in earlier years in Montana, occurred later that year when the River Press reported, “Chinaman Hong, who assaulted a man the other day with deadly weapons, two beer bottles and a tack hammer, was bound over by Judge Luke in the sum of $500 to appear before the grand jury. Hong is congratulating himself over the fact that in his excitement he did not make the fatal mistake of hitting his man with two bottles of Benton China whiskey. If this had occurred he is satisfied he would have gone to jail without benefit of bail, on a charge of murder in the first degree. As it is Hong furnished bail and is holding just as good hands as ever in the great American game of poker.”
In 1905 The Great Falls Leader carried a humorous story about the “Resignation of Chinese Cook” in 1887. The Leader wrote, “As one of the souvenirs of the old army post at Fort Shaw, which was abandoned by the war department for such purposes a number of years ago, Mr. F. Geo. Heldt, who during the days of that post was situated there as a member of the J. H. McKnight company and was in charge of its business at that place, retains a letter which was written by a Chinese cook employed by the company in its restaurant at the post. The latter complains of the methods by which the man in charge of the restaurant, Mr. Ferg, conducted the place. The cook was able to read and write in English, but the letter which he addressed to Mr. McKnight was so peculiarly constructed that it is evident the writer made use of a dictionary and employed words far beyond his grasp to express himself. The letter [which may drive you batty] follows:
‘November 10th, 1887, Fort Shaw, Montana.
Messrs. McKnight.
Dear Sir
I am very gratefully to you and every gentlemen and ladies, so kindness, and so nice place to work for. I am very glad to have it, but Mr. Ferg so grudge and manifest at frequently make me very hard to stay, the only trouble he is, but I tend to the place never had any not well of it and did to try how I possible, to do all boarders satisfy and rejoice. just work at every things take what they want whole day I never say a word and continually the meals in time and the morning he get up at 7 o’clock or half past 7 and take his breakfast then he way out and I wait on the table, some day in afternoon he went out to supper time nor come back and I wait on also, never speak a word to him. I suppose probably was a dutition, and some times may be I feel not well, he will say I get made and since in last Sunday morning make some cocoa for breakfast to boil over sat on the stove keep warm, then he take a cup put some cool milk on it and put little cocoa to it mix up and he say what is so cold, and I say the cool milk make so if put some ice on it more cold too and he just so fierce and he say G___ d____ wish to hold a log wood to lick me, so bottom and speak so many nonsence. I could not stay with and so for I refuse my place in 15th this month. If he was a good man I will stay a long time and when I go will send a good man to take my place before I way, but he was such circumstances I prefer not to stay. I am very sorry to say. I use to explication what do I be, and he was so highton and so lazy. on to do any work then. So and so I let to know
Yours respectfully servant
AH WAI’
At the bottom of the letter was the notation of Mr. McKnght, made before sending the letter back to Mr. Heldt at Fort Shaw, which read as follows: “What is the matter with the Chinaman?—if Ferg is not attending to his business better stir him up.”
Worden P. Wren recalled another incident involving Chinese burial bones in early Great Falls, and his story was written in Great Falls Yesterday.
“Murphy-Maclay and Co. were agents for the stage line to Lewistown and had a quantity of bedding and other things in the basement awaiting shipment elsewhere. Some of it got wet, so Mr. Wren had the store porter take a coal oil lamp to the cellar, sort out the packages, and throw in the river any that were badly damaged. The porter asked what should be done with one box he found. Mr. Wren told him to open it up and see if it was of any value. In the box were Chinese papers, incense, Chinese candies, paper covered with Chinese writing, and at the bottom, a skull. The articles were returned to the box, and Joe McKnight of Fort Shaw brought a Chinaman to the store to interpret the writing. A Chinese had been murdered at Lewistown--knocked in the head with an axe--and the remains were to go to China via San Francisco, for burial. Mr. Wren wrote Chinese headquarters in San Francisco telling them a box was held here awaiting money for express from Lewistown to China, but no reply was ever received to the letter so the box was taken to the warehouse and put on the crossbeams where it stayed for five years. Some boys found it, took it down, and no one knows what eventually became of the poor Chinaman’s remains.”
Chinese Section of Fort Benton in 1888 with two Chinese restaurants on Front Street and a Chinese Laundry near today's Hagen Building. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map 1888.
The absence of the 1890 U. S. Census [long ago destroyed by fire] precludes detailed analysis of the Chinese in Choteau County at that time. Some insight into the Chinese community in Fort Benton in the late 1880s comes from licenses paid and issued by the Choteau County treasurer during 1889. Wun Ling held both gaming and saloon licenses, while Hop Ling and Chin Hin held gaming licenses. King Faun held licenses to operate both saloon and gaming. Wah Soo operated a laundry, and Wah Sing held both saloon and gaming licenses. Sing Lee owned both a laundry and a restaurant. Wong Quot bought the Enterprise Restaurant from Sing Lee, while Sam Lun ran the White Elephant on Front Street.
The River Press made clear the sentiment of much of the Benton community in April 1891, editorializing “We understand that a Chinese resurrection will take place here next Saturday. The remains of a Chinaman, who died here several years ago, will be exhumed, his bones carefully secured and polished up--even to the smallest bone in the body--when they will be carefully packed, in the smallest square box that will hold them, and sent back to China. These people--the Chinese-- will not allow even their bones to rest in American soil. They are aliens alive and aliens dead, and have nothing in common with our people. It would be better for them and better for our people if every one of them could be sent back within the next twelve months to their own land.”
19 October 2009
Life in Frontier Fort Benton by Martha Edgerton Rolfe
A Woman’s Perspective of Life on the Frontier: The Fort Benton Years of Martha Edgerton Rolfe--Part II
By Ken Robison
[Published in the Fort Benton River Press 14 October 2009]
This continues the series of frontier historical sketches by historians at the Joel F. Overholser Historical Research Center in Fort Benton.
Mrs. Martha Edgerton Rolfe, daughter of Montana’s first territorial Governor Sidney Edgerton and wife of adventurous Herbert Percy or H. P. Rolfe, left a remarkable account about life Fort Benton in its transition years from lawless frontier town of the early 1870s to more peaceful transportation hub by the end of that decade. In Part I, published in the October 1, 2008 River Press, Martha Rolfe or “Mattie,” as her family called her, wrote about the hazardous trip by stage from Helena to Fort Benton.
Young Mattie Edgerton, age 16
Territorial Governor Sidney Edgerton
Arriving late December 8, 1879 at the Overland Hotel, the Rolfe’s Fort Benton adventure began. The Benton Record Weekly announced the arrival of Professor Rolfe, his wife, and children [Pauline age two and Harriet just six weeks old] on Tuesday’s coach, adding “The Professor has come to Benton with the intention of establishing a law office, and may now be considered a citizen of Choteau [County]. Welcome.”
Mattie now continues her account of life in frontier Fort Benton as she and her young family overcame the harsh conditions and became part of the intercultural society of the town.
This [Overland] hotel was a board structure fronted with large windows, admitting plenty of light and cold. The stove, when we entered the waiting room, glowed a fiery red, but heated only the small section of the room in its vicinity. The baby, stowed away in its carriage, needed to be tucked in with blankets as if on the street, and the rest of us could warm ourselves only on one side at a time. The furniture, we discovered, was not trustworthy; the sole couch collapsing when sat upon. It lacked a leg.
The Rolfe's first Home in Fort Benton, the Overland Hotel
Our bedroom adjoined the waiting room, its door leading into a narrow passage, and nearly opposite was the bar room. That first night of our stay, a visiting army officer decided to go on a spree in which there were several participants. A good deal of noise resulted, and our door was tried on several occasions. In consequence we slept little. The next morning the bleary-eyed waiter apologized for the disturbance by explaining who had been the chief offender, concluding with “wasn’t it a shame; and him an officer ‘nd a gintleman?” This man was none other than the Colonel [Eugene] Baker, who it is commonly believed was the worse for liquor when the massacre took place on the Marias that bears his name for all time.
When I went from Helena to Fort Benton . . . the town was in its transition period, with unlimited expectations for the future, and with the best of reasons. Situated as it was at the head of navigation on the Missouri, with no rival to dispute its claim of being one of the chief distributing depots in Montana, its dream of domination had not yet been disturbed by the defiant shriek of the approaching locomotive.
Not long before the date of my arrival, it was the headquarters of the Piegan Indian Agency, and it still bore traces of the two stages of development through which it had passed; that of a fur trading post and an Indian agency. Many of the inhabitants [and most of the women] of the town were mixed or full bloods, a survival from the fur trade days. These were most in evidence when the whistle of an approaching steamboat was heard down the river. Then they trooped to the Levee to witness the boat’s arrival. Tepees frequently added a picturesque feature to the landscape; and, through [Fort Benton] annually, the whole Piegan tribe passed on its way to the Judith country to gather berries for their pemmican. This procession of natives was right well worth seeing, as it followed the trail of the river and forded it.
On these pilgrimages either going or coming, the Indians generally lingered for a time to make needed purchases, and the display of dry goods in the store windows were indicative of the trade for which it was largely intended. I always wondered where such a heterogeneous collection could have been picked up. Its gay colors would not today attract the attention they did then.
I saw the Piegans pass through the town for the last time on its way from its annual berry-picking in the Judith country to their reservation. I sat in the door of my house and watched them. It was a colorful scene and one not easily forgotten. Old and young were there and all in tribal dress. Some rode and some walked. Horses drawing traveaux loaded with robes and cooking utensils, also carried children who rode there in state, laughing and chattering. Women with gay colored blankets girdled by belts studded with brass, ran wildly back and forth, calling loudly, perhaps to collect their children. There were squaws on horseback and afoot, and dogs with miniature traveaux bore such of the tribe’s belongings as could not be carried elsewhere.
Piegan Blackfeet crossed the ford and paraded through town
It is said that on these marches each person had his or her allotted place in the procession. There were horsemen in front and rear, ready in former days to ward off attacks by an enemy should they occur.
There were three large business houses [in Fort Benton]; those of I. G. Baker, T. C. Power and Murphy-Maclay. The buildings in which these were installed made other houses along Front street look squalid by comparison. Most of the latter were ramshackle affairs, like those in early mining towns, and were either of logs, or flimsy structures of frame, with aspiring fronts and no rear to the upper portion. There was nothing imposing about Front street.
There were several fine residences on the rising ground back of town, the property of the Conrad family, which was well represented. For the rest, those which clustered on the flat, they were, like the smaller business houses, of the frontier type of architecture, and either of logs, or frame of a kind. I lived in one of the latter. It was built of boards, something like a framework for moulding concrete, and little better, the intervening space of this framework, being filled with broken bits of adobe, between which the bitter winter winds [of 1879-80] readily found a way. My next dwelling and first owned home, had two rooms of logs, with a shack addition to serve as kitchen. It was an unpretentious abode, but “It was mine own,” and I prized it accordingly.
A few years afterwards we built a frame house near the Helena road, as it was called, the stage daily passing over that route from the upland onto the flat. This house was later moved to Great Falls, and now stands not far from Ninth street.
While we were in the log house, which was almost in the direct line west of the ferry, and on low land, occurred two notable events in the history of the town—a fuel famine and an ice gorge. The intensely cold winter of 1880-81 saw a fuel famine in Fort Benton. All the coal and wood in town was exhausted, except what belonged to the Government, stored for the use of the soldiers, and not on sale to civilians. To keep themselves from freezing to death, and to conserve what little fuel remained, two or three families [including Dr. Caldwell and wife] sheltered themselves under one roof. Our small house took in two men and their wives. Our kitchen was nothing but a shack attached to the log part and here the cooking had to be done for six adults and two children.
Because of the cold, the men took turns getting breakfast, one cooking until he could stand it no longer, then going into the log part of the house to thaw out, while another took his place at the cake griddle. We had a fence when the fuel famine started. At its close, little of it remained. We were fortunate in having the fence, as some like Colonel James Sanford lacking a fence, were forced to break up their kitchen furniture in order to keep warm. The famine ended when a telegram from the War Department authorized Colonel Moale to sell the Government wood to residents.
Then came spring, and with it another danger. I was living at the upper end of town not far from the river on low land. A little above, the channel of the river narrowed between two bluffs. The weather had modified; a chinook wind was blowing; and we thought our troubles were ended when it was announced that an ice gorge had formed between the bluffs and unless it broke soon, the town would be flooded. In that event we would be among the first victims.
Great excitement prevailed throughout the town, and a number left their homes for higher ground, preferring to spend the night shelterless than run the risk of being swept down the river. Three families still united, we did not care to leave the house unless it became absolutely necessary to do so. Instead we dispatched the men to watch the gorge and report to us at intervals. This they did, and at length returned with the joyful news that we were no longer threatened, the gorge was broken.
It was foolhardy for us to have awaited the flood. Had it come, we could not have escaped it. However, aside from our anxiety, we passed the night comfortably, while those who fled to the hills suffered from the cold as the weather was by no means summerlike.
These ice gorges are all too common in the Missouri and often cut new channels. Warm weather, the result of the chinook wind, comes earlier on the upper river than it does further down. The ice there breaks up and floats down in large cakes to be suddenly checked by the solid ice below. Here it piles up, forming a dam that holds back the water until it freezes itself, either over the ice barricade or its banks. Such gorges form rapidly, often too rapidly to permit the escape of those who live in the bottom lands. A pioneer told me of one occurring above Fort Union, that was 30 miles long. He was caught in the flood and obliged to wade in the water breast high.
There was a small [Army] garrison at Fort Benton when we first went there. It was established to protect that part of the Territory in case of an Indian outbreak. After the building of Fort Assinniboine, no further need remained for the maintaining of soldiers at Fort Benton, and those there were withdrawn [in 1881].
The Fort Benton [military] post, in 1880 was in command of Colonel [Edward] Moale, a brother-in-law of General [John] Gibbon. During the retention of the garrison, it must have been regarded as a social and business acquisition. Of the social life of the place, I knew little, as I had neither the time nor the means to enter into its gayeties, which where at their height during the summer, when a dance was given now and then on the [steam]boats. I did not attend them, but reports reached me that the ladies at these parties “wore gloves and dressed just as well as they did in Calliope.”
All were strangers about me at first, but my singing at church and concerts made me known and brought me friends. The best of these were from the South, Fort Benton being settled mainly by Southerners, St. Louis furnishing its quota, as it was the home of the American Fur Company that built the original fort there.
I never shall forget my amusement when one of these friends apologized for having used the word ‘Yankee’ in my presence. My mind reverted to Tallmadge, when yearly its historian, after a roll call of New England names, stressed the point that Yankees were the salt of the earth, and we could never be too thankful for our descent from them. I chuckled inwardly, not at all offended, for the years and changed environment had taught me tolerance. My political education did not end with the Civil War.
An effort was made by one well-intentioned woman to ascertain my social status, by discovering if any officers’ wives had called upon me. They had not and I admitted it, although the admission made me at once sink to the level where she felt I belonged, all of which goes to show that the military, during their stay, were persons of distinction, and social arbiters of the town whose favor it was advisable to cultivate.
At the time there was no public library in Fort Benton; books were scarce, likewise magazines, and to one shut in as I was, there was little intellectual stimulus. I tried to find it by taking up studies with my husband, and I took up geology with my husband, teaching him German in exchange, although he had taken this language in college. I took a course in botany with the Home Correspondence School of Boston, Massachusetts, the first correspondence school in the country. It was organized and conducted by a few of the leading women of Boston and Cambridge. My teacher was Miss Jane Newell, whose botany has been used in Montana schools. A few years later I visited Miss Newell at her pleasant home on Brattle street, Cambridge, next door to the historic Longfellow house, which was once [General George] Washington’s headquarters.
This correspondence course helped to relieve the monotony of my life, but I received the greatest aid from my music. In those days I sang in churches and at the infrequent concerts. Through the courtesy of Mr. William Conrad a carriage was sent for me every Sunday, to take me to the Episcopal church, where I often served in the double capacity of soloist and accompanist. This was during the rectorship of both the Reverends [S. C.] Blackiston and Cleews. On one or two occasions I was nearly the whole congregation. They were men of character and ability, well deserving a more appreciative parish.
There was no organ in the church, a melodeon serving instead. As this only covered four octaves, there was no opportunity for fine instrumentation. On the contrary, the accompaniments of my songs had to be curtailed to meet the possibilities of the melodeon. Mrs. [Frank] Lepper was the regular organist.
Occasionally the choir was improved by the addition of a new member. One of these was Mr. [William A.] Griffith, a civil engineer, who possessed a fine tenor voice, and formerly sang in a Brooklyn, N. Y. church. He also aided in giving one or two concerts while in Fort Benton.
Madam Luisa Cappiani, the former operatic star, then a famous vocal teacher, visited Fort Benton, and gave a concert there, when I played her accompaniments. On her return from a concert tour of the State she again sang in Fort Benton. I finally agreed to play for her, although I was in no condition to do so, having run a sewing-machine needle through my finger. However, she insisted, and agreed to give me her first three lessons in payment. I would not have played for money, but the lessons broke down my resistance. I took the lessons, practiced them diligently, and later spent a couple of months in New York City under her tuition.
[Sources: Undated article for Montana Newspaper Association by Martha Edgerton (Rolfe) Plassmann; Benton Record Weekly 12 Dec 1879; Memories of a Long Life by Martha Edgerton Rolfe Plassman]
By Ken Robison
[Published in the Fort Benton River Press 14 October 2009]
This continues the series of frontier historical sketches by historians at the Joel F. Overholser Historical Research Center in Fort Benton.
Mrs. Martha Edgerton Rolfe, daughter of Montana’s first territorial Governor Sidney Edgerton and wife of adventurous Herbert Percy or H. P. Rolfe, left a remarkable account about life Fort Benton in its transition years from lawless frontier town of the early 1870s to more peaceful transportation hub by the end of that decade. In Part I, published in the October 1, 2008 River Press, Martha Rolfe or “Mattie,” as her family called her, wrote about the hazardous trip by stage from Helena to Fort Benton.
Young Mattie Edgerton, age 16
Territorial Governor Sidney Edgerton
Arriving late December 8, 1879 at the Overland Hotel, the Rolfe’s Fort Benton adventure began. The Benton Record Weekly announced the arrival of Professor Rolfe, his wife, and children [Pauline age two and Harriet just six weeks old] on Tuesday’s coach, adding “The Professor has come to Benton with the intention of establishing a law office, and may now be considered a citizen of Choteau [County]. Welcome.”
Mattie now continues her account of life in frontier Fort Benton as she and her young family overcame the harsh conditions and became part of the intercultural society of the town.
This [Overland] hotel was a board structure fronted with large windows, admitting plenty of light and cold. The stove, when we entered the waiting room, glowed a fiery red, but heated only the small section of the room in its vicinity. The baby, stowed away in its carriage, needed to be tucked in with blankets as if on the street, and the rest of us could warm ourselves only on one side at a time. The furniture, we discovered, was not trustworthy; the sole couch collapsing when sat upon. It lacked a leg.
The Rolfe's first Home in Fort Benton, the Overland Hotel
Our bedroom adjoined the waiting room, its door leading into a narrow passage, and nearly opposite was the bar room. That first night of our stay, a visiting army officer decided to go on a spree in which there were several participants. A good deal of noise resulted, and our door was tried on several occasions. In consequence we slept little. The next morning the bleary-eyed waiter apologized for the disturbance by explaining who had been the chief offender, concluding with “wasn’t it a shame; and him an officer ‘nd a gintleman?” This man was none other than the Colonel [Eugene] Baker, who it is commonly believed was the worse for liquor when the massacre took place on the Marias that bears his name for all time.
When I went from Helena to Fort Benton . . . the town was in its transition period, with unlimited expectations for the future, and with the best of reasons. Situated as it was at the head of navigation on the Missouri, with no rival to dispute its claim of being one of the chief distributing depots in Montana, its dream of domination had not yet been disturbed by the defiant shriek of the approaching locomotive.
Not long before the date of my arrival, it was the headquarters of the Piegan Indian Agency, and it still bore traces of the two stages of development through which it had passed; that of a fur trading post and an Indian agency. Many of the inhabitants [and most of the women] of the town were mixed or full bloods, a survival from the fur trade days. These were most in evidence when the whistle of an approaching steamboat was heard down the river. Then they trooped to the Levee to witness the boat’s arrival. Tepees frequently added a picturesque feature to the landscape; and, through [Fort Benton] annually, the whole Piegan tribe passed on its way to the Judith country to gather berries for their pemmican. This procession of natives was right well worth seeing, as it followed the trail of the river and forded it.
On these pilgrimages either going or coming, the Indians generally lingered for a time to make needed purchases, and the display of dry goods in the store windows were indicative of the trade for which it was largely intended. I always wondered where such a heterogeneous collection could have been picked up. Its gay colors would not today attract the attention they did then.
I saw the Piegans pass through the town for the last time on its way from its annual berry-picking in the Judith country to their reservation. I sat in the door of my house and watched them. It was a colorful scene and one not easily forgotten. Old and young were there and all in tribal dress. Some rode and some walked. Horses drawing traveaux loaded with robes and cooking utensils, also carried children who rode there in state, laughing and chattering. Women with gay colored blankets girdled by belts studded with brass, ran wildly back and forth, calling loudly, perhaps to collect their children. There were squaws on horseback and afoot, and dogs with miniature traveaux bore such of the tribe’s belongings as could not be carried elsewhere.
Piegan Blackfeet crossed the ford and paraded through town
It is said that on these marches each person had his or her allotted place in the procession. There were horsemen in front and rear, ready in former days to ward off attacks by an enemy should they occur.
There were three large business houses [in Fort Benton]; those of I. G. Baker, T. C. Power and Murphy-Maclay. The buildings in which these were installed made other houses along Front street look squalid by comparison. Most of the latter were ramshackle affairs, like those in early mining towns, and were either of logs, or flimsy structures of frame, with aspiring fronts and no rear to the upper portion. There was nothing imposing about Front street.
There were several fine residences on the rising ground back of town, the property of the Conrad family, which was well represented. For the rest, those which clustered on the flat, they were, like the smaller business houses, of the frontier type of architecture, and either of logs, or frame of a kind. I lived in one of the latter. It was built of boards, something like a framework for moulding concrete, and little better, the intervening space of this framework, being filled with broken bits of adobe, between which the bitter winter winds [of 1879-80] readily found a way. My next dwelling and first owned home, had two rooms of logs, with a shack addition to serve as kitchen. It was an unpretentious abode, but “It was mine own,” and I prized it accordingly.
A few years afterwards we built a frame house near the Helena road, as it was called, the stage daily passing over that route from the upland onto the flat. This house was later moved to Great Falls, and now stands not far from Ninth street.
While we were in the log house, which was almost in the direct line west of the ferry, and on low land, occurred two notable events in the history of the town—a fuel famine and an ice gorge. The intensely cold winter of 1880-81 saw a fuel famine in Fort Benton. All the coal and wood in town was exhausted, except what belonged to the Government, stored for the use of the soldiers, and not on sale to civilians. To keep themselves from freezing to death, and to conserve what little fuel remained, two or three families [including Dr. Caldwell and wife] sheltered themselves under one roof. Our small house took in two men and their wives. Our kitchen was nothing but a shack attached to the log part and here the cooking had to be done for six adults and two children.
Because of the cold, the men took turns getting breakfast, one cooking until he could stand it no longer, then going into the log part of the house to thaw out, while another took his place at the cake griddle. We had a fence when the fuel famine started. At its close, little of it remained. We were fortunate in having the fence, as some like Colonel James Sanford lacking a fence, were forced to break up their kitchen furniture in order to keep warm. The famine ended when a telegram from the War Department authorized Colonel Moale to sell the Government wood to residents.
Then came spring, and with it another danger. I was living at the upper end of town not far from the river on low land. A little above, the channel of the river narrowed between two bluffs. The weather had modified; a chinook wind was blowing; and we thought our troubles were ended when it was announced that an ice gorge had formed between the bluffs and unless it broke soon, the town would be flooded. In that event we would be among the first victims.
Great excitement prevailed throughout the town, and a number left their homes for higher ground, preferring to spend the night shelterless than run the risk of being swept down the river. Three families still united, we did not care to leave the house unless it became absolutely necessary to do so. Instead we dispatched the men to watch the gorge and report to us at intervals. This they did, and at length returned with the joyful news that we were no longer threatened, the gorge was broken.
It was foolhardy for us to have awaited the flood. Had it come, we could not have escaped it. However, aside from our anxiety, we passed the night comfortably, while those who fled to the hills suffered from the cold as the weather was by no means summerlike.
These ice gorges are all too common in the Missouri and often cut new channels. Warm weather, the result of the chinook wind, comes earlier on the upper river than it does further down. The ice there breaks up and floats down in large cakes to be suddenly checked by the solid ice below. Here it piles up, forming a dam that holds back the water until it freezes itself, either over the ice barricade or its banks. Such gorges form rapidly, often too rapidly to permit the escape of those who live in the bottom lands. A pioneer told me of one occurring above Fort Union, that was 30 miles long. He was caught in the flood and obliged to wade in the water breast high.
There was a small [Army] garrison at Fort Benton when we first went there. It was established to protect that part of the Territory in case of an Indian outbreak. After the building of Fort Assinniboine, no further need remained for the maintaining of soldiers at Fort Benton, and those there were withdrawn [in 1881].
The Fort Benton [military] post, in 1880 was in command of Colonel [Edward] Moale, a brother-in-law of General [John] Gibbon. During the retention of the garrison, it must have been regarded as a social and business acquisition. Of the social life of the place, I knew little, as I had neither the time nor the means to enter into its gayeties, which where at their height during the summer, when a dance was given now and then on the [steam]boats. I did not attend them, but reports reached me that the ladies at these parties “wore gloves and dressed just as well as they did in Calliope.”
All were strangers about me at first, but my singing at church and concerts made me known and brought me friends. The best of these were from the South, Fort Benton being settled mainly by Southerners, St. Louis furnishing its quota, as it was the home of the American Fur Company that built the original fort there.
I never shall forget my amusement when one of these friends apologized for having used the word ‘Yankee’ in my presence. My mind reverted to Tallmadge, when yearly its historian, after a roll call of New England names, stressed the point that Yankees were the salt of the earth, and we could never be too thankful for our descent from them. I chuckled inwardly, not at all offended, for the years and changed environment had taught me tolerance. My political education did not end with the Civil War.
An effort was made by one well-intentioned woman to ascertain my social status, by discovering if any officers’ wives had called upon me. They had not and I admitted it, although the admission made me at once sink to the level where she felt I belonged, all of which goes to show that the military, during their stay, were persons of distinction, and social arbiters of the town whose favor it was advisable to cultivate.
At the time there was no public library in Fort Benton; books were scarce, likewise magazines, and to one shut in as I was, there was little intellectual stimulus. I tried to find it by taking up studies with my husband, and I took up geology with my husband, teaching him German in exchange, although he had taken this language in college. I took a course in botany with the Home Correspondence School of Boston, Massachusetts, the first correspondence school in the country. It was organized and conducted by a few of the leading women of Boston and Cambridge. My teacher was Miss Jane Newell, whose botany has been used in Montana schools. A few years later I visited Miss Newell at her pleasant home on Brattle street, Cambridge, next door to the historic Longfellow house, which was once [General George] Washington’s headquarters.
This correspondence course helped to relieve the monotony of my life, but I received the greatest aid from my music. In those days I sang in churches and at the infrequent concerts. Through the courtesy of Mr. William Conrad a carriage was sent for me every Sunday, to take me to the Episcopal church, where I often served in the double capacity of soloist and accompanist. This was during the rectorship of both the Reverends [S. C.] Blackiston and Cleews. On one or two occasions I was nearly the whole congregation. They were men of character and ability, well deserving a more appreciative parish.
There was no organ in the church, a melodeon serving instead. As this only covered four octaves, there was no opportunity for fine instrumentation. On the contrary, the accompaniments of my songs had to be curtailed to meet the possibilities of the melodeon. Mrs. [Frank] Lepper was the regular organist.
Occasionally the choir was improved by the addition of a new member. One of these was Mr. [William A.] Griffith, a civil engineer, who possessed a fine tenor voice, and formerly sang in a Brooklyn, N. Y. church. He also aided in giving one or two concerts while in Fort Benton.
Madam Luisa Cappiani, the former operatic star, then a famous vocal teacher, visited Fort Benton, and gave a concert there, when I played her accompaniments. On her return from a concert tour of the State she again sang in Fort Benton. I finally agreed to play for her, although I was in no condition to do so, having run a sewing-machine needle through my finger. However, she insisted, and agreed to give me her first three lessons in payment. I would not have played for money, but the lessons broke down my resistance. I took the lessons, practiced them diligently, and later spent a couple of months in New York City under her tuition.
[Sources: Undated article for Montana Newspaper Association by Martha Edgerton (Rolfe) Plassmann; Benton Record Weekly 12 Dec 1879; Memories of a Long Life by Martha Edgerton Rolfe Plassman]
19 September 2009
“Old Waxy”: J. D. Weatherwax From the Belly to the Judith
By Ken Robison
Presented by Bob Doerk at the International Fur Trade Symposium at Fort Whoop-Up 12 September 2009.
Fort Benton has been home to many colorful characters over its long history, but few can top J. D. Weatherwax, known fondly by his many friends as “Old Waxy.” Standing over six feet tall and bearing a commanding presence, he made and lost fortunes, acquired and abandoned families, and made his mark at every stop along the frontier from the Belly River to the Judith. Yet in many ways, Weatherwax lived a life shrouded in mystery. Even his given name remains blurred through his own use of Joseph, Josiah, and John, but most often simply J. D.
For our purposes today, Joseph David Weatherwax, as we’ll call him, is important for two reasons: first, because he unwillingly played a key role in ending the whiskey trade and made a bit of Mounted Police history in the process; and second, because he left many descendants on the Blackfeet reservation.
During this past year we have begun to understand J. D. Weatherwax through research conducted at our Overholser Historical Research Center in Fort Benton and from excellent research and insight shared by Weatherwax family members in the south and east such as C. Raymond Burklin of Dallas, Texas, a grandson of J. D.’s eldest son Charles Lindell Weatherwax, and Wayne Weatherwax of Westfield, Massachusetts, who although not a direct descendant is writing a Weatherwax Family History.
Joseph David Weatherwax, was born in New York in 1830, son of Thomas and Jane Weatherwax, though Wayne Weatherwax believes the father was Peter Weatherwax, also of New York. The family moved West to Illinois by 1849, and J. D. and a brother started a carriage factory in Quincy, Illinois. On February 21st, 1854, Joseph D. Weatherwax married Martha Virginia Sanks, and by 1859 two sons, Charles Lindell and Edward Thorne, had been born.
No photo has been found of J. D. Weatherwax, but this is his eldest son Charles Lindell Weatherwax (Courtesy of Charles Raymond Burklin)
From here the trail dims. Martha and the boys remained in Illinois, while J. D. apparently did not serve in the Union Army, but rather spent much of the Civil War in the cotton trade in New Orleans. During this time he made and lost a fortune and spent little time with his first family. Like many from both North and South at the close of the Civil War J. D. Weatherwax headed West to seek a new life and opportunities. J. D. made the long trip up the Missouri River on the steamboat Agnes departing St. Louis bound “for the mountains,” April 27, 1867, and 70 days later arrived at Fort Benton on July 5th. The following winter, his wife Martha obtained a divorce in Illinois.
Settling into life in the toughest town on the Upper Missouri, by 1870 J. D. Weatherwax had been elected Sheriff of the massive Choteau County then extending from the Rockies eastward past the Bear’s Paw Mountains and from the Judith Basin to the northern border. He was popular, respected, and known to fear no man. Living with him at this time was his Deputy H. A. “Fred” Kanouse, who personified to Hugh Dempsey an “unsavory character.”
During the trading season of 1871, Winfield Scott Wetzel of Fort Benton hired Weatherwax to build a robe trading post across the Medicine Line on the northern end of the Whoop-Up Trail. Suddenly, like many others from Fort Benton, Weatherwax was knee-deep in the robe and whiskey trade, establishing a post on the Lower St. Mary River near Fort Whoop-Up. The next year J. D. had worked his way into partnership with Scott Wetzel, and throughout the 1870s the firm Wetzel & Weatherwax became famous as an aggressive merchant house competing with the powerful T. C. Power & Brother and I. G. Baker firms.
Old Waxy’s duties apparently included acting as agent for T. C. Power & Brother, and keeping a watchful eye on Healy & Hamilton’s operations. He freighted trade goods including whiskey up the Whoop-Up Trail, selling them to other traders. He acted as buyer at trading posts around both the Standoff and Whoop-Up areas. In the words of Hugh Dempsey, [Quote] “Over the winter of 1871-72, the traders did a booming business, and it seemed as though just about everyone from Fort Benton was in the area.” [Unquote] [Hugh Dempsey’s Firewater The Impact of the Whisky Trade of the Blackfoot Nation, p. 86]
In October 1873, Canadian Reverend John McDougall visited the Belly River area, and wrote, [Quote] “Presently we looked upon the junction of the St. Mary’s and the Belly rivers, two deep valleys . . . The scene was rather picturesque, but the crowd we might meet down there was causing somewhat of a tremor in our minds . . . Further down [from Fort Whoop-Up] was another post. Whoopup itself belonged to Healy & Hamilton, and the other post to a Mr. Weatherwax, or, as the boys called him, ‘Old Waxy,’ and when we came in contact with him we thought he was well named—cool, calculating, polished, using the finest of English, crafty. [He told us] ‘Yes, gentlemen, we are glad to see you travelling through our country. We wish you most heartily a bon voyage.’” [Unquote] [On Western Trails in the Early Seventies Frontier Pioneer Life in The Canadian North-West by John McDougall. Toronto: William Briggs, 1911, pp. 66-7]
For three years, Old Waxy operated north of the line during the trading season, and Wetzel & Weatherwax prospered. During the fall of 1874 Old Waxy built Fort Weatherwax on the Oldman River downriver from the new site of Fort Macleod. While he hauled whiskey with other trade goods up the Whoop-Up Trail and sold it to traders at Fort Whoop-Up, Dick Berry’s Post, and others, Fort Weatherwax did not have the reputation of a whiskey post. Old Waxy appears to have let others do the “dirty work.”
During the winter of 1875, a long, rambling letter appeared in the Helena Herald from a member of the newly arrived North West Mounted Police at Fort Macleod. The writer declared (Quote)“Our duties are to suppress the whisky trade or die in the attempt . . . The renegade Yankees have monopolized the entire Indian trade. They are coarse, unpolished and uneducated, they are insulting in their conversation and disgusting to our sight.
. . . They tell us we can’t try and convict a man and confiscate his property until he is arrested. How absurd, when our civil record shows that we have done it repeatedly, and by this process we expect to regenerate the N. W. Territory, or drive the outlaws into exile.
. . . We must make arrests and seizures, or we will lose our shoulder-straps, and the Police force will be disbanded. Such a thing must not happen.” (Unquote) [Letter dated 30 Jan in HHD 15 Mar 1875, p. 3]
Within days of that letter, the North West Mounted Police made their arrest, but it didn’t turn out the way it was planned. The action was described in a letter dated February 18, 1875, from the Mounted Policeman at Fort Macleod. The letter opened with (Quote) “Hurrah for our side! In the language of a celebrated English General, ‘We have met the enemy, and they are ours.’
“Complaint was made last fall against Wetzel, Weatherwax and Berry for selling liquor to Indians. We have had our Yankee detectives shadowing them ever since, Wetzel at Benton, Weatherwax on Old Man’s river, and Berry on Bow river. On February 1st two loads of robes were driven into Weatherwax’s Fort. We seized them at once as property of Dick Berry. Old J. D. was foolish enough to protest, on the ground that he had purchased them from Berry.” (Unquote)
Eight days later a second load of robes was seized, and on February 15th a hearing was held at Fort Macleod with J. D. Weatherwax present. The meager testimony presented as evidence was that Berry had traded whiskey contrary to law, that he bought his goods from Wetzel & Weatherwax, and had in turn sold them his robes. This was enough. The intended culprit, Berry had not been caught, but actually had passed within rifle shot of Macleod on his way south just a few days after a detachment had been sent north to arrest him. It was enough that Weatherwax had the robes and money. He was found guilty of selling whiskey to Dick Berry, and sentenced to six months imprisonment [and fined $500]. In the words of the Mounted Police correspondent to the Helena Herald (Quote) “Old J. D., the chief of all the smugglers and desperadoes of the great Northwest, was locked up in jail, while the Union Jack floats triumphantly from the butt end of a broken lodge pole over his place of solitary confinement. At Fort Benton we laid the programme, and at Fort Macleod we consummated it.” (Unquote) [HHW 18 Mar 1875, p. 2]
Many in both Fort Benton and Helena were outraged. A correspondent for the Helena Herald from Fort Macleod laid out the “facts in the case”: noting that 711 buffalo robes had been seized. It was not charged that Wetzel & Weatherwax had indulged in illicit traffic, nor was any proof to that effect obtained or offered. No proof was introduced that W. & W. had sold or had in their possession any liquor in the country since the arrival of the Mounted Police. The prosecutors disregarded proof that Berry was not a partner of W. & W.; that they were innocent sellers and purchasers; that they should not be legally held liable for a crime committed by a third party; that they were in no way responsible for the acts of Berry. During the trial Weatherwax was not allowed to cross-examine the prosecuting witness. The detectives and those who expect half the proceeds and the prosecutors sat as judges in the case. [HHW 20 Mar 1875, p. 3]
Irish Fenians operated the fledgling newspaper in Fort Benton, The Benton Record, and the town was filled with Irishmen such as Colonel John J. Donnelly, a leader in the 1870 Fenian invasion of Canada. The Record’s headline of March 1st screamed: (Quote) “Arrest of Mr. Weatherwax. We did not expect that the conduct of the Queen’s Regulators would be according to law; in fact, we knew from experience, that wherever the English flag floats, might is right, but we had no idea that the persons and property of American citizens would be trifled with in the manner that American merchants have been of late in the British Possessions.” (Unquote) The Record concluded (Quote) “We demand an investigation of this matter, and we demand the immediate release of Mr. Weatherwax from the bastile.” (Unquote) [BRW 1 Mar 1875, p. 3]
All pleas and demanded were to no avail, and Old Waxy remained in jail at Fort Macleod. After serving his six-month sentence, he returned to a hero’s welcome at Fort Benton Sunday evening August 15th. Many townsmen met him on the trail and escorted him into town for a big celebration.
Hero or not, Old Waxy had learned his lesson, and we find no evidence that he ever traded above the border again. The tough enforcement measures by the Mounted Police in early 1875 proved effective in shutting down the whiskey trade.
About the time of his return to Fort Benton or possibly the previous year, J. D. Weatherwax married Bird Tail Woman or Su wats ak a, a Pikuni woman, also known as Tail Feathers and in the U. S. Census as Mary Weatherwax. Bird Tail Woman was the daughter of Crow Red Bird Tail and Medicine Calf. The Children of J. D. and Bird Tail Woman were Anna (or Nannie) born in December 1876 and baptized at St. Peter’s Mission; Josephine (or Jane) born about 1878 and who married a Mr. Murphy; Mary H. born about 1880 and wife of Joseph Ollinger; and Joseph, born in 1884 at the Blackfeet Reservation in Browning and married first to Margaret or Maggie Little Dog and later to Agnes Butterfly.
For the winter of 1875-76, Wetzel & Weatherwax turned their focus to the historic trading area at Willow Rounds. T. C. Power built a trading post in December 1875 at Willow Rounds, near the winter camp of the Blackfeet on the south side of the Marias north of the present town of Valier. Trading posts had operated at that site since 1848 when Augustin Armell established a winter post there. Now Old Waxy took charge of Willow Rounds in a joint operation for T. C. Power and Wetzel & Weatherwax. The following year W & W took over the post, and Old Waxy continued to manage the Willow Rounds post for W. & W. until the spring of 1877. At that time J. D. ended his partnership with Scott Wetzel, although he rejoined the firm in 1878.
In January 1879 Weatherwax left Fort Benton by stage for his first trip to “the States” since 1867. During this trip he probably visited his sons Charles and Edward, then living in St. Louis—both sons later visited their father in Montana Territory. Old Waxy returned to the Upper Missouri on the steamboat Dacotah in June 1879. In the spring of 1880, Old Waxy started a horse ranch on the Teton River about 20 miles above Fort Benton. That same year, Old Waxy was elected to serve as one of three commissioners of Choteau County.
Many other great stories surround the restless ways of Old Waxy as he ran ranches, freighting operations, retail stores, and gold mines. By 1881 fewer buffalo roamed the fertile Judith Basin, and Old Waxy became one of the first ranchers there. He built a log building in the fledgling town of Utica and opened the first merchandise store, serving miners from the Yogo mines and cowboys from the Judith Basin. An old ledger from his store shows one unpaid account for saloon and clothing charges by cowboy Charlie Russell for $36.43. By 1885 Old Waxy, a victim of his generous nature, had extended too much credit to friends so he lost the store. By then he had opened a gold mine at Yogo, a few miles above Utica in the Belt Mountains. Two years later, in October 1887, while working his promising mine, J. D. Weatherwax slipped and fell striking his head and breaking his neck.
Ironically, Old Waxy is buried in an unmarked grave in the Utica Cemetery, where even the cemetery records fail to reflect his presence. He died alone and largely forgotten by his white and Blackfeet families, but not by his friends. Old Waxy made an indelible mark in the dying stages of the robe trade.
Perhaps it is fitting to end with the words of James Willard Schultz, [Quote] “I make no excuse for the whiskey trade. It was wrong, all wrong and none realized it better than we when we were dispensing the stuff. It caused untold suffering, many deaths, great demoralization among those people of the plains. There was but one redeeming feature about it: The trade was at a time when it did not deprive them of the necessities of life; there was always more meat, more fur to be had for the killing of it. In comparison with various Government officials and rings, who robbed and starved the Indians to death on their reservations after the buffalo disappeared, we were saints.” [Unquote] [My Life as An Indian, p. 95]
Presented by Bob Doerk at the International Fur Trade Symposium at Fort Whoop-Up 12 September 2009.
Fort Benton has been home to many colorful characters over its long history, but few can top J. D. Weatherwax, known fondly by his many friends as “Old Waxy.” Standing over six feet tall and bearing a commanding presence, he made and lost fortunes, acquired and abandoned families, and made his mark at every stop along the frontier from the Belly River to the Judith. Yet in many ways, Weatherwax lived a life shrouded in mystery. Even his given name remains blurred through his own use of Joseph, Josiah, and John, but most often simply J. D.
For our purposes today, Joseph David Weatherwax, as we’ll call him, is important for two reasons: first, because he unwillingly played a key role in ending the whiskey trade and made a bit of Mounted Police history in the process; and second, because he left many descendants on the Blackfeet reservation.
During this past year we have begun to understand J. D. Weatherwax through research conducted at our Overholser Historical Research Center in Fort Benton and from excellent research and insight shared by Weatherwax family members in the south and east such as C. Raymond Burklin of Dallas, Texas, a grandson of J. D.’s eldest son Charles Lindell Weatherwax, and Wayne Weatherwax of Westfield, Massachusetts, who although not a direct descendant is writing a Weatherwax Family History.
Joseph David Weatherwax, was born in New York in 1830, son of Thomas and Jane Weatherwax, though Wayne Weatherwax believes the father was Peter Weatherwax, also of New York. The family moved West to Illinois by 1849, and J. D. and a brother started a carriage factory in Quincy, Illinois. On February 21st, 1854, Joseph D. Weatherwax married Martha Virginia Sanks, and by 1859 two sons, Charles Lindell and Edward Thorne, had been born.
No photo has been found of J. D. Weatherwax, but this is his eldest son Charles Lindell Weatherwax (Courtesy of Charles Raymond Burklin)
From here the trail dims. Martha and the boys remained in Illinois, while J. D. apparently did not serve in the Union Army, but rather spent much of the Civil War in the cotton trade in New Orleans. During this time he made and lost a fortune and spent little time with his first family. Like many from both North and South at the close of the Civil War J. D. Weatherwax headed West to seek a new life and opportunities. J. D. made the long trip up the Missouri River on the steamboat Agnes departing St. Louis bound “for the mountains,” April 27, 1867, and 70 days later arrived at Fort Benton on July 5th. The following winter, his wife Martha obtained a divorce in Illinois.
Settling into life in the toughest town on the Upper Missouri, by 1870 J. D. Weatherwax had been elected Sheriff of the massive Choteau County then extending from the Rockies eastward past the Bear’s Paw Mountains and from the Judith Basin to the northern border. He was popular, respected, and known to fear no man. Living with him at this time was his Deputy H. A. “Fred” Kanouse, who personified to Hugh Dempsey an “unsavory character.”
During the trading season of 1871, Winfield Scott Wetzel of Fort Benton hired Weatherwax to build a robe trading post across the Medicine Line on the northern end of the Whoop-Up Trail. Suddenly, like many others from Fort Benton, Weatherwax was knee-deep in the robe and whiskey trade, establishing a post on the Lower St. Mary River near Fort Whoop-Up. The next year J. D. had worked his way into partnership with Scott Wetzel, and throughout the 1870s the firm Wetzel & Weatherwax became famous as an aggressive merchant house competing with the powerful T. C. Power & Brother and I. G. Baker firms.
Old Waxy’s duties apparently included acting as agent for T. C. Power & Brother, and keeping a watchful eye on Healy & Hamilton’s operations. He freighted trade goods including whiskey up the Whoop-Up Trail, selling them to other traders. He acted as buyer at trading posts around both the Standoff and Whoop-Up areas. In the words of Hugh Dempsey, [Quote] “Over the winter of 1871-72, the traders did a booming business, and it seemed as though just about everyone from Fort Benton was in the area.” [Unquote] [Hugh Dempsey’s Firewater The Impact of the Whisky Trade of the Blackfoot Nation, p. 86]
In October 1873, Canadian Reverend John McDougall visited the Belly River area, and wrote, [Quote] “Presently we looked upon the junction of the St. Mary’s and the Belly rivers, two deep valleys . . . The scene was rather picturesque, but the crowd we might meet down there was causing somewhat of a tremor in our minds . . . Further down [from Fort Whoop-Up] was another post. Whoopup itself belonged to Healy & Hamilton, and the other post to a Mr. Weatherwax, or, as the boys called him, ‘Old Waxy,’ and when we came in contact with him we thought he was well named—cool, calculating, polished, using the finest of English, crafty. [He told us] ‘Yes, gentlemen, we are glad to see you travelling through our country. We wish you most heartily a bon voyage.’” [Unquote] [On Western Trails in the Early Seventies Frontier Pioneer Life in The Canadian North-West by John McDougall. Toronto: William Briggs, 1911, pp. 66-7]
For three years, Old Waxy operated north of the line during the trading season, and Wetzel & Weatherwax prospered. During the fall of 1874 Old Waxy built Fort Weatherwax on the Oldman River downriver from the new site of Fort Macleod. While he hauled whiskey with other trade goods up the Whoop-Up Trail and sold it to traders at Fort Whoop-Up, Dick Berry’s Post, and others, Fort Weatherwax did not have the reputation of a whiskey post. Old Waxy appears to have let others do the “dirty work.”
During the winter of 1875, a long, rambling letter appeared in the Helena Herald from a member of the newly arrived North West Mounted Police at Fort Macleod. The writer declared (Quote)“Our duties are to suppress the whisky trade or die in the attempt . . . The renegade Yankees have monopolized the entire Indian trade. They are coarse, unpolished and uneducated, they are insulting in their conversation and disgusting to our sight.
. . . They tell us we can’t try and convict a man and confiscate his property until he is arrested. How absurd, when our civil record shows that we have done it repeatedly, and by this process we expect to regenerate the N. W. Territory, or drive the outlaws into exile.
. . . We must make arrests and seizures, or we will lose our shoulder-straps, and the Police force will be disbanded. Such a thing must not happen.” (Unquote) [Letter dated 30 Jan in HHD 15 Mar 1875, p. 3]
Within days of that letter, the North West Mounted Police made their arrest, but it didn’t turn out the way it was planned. The action was described in a letter dated February 18, 1875, from the Mounted Policeman at Fort Macleod. The letter opened with (Quote) “Hurrah for our side! In the language of a celebrated English General, ‘We have met the enemy, and they are ours.’
“Complaint was made last fall against Wetzel, Weatherwax and Berry for selling liquor to Indians. We have had our Yankee detectives shadowing them ever since, Wetzel at Benton, Weatherwax on Old Man’s river, and Berry on Bow river. On February 1st two loads of robes were driven into Weatherwax’s Fort. We seized them at once as property of Dick Berry. Old J. D. was foolish enough to protest, on the ground that he had purchased them from Berry.” (Unquote)
Eight days later a second load of robes was seized, and on February 15th a hearing was held at Fort Macleod with J. D. Weatherwax present. The meager testimony presented as evidence was that Berry had traded whiskey contrary to law, that he bought his goods from Wetzel & Weatherwax, and had in turn sold them his robes. This was enough. The intended culprit, Berry had not been caught, but actually had passed within rifle shot of Macleod on his way south just a few days after a detachment had been sent north to arrest him. It was enough that Weatherwax had the robes and money. He was found guilty of selling whiskey to Dick Berry, and sentenced to six months imprisonment [and fined $500]. In the words of the Mounted Police correspondent to the Helena Herald (Quote) “Old J. D., the chief of all the smugglers and desperadoes of the great Northwest, was locked up in jail, while the Union Jack floats triumphantly from the butt end of a broken lodge pole over his place of solitary confinement. At Fort Benton we laid the programme, and at Fort Macleod we consummated it.” (Unquote) [HHW 18 Mar 1875, p. 2]
Many in both Fort Benton and Helena were outraged. A correspondent for the Helena Herald from Fort Macleod laid out the “facts in the case”: noting that 711 buffalo robes had been seized. It was not charged that Wetzel & Weatherwax had indulged in illicit traffic, nor was any proof to that effect obtained or offered. No proof was introduced that W. & W. had sold or had in their possession any liquor in the country since the arrival of the Mounted Police. The prosecutors disregarded proof that Berry was not a partner of W. & W.; that they were innocent sellers and purchasers; that they should not be legally held liable for a crime committed by a third party; that they were in no way responsible for the acts of Berry. During the trial Weatherwax was not allowed to cross-examine the prosecuting witness. The detectives and those who expect half the proceeds and the prosecutors sat as judges in the case. [HHW 20 Mar 1875, p. 3]
Irish Fenians operated the fledgling newspaper in Fort Benton, The Benton Record, and the town was filled with Irishmen such as Colonel John J. Donnelly, a leader in the 1870 Fenian invasion of Canada. The Record’s headline of March 1st screamed: (Quote) “Arrest of Mr. Weatherwax. We did not expect that the conduct of the Queen’s Regulators would be according to law; in fact, we knew from experience, that wherever the English flag floats, might is right, but we had no idea that the persons and property of American citizens would be trifled with in the manner that American merchants have been of late in the British Possessions.” (Unquote) The Record concluded (Quote) “We demand an investigation of this matter, and we demand the immediate release of Mr. Weatherwax from the bastile.” (Unquote) [BRW 1 Mar 1875, p. 3]
All pleas and demanded were to no avail, and Old Waxy remained in jail at Fort Macleod. After serving his six-month sentence, he returned to a hero’s welcome at Fort Benton Sunday evening August 15th. Many townsmen met him on the trail and escorted him into town for a big celebration.
Hero or not, Old Waxy had learned his lesson, and we find no evidence that he ever traded above the border again. The tough enforcement measures by the Mounted Police in early 1875 proved effective in shutting down the whiskey trade.
About the time of his return to Fort Benton or possibly the previous year, J. D. Weatherwax married Bird Tail Woman or Su wats ak a, a Pikuni woman, also known as Tail Feathers and in the U. S. Census as Mary Weatherwax. Bird Tail Woman was the daughter of Crow Red Bird Tail and Medicine Calf. The Children of J. D. and Bird Tail Woman were Anna (or Nannie) born in December 1876 and baptized at St. Peter’s Mission; Josephine (or Jane) born about 1878 and who married a Mr. Murphy; Mary H. born about 1880 and wife of Joseph Ollinger; and Joseph, born in 1884 at the Blackfeet Reservation in Browning and married first to Margaret or Maggie Little Dog and later to Agnes Butterfly.
For the winter of 1875-76, Wetzel & Weatherwax turned their focus to the historic trading area at Willow Rounds. T. C. Power built a trading post in December 1875 at Willow Rounds, near the winter camp of the Blackfeet on the south side of the Marias north of the present town of Valier. Trading posts had operated at that site since 1848 when Augustin Armell established a winter post there. Now Old Waxy took charge of Willow Rounds in a joint operation for T. C. Power and Wetzel & Weatherwax. The following year W & W took over the post, and Old Waxy continued to manage the Willow Rounds post for W. & W. until the spring of 1877. At that time J. D. ended his partnership with Scott Wetzel, although he rejoined the firm in 1878.
In January 1879 Weatherwax left Fort Benton by stage for his first trip to “the States” since 1867. During this trip he probably visited his sons Charles and Edward, then living in St. Louis—both sons later visited their father in Montana Territory. Old Waxy returned to the Upper Missouri on the steamboat Dacotah in June 1879. In the spring of 1880, Old Waxy started a horse ranch on the Teton River about 20 miles above Fort Benton. That same year, Old Waxy was elected to serve as one of three commissioners of Choteau County.
Many other great stories surround the restless ways of Old Waxy as he ran ranches, freighting operations, retail stores, and gold mines. By 1881 fewer buffalo roamed the fertile Judith Basin, and Old Waxy became one of the first ranchers there. He built a log building in the fledgling town of Utica and opened the first merchandise store, serving miners from the Yogo mines and cowboys from the Judith Basin. An old ledger from his store shows one unpaid account for saloon and clothing charges by cowboy Charlie Russell for $36.43. By 1885 Old Waxy, a victim of his generous nature, had extended too much credit to friends so he lost the store. By then he had opened a gold mine at Yogo, a few miles above Utica in the Belt Mountains. Two years later, in October 1887, while working his promising mine, J. D. Weatherwax slipped and fell striking his head and breaking his neck.
Ironically, Old Waxy is buried in an unmarked grave in the Utica Cemetery, where even the cemetery records fail to reflect his presence. He died alone and largely forgotten by his white and Blackfeet families, but not by his friends. Old Waxy made an indelible mark in the dying stages of the robe trade.
Perhaps it is fitting to end with the words of James Willard Schultz, [Quote] “I make no excuse for the whiskey trade. It was wrong, all wrong and none realized it better than we when we were dispensing the stuff. It caused untold suffering, many deaths, great demoralization among those people of the plains. There was but one redeeming feature about it: The trade was at a time when it did not deprive them of the necessities of life; there was always more meat, more fur to be had for the killing of it. In comparison with various Government officials and rings, who robbed and starved the Indians to death on their reservations after the buffalo disappeared, we were saints.” [Unquote] [My Life as An Indian, p. 95]
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