Ellen Baumler's Blog, page 14

Friday Photo: Thanksgiving Turkey

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 950-354Are you ready for Thanksgiving dinner? I'd say this young man isn't. I hope your feast is filled with joy and free of regret.

P.S. The photo was taken by Evelyn Cameron.

Murder or Suicide?

The Grand Lodge AF & AM Museum in Helena displays the masonic apron of Meriwether Lewis. Not only is this treasure important to Freemasonry, it is also important for the role it played in the nation’s most intriguing unsolved mystery: Lewis’s controversial death.

Portrait of Meriwether Lewis by Charles Willson Peale
Independence National Historical ParkAccording to family lore, Lewis died with the apron in his breast pocket. He was traveling to Philadelphia along the Natchez Trace, on his w...

A Great Place to Gather

The remote Judith River Ranger Station traces its origin to 1906 when Forest Service Ranger Thomas Guy Myers took up residence in the newly created Jefferson National Forest. His challenge was to interpret and administer policies regarding public use of the area’s abundant natural resources.

Myers temporarily took over an abandoned miner’s cabin and set to building a field office and permanent home using a catalog-ordered “house kit.” He supplemented native logs and scrounged barbed wire from...

Friday Photo: Milking

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 91-69.64I hope that today's photograph gives you a chuckle. This woman is a talented milker, but unfortunately nothing is known about the picture or the photographer. Do you recognize who she is or where the picture was taken? Leave a comment and let me know.

Chinese Altar

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

A Legacy of War

Orville .G. Willett was an army veteran, a state senator, and the person who suggested the name for Mineral County. He was also the victim of a dreaded disease. Willett had suffered undiagnosed bouts of illness for years, but while serving in the legislature in 1917, the Mayo Clinic finally determined the cause. Willett had leprosy. He had become infected while serving his country during the Spanish American War in the Philippines in 1902. He was one of some two hundred veterans of this war t...

Friday Photo: Cousin Jack Race Horses

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, ST 001.072The description included with this stereograph states that: "A Cousin Jack is a person from Cornwall." Perhaps this is insight into the humor that photographer N. A. Forsyth intended in his caption. He took the photo in Butte between 1901 and 1911.

A Gruesome Legacy

Violence in Montana’s mining camps affected everyone, and Helena’s Hangman’s Tree was a community icon. Mary Ronan recalled in her memoir, Girl from the Gulches , that one morning she and her classmates saw a man hanging from the tree. She never forgot  “…that pitiful object, with bruised head, disarrayed vest and trousers, with boots so stiff, so worn, so wrinkled, so strangely the most poignant of all the gruesome details.” Nearly seventy years later as she dictated her memories to her...

Celebrate Woman Suffrage Today!

When Congress created Montana Territory in 1864, women had few opportunities. Not only could they not vote, they could not work in most professions and could not attend most colleges. Some women were against woman suffrage because they believed it threatened traditional views. Belle Winestine of Helena, a great campaigner for women’s rights, explained the controversy this way: Men said, “Women’s place was in the home. Women are on a pedestal. Why should they come down and mix in ‘dirty politi...

Haunted Fort Assinniboine

Empty buildings with hollow windows sprawl across the windswept prairie off U.S. 87 outside Havre, Montana. Fort Assinniboine, established in 1879, once housed some five hundred soldiers and their families. As the largest fort in Montana, its famous residents included General “Black Jack” Pershing. Stationed at the fort in the mid-1890s, “Black Jack” earned his nickname as first lieutenant in the African-American Tenth Cavalry unit.  The fort closed in 1911, and over the decades the rema...