Ellen Baumler's Blog, page 39

Friday Photo: Hog Ranch

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 2011-65.02Bob Pewitt and Helen Meisel of Chicago pose in front of a hog ranch located halfway between Zortman and Malta, Montana. The photo was snapped c. 1920s.

P.S. More thought-provoking vintage tobacco ads
P.P.S. Speaking of Zortman, remember the poignant exhumation of Pete Zortman?

Yellowstone Trail

The Yellowstone Trail was a transcontinental road that ran from Plymouth Rock to Puget Sound in the era before numbered roads and maps. As travelers exchanged horses for automobiles, they began to demand roads instead of disconnected muddy wagon roads full of potholes. The Yellowstone Trail Association was a grassroots effort that grew from this need. It was the first transcontinental route through the northern part of the United States. Begun in 1912, the trail was completed by 1919. The ass...

The Rush to Reeder’s Alley

Happy April Fool's Day. Don't get taken in!

Reeder’s Alley in Helena is a charming collection of tiny tenements that originally provided miners with better accommodations than the primitive log cabins typical of the of the gold rush. Built against the slope of the hill between 1873 and 1884, the one-room apartments were built by brick mason Lewis Reeder, who brought the row house style from his native Pennsylvania. He added a couple of western false fronts to achieve a unique architectural com...

Friday Photo: Stage Travel

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 2011-65.13Today's photo shows women traveling by stagecoach, probably near Zortman, Montana. For our last post in honor of Women's History Month, here's one woman's experience traveling by stage.

Frances M. A. Roe wrote a lively account of a stage ride through the treacherous Prickly Pear Canyon in Army Letters from an Officer’s Wife . Frances describes why she dreaded meeting an oncoming ox train on the very narrow, boulder-strewn road....

The Legacy of Lily Toole, Montana’s First First Lady

Springtime in Helena brings to mind Lily Toole and the gift she left her adopted community. Lily was a gentle soul. Born to the prominent family of Brigadier General William Stark Rosecrans of Civil War fame, Lily grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, in a devoutly Catholic family. The general’s brother was a Catholic bishop, and three of Lily’s siblings entered the religious life. On May 5, 1890, Lily married Joseph Kemp Toole, governor of the new state of Montana. The small, private wedding took pla...

Scherlie Homestead

The Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909 lured many homesteaders to Montana and to an area in Blaine County called the Big Flat. One of these was thirty-two-year-old Anna Scherlie, who arrived in 1913 to file a claim near her brother’s place. Anna was one of many women homesteaders in Montana. In fact, in the four surrounding townships, women made up about one-fourth of the total homestead applicants. By 1916, Anna had forty acres planted in wheat, oats, and flax. Isolation on the Big Flat led many...

Friday Photo: Homestead Mom

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, Farms and Farming CollectionOur celebration of Women's History Month continues with today's photo of a mother and son posing with a wheat crop near Glendive, Montana, in 1911. I think she must have been awfully strong to raise a crop and a son at the same time.

P.S. Homesteading was a hard life! Remember Myrtle Hagadone Hledik?

St. Vincent’s in Billings

The Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kansas, came to Montana in 1869 to pioneer health, education, and social services in many Montana communities.  Billings was the Sisters’ final Montana frontier. In 1896, Father Clarence Van Clarenbeck and Billings mayor Dr. Henry Chapple traveled to Leavenworth to make an appeal to the Mother House. The need for a hospital in the bustling railroad town of 3,000 would soon be critical. The men were so persuasive that Mother Mary Peter Dwyer assigned...

Ruth Garfield

Ruth Lane was visiting relatives in Montana when she met Jesse Garfield, a Yellowstone County homesteader. The couple married in 1912 and later moved to a ranch near Ryegate. Jesse became the first sheriff of newly created Golden Valley County in June of 1920.

Photo courtesy Ford and Barbara Garfield, via Ancestry.comHe had been reelected to his first full term of office in November but had not yet been sworn in. On December 6, Jesse went out to the Snowy Mountains to investigate a complaint....

Friday Photo: Turning Sod

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 90-87-65.6Evelyn Cameron snapped this photo of Rosie Roesler on a sulky plow in Prairie County in 1912.

P.S. Here's another iconic Cameron photo of homesteaders.
P.P.S This website showcases wonderful stories for Women's History Month.