Yellowstone County MT Archives News.....Log Homestead Cabin Near Yellowstone Served as First County School January 4, 1931
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Ronald J. Reid rreid21@cox.net August 12, 2008, 9:57 pm

Billings Gazette January 4, 1931
Billings Gazette, January 4, 1931, page 15
Log Homestead Cabin Near Yellowstone Served as First Country School.
By W.H. Banfill.
In a little log homestead cabin near the banks of the Yellowstone river south 
of where billings now is, the first school within the confines of the present 
Yellowstone county was started during the winter of 1878-79.  The wind often 
blew the smoke down the chimney and when the door was opened to let the smoke 
out the wintry blasts nearly froze the children and their teacher.
  There were 12 or 14 children in the school and some of them came on horseback 
all the way from Canyon creek, while later there were several children 
attending from old Coulson, which never had a school of its own.
  Billings broke away from the original district in the fall of 1882 and with 
the aid of a generous gift from Frederick Billings, the city’s godfather, a 
brick building was erected a year later which still does duty as the 
administration building of the local school system.
  To look at its site today, flanked by its towering offspring, the high school 
and Jefferson school buildings, in an attractive setting of lawns and trees, it 
is difficult to picture it as the pioneers remember it, standing alone on 
ground white with alkali near the banks of a slough, and swaying in the winds 
that swept over the treeless flats.
  CANYON CREEK STARTS LOG CABIN SCHOOL.
  About the same time that the Billings schools were started, residents at 
Canyon creek started another small rural school in a long [log] building, 
without desks or dictionary.  Perhaps about the same time, Park City, then in 
the county, and already a considerable town, built a frame schoolhouse.
  Even as late as 1889 when Montana became a state, there were only 12 
districts in Yellowstone county which then extended from Junction City (near 
Custer) to Reed Point and from the Yellowstone river to Musselshell crossing, 
according to Mrs. R.B. Crampton of Billings, who was county superintendent of 
schools from 1889 to 1895.
  At that time, all the schoolhouses were long [log] buildings except Billings 
and Park City, which had a frame house and was equipped with a globe, 
blackboard and dictionary.  Some of the schools had no equipment but a small 
blackboard.
   The first teacher in Yellowstone county was Nat Givens, a rancher who had 
come into the country a short time before from Sedalia, MO.  He was a widower 
with six daughters.  Having considerable education, when the question of a 
school came up in the little settlement, he volunteered to serve as teacher.  
This first school was run on a subscription basis, various settlers 
contributing toward the expenses.  The first term as well as several others 
were only three months long.
  Afterward Mr. Givens had charge of the sawmill at Coulson, owned by P.W. 
McAdow.  He owned property to the north of the townsite of Billings and made 
several thousand dollars by selling it to Fred Foster and associates who laid 
out Foster’s addition.  He made sufficient money from his Montana ventures to 
rreturn to Missouri a few years later and buy a farm where the last years of 
his life were spent.  His second daughter, Minnie, was the first wife of 
Forrest Young, Billings and Park City pioneer.  Most of the other daughters 
married Montana men.
MRS. ED NEWMAN WAS EARLY DAY TEACHER.
  The next fall, the district has some tax money due them, sufficient to hire a 
teacher.  Miss Emily Alling, later Mrs. Ed Newman, whose family had located 
eight miles west of Park City in August, 1879, was engaged as teacher.  Miss 
Alling had taught several terms on the Kansas frontier before the family came 
by covered wagon train to Montana spending 11 weeks en route.
  According to Mrs. Newman, the school in which she taught had been built by 
her future husband, Ed Newman, as a homestead shack, not far from the river 
banks.  When the wind blew the smoke came down the chimney until it was almost 
impossible to stay in the building.  The entire area was in Custer county and 
she was obliged to send to Miles City, where a Mr. Savage was superintend of 
schools to get her certificate.  The pay was $35 a month.  In one of the 
schools she had taught in Kansas, she received $10 a month and board.
  There were 15 students in the school.  As Mrs. Newman recalls there were two 
daughter of R.W. Clarke; they are now Mrs. Chris Yegen and Mrs. Joe Cochrane; 
and four of the younger Newman children, Jane, Mary, Dow, and Albert.  Rose 
Bishop whose parents lived on the McAdow farm near Coulson, was another 
student.  From Canyon creek, Danny Sullivan, the oldest boy in the school who 
was staying with his uncle, Bela “Bill” Brockway; Frank Young, a younger 
brother of Forrest Young, and Kilen Reardon, came on horseback.  The trustees 
were O.N. Newman, Mr. Clark and Mr. Givens, who had taught the previous year.
  Mrs. John Shock, whose husband ran the ferry at Coulson, says that the only 
boy in Coulson of school age before the railroad boom of 1882 began was Dickie 
Alderson, whose father, John J. Alderson, owned the Coulson townsite.  He went 
over to the Newman school on horseback.  At Huntley, Mrs. Omar Hoskins taught 
her small son, Clarence the only school child at that place.  The teachers at 
the Newman school usually boarded at the O.N. Newman home.  In addition to the 
Clarke, Newman, and Givens children, there were three small Caldwell girls.
  Soon after Miss Alling’s term, a log schoolhouse was built somewhere along 
the road to the South bridge but across the river from the place where the 
present State street school structure stood before it was removed to the 
present site.
HERE IS HOW ONE TEACHER WAS HIRED.
  A story is told by R.W. Clarek of how they obtained Miss Lilly Nutting, 
sister of Lucius A. Nutting of Laurel as a teacher.  Their father, Dr. Lucius 
Nutting, with his family were traveling through in a covered wagon, when they 
stopped in the Newman settlement.  The trustees were looking for a teacher and 
the emigrants were asked: “Have you anyone with you that can teach school?”  
Miss Nutting jumped down from the back of the wagon and exclaimed, “Here, I’ll 
teach your school.”  Satisfied with her credentials, the trustees employed 
her.  She taught for two terms and was regarded as one of the best teachers the 
district ever had.
  Another teacher in the Newman school was Miss Eva Ash, daughter of George 
Ash, who later married Sam Garvin early day cattleman.  She afterwards taught 
in Billings also.
  Among the early teachers in Yellowstone county, still living here, is Mrs. 
Sam Salsbury, who taught the first Canyon Creek school in the summer of 1883.  
Mrs. Salsbury, then Miss Lucy Baker, came to Montana the previous fall with the 
family of Dr. D.M. Parker, from Cochester, Vt., her native town.  She had 
taught for seven or eight years in Vermont.
  At that time J.J. Walk pioneer cattleman, had his ranch headquarters on 
Canyon Creek and Miss Baker spent several months with the family, tutoring the 
children before the school was started.  There were about 10 or 12 children in 
the school, including the two Walk girls and children of the Iamey, Danford and 
Summers families.
  The school was in a long [log] building and the furniture was homemade.  
Instead of desks, there were benches with a long seat behind them.  A small 
blackboard from which it was difficult to erase the figures was used by the 
teacher while the students worked on slates.  There was no dictionary and often 
children were asked to look through books at home for answers to mooted 
questions.  Once when a textbook was needed for a child it was necessary to 
wait until it could be obtained at Bozeman as it could not be found in Billings.
FIRST INSTITUTE WAS HELD IN FALL OF ’83.
  The first teachers’ institute that Mrs. Salsbury attended was held in the 
Congregational church building in the fall of 1883, and was conducted by 
Cornelius Hedges, Sr., territorial superintendent of public instruction.  Mrs. 
Salsbury and Miss Mary Rixon were the last ones up in a spelling bee which was 
held at the close of the institute.  Miss Rixon won finally on a western word, 
chaparral or chaparajo, with which her opponent was not familiar.
  One of the attending teachers was “Aunty” Gardiner, who had taught both 
Indian and white children at the old Crow agency, and who was then teaching in 
a reform school.  One young man fell out of the graces of the other teachers 
when he made some caustic remark about the character of “Aunty’s” charges and 
there was great rejoicing when he failed to spell Tennessee.
  One morning, a cowboy named Wallace who was working for Mr. Walk, had ridden 
over to the schoolhouse with Miss Baker.  She went into the schoolhouse with 
the children and was starting the daily work, when she noticed Wallace on her 
horse, a fleet animal owned by Mr. Walk, riding at breakneck speed across the 
prairie.  One of the boys, Homer Summers, came running crying; “The cattle are 
gathering.”  A little 3-year-old daughter of Mrs. Norman Brockway, who was 
staying at the Bill Brockway home while her husband was away working, had 
started to wander across the field, and the range cattle attracted by her 
movements had started to gather about her.  Wallace seeing the tot and 
realizing her peril had started rescue her and her mother, saw her and ran to 
her rescue about the same time.  They got to the girl and saved her from any 
harm.
  Another incident that Mrs. Salsbury recalls in connection with the Canyon 
Creek school was a windstorm which was the hardest she ever saw in the valley.  
The logs in the cabin swayed in and out with the buffetings of the wind and the 
teacher and the children expected momentarily, that the building would be 
destroyed.  Mr Walk was in the middle of a field at the time and the wind 
whipped off a new hat and it disappeared and was never found.
SPITBALLS SERVED AS CEILING DECORATIONS.
  A year or two after her marriage, Mrs. Salsbury taught one term in the Newman 
school.  The ceiling of the building was made of roughly hued lumber which 
fitted together with tongue and groove.  There were some whitish proturbances 
on the ceiling which Mrs. Salsbury at first thought were wasps nests.  One of 
the older girls finally volunteered the information that they 
were “spitballs.”  I think they make nice decorations, we will just leave them 
there,” Mrs. Salsbury told her.  The next morning, she discovered the children 
had climbed through a window and had carefully removed all the spitballs.
  The first school to be started in Billings itself was a subscription school 
which was taught by Miss Eva Ash.  An item in the Billings Post in the latter 
part of October, 1882, says: “Sufficient money, has been subscribed by our 
citizens to justify Miss Eva Ash in opening a free school at Billings for the 
ensuing six months.  Miss Ash is an experienced teacher, having taught several 
sessions in the valley.”  Miss Ash resigned in March 1883, a few days before 
her marriage to Sam Garvin, one of the big social events of that year.  A Miss 
Lee finished the term which was prolonged until June.
  In the fall of 1883, the early Billings papers contain frequent references to 
the schools.  Frederick Billings, former president of the Northern Pacific, for 
whom the town was named, had made a gift of $4,000 toward a school building.  
On September 13 a contract was signed by the firm of Nelson, Crowe & Gagnon, 
for the erection of a brick building.  The members of the board who signed the 
contract were J.R. King, F.H. Foster, H.H. Mund with F.B. Stoneman, clerk.  
H.W. Rowley and Judge James R. Goss were early trustees.
  In an item appearing later the same month, announcement was made that “Miss 
Rose Camp has been engaged as a teacher in the primary department which will be 
held in the Congregational church.  Miss Graham will continue in charge of the 
upper grades in the old school house.  There are now 75 pupils in the Billings 
school.”
  MISS CAMP RECALLED AS PIONEER TEACHER.
Miss Camp was a sister of Charles and Edgar Camp, pioneer Billings merchants, 
later prominent in the founding of Laurel.  She taught for several years and 
was a very popular teacher.  Many of the new middle-aged sons and daughter of 
pioneer families have their first memories of school centering about her.  She 
was an accomplished musician and was an early organist for the Congregational 
church.  She later married Al Coombs, who was a member of billings’ first male 
quartet.  She has been dead for some years.
  The exact location of the first building used as a schoolhouse is variously 
given by old-timers but was somewhere near the site of the Billings Laundry, or 
possibly a block or two further east.  According to Arthur Hart who went to 
school in this building, it burned down one morning soon after school started.  
The building was a low one-story log house with a pole roof.  There was a large 
stove and the pipe becoming too hot set the roof on fire.  W.P. Rixon, who was 
not then attending the public schools, recalls seeing the children running out 
of the building.
  The school then was held in a building near the Congregational church and the 
first church building was used for the upper grades.  According to Mrs. 
Salsbury, citizens of Billings were alarmed at another time by smoke pouring 
out of the school building.  One of the children had bumped against the stove 
and pushed it over.  Mr. Walk and several other citizens rushed in the building 
but found no damage had been done by the overturning of the stove.
SEVERAL PRIVATE SCHOOLS HERE IN EARLY DAYS.
In the Jan. 6, 1886 issue of The Billings Gazette was an account of a fire in 
the brick building.  Children going into the basement to eat their lunch 
discovered the woodwork near the furnace was on fire.  One of the girls was 
slightly burned but the fire was put out without serious damage.
  Several private schools were held in billings during the first few years.  
The Misses Jennie and Minnie Panton conducted one for some time, teaching music 
as well as other studies.  Their niece, Miss Anna Rixon, now Mrs. P.L. Recco, 
later taught a private school for a year or two.  Miss Jennie Panton afterward 
taught in the Newman school.
  Mrs. Paul Van Cleve about 1885, conducted a seminary, which received 
considerable patronage from those who desired to instill the social graces in 
their children.  Mrs. Van Cleve had been educated in a convent in New York and 
was a woman of great social charm.  At a later date, she gave French lessons 
and a good many youngsters attended these classes.
  The first principal of the public schools was probably George W. Shoemaker, 
although one or two informants were of the opinion that a man named Higgins 
taught for a short time earlier.  Mr. Shoemaker had previously taught in the 
rural districts of New York.  He was a nephew of the Rev. Mr. Comfort, a 
prominent Methodist missionary in Montana.  Mr. Shoemaker had a sister, Martha 
Shoemaker, also a teacher, who was at one tome county superintendent of 
schools.  It was a source of fun of the youngsters in school that the principal 
had been christened George Washington and his sister, Martha Washington.
  Shoemaker was a man of considerable brilliance but eccentric.  He was a 
severe disciplinarian and seemed to delight in inflicting punishment.  The 
basement was a “chamber of horrors” to the youngsters who were regaled by the 
older children with tales of terrible whippings, which the yells and entreaties 
which sometimes floated up from the “lower regions” etched in their minds.
IRATE PARENT BLACKENED EYES OF TEACHER.
  One of the pupils recalls that the principal would walk up and down the 
aisles during the writing lesson with a long pointer and the pupil who deviated 
from the right position, received a crack over the knuckles.  Another recalled 
a leather strap which he applied with telling effect.
  The teacher’s tactics on at least one occasion won him a pair of black eyes 
inflicted by an irate parent.  An item which appeared in The Billings Gazette 
in the fall of 1885, concerning the principal’s recovery from a sprained ankle 
is said to be the sequel of an earlier incident when an older girl whom he 
attempted to punish, pushed him down a flight of stair.  Some of the pupils 
also recall that Harry Ramsey and Percy Campbell at one time threw a principal 
down the same stairs but they are not certain whether it was Shoemaker or a 
successor.
  Shoemaker, who had studied medicine, remained in Billings, and started a drug 
store which was located in a building west of the present Midland National 
bank.  This drug store was later bought out by Chappie brothers.
  Boys of 17 and 18 from outlying ranches, came to Billings to school and, 
unused to discipline, they presented a serious problem to the principals, 
usually men from the east.  There is said to have even been trouble at one time 
with a bunch of young students who insisted on wearing six-shooters to school.
  The schools were moved into the new brick building, later the Lincoln school 
early in 1884.  The late R.R. Crowe and Charles Klambeck did most of the 
building.  There were four rooms in the building, each teacher having two 
grades.  
  The site was bleak and unattractive, the ground white with alkali.  At that 
time a small creek, usually referred to as “the slough,” ran from west of 
Billings, near the present Trail Spring ranch, along about where Fifth avenue 
is now and east toward the fairgrounds.  After irrigating became common, much 
of the land above the slough was a swamp.
WATER UNDERMINES FOUNDATIONS OF SCHOOLS.
  The water in time began to undermine the foundations of the building and at 
one time it was condemned as unsafe.  The winds had full sweep at the building 
and its walls often swayed until they seemed about to collapse.  One of the 
early day students confesses that whenever the wind began to blow, he sought an 
excuse to leave the building and than ran home, rather than brave the shaky 
walls.
  There were a few residents on the north side of the slough, including the 
Walks, Goddards, Edwards and Jones families.  There was a bridge near the 
present Burlington railway and an elevated foot bridge for pedestrians.  Nearly 
every spring, the waters took out the bridges.  Mr. Walk frequently used 
snowplows in the winter to clear a path for his two daughters and for the other 
children of the neighborhood, who attended the school.
  Skating was one of the principal forms of amusement as there was usually good 
ice along the slough from west of Billings clear to the river.  Mrs. E.E. 
Sayer, daughter of Mr. Walk, recalls with what envy the other boys and girls 
regarded Ben Greenough, who, like a western “Huckleberry Finn,” spent hours 
perfecting his skating skill and in hunting and fishing while they were in 
school.
  During he year, 1885-1886, Mrs. J.B. Herford, then Miss Susan Whitney, taught 
the second room in the public schools.  She had taken examinations a year or 
two before from the Rev. B.F. Shuart, superintendent of schools.
  The day that the Congregational church was dedicated, Miss Whitney drove out 
with the Shuarts to the Billings ranch, west of the city, and spent several 
days there taking the tests.  Afterward, she worked in the postoffice, her 
father, Lucius Whitney, being the first postmaster.  When she came to teach the 
school, she found the certificate was lost and she was obliged to go horseback 
to the Hesper ranch to take some additional tests.  There came up a storm while 
she was gone and her mother, when she failed to arrive, had just started out 
with a livery rig about midnight, when she finally got back.
  The room in which Mrs. Herford taught was quire small and the students had 
seats upstairs, coming down for their recitations.  Miss Clara Howard, after 
Mrs H.G. Arkwright was the primary teacher.  Among her pupils were Orrie 
Nickey, Mrs. Robert Leavens, Mrs. Sayer and her sister, Mrs. W.I. Peckham, Mrs. 
Arthur Bake, Mrs. W.C. Renwick, Tony Loftus and Mary Loftus, (now Mrs. Ed 
O’Donnell, Dickie Alderson, and Roy Wilkinson.  Upper grade pupil sometimes 
aced as substitute teachers.
SCARLET FEVER EPIDEMIC CLOSED THE SCHOOL.
  While she was teaching a serious scarlet fever epidemic broke out in the 
schools.  A number of pupils were very sick with the disease and one boy died.  
The schools were closed for about two months.  Mr. Shoemaker was succeeded as 
principal by Professor Foote whose wife had taught in the Billings schools the 
previous year while he had charge of the schools at Glendive.  At a later time, 
Miss Mary Mooney was principal whle her sister, Annabelle Mooney, taught in the 
grades.  J.W. Johnson, who a few years ago was candidate for superintendent of 
schools, was principal in the nineties at the time when the high school was 
started.  H.M. Baryton was principal when the first high school class was 
graduated.  Mr. Brayton originated the term “Midland Empire” in connection with 
the local fair.
  Mrs. Crampton was the first county superintendent of schools when the state 
was formed, serving from 1889 to 1895.  In territorial days, J.E. Hendry, an 
editor, was the first superintendent.  He resigned and the Rev. B.F. Shuart was 
appointed and his wife also served in the same position.  A Miss Baker was 
superintendent immediately before Mrs. Crampton.
 At the time Mrs. Crampton took the office, all the school records were kept in 
a shirt box.  At first, there was no office in the courthouse and she had 
served a year or two before Commissioner Boots, taking a personal interest in 
the matter, managed to secure a small room for her use.  This was in the frame 
courthouse which stood on the site of the present Securities building.  All the 
building was then lighted by lamps.  At that time, Professor Matheson, a 
brother of J.D. Matheson, was principal in Billings and the other teachers were 
Ethel Constable, Ellen Smith and Annabelle Mooney.  A few high school studies 
were then being given by Professor Matheson.
  Mrs. Crampton and her husband and three small children came to Billings in 
1883 from Utica, N.Y., where Mrs. Crampton had been a teacher in advanced 
schools after having been a student at Williams college.  They located on a 
ranch 12 miles from Billings.  AS there were no schools closer than Billings, 
Mrs. Crampton taught her own children during the years before she was chosen 
superintendent, in addition to her work in the ranch home.
  At the time she left the office in 1895, the number of schools in the county 
had grown from 12 to 28.  There were then two teachers at Park City and two at 
Laurel, and there were schools at Reed Point, Merrill, Huntley, Hawk’s Creek, 
where Mrs. Austin North taught before her marriage, and at Half Breed creek as 
well as at other points.

  


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