Montana, its story and biography; a history of aboriginal and territorial Montana and three decades of statehood, Volume II, Part 145

Author: Stout, Tom, 1879- ed
Publication date: 1921
Publisher: Chicago, American Historical Society
Number of Pages: 1126

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Philo C. Hanson acquired a public school edu-

11.0. Walters.

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cation, beginning at Racine and continning at Butte. He left the Butte High School to take a special course in the Butte Business College, graduating in 1903, and then, at the age of twenty, began mak- ing his industry and his talents useful in the office of The Thompson Company. He was fortunate in getting into his proper field at the very outset, and it was not long before he was spoken of as a young man of more than ordinary powers and capabilities. In 1909 with Mr. MacPherson he bought out The Thompson Company and incorporated as the Mac- Pherson-Hanson Company, handling real estate, mining prospects and properties and investments. The business has had a steady growth, and the firm has handled some of the largest deals in recent years in Silver Bow County.

Mr. Hanson has all the qualities of a popular young business man. He mingles with his fellow men in varied relationships, as a hunter and lover of outdoors, a republican in politics, in Mount Moriah Lodge, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, and in the Scottish Rite Consistory, also in the Elks and Woodmen of the World at Butte. March 23, 1909, he married Miss Edith Terry, daughter of Elmore and Sarah J. (Boatman) Terry, of Butte. They have two daughters, Dorothy Racine and Helen Terry.

N. P. WALTERS has enjoyed a long residence at Helena, since 1883, and has found his talents and energies engaged in many interesting and useful lines of activity.

Mr. Walters was born at Onslunda, Province of Skane, Sweden, January 19, 1864, and was therefore only eighteen years of age when he came to Mon- tana. His father, Per Nilsson, spent all his life in the same locality as a farmer, born in 1841 and died in 1913. He served the regular time in the Swedish army and was a member of the Lutheran Church. He found his wife in the adjoining community of Efverod, Petronella Anderson, and she was born in 1841 and died in 1916. Three of their children came to America. Besides N. P. Walters there is Tilda, wife of Erick Olson, a painting contractor at West Superior, Wisconsin, and also Otto P. Walters, who is in the laundry business at Tacoma, Washington.

N. P. Walters acquired the equivalent of a high school education in his native country. He also had some experience as clerk in a store before coming over in April, 1882. His first location was at Grove City, Minnesota, but on April 3, 1883, he arrived at Montana and located at Helena in October of the same year. He had some various employment there for a time, and in 1886 began applying himself seri- ously to detective work, for which he had special qualifications. In 1887 he established his detective agency and has continned in that work to a certain extent to the present time, being correspondent and local representative for practically every large de- tective agency in the United States particularly in Pinkerton's National Detective Agency.

In the meantime a growing group of business in- terests have absorbed his energies. He has mined and ranched on a large scale, and among other interests today he is secretary and treasurer of the Helena Ice Company. For a number of years he was manager and director of the Old Bald Butte gold mine, one of the old and most productive gold mines of Montana.

Mr. Walters still maintains offices in the Union Bank Building. Soon after the United States en- tered the World war Mr. A. M. Briggs of Chi- cago organized the American Protective League to work in connection with the United States Depart- ment of Justice as a volunteer detective agency and for investigations and other work as exigency

required. Mr. Briggs was joined by Capt. Charles Daniel Frye, Victor Elting, Capt. J. T. Evans and S. S. Doty. The organization grew rapidly, the headquarters were moved to Washington to be in immediate touch with the various departments of government, and branches were established in every city, town and hamlet in the United States. Eventu- ally the league comprised a membership of nearly 300,000. Mr. Walters by obvious qualification was early selected by the executive officers of the or- ganization to direct the work in Montana, becoming chief in this state. He organized the Helena Divi- sion and later became state inspector in charge of the league work in Montana. He handled thousands of cases, in the apprehension of draft dodgers, in investigations prior to the granting of commissions in the army, navy and other branches of the serv- ice, in reporting on character and reputation of applicants for positions in the Y. M. C. A., Knights of Columbus and similar organizations. Its objects and purposes thoroughly performed, the league was disbanded February 1, 1919. In the meantime for more than twenty months Mr. Walters had given his time withont compensation to the task. The services of the Montana organization are a direct tribute to Mr. Walters, and the value of his work was commended by the national directors of the league. Probably no other volunteer organiza- tion auxiliary to the great war cause performed so much difficult and disagreeable work, and, by the very necessities of the character of the service, unrecognized and unappreciated by most people, ex- cept government officials who had direct knowledge of what the league was doing. The league was offi- cially thanked by Attorney General Gregory, who acknowledged that the Department of Justice would have been seriously crippled without the aid of this volunteer organization.

Mr. Walters has never taken part in any political campaign as candidate for office, though he has worked in the interest of good government, and has attended many local and state conventions of the republican party. He is affiliated with the Masonic fraternity, being a member of King Solomon Lodge, No. 9, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, Helena Chapter No. 2, Royal Arch Masons, Helena Council No. I, Royal and Select Masters, Helena Com- mandery No. 2, Knights Templar, Helena Consistory No. 3 of the Scottish Rite, and is a Knight Comman- der of the Court of Honor and a member of St. Peters Conclave No. 8 of the Knights of the Red Cross of Constantine. He is also affiliated with Algeria Temple of the Mystic Shrine, and Helena Court No. 5 of the Royal Order of Jesters and for several years past custodian of the Consistory- Shrine Temple. He is a charter member of the Helena Rotary Club.

He married at Helena in 1884 Maria Andersson, who was born at Sellshog, Province of Skane, Swe- den, a daughter of a noted educator, Per Andersson. They have two children. The son, N. P., Jr., at- tended Helena High School, is a graduate of the Minnesota School of Pharmacy at Minneapolis, and for the past eight years has been proprietor of the Walters Drug Company at Wolf Point, Mon- tana. The daughter, Marie, acquired a thorough literary and musical training, is a skilled vocalist and instrumentalist, and is now the wife of Dr. Clem L. Shafer, an osteopathic physician of Helena. Doctor and Mrs. Shafer have one child, Clem, born in November, 1918.

JOHN LINDSAY, former judge of the District Bench of Silver Bow County, earned his first suc- cesses in the law at Butte nearly thirty years ago

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and has justified every claim made for him as an able jurist and lawyer.

Mr. Lindsay was born at Lanarkshire, Scotland, September 23, 1864. His parents came to the United States when he was very young, and he received a common school education and attended the law department of the University of Minnesota. Grad- uating in 1901, he chose the new state of Montana as the scene and arena of his professional career. After a brief residence at Butte he was enjoying a living practice, and in 1896, at the age of thirty- two, was preferred by the democrats of Silver Bow County as their candidate for the district bench. He was a young lawyer, of good character and ability, but his qualifications for the bench were not generally accepted. There was a faction of his own party opposed to his nomination, but he was elected by a big majority and entered upon his duties in January, 1897. During the next four years Judge Lindsay applied himself to his judicial duties with a degree of earnestness that made his administration of the judicial court exceptional in volume of results and in the splendid character of his decisions. One interesting comment on his judicial career is found in a set of resolutions passed by a committee of lawyers, including the following : "It is the sense of the bar of Butte that during his incumbency of the office he has just retired from the Hon. Judge Lindsay has discharged his duties with such painstaking care and with such high sense of honor as has made for himself a name of which he and his descendants may be justly proud." Another comment, to some degree even more flat- tering, is found in a newspaper which had opposed his election: "Sometime in the course of a life- time every man is liable to make a mistake. What is true of a man is equally true of a newspaper. In the four years. Judge Lindsay presided over one of the two departments of the District Court he showed himself a model judge. His record is an open book-one he has good cause to be proud of -one that may serve as an example to others upon whom time and conditions may impose the same arduous duties."

Since retiring from the bench Judge Lindsay has given his undivided time and energies to a private practice, and has satisfied the most exact- ing requirements of a successful lawyer.

He married Miss Cora Lee, of Burlington, Iowa. Their three children are Ruth Christie, William Harvey and Marion Lindsay.

WILLIAM MARTIN TUOHY is a veteran business man of Butte, a city with which his home and chief interests have been identified thirty years, since 1800.

He was born at Bradford, Ontario, February 8, 1864. In Butte he has played an active part in commercial affairs, and for many years has been president of the Northwest Coal Company, one of the largest coal dealing concerns in the Northwest with headquarters at Butte. Mr. Tuohy has never been in politics, his zeal in the public interests being chiefly expressed through his work and official con- nection with the public schools. For many years the people kept him on the county school board, and the advanced facilities and standards of the Butte public schools are to be credited in a large degree to his unflagging efforts in the cause of public education.

Mr. Tuohy is a member of the Silver Bow Club and is affiliated with the order of Elks. He mar- ried Miss Anna Lee Kremer, of an old Kentucky family. They have three children. Florence Belle, wife of J. Ryan Gaul, with the Montana Power

Company, in Butte; Charles, who was in the signal service during the late war as second lieutenant and was drowned at Vancouver Barracks on February 10, 1917; and Anna Lee.

SAMUEL BARKER has spent nearly all his life in the great mining districts of the Far West, and for a quarter of a century has earned and main- tained a high position among the mining engineers of Montana.

Mr. Barker, whose home is at Butte, was born in England, May 17, 1869, son of Samuel and Eliza- beth (Oliver) Barker. His father met a tragic death in 1869 and the widowed mother five years later, in 1874, with her only child came to America. She made her home for ten years at Virginia City, Nevada, and then came to Butte.

Samuel Barker attended his first school in Vir- ginia City, Nevada, and finished his literary educa- tion in the Butte High School. Neither wealth nor influential friends had any part in shaping his early career. He accepted life as he found it, and has been the architect of his own destiny. At the age of sixteen he was apprenticed to the firm of Korn- berg & Hoff, civil and mining engineers. He served another four years' apprenticeship with Wilson & Gillie, prominent mining engineers, and rounded out his professional education at the College of Mon- tana at Deer Lodge, from which he received his degree Mining Engineer in 1895.

After leaving college Mr. Barker resumed his employment with Wilson and Gillie at Butte a few months and in December, 1895, was placed on the engineering staff of the Anaconda Mining & Cop- per Company as engineer. In August, 1897, he and W. W. Pennington acquired the engineering busi- ness of Wilson & Gillie, and since then Mr. Barker has engaged in an engineering practice that has made his skill widely known all over Montana. He has acquired mining interests of his own and enjoys a secure reputation in business, professional and civic circles.

Mr. Barker is a member of the American Insti- tute of Mining Engineers, has served as an official of the Montana Society of Engineers and is a mem- ber of the National Geographic Society. He rep- resented the Sixth Ward of Butte one or two terms in the council, and is a member of the Silver Bow Club, Mount Moriah Lodge No. 24, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, Butte Consistory of the Scot- tish Rite and Bagdad Temple of the Mystic Shrine. He is a republican voter.

At Helena December 14. 1896, Mr. Barker mar- ried Blanche Stuart, daughter of Samuel D. and Amanda J. Stuart. Mrs. Barker was born in Iowa, and was liberally educated, achieving a high degree of proficiency in painting, both in oil and water colors. Mr. and Mrs. Barker have one son, Samuel Stuart Barker, born at Butte December 31, 1903. The family reside at 845 West Galena Street, while Mr. Barker's offices are at 60 East Granite Street.

LEWIS A. SMITH is one of the most loyal and enthusiastic citizen Butte has ever had. He first came to this city nearly thirty years ago, and its charms and advantages made such a strong impres- sion upon him that as soon as he had qualified for the law he returned and since 1806 has been one of the hard working and eminently successful law- yers of the city.

He was born at Blandinsville, Illinois, February 27, 1871, son of Peter A. and Sarah J. (Stimson) Smith. His grandfather, Ambrose B. Smith, was horn September 22, 1810. and died July 2, 1859, in Indiana. Peter A. Smith was born in Indiana June

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24, 1842, and when about nineteen years of age en- listed in a regiment of artillery for service in the Civil war. He was all through the war, his chief commander being General Sherman. On January 23, 1864, he married Sarah J. Stimson, who was born in Michigan October 11, 1847. From Illi- nois the Smith family removed in 1877 to Burling- ton, Iowa, where Peter A. Smith developed a large and successful business in blacksmithing and car- riage manufacturing. He and his wife had three children : Cora C., born April 22, 1866, and died in 1874; Frank A., born September 13, 1868, who became a. contractor at Burlington, Iowa; and Lewis A.

Lewis A. Smith acquired his public school edu- cation at Burlington, Iowa, and in 1888, at the age of seventeen, left home and with a boyish zest for travel and adventure traveled over many of the western states. At different times he was in Omaha, Denver, San Francisco, Portland and Spokane, and in 1891 arrived in Butte, where he remained until 1893. That year he returned to Iowa and entered the law school of the State University, graduating LL. B. in June, 1895. While he had some experi- ence as a lawyer at Peoria, Illinois, he soon re- turned to Montana and was admitted to the Supreme Court March 11, 1896. Since that year his time and talents have been taken up with a constantly enlarging general practice at Butte, and today his name is associated with the very ablest lawyers of the state.

In 1908 he was a candidate on the republican ticket for district judge, being defeated by a small majority. He was elected an alderman from the Fourth Ward of Butte April 1, 1912, and served as president of the Council one year, and acting mayor of Butte. Upon the organization of the Silver Bow County Bar Association in January, 1905, he was elected the first secretary and filled that office for a number of years. He is widely known over the state as a Mason and has been an official of the Grand Lodge. He was worship- ful master in 1906 of Mount Moriah Lodge No. 24, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, at Butte, in 1914 and 1915 was grand master of Masons of Mon- tana, and has taken thirty-two degrees in the Scot- tish Rite and is a member of Bagdad Temple of the Mystic Shrine. He is also affiliated with the Modern Woodmen of America and the Fraternal Brotherhood. Other important interests outside of his home and profession are dictated by his love of outdoor sports, hunting and motoring being his favorite pasttimes. He is a member of the Episco- pal Church.

By his first marriage Mr. Smith had two children : Walter Allen, born Jannary 25, 1902, at Butte, and died of lockjaw, brought on by an old-fashioned Fourth of July celebration, in July, 1910; and Lil- lian, born December 13, 1896, and died July 31, 1897. His son's death was due to the explosion of a toy pistol, and Mr. Smith employed his personal tragedy to impress upon the Legislature at the next session a law prohibiting the sale of toy pistols in Mon- tana, one of the first practical steps taken by any state to enforce what is now practically a nation- wide safe and sane observance of the national holiday. Mr. Smith married December 25, 1909, Miss Lillian De Mordaunt, who died December 1I, 1911. In 1913 he married Miss Rose Blake, then principal of the Franklin School of Butte and a daughter of one of Montana's early pioneers.

ANTON M. HOLTER, at the age of eighty-nine, is one of the very few survivors of that band of Montana pioneers who came in the early '6os. A

sketch of his personal career is more than biography, it is true history, and involves the beginning of the lumber industry in Montana and much of the manufacturing and industrial enterprise of the old territory and early state. His life has thoroughly deserved the just tribute paid him some years ago: "He is one of those rugged indomitable spirits to whom the coming generation inhabiting the North- west, and especially Montana, will owe in a large degree the magnificent heritage that awaits them."

Anton M. Holter was born thirty-two miles south of Christiania, Norway, June 29, 1831, son of Foin and Berta M. (Floxstad) Holter. As a young man he learned a mechanical trade, and in April, 1854, set out for America, landing at Quebec May 25th. He traveled by railroad with others of his fellow countrymen to Rock Island, Illinois, reaching there at a time of a cholera epidemic, and fortunately making his escape by river boat to the vicinity of Decorah, Iowa, where he worked at his trade at wages of $20 a month. He also made one or two small investments, and at the end of a year had accumulated a capital of $300. During the next four or five years he was in Missouri and Iowa, and in the spring of 1860 started for the gold fields of the Pike's Peak district in Colorado. He and his brother Martin remained there mining and farming for sev- eral years.

Some years ago Mr. Holter contributed to a trade journal an article entitled "Pioneer Lumbering in Montana," and gives an interesting account of his coming to Montana and his first operations in the lumber business in the territory. In the spring of 1863 he started with a team of oxen to Colorado, and from there joined a large party whose destina- tion was what is now known as Ruby River, Madison County, Montana. They left Colorado in September, 1863, and owing to their slow progress Mr. Holter and Mr. Evenson, who had arranged a partnership for the purpose of setting up a sawmill in Montana, left the main train and arrived at Bevin's Gulch, abont eighteen miles from Virginia City, in Novem- ber. They had bought a second-hand saw mill ont- fit, and during the following winter they. contended with every conceivable difficulty, including personal danger, making a camp, setting up their machinery, and in the absence of foundries and machine shops contriving with remarkable ingenuity to make a limited equipment serve the intended purpose. Mr. Holter gives a most interesting account of one of Montana's first industrial enterprises, and while that account is too long to be published here, it has the great historic value of showing conditions of early territorial times and the almost insurmountable difficulties confronting men engaged in any line of manufacturing.

Mr. Holter finally purchased Mr. Evenson's inter- est in the business and formed a partnership with his brother Martin Holter under the name A. M. Holter & Brother. This firm established the first planing mill in Montana in the summer of 1865, operating it in conjunction with a saw mill on Ten Mile Creek, about eight miles from Helena. After going east to purchase new machinery, Mr. Holter describes conditions affecting the lumber industry in the following sentences: "I arrived in Helena on the 17th of May and found the Inmber business in a bad way. The firm of A. M. Holter & Brother had closed the mill with the first snow storm in the fall and had sent all the livestock to winter quarters, so in a short time they were out of lumber and also out of business. My first move was to hurry the men after live stock and to prepare to start the mill. Shortly after I had left Helena in 1866 the cut- ting of prices began, and from this time on the custom of selling for what you could get prevailed.

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HISTORY OF MONTANA

The prices obtained by A. M. Holter & Brother for the year 1867 and up to August, 1868, averaged about $50 for common lumber and $60 per thousand feet for sluice, flume, and the better grades, but during the month of August we reduced these prices $10 per thousand, without consultation with other dealers. We had reduced the price of planing mill work to $25 and $20 per thousand, according to quantity and $10 for surfacing. Shingles sold for $6 and lath for $12. We maintained the prices on the last three items, as we had no competition on these. I finally got the mill started and also erected a new mill on Spring Creek. Several more mills sprang up in the vicinity of Helena, mostly operated by inexperienced men on borrowed capital, at a high rate of interest, so they soon came to grief. I bought up some of these saw mills in 1868 and 1869. We also added to our holdings a water mill near Jefferson City in Jefferson County, and a portable steam mill that we located near Lincoln, in what is now Lewis and Clark county."

For many years Mr. Holter was one of the fore- most figures in the lumber industry in the Northwest. He and his brother established in Helena in 1868 the first sash and door factory in Montana, the plant being operated until destroyed by fire in 1879. Mr. Holter established a pioneer lumber business at Great Falls in 1886. He became associated with William Thompson in the Montana Lumber & Manu- facturing Company in 1889, this company operating all over the western part of the state, with main offices at Helena and Butte. Later his interests were extended to Idaho, Oregon, and even to Alaska.

Mr. Holter still retains his official post as presi- dent of the A. M. Holter Hardware Company. This is one of the oldest business organizations' of Helena, having been established in 1867, by Mr. Holter and his brother. Originally it was a general merchandise store, but later became a general hardware business and for years has been conducted both wholesale and retail.

Mr. Holter was one of the organizers and incor- porators of the company that established the first waterworks system in Montana, known as the Vir- ginia City Waterworks Company, incorporated in January, 1865. This was the first corporation or- ganized in the Territory of Montana, receiving its charter from the first Legislature. The water mains were logs, with a three-inch hole bored from end to end, and by this crude pipe water was conveyed a distance of two miles. Nearly all the equipment, including faucets and valves, were made by hand.

Mr. Holter was also identified ·with the first hydro- electric development in Montana. In 1890 he and associates made application for the use of the water of the Missouri River near Helena for power pur- poses, and secured permission from Congress to construct a dam across the river as a means of developing the power.

In '1875 Mr. Holter and brother bought from a German inventor the rights to manufacture the Utsch Jig, a machine for concentrating ore. This was the first jigging machine ever worked success- fully in the mining business, and had a wide and effective use in the mines of the Northwest. Mr. Holter was also one of the organizers in 1898 of the Sand Point Lumber Company at Sand Point, Idaho, later known as the Hambird Lumber Com- pany.

Such a career in itself is a constructive public service, but Mr. Holter at different times has been identified with official public life. He was the first republican ever elected to office in Helena, being chosen a member of the Territorial Legislature in 1878. In 1888 he was elected a member of the

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Montana, its story and biography; a history of aboriginal and territorial Montana and three decades of statehood, Volume II, Part 145

Author: Stout, Tom, 1879- ed Publication date: 1921 Publisher: Chicago, American Historical Society Number of Pages: 1126

Author: Stout, Tom, 1879- ed
Publication date: 1921
Publisher: Chicago, American Historical Society
Number of Pages: 1126