204                     HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY


tion of the Masonic Temple at that place, and was then made Secretary
of the Board of Masonic Temple Trustees, in which position he con-
tinued until the year 1889, when he decided to make the tour of the
Eastern Continent.
    Leaving Helena on Sunday, the 15th day of September, he went
directly to •New York, where he boarded the steamer’ “Pennland” for
Antwerp at 12 o’clock, Wednesday, September 18th, ‘and on arrival at
destination by steamer, proceeded to visit the countries of the Old World
in the following order: Belgium, France, Bavaria, Austria-Hungary,
Turkey, Asia Minor, Palestine, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Prus-
sia, Holland, England, Scotland and Ireland, sailing then from Queens-
town for New .York, when he again went to Helena, Montana, which
place he quit permanently in 1896, and now resides at Bagdad, Kentucky,
having spent much of the intervening time in Clay county.
    He is an enthusiastic Mason, having taken all the degrees of York
Masonry, with the adoptive Rite of Order of Eastern Star, Robert Morris
Palm and Shell, Order of High Priesthood, the Shrine, and all the degrees
in the Scottish Rite, having "wound up” by taking all the Egyptian Rite
degrees that could be given. But nothing counts, he says, above the 33d
degree Scottish Rite.
    The experience and observations of Mr. Major for the period of
thirty years, from the time of his going to the gold-fields of Montana in
i866 to the time of his taking final leave of Helena, in 1896, including his
tour of the Eastern continent, would make a good-sized volume of
fascinatingly interesting narrations. Though he does not hesitate to
recite them to his friends in fireside conversation, he is scrupulously
averse to exploiting them indiscriminately.

    Marvin B. Crist, a native of Sullivan county, Indiana, son of Henry
W. and Lucinda (Liston) Crist, born March 24, 1845, the family moving
across the line into Clay county, in 1846, locating in Lewis township,
where the aged father still resides; attended the public schools and began
teaching at nineteen years of age; was elected county surveyor on the
Democratic ticket in the fall of 1868 and re-elected in 1870. On the
2d day of April, 1871, he married Miss Laura Frump, daughter of John
and Betsy J. (Matthews) Frump, of Washington township. In the
Democratic county convention of 1872 he came within five votes of being
nominated on the first ballot for Sheriff, with four other candidates in the
race, when, for reasons, he withdrew before the second ballot. After
the expiration of his second term of office he devoted two or more years
to the surveying of mines, a great deal of interest and activity having
meanwhile developed in the coal mining industry, He also gave his atten-
tion to the buying and selling of real estate, not as an agent, on commis-
sion, but on his own “hook,” and met with his first reverse in the business
in 1873, when he invested $18,000 in clean cash in a coal-shaft,which shrank
to $3,000 in the panic of that year, due to the “resumption act.” On the
removal of the county seat he located at Brazil, where, for .two years,
he was city civil engineer. Subsequently, lie practiced law for two
years in partnership with George A. Byrd. His personal and business
acquaintance extended into all parts of the county, and he knew, practi-
cally, every land-holder. Having acquired a large tract of unimproved
land in the extreme southeast part of the county (Harrison township), he
located on the same in 1878, where he continued to reside for nine years,