An illustrated history of the state of Montana, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 28

Author: Miller, Joaquin, 1837-1913. cn
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: Chicago, The Lewis pub. co.
Number of Pages: 1216

USA > Montana > An illustrated history of the state of Montana, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens > Part 28

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Mr. Watson was married in Philadelphia, in 1868, to Miss Sarah Starr, daughter of Jesse W. Starr, the Phila- delphia and Camden founder, and a niece of ex-Congress- man John F. Starr. Mrs. Watson died in Helena in 1871. They had one child, a son, who died at the age of five months.

HENRY KLEIN, a prominent merchaut and pioneer of Ilelena, was born in Austria, August 4, 1837. ITis father, Gabriel Klein, also a native of that country, was a mer- chant there until he came to America, in 1863, bringing his family with him and settling iu San Francisco, where he died, having attained the advanced age of ninety-three years. Three of his sous had preceded him to the United

of prehistoric skeletons and stone implements the thigh-bone of a giant, in which you can see, through a split in it, a clean white seam of quartz; the marrow having turned to what looks like good gold-bearing quartz! The statement has been made that gold may be seen in this, as was seen in the one at Shasta; but the gold is not there. The quartz, however, is there, the quartz in which gold grows or forins has grown or formed in it, out of the marrow in a man's leg. Now heed closely. This bone, like the one in Shasta,-unfortunately now destroyed,- rested on a mountain side in the great Yreka quartz and gold district.

Tell me what chemical process was required to convert what seems to have been water, with green moss, grasses, leaves, into quartz or moss agate, and can you tell what turned marrow into quartz.

Mr. Hubert Howe Bancroft's History of Wash-

States, and were engaged in the mercantile business at Sau Francisco at the time he located there.

In 1866, Henry Klein severed his connection with the San Francisco firm, and in company with Louis Gans, established a mercantile business in Helena, under the firm name of Gans & Klein. Mr. Gans is now a promi- nent New York business man. With the business inter- ests of the embryo city they at once became identified, and have continued with it, being now one of the most enter- prising and successful firms in the State of Montana, doing a large wholesale and retail business, dealing in clothing, hats and caps, boots and shoes and gentlemen's furnishing goods. In the upper end of the town they erected a building in which they conducted their trade for fifteen years. From there they removed to their present quarters on the corner of Broadway and Main streets, this block having been erected by them, and finished and furnished with all the latest modern improvements, it being one of the fine business blocks for which Helena has become noted. It is 27x115 feet, four stories and basement, and the whole of it is occupied by Gans & Klein. They are sole agents in Montana for several large Eastern manufacturers, and by their very libera and honorable dealing, they have built up an extensive trade. During their long and successful business career here they have acquired valuable real estate, both city aud country, and are also interested in farming and stock raising, and in mines and mining.

Mr. Klein has been thoroughly identified with Helena

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ington, Idaho and Montana, p 507, says: " In Montana quartz is not always the mother of gold when iron and copper with their sulphurets and oxides are often a matrix for it. Even driftwood long imbedded in the soil has its cal- earcous matter impregnated with it; and a sol- ution of gold in the water is not rare."

This wild statement is quoted, not that Mr. Bancroft knows any more about the subject than he does about so many other things which he treats, but to show that the inquiry is and has been broad and universal, and yet no intelligent answer. For here we have been nearly fifty years in the gold fields, and yet a man writing an alleged history of these lands gravely tells us, and he certainly tells us all he knows or has learned from others, that gold is found in the driftwood of Montana and that "a solution of gold in the water is not rare." He also says, same page, that gold is often found in alluvial soil and

ever since he located here. Indeed, few men have done more to advance its interests than has he. He took stock in the companies which brought gas, electric light and electric railways to the city. He served three terms on the Council of the city, took an active part in the estab- lishment of the public library, the erection of the library building, and also aided materially in the building of the beautiful temple erected by the few children of Israel who reside at Helena.

Mr. Klein was happily married in Helena, April 14, 1878, to Miss Annie Leon, a native of this country and a descendant of German ancestry. Their only son they named Leon. In 1887 Mrs. Klein died, and Mr. Klein has since remained single.

In politics he is a Republican, intelligent upon all the affairs of the country, but not a politician in the sense of desiring office. He has been a member of the Masonic fraternity for a number of years. As a citizen of Montana and a business man of Helena, Mr. Klein stands high, having secured the utmost confidence and esteem of hosts of friends. To give some idea of the extent of the interest his firm has taken in the improvement of the county, it may with propriety be stated here that they have spent on the improvements of their land alone no less than $200,000.

GOWAN FERGUSON, M. D., a popular and skillful young physician of Great Falls, Montana, dates his birth in Simcoe county, Ontario, July 16, 1866. His ancestors were Irish. His grandfather was an officer in the En-

asks if this may not be the origin of flour gold, -- a sort of pulverized wheat!

With this let us proceed with our own con- clusions about the growth of gold. Briefly, shall we not concede that some sort of gases from below converts certain substances into quartz ready to receive gold? Gold is found only in the mountain seams, or of upheavals, where the crust has been broken and rent asunder.

Active gold mining is going on to-day in the rediscovered old mines within a few hours of London, but the mines are in the mountains of Wales; and if ever the gold mines of Gatil, men- tioned by early writers, are rediscovered, they will be found not in the valleys but in the moun- tains of France. Briefly to sum up, I can but conclude, after all my years of observation, that the peculiar rock in which gold is found is created from gases escaping from the rent and

glish army, who came to Canada as early as 1842, bring- ing with him his family, his son Isaac, Dr. Ferguson's father, being then a mere boy. They located in Simcoe county. When Isaac Ferguson grew up he was married, in Toronto, to Miss Emily J. Gowan, a native of Brock- ville, Ontario, and daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Ogle R. Gowan, of the Queen's Royal Borderers and a member of Parliament. They had four sons and two daughters, all of whom are living, the doctor being their second born. The father departed this life in 1889, at the age of fifty-eight years; the mother is still living. She is a member of the Episcopal Church, as was also Mr. Ferguson.

Dr. Ferguson has had excellent educational advant- ages. He attended the public schools, the Upper Canada College in Toronto and the University of Toronto. Ilis medical education was obtained in the latter institution and in the New York Polyclinic school, where he grad- nated in 1888. He entered upon his professional ca- reer in Toronto, where he practiced two years, and whence, in May, 1891, he came to Great Falls. IIere he has met with marked snecess. Both as a gentleman and as a physician, he is held in high esteem. He is a mem- ber of the Northern Montana Medical Association, of which he was elected and served as secretary in 1893, and he is also a member of the Montana State Medical Society and of the Medical Society of the City of Toronto. Socially, he is identified with the Elks and the Foresters.

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broken crust of the earth below, and that gold is, as well, of a vapory or gaseous origin, rising from rents in the earth and forming on the walls and fissures of quartz.

" ' Old Baldy' [ Bald Mountain, the highest peak near Union City.] is my near neighbor. He is respected here as youth respects the ven- crable in all civilized communities. How long he has had his habitation where he now rests in conscious dignity, I know not. The time was, perhaps ere mortal's griefs begun, when he slept in the bottom of the sea, and the swin- mning tribes, from the leviathan to the modest crinoid, climbed his rugged sides and sported in his pockets. How he came to change his sphere the learned can only guess, while he re- mains silent. It may be that gradually the waters were called to the Eastern ocean, and he rose from his uneasy bed as centuries rolled back into the eternal past; or perchance the angry earthquake flung him up toward the heavens and bade him stay to chifl the summer breezes as they kiss his bronzed cheek in their ouward flight. However he came, he was not alone. In his huge arms he brought with him his old associates. The plant of the ocean still slumbers in his watchful keeping. perfect in all

RICHARD HOBACK came to Montana in 1864 with Gen- eral Sully, and in 1866 settled at Helena, where he has since continuously resided.

Mr. Hoback was born in the State of Kentucky, August 11, 1835. Ilis grandfather, Michael Hoback, was a Vir- ginian and one of the first settlers in Kentucky. IIe served in the Revolution, being with Washington during the great privations that the little army of patriots under- went during the hard winter at Valley Forge. He reared four daughters and one son, and lived to be ninety years old. Ile was a Kentucky farmer. His son, Michael Iloback, was born in Kentucky in 1797, and married Josephine Burchin, a native of that State. Iler grand- father came from Ireland to this country during the Revolution and settled in Kentucky where he engaged in farming up to the time of his death. He had been a member of the Methodist Church for forty years. Our subject's parents also had four daughters and one son. They emigrated to Indiana in 1848, where he resided until 1873, when his death occurred. His wife had died in 1849.

Their son, Richard, attended a little private school and at eleven years of age started out to do for himself. He first worked on the farm for $13 per month, which was then thought to be good wages. In 1854 he went to St. Paul, Minnesota, and worked for the Government on the Sioux Reservation. He remained there as a teamster

its fibres and leafy beauty; although he has chilled it into stone hard as his rocky coat of mail. The shell-fish came with him, hid in his curves and recesses."

It is not at all probable that when Montana and all the Rocky mountains lay cradled in the bottom billows of the ocean as the fossil sea-shells and salt-fish reveal, her gold and silver lay there as now. But when the great upheaval came shafts of fire shoot- ing to the stars, the earth's crust, broken and banded together, bulged skyward from compression and contraction of the globe or from whatever cause in the awful crash of matter; then the rounding down, the ice age, the glacier from the cold blue waters north, the grinding into form, the clay in the potter's hand on the wheel, Ossa on Pelon here, fathomless chasms there; a crash, a cañon is filled, and the hairy monster, the giant prim- itive man, leaning mutely on his stone-tipped spear, looks up in the morning and Ossa is not !

until 1862, at which time he enlisted in the Randville Rangers to engage in subduing the Indians. His comp- any was raised at the agency to join a regiment at Fort Snelling. They started on Friday, stopped a day at Fort Ridgley and on the 18th reached St. Peter's, where they were informed by a courier that the Indians had killed all the whites at the agency. It was claimed that 800 men, women and children were killed. The rangers returned as rapidly as possible, and were for seven days besieged by about 1,000 warriors, the rangers number- ing about forty-two, with the other whites with them numbering altogether about 200. The Indians tried every plan known to savage warfare to capture the brave little band, but without avail. After the seventh day of siege General Sibley came to their relief with three regiments and attacked the Indians and drove them off. They all pursued the red men as far as Wood lake, where another battle ensued, resulting in the complete subjugation of the Indians, the capture of 500 lodges, and the rescue of 300 white women and children from worse than death. Mr. Hoback's company was not then needed and was dis- banded. But the wild life of the frontier was suited to his adventurous nature, and soon after he enlisted in the Monntain Rangers and was sent out on the plains to pro- tect the emigrants. His company struck the main camp of the Sioux at Bone Hill, now in Dakota, just across the river where Bismark is now located; fought and whipped

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HISTORY OF MONTANA.

Ages and ages roll by ; beasts less monstrous, inan less a beast, grasses, God's still, small rain, gold and silver growing.

Ages roll by, storms of rain when the monnt- ains seem melting to the sea ; peaks topple, fall slide, in their slime and inud ; rivers in their track toward the sea ; huge abutments of ice- bound mountains, -they break away and dash to the valley bnttes !

In the bed of Cañon creek, Oregon, 1863, the head of a huge buffalo was found, although it is held by learned men that this beast never descended the western slope of the Rocky mon- tains. Cortez and his men fonnd no living animal in Mexico larger than the mountain goat, yet recent excavations show skeletons like that dug from the mine in Oregon. We thus see that at times all life was destroyed from one end of the continent to the other, only to be re- stored and destroyed, destroyed and restored. Meantime, as the mountains melted down, they

them, and then returned and went with Governor Ramsey up the Red river, where they made a treaty of peace with the Chippewa Indians; returned to Fort Snelling and were mustered out. In the spring of 1864 they were reorganized and formed the Second Minnesota Cavalry, being ordered south to New Orleans. Before they started on the march, however, the order was counter- manded and they were sent on the plains again, where they spent the summer. They came to the Missouri river under the command of General Thomas, there met General Sully, who took command, and the forces were angumented to 5,000 men. They laid out and built Fort Rice; came out to Ilart river, corraled the train there and then went north until they again reached the Sioux Indians, where a battle ensued resulting in victory to the whites; returned to their train and came on to the Bad Lands, and on the Little Missouri again struck the Indians and followed them to the Yellowstone river; crossed the river, went to old Fort Union, crossed the Missouri, took a line of march for Mouse river, and re- turned to Fort Rice. When they arrived at the fort they found Colonel J. Fisk and his company corraled by the Indians. A detail was sent to relieve him, and he came back to Fort Rice. They then returned to Fort Snelling and wintered there. In the summer of 1865 they were on duty on the frontier of Dakota and Minnesota, and the following winter they built Fort Wadsworth in the

washed down and so ground and ground to dust the gold that had been growing from æons baek. Ages and ages still of glaciers, mountains slid- ing toward the seas ; rivers forming ; world building.

May be the gold and silver formed more slow- ly as the fearful fissures, the sobbing, broken heart of earth began to heal and close under the hand of time ; may be gold and silver stopped forming or growing entirely. But, briefly, to use the vigorous phrase of the old miners of Cali- fornia, " gold grows as potatoes grow."

It brings us to our own time and quite out of the field of speeulation, to have Prof. Whitney in his geological survey of California point out that a certain valley in California was materially changed by the fearful storms of 1861-2. No one who has not really fronted and felt the rage of the elements, as this wearing down of the earth goes on, can comprehend its terror. What they must have been before man came, when the

Dakota Territory. In the spring of 1866 they were mus- tered out at Fort Snelling, During these campaigns Mr. Hoback traversed a large amount of territory, did lots of hard Indian fighting, and suffered many hardships and privations.

In the spring of 1866 a large company was formed to cross the plains to Montana, and of this party Mr. Iloback was a member. Their train was composed of 300 wagons. It was formed in Minnesota and came out to Montana on the route over which the Great Northern now runs its trains. Hle came to Helena and entered forty acres of land for mineral purposes. On this property he was en- gaged in placer mining for a number of years. After- ward he platted it, and to-day it forms a portion of the seventh ward of the city of IIelena, much of it being covered with residences. While engaged in mining ou this property, which was then called California Bar, Mr. Hloback and another man took out a pound of gold dust in five days, the value of which was $216. Ile continued his mining operations up to 1885. Since then he has purchased eighty acres of land a quarter of a mile further out. Ile has also been in partnership with Mr. C. W. Cannon in some large land deals.

Mr. Hoback was married in 1863 to Miss Mary Hayes, a native of Pennsylvania, and they are the parents of two children, William and Josephine; the first child was born in Minnesota, the latter in Helena. Their daughter

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saturated and dissolving mountains went daslı- ing down the gold-growing gorges toward the sea, who shall conceive or attempt to say ?

But as I chanced to be in the mountains of Idaho that terrible winter of storms referred to by the learned geologist, Whitney, and as I have already attempted to set down what I saw

there in the way of world-building and in the wearing down of gold-growing mountains and grinding of gold dust, I venture to trausmit the account to these pages, you will pardou the bit of romance or fiction. The personages are all real, the scenes and the superstition as entirely correct as can be set down.

CHAPTER XII.

ROCKY MOUNTAINS NOT ROCKY-CLIMATE MILD-THE COLD MONTHS NOT COLD-FIRST MINING IN MONTANA BY OREGONIANS.

O see Montana through the guidance of these pages with the eye of the true seer, you must lay aside many popular tradi- tions as you enter her doors.

In the first place, then, divest your mind of the idea that the Rocky mountains of Montana are rocky, rocky mountains. So far from that, they were from the first the great pasture fields of the red man, and black with buffaloes so fat in their season that they made earth tremble

with their might and numbers when their un- gainly bodies rolled in a terrified mass before their pursuers. The Rocky mountains of Mon- tana are, and are to be, fields of golden harvest, granaries of the civilized globe.

The only thing that strikes the stranger with awe and admiration, on first looking on Mon- tana, is her massiveness.

As you climb up the rounded, grassy steeps of the Rocky mountains of Montana, whether

is now the wife of Thomas Wilkinson and resides in Los Angeles, California.

Mr. Hoback is a member of the G. A. R. and A. O. U. W. Previous to the civil war he was a Douglas Democrat, but has since been a Republican. He has never been an office-seeker and he has given little time to political matters, the only office he ever held being that of Alder- man of Helena. He was one of the bravest of pioneers, has been an industrious man all his life, and by his wise investments at Helena has seenred a competency, to which every one feels he is richly entitled.

JOSEPH NICHOLAS KENCK, assistant cashier of the Second National Bank of Helena, has been a resident of Montana since 1866. Following is a brief sketch of his life:

Joseph N. Kenck was born in Doniphan, Kansas, Feb- ruary 27, 1862, and the same year his parents emigrated to Virginia City, Nevada. He is of German parentage, his father and mother being natives of Baden Baden. In 1866 the family came to Montana. Two years ago his

parents removed to San Diego, California, where they now reside.

The subject of our sketch received his early education in the public schools of Montana, and spent two years in school at Atchison, Kansas. He has resided in Diamond and Washington Gulch, two famous placer-producing sections, since coming to Montana, but the major portion of his time has been spent in Helena. After finishing his education he traveled in the East and South until 1885, when he accepted a position as bookkeeper in the Second National Bank of Helena, in which institution he was promoted to the position he now holds. At the city election of 1893 he was elected Alderman from the seventh ward of Helena, and he has also received the appointment of Public Administrator of Lewis and Clark counties. He is a member of the A. O. U. W., and relig- iously he is a Catholic. In politics he has ever been an enthusiastic Republican.

Mr. Kenck was married June 29, 1886, to Miss Agnes M. Kaiser, of Detroit, Michigan. They have four children, three sons and one daughter.

M. M. Quecars. M.S.

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from the east or from the west, you first notice a tremendous hill before you, and massive, grass- set tumuli to your right, to your left, behind and before, as you proceed. Yon pass huge hills dotted with herds, ribbons of rills thread- ing down and around and running together, here and there, forming wooded streams. Then you see before you more massive, grassy hills, more herds, more massive hills now, more herds, more hills, then more massive and mighty hills.

Such was the sublime aspect of this land when my eyes first looked upon it more than a generation ago, and such it must remain until "the wreck of matter and the crash of worlds."

Man may break this sublime monotony of na- ture a little, as time sweeps on, by a harvest

field where the ever fertile hilltops tempt him to sow and reap; he may set his little city and cen- ter of trade by the meadow brook at the base, he may gridiron the great, rounded domes of grass that stretch in billowy succession east and west and north and south, but he will never be able to drive from the mind of the stranger the conviction, as he first beholds Montana, that it was, at the first, cast in a tremendous mould.

In the second place, this northern border of the nation is not in all respects northern. This cold blue north, where the great stars glitter in the clear, sparkling air of the majestic winter, is not uncomfortably cold.

Another peculiarity of the winters in the Rocky mountains is the insensibility of residents

DR WILLIAM MASON BULLARD, a prominent member of the medical profession of Helena, Montana, was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, April 23, 1853.

Dr. Bullard's paternal ancestors came to this country from England and settled in Massachusetts, where many generations of the family have lived, among them being many prominent ministers and physicians. Indeed, the Bullards have been a family of ministers and physicians, honored and loved in their professions. The Doctor's maternal ancestors were nativeş of Ireland, and also professional people. Henry Ward Beecher was a rela- tive of Dr. Bullard, Mrs. Beecher being his father's sister. Dr. Talbut Bullard, the father of our subject, was a special surgeon in the Union army, under com- mission from Governor Morton, and in this way served his country up to the time of his death, in June, 1863, his death resulting from overwork and exposure in the fleld. He left a widow and two sons, the younger of whom died about ten years ago. Mrs. Bullard is still living, now in the sixty-eighth year of her age, honored and beloved by a large circle of friends, but by none more than her son.

Dr. William M. Bullard was reared to manhood in his native city, receiving his literary education there and at Cambridgeport, Massachusetts. He took a full medical course in the Indiana Medical College at Indianapolis, where he graduated with honors and received his degree of M. D., in 1876, and also studied chemistry at Heidel- berg, Germany. He was for a time assistant to the Chair of Chemistry in the Indiana Medical College, afterward succeeding Prof. H. W. Wiley, now Chief Chemist of the Agricultural Department at Washington, as Professor of Chemistry and Toxicology. After com

pleting his studies, he entered upon his professional career in Indianapolis, serving in turn the City Hospital as interne, and the City Dispensary.

He did not, however, remain there long, for in 1880 he came to Montana to accept the position of surgeon to the Alta Montana Company at Wickes, which afterward be- . came the Helena Mining and Reduction Company. From Wickes Dr. Bullard went to Pony, Madison connty, Montana, and took charge of the hospital for the Pony Gold Mining Company, remaining there until the com- pany ceased operations, when he settled in Helena. Here he became associated with Dr. Charles K. Cole, with office rooms in the First National Bank block, and soon found himself in the midst of a large and lucrativo practice. In 1889, when the Medical Practice act went nto effect, Dr. Bullard was appointed a member of the Board of Medical Examiners. At the end of the first year he received the appointment for the full term of seven years, and by the Board he has been chosen its secretary. Largely to his efforts is due the successful working of the law. He is secretary of the Lewis and Clarke County Medical Association, and also of the State Medical Association, and chairman of the Board of Health of the city of Helena. Dr. Bullard is a member of the American Medical Association, the Medico-Legal Society of New York, and the American Chemical Society of New York.

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An illustrated history of the state of Montana, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 28

Author: Miller, Joaquin, 1837-1913. cn Publication date: 1894 Publisher: Chicago, The Lewis pub. co. Number of Pages: 1216

Author: Miller, Joaquin, 1837-1913. cn
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: Chicago, The Lewis pub. co.
Number of Pages: 1216