Ellen Baumler's Blog, page 25

The Kontinental Klan

Prohibition’s failure had some consequences no one seemed to anticipate. Illegal moonshine flowed more freely than legal booze either before or after the nation went dry. Illegal traffic in liquor fostered criminal activity which led to organized crime. But another rather bizarre consequence was the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan across the Pacific Northwest. The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan claimed a platform that claimed to be anti vice and corruption It was also pro patriotism in the wake o...

Friday Photo: Smith Mine Rescue Worker

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, reference fileA rescue worker comes out of Smith Mine near Bearcreek after a methane gas explosion in the mine killed seventy-four miners on February 27, 1943.

P.S. The rest of the story of the disaster.

Neither Empty Nor Unknown

The Montana Historical Society’s current exhibit, Neither Empty Nor Unknown, explains some of the errors Lewis and Clark made. Their primary mistake was thinking that the land was unknown and largely unpopulated, as maps of the time indicated. But in reality, communities lived, worked, and thrived on the land. Places that the expedition named in English already had names known to generations of inhabitants. How could Lewis and Clark have been so wrong? We don’t usually think of the Corps of D...

A Monument to Convict Labor

Upon Statehood in 1889, the federal penitentiary at Deer Lodge, Montana, became a state institution. The prison housed 198 inmates in a cell block built to hold no more than 140. Prisoners spilled over into the outbuildings in the yard, the wash house, and the prison’s carpenter shop. Warden Frank Conley foresaw the deterioration of the prison if nothing were done to repair and expand it. But the state had no money. Conley was convinced, like other penal administrators of the time, that...

Friday Photo: Indian Twin Motorcycle

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 84-83 f18A couple, probably John and Fannie Westling, poses on a 1911 or 1912 Indian Twin motorcycle. The photo was taken in the Bitterroot Valley.

Thomas Marlow

The transcript of a speech given in 1989 by Peggy Marlow Guthrie outlines the life of her grandfather, Thomas Marlow. He was a prominent banker, businessman, and owner of Helena’s beloved Marlow Theatre. As a young man in Helena, he was on the eve of marriage to Katherine Sligh, daughter of an Anaconda physician, when she died of a heart ailment. The community mourned with her bridegroom and Marlow erected a huge angel as a monument to her memory at Forestvale Cemetery.

Photo via Find a GraveT...

Christenot Mill at Union City

Prospectors discovered gold in Alder Gulch, Idaho Territory, on May 26, 1863. Within weeks, the countryside was teeming with thousands of prospectors, but the easily extracted placer gold soon played out. B. F. Christenot, acting independently or perhaps as agent to Philadelphia backers, began acquiring claims in the Summit Mining District in 1864. Christenot later concealed a substantial amount of gold on his person and traveled to Philadelphia where he convinced investors to back constructi...

Friday Photo: Homestead Wedding

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 90-87 G065-002Happy Valentine's Day! Here's a romantic photo: John and Christina Krenzler married on February 22, 1912, on this homestead. In traditional Russian-German style, schnapps and beer flowed liberally. Photo by Evelyn Cameron.

The Gordons of White Sulphur Springs, Part II

Taylor was the youngest of the Gordon children. He led both a charmed and tragic life.  His adventures began when John Ringling—of circus fame—came to town with his chauffeur, John Spencer. Spencer taught Gordon how to be a mechanic, which led to a job as chauffeur and mechanic for the president of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Taylor eventually worked as chef for Ringling and traveled with the circus. He quit that to take a very strange job with the federal government, escort...

The Gordons of White Sulphur Springs, Part I

Mary Gordon of White Sulphur Springs was born a slave in Kentucky in 1853. Her husband John was a free person of color who came from Scotland to the United States with his employer. A trained chef, he worked as chef and baker in White Sulphur Springs’ Higgins House, the town’s main hotel. In 1895, he took a job as chef for a Canadian railway and died in a train accident just before the birth of the Gordons’ fifth child, Taylor. Mary took in laundry, provided nursing care for the community, an...