Cascade County MT Archives History .....History Of Eden Valley (Cascade County) November 13, 2009 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/mt/mtfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Jennifer Keith Jennifer.Keith@gmail.com November 13, 2009, 3:34 pm (Written by Vivian Ellis, transcribed to online text by Jennifer Keith) (This seems to have been written for a Pioneer Society Meeting) You know the most difficult audience in the world is your own home community for they definitely knew you when-----. If I seem to tell some tall tales this afternoon there are those among you who may raise your eyebrows and say—“even as a child she had that unfortunate tendency”. The worst of it is that a paper like this is likely to be composed of stories substantiated by hearsay only. Many of them are twice and thrice told tales and far be it for me to see that they lose anything when my turn comes to tell them. Mr. Huntsberger asked me yesterday, why the grey in my hair. I’ve been growing it for this special occasion. If I’m to talk like a pioneer then I shall look like one. I can’t be quite as good a pioneer as Mr. and Mrs. Simpson or Mr. and Mrs. Carr but I’ve been here pretty nearly as long as any one else in this community and if there is any comparison between my age and my feelings some days---- then I mush have come here with the Indians. The degree of pioneerishness of a pioneer is usually judged by the way they name the places. Now we speak of the Maurers, the Proctors, the Ellises, the Holloways, the Givens, the Bruneaus, the Huntsbergers altho those names are fast changing to the Schencks and Markos etc. Our parents spoke of the Porters, Evand, Pattersons, Hopkins and Hops and Sands. Then there is an era of Bostons and Swingleys and McGees, Gearings and Gibsons and back still farther there are a few who remember the name of Diamond and Tingley and who remember that one winter a man by the name of Ming from Helena wintered his cattle on the Ming bottom which always carried his name after that, Mr. Simpson remembers most of these people and Mr. Carr undoubtedly remembers most of them for he is related, I believe, to John Diamond who lived on or near the present Holloway place and who according to Uncle Bob Thoroughman was “tops”. However, if I start in telling who is related to whom, I’m headed streight for trouble. In fact I’m going to drop name and personalities in so far as possible. In that way I may avoid a libel suit and I’ll make it much more difficult for any one to check up on the information I give. So far as I have been able to find ---and for authority I have Bob Chestnutt after whom Chestnutt Valley was named and he came here when the place was largely peopled by Indians---- the first place on Deep Creek was a branding corral located near the present Huntsberger home. He also said there was a man who had a blacksmith shop near where our won home is. The oldest building on our place is a log cabin near the present workshop and by a tree right across Boston Coulee from the house is an old bellows which might easily be used as proof of Bob Chestnuts story for it was on the place when we came and had been so long as anyone seemed to know anything about it. The branding corral was owned by an Italian whose name had been on the tip of my tongue for days but I cannot remember it to save my soul and I cannot find it in my notes. Uncle Bob Thoroughman came to Chestnutt Valley in 1880 and it was thru him that I learned much of the history of the community. I have heard him tell how he spent his first spring here skinning cattle which had drifted down Deep Creek into the corner by the old Ned Couch ranch where the Missouri and Smith Ricer some together. The winter of ’80 and Spring of ’81 took terrible toll of the herds of cattle that ran in the open country in this community, and Uncle Bob said he alone skinned over 300 head. He used to tell me how the roundup would swing over in the Adel country, down the river with the first cut-out at the Italians corrals and then on down to where the two rivers join. From there some of the cattle were taken to Fort Benton and some to Helena. But cattle raising wasn’t the only way to earn a living on Deep Creek in the early days. Truck gardening stood high and I had a couple of uncles who floated a few logs down the river before the Richardson dam was built and who floated many more down the Missouri. Some of those logs with my uncles marks on there were used years later the Slack place. I can go back still further and tell who the half breed Indians who were squatters here tapped the boxelder trees, boiled down the sap and sold it for maple syrup for their pin money. Spanish Joe, after whom Spanish Coulee is named, raised potatoes, squash, cabbage, cucumbers and other vegetables on the Ming bottom. There is a tale of a fight over an irrigation ditch that ended in murder but time has dimmed its memory. Billy Boston had the largest truck garden, and the first irrigation ditch in the community is marked by the line of trees by the edge of the yard at thome. He not only raised a garden there but he irrigated part of the meadow between the house and the river and raised more garden on it. In one of the little cleared patches above the house there used to be an old well. Mr. Simpson says the Mr. Boston pumped water in a tank over the well and used it to irrigate this little patch. When we first came back from Canada I remember playing up there and finding boards and parts of an old building and an old well which Dad later filled. Marketing was no problem whatever for Spanish Joe and Billy Boston. They simply hauled their produce to Helena or Fort Benton where there was a ready market. How good that marked was can be readily understood when Uncle Bob tells about one winter in Helena when communications were not up to par and they had a diet or meat for 21 days. Potatoes were 25(cent symbol) a pound with the eyes cut out. Sugar sold for 40(cent symbol) a pound and a mowing machine cost $350. When Uncle Bob first came to Helena--- about 1865--- his family milked and made butter for a living. I hesitate to quote a price for it for I’m not sure but years later old Mr. Millegan still found it profitable to make butter and bring it our of the Millegan Basin and take it all the way to Fort Benton to market. Cascade eventually took the place of the Helena and Fort Benton markets but Cascade was’nt Cascade at all in the good old days but Saint Clair—and located on the other side of the river. The cable for the ferry at Cascade was so heavy that no wagon could be found in Fort Benton to carry it. Every so many feet a team of oxen was hitched and the cable was dragged over ground. In ’81 and ’82 Uncle George Bickett rode to St. Clair to get his mail. And you have your mail brot to you three times a week now, isn’t it? Fine pioneers you would make! The funny thing about this truck gardening is that this particular spot on Deep Creek—Boston Coulee and the Ming bottom—were considered the garden spots of the country. People who lived there were thot very fortunate for there were those who didn’t believe that potatoes could be raised in nearby communities. And I can still remember how proud Dad was of his watermelon which took first prize at the state fair in Helena. Evidently there were dry years-- for they irrigate-- and I know there were wet years. The mark on the Truly bridge shows that, and I believe the water went up into the second floor of the old Evans house which is the Holloway house now. It wasn’t a problem then of whether we got one or two crops of alfalfa but whether we could get the first crop dry enuf so we could put it up before the second crop came on and sometimes we just dragged the second crop off the meadow so it wouldn’t mildew on the ground and spoil the third crop. It hasn’t been so long in memory since Mr. and Mrs. Huntsberger climbed in the boat anchored to their porch, rowed to the hill and walked across it to spend a few days with us in our comparatively dry place. The Water only came to the corner of our garden. And there were dry years too, in the gold old days. One year I’ve heard how the people near Eden went back into the mountains and cut last years grass for hay since none had been able to grow this year. Our whole trouble is that we pasture our lands so closely-- not being able to own and pay taxes on the whole country side and not having open range as then-- that our stock eat this years grass to the ground and any blade that may be left from last year along with it. Cattle roamed the wide open spaces and then wintered in the underbrush and timber and when spring came there wasn’t any underbrush for if the snow was too deep the cattle lived on the young willows and bushes. Mother and I spent one day digging around in the County Supts. Office finding out about the first schools, only to discover that the first school in this community was held in august 1996 in a log house at McGees-- which is on the present Anderson place just about where it joins Maurers-- and according to Aunt Jennie (Mrs. Keeney), just where the mosquitoes were thickest, and my own Aunt Jo was the first teacher. The school district was established Jan. 4, 1896-- 45 years ago. The first trustees were G.H. Swingley, Byron Porter, and W.H. Simpson and in order to hold the district, school had to be held for at least one month the first year. In 1915 the district was divided and the little log school house at the foot of the Orr hill became a thing of the past. I don’t know what the youngsters watch now but I’ll bet they don’t have half the fun we did watching some of the early models back up that hill. And if there is a colder place on the face of the earth, then that stretch of the road when you turn the corner away from the river, I’ve yet to meet it, especially if you take that stretch sitting on the high seat of a two wheeled cart hitched to old Billy who hated it as much as we did and took it on the run. District 33 was not the first school in this community proper, however. That was district 6 and it was located in a rather large school house across the road from the foot of the old Truly grade as near as I can find out. This school was established in 1888 with Charles Remington beginning the term and Miss Carrie Patch finishing it. In 1889 J.N. Largent, who was a minister by profession and later taught in Great Falls but was no relation to Supt. Largent, taught the school and it was visited by Supt. Bessie Ford on March 25. The trustees were John W. Hopkins, H.D. Evans, W.W. Carr and P.D. Cotter. The Millegan district was organized in 1889 but the Chestnutt Valley district was one of the earliest districts of all. I thought that Bessie Fords report for 1889 might be interesting to you. This covers Cascade County. Number of white persons between 4 and 21--- 931 Number of organized districts--- 13 Number of school children--- 526 Number attending school--- 320 Number of teachers--- 19 Greatest number of days taught--- 200 Least number of days taught--- 20 Average--- 111 Two frame, 8 log school houses and 4 graded schools. Number of teachers having certificates--- 25 Average salary--- $61.70 I’ve heard a little discussion of chickens since I came here today. Back in the seventies when Uncle Bob was living on the bird Tail he went looking for cattle and chanced to stop at a neighbors. In the course of the conversation chickens were mentioned and it turned out that the Thoroughmans had a hen that wanted to set and the neighbors had some beautiful Buff Cochin and Light Brahma chickens-- just a few that had come all the way up the river to Fort Benton and across to the Sullivan Valley country. Very generously they have Uncle Bob 11 of their precious eggs carefully wrapped in rags-- much more plentiful than paper in those days. He tied them on the back of his saddle and rode the 10 miles home-- which turned to 20 as he chased his cattle. Aunt Anna was so delighted with the eggs that she set her scrawny little mongrel hen behind the kitchen range to lessen the chance of chilling the eggs. Six of the 11 eggs hatched, 3 Butt Cochin hens and one rooster and a Light Brahma hen and rooster. That winter Uncle Bob built a hen house in the hill and the chickens were more comfortable than the family was, he insisted and the next year one of the Buff Cochins he raised weighed 14 pounds. From that little beginning grew the beautiful flock of Buff Cochins that he always kept-- and he always insisted that his chickens came from real pioneer stock. None of your modern day chicks could hatch from an egg that had ridden 20 miles up hill and down hill behind a saddle. When I see you all meeting together today I think of the story Mother often tells of how she used to carry me to the top of the hill behind the house and look across the hills and wonder if anyone lived there. It was very different from Iowa and the Dakotas. And I remember too, how happy she says she was when after she had been there only a couple of years, Mrs. Simpson came riding her little blue phony one day carrying Rosy on the saddle before her. I think often too of the night Aunt Anna told about when Uncle Bob didn’t get back and the hired man was called to help a neighbor. This was on the Bird Tail just before the Indian scare that drove her back to Helena with the children and just before the Indians killed Henry Cottle. She put her little son and daughter to bed, barred the windows, put out the fire and after the children had gone to sleep she went out quietly, locking the door behind her. Then with her loaded gun in her hand she sat the night through on a little promontory where no one could approach the house or her without her being able to see then first. I think of the lonely graves that are the mute testimony of the fact that doctors were few and far between and that methods of travel were almost primitive. Uncle Bob had a sense of humor that went too far some times as senses of humor some times do. As he and Aunt Anna grew older she showed her age much more than he did and he delighted in introducing her at Pioneer Society meetings as his mother. It worked very well until one day she looked up, smiled and said, “It living with Robert has made me look old enuf to be his mother, I’m sorry, that’s all.” But from a purely unbiased viewpoint I can see where living with any pioneer might make a woman look old enuf to be her own grandmother. There are so many stories I might tell-- all woven into the fabric that was life in this early community. There is a melodramatic yarn that if you’ve about gone to sleep should start the blood running a bit faster. I heard it one night as Mrs. Tabor told it and it happened long years before even Uncle Bob came, for Mrs. Tabor was the daughter of an Indian chief who later married a full blooded Missourian. Her mothers sister married a man by the name of Clark, an educated and traveled man who for some reason lived for some time here on Deep Creek and whose descendents have some peculiar interest in Glacier Park. The two sons of this couple were sent East and as I remember it, one went to England and the other finished his education in Harvard and then returned here. It was the custom of small bands of Indians to come down on the river during the berry season to pick gooseberries, thornapples, chokecherries and wild plums and with one little group came a very lovely Indian girl. Young Clark immediately became interested but already had a boy friend. Papa Clark was able to may much more for her for his son than the boy friend could manage to scrape up so the matter was settled to young Clarks satisfaction-- for a short time. Then one day the boy friend came back. A fight followed and young Clark was killed and if I remember rightly the father interfered and was also killed. – we might as well make a real story out of it! Anyway, Mrs. Tabor who was only about six then, saw the huge knife that the boy used and learned the gruesome fact that he ended the battle by removing the head of young Clark. She and her mother came to the funeral, coming down the hill to what was later the Ming bottom and spending the night with an Uncle who lived there and then going the next day across the river, up the creek a bit and over the hill and down again to the river. The burial was under some red cliffs. There are plenty of red cliffs on Deep Creek. Anyone who wants the ghost may have him. We thot that the skull Frank Stearns found under a rock ledge that sometimes becomes a waterfall in a little coulee on our grade might be his. But when Uncle Bob told Bob Chestnutt about finding the skull Bob Chestnutt immediately told him exactly where it had been and told a story of how he was hunting on the hill between Boston Coulee and Ming Coulee when he found he was being followed by three Indians. He gave two of them the slip but the third he killed and hid the body on a ledge of rock under a waterfall just above Boston coulee and near the river. If there has been any purpose to this paper this afternoon it has been to remind you of the fact that these ranches of ours aren’t just land and water, rocks and trees, too dry some years and too wet others but places where family after family has lived and died and loved and fought and worked. Each family has contributed something-- it may be the burdock that Mrs. Fikes brought from Kentucky or it may be something as lovely as the lilacs that have bloomed year after year on the Wuerl place. I think of Mr. Huntsbergers call shortly after Dad’s death when he looked across the meadow that Dad had cleared mostly with the labor of his own hands and said, “How he worked and how he loved it”. I think of Mr. Colby coming back year after year to the ranch that is so dear to him and of the happiness he has expressed that it is in the hands of people he trusts and loves. Last year Mrs. Colby found a diary that Mr. Colby had kept when he first came here. You know, I think there ought to be a law that when you sell a place and give the abstract, you should turn over a record of the years you have lived on the place, the mistakes you have made and the things you have learned. Surely the knowledge that again and again families before us have met flood and drouth and hail and grasshoppers and taxes and still have found some joy in the place should be of inspiration to us. Those of us who are living on ranches now are trying to give back to the land some of the things we took from it. You don’t have the serious problems here of acre after acre thet mush be put back in crested wheat or native grass before it will be fir for anything again. Dick often says that by the time he gets the place we have back to what it was, he will be an old man ready for the grave. But we have come to the conclusion that there will be a great deal of satisfaction in knowing that the place is better for our having lived on it. Dean Stone used to say that there was as definite and a harder job of pioneering now than there had ever been before. It’s groups like you who are doing it and who will continue to do it in spite of every discouragement. More power to you. (Handwritten note) Written before 1955 (Additional text after the above) The Naming of the Smith river. The Expedition of Lewis and Clark-Hosmer- Chapter 12, page 322 Monday, July 15, 1805 “We arose early, embarked all our baggage on board the canoes, which, tho light in number, are still heavily loaded, and at ten o’clock set out on our journey. At a distance of three miles we passed an island, just above which is a small creek coming in from the left, which we called Fort Mountain creek, the channel of which is ten yards wide, but now perfectly dry. At six miles we came to an island opposite to a bend towards the north side, and reached, at seven and a half miles, the lower point of a woodland at the entrance of a beautiful river which, in honor of the secretary of the navy, we called Smith’s River. This stream falls into a bend on the south side of the Missouri, and is eighty yards wide. As far as we could discern its course it wound through a charming valley towards the south-east, in which many herds of buffalo were feeding, till, at the distance of twenty-five miles, it entered the Rocky Mountains, and was lost from our view. After dining near this place we proceeded on--------“ (Notes on Persons who appear in the above) Mr. Huntsberger- would be Mr. Ira Kurtz Huntsberger Mrs. Huntsberger- would be Mrs. Ida Stonewall Huntsberger The original Mrs. Huntsberger, Nellie (Mead) Huntsberger died 2-7-1914 Uncle Robert P Thoroughman- Born abt 1848 Aunt Anne E (Bruneau) Thoroughman- Born abt 1851 Aunt Jennie (Bruneau) Keeney- Died 8-30-1959 Aunt Josephine (Bruneau) Hale, married Walter G. Hale who died 3 years later Mother- Antoinette (Lambert) Bruneau Dad- Alfred Bruneau Additional Comments: Vivian (Bruneau) Ellis lived in Great Falls. Her family was among the first settlers of the Eden Valley area and this is a speech we believe she wrote for a Pioneers meeting. Hope you find it interesting. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/mt/cascade/history/other/historyo3gms.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/mtfiles/ File size: 21.4 Kb