Montana, its story and biography; a history of aboriginal and territorial Montana and three decades of statehood, Volume III, Part 105

Author: Stout, Tom, 1879- ed
Publication date: 1921
Publisher: Chicago, American Historical Society
Number of Pages: 1144

USA > Montana > Montana, its story and biography; a history of aboriginal and territorial Montana and three decades of statehood, Volume III > Part 105

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HISTORY OF MONTANA

ver, Colorado, January 25, 1919. He is one of the organizers of Havre Post, American Legion, and also of the one at Glasgow.

On May 10, 1919, Judge Hall was united in mar- riage at Great Falls, Montana, to Miss Georgie Coleman, a daughter of George Coleman, who came to Montana from Missouri. Mrs. Hall was born at Memphis, Missouri, August 20, 1895. Her mother bore the maiden name of Frances Broadwater, and she belongs to the same family as the pioneer Broad- waters of Montana. Mr. and Mrs. Coleman had two daughters born to them: Mrs. Hall and Miss Martha Coleman. Like his honored father, Judge . Hall is a democrat, and he cast his first presiden- tial vote for Woodrow Wilson. He is a Master Mason.

PRESLEY L. HERRING is now serving his second term as postmaster of Glasgow. While this is his only public office and he has never sought leader- ship in political affairs, Mr. Herring is widely known over this section of the state as a very suc- cessful farmer and rancher, and has given the patrons of the postoffice of Glasgow a complete measure of satisfaction and service.

Mr. Herring, whose operations as a cattleman began in Montana about eighteen years ago, had a wide experience in that industry in the South before coming to Montana. He was born at Peoria, Hill County, Texas, January 9, 1863. His grandfather, John Herring, was a native of England, came to this country early in the nineteenth century, and was descended from a Herring whose family orig- inated in a German province. John Herring was a farmer and lived for a number of years in Peoria County, Illinois. Jesse L. Herring, father of the Montana postmaster, moved overland from Peoria, Illinois, to Texas some years before the beginning of the war between the states. He was one of the first settlers in that portion of "Hill County where the village of Peoria was established. When the war came on he entered the Confederate Army, but otherwise spent his active career as a farmer. He died in the spring of 1885, at the age of sixty- seven. He had a large family, the children of his first marriage being: Will, who spent his life in Hill County ; Cornelius T., a prominent oil mill operator, land owner and banker in the Panhandle country of Texas at Amarillo; John, who died at Blanco, Texas; Emerson, a Texas farmer ; "Doc." who died in Greer County. Oklahoma; F. E. (EI), of Oklahoma City. At Peoria, Texas, Jesse L. Herring married for his second wife Martha J. Webb, who was born in Mississippi, daughter of Presley Webb, a farmer and an early Texas settler. Mrs. Martha Herring is now living at Pyote, Texas. at the age of eighty-seven. Her children were: Sarah; Mrs. Frank Green, of Lodi, California; Presley L .; George O., of Grand Falls, Texas; Euna, wife of Sam T. Wilkes, of Powell, Texas; Thomas J., of Hillsboro; Lottie, wife of James Arm- strong, of Grand Falls: James, still living in Texas; Pet M., a farmer at Pyote, Texas; and Lillie, wife of N. C. Young, of Marshall, Texas.

Presley L. Herring grew up in a rural district of Texas, attended the local schools, and left the old home at the age of sixteen, spending his first year as a wage worker. About that time he began riding the range, and he hardly remembers a time when he was not perfectly at home in the saddle. The following winter he spent with his brother C. T., going to East Texas and Arkansas, buying cattle, and after collecting them driving to Fort Worth and holding them on the range until sale. This expedition was repeated yearly until 1884, their purchases being made largely in Arkansas, Louisiana

and Texas, with Fort Worth as the ultimate market.

In the spring of 1884 Presley L. Herring drove a herd of cattle across the Indiana Territory to Cald- well, Kansas, for sale, delivering them in Novem- ber. With his outfit of horses and wagons he moved into Western Indiana Territory on the north fork of Red River, establishing a camp near where Navajo now is. For the following ten years he and his brother Cornelius T. carried on an extensive business as cattle men. In the spring of 1894 Mr. Herring moved toward Woodward County, Oklahoma, estab- lishing a ranch near old Fort Supply. In February, 1897, going to Memphis, Tennessee, he bought up about 25,000 head of cattle, about 15,000 of which he took to the Kaw Nation in Northeastern Okla- homa. Here the Texas fever struck the herd and in three weeks 1,900 head had died. In the fall the larger part of the cattle were shipped to Engle- wood, Kansas, and the 'remainder the next spring, and Presley Herring drove about 7,000 head to Coolidge, Kansas, where he made his headquarters, running his stock on the Arkansas River along the Colorado and Kansas line.

In order to secure more range, since the public domain of Western Kansas was being rapidly di- vided up among settlers, Mr. Herring came into Montana in 1902 and located his ranch headquarters near old Kismet on the Musselshell River. He con- tinued handling cattle there until the spring of 1906, when he made the final disposition of his holdings as a range stockman. He had brought in his first consignment of cattle in 1901, and the following year the remainder of 12,000 head. These were kept on the grass until 1904, before the first shipment was made. Prices were exceedingly low in the early years of the century, and his experience fur- nishes a vivid contrast to modern war time prices. A shipment of 5,000 head sent out to market in 1904 netted him between $29 and $30 a head. In 1905, 4,000 head went to market, averaging a little over $31 apiece. The final shipment, cleaning up his herd, in 1906, brought about $50 a head. In the meantime, after the final checking up was made, it was discovered that about 1,800 head of the "lazy S" brand had disappeared and could not be accounted for.

On leaving the stock business as a range man Mr. Herring entered a homestead two miles south of Glasgow, in the Milk River Valley, in 1905. For seven years he and his family lived on the farm and ranch, and enjoyed the comforts of a good country home, a seven-room frame house with waterworks. While there Mr. Herring did much to develop agriculture, believing in the fertility of the soil, and his experiences demonstrated the possi- bilities of crop growing. His best wheat yield was from thirty to thirty-five bushels per acre, his oat crop was equally promising, and an experiment withi potato planting yielded approximately 400 bushels to the acre. Still more remarkable was his corn yield. A measured acre of ground yielded more than 100 bushels of squaw corn. Around his home he developed a tract of half a section to an alfalfa farm. The second crop grown on his land had alfalfa seeded in the ground, and that great legume proved its worth, and the farm is now practically a hay farm.

During these years Mr. Herring also carried on a business as a horse dealer, shipping his stock to railroad and ditch contractors in this country and Canada. While the Herring residence is in Glas- gow in winter it is on the farm in summer, where the children have a better environment and learn the lessons of industry. Mr. Herring was brought up in a democratic home, cast his first presidential vote for Mr. Bryan at Englewood, Kansas, though,

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as already stated, he was never burdened with the cares of office until his appointment as postmaster of Glasgow in 1915. He succeeded Mrs. Mary L. Bohnard, and was reappointed for his second term in August, 1919. His term has covered a busy time in postal affairs, involving many extraordinary items of finance for the Government.

At Henderson, Tennessee, April 25, 1897, Mr. Herring married Miss Carrie Baynham. She was born December 3, 1873, at Lafayette, Kentucky, a daughter of Alexander and Martha J. (Rossiter) Baynham. Mr. and Mrs. Herring have two chil- dren. The daughter, Carrye Neal, is a student in the Ward-Belmont Seminary, one of the leading woman's colleges in the South, at Nashville, Ten- nessee. The son, Charles Thomas, popularly known among his mates as "Tom," is in the Glasgow High School.

CURTIS W. POWELL, sheriff of Valley County, came to Montana a year or so before statehood, as a cowboy was associated with many of the strong and reckless men of the ranch and range period, has been in business for himself as a rancher, freighter and merchant, and his character is iden- tified with many of the fine qualities which the people of Montana admire and respect.

Mr. Powell has spent most of his life on the frontier of the Northwest, and his father was a man of many adventures and experiences in the country. He was born in Scott County, Iowa, De- cember 12, 1867. His father, William Powell, was a native of England, and at the age of three years was brought to the United States by his parents, Frank and Amanda (Reece) Powell. Frank Powell took up a homestead in Scott County, Iowa, and subsequently became a California forty-niner. He was in the placer mines for several years, and re- turned to Cleveland, Ohio, with a "good stake." He spent his last years as a farmer in Scott County, Iowa.

William Powell, third child of his parents, ac- quired a limited education, but had the native in- telligence and the resourcefulness to carry on any business successfully in which he engaged. One of his first experiences of early manhood was his en- listment for service in the Civil war. . He joined Company G of the Fourteenth Iowa Infantry, was under General Butler at New Orleans, in the battle of Pittsburg Landing at Shiloh, was taken prisoner in Alabama, and spent eighty-six days of trial and suffering in Andersonville prison. After his ex- change he returned home, but three months later again entered the army as a substitute for Charles Pinneo, and was on duty until the close, coming out with the rank of sergeant. Though in many battles he was never wounded. He left his busi- ness as an Iowa farmer and sought the oppor- tunities of the Far West, becoming a bull team freighter in Wyoming as early as 1878. He oper- ated five outfits, each consisting of five wagons and with from eighteen to twenty-five yoke of cattle to the string. He freighted from Fort Cheyenne to Fort Laramie and Fort Fetterman and to Running Water north of Cheyenne, and in 1880 moved his family out to Cheyenne. After about 1885 he en- gaged in ranching at Running Water, now Lusk, Wyoming. His tastes and inclinations always kept him on the frontier of civilization. Finally he joined a party of adventurers bound for Alaska, that being two years before the discovery of gold in the Klon- dike. He did prospecting and mining in the Far North, and was in Dawson City and one of the first men to go to Nome after the gold discoveries there. For a number of years he spent his winters at Long Beach, California, and returned to his mining busi-

ness every spring. He and a partner sold their mining property in the North for $120,000, but evi- dently money was not the goal of his ambition, since he continued mining as a fascinating game, and had expended nearly all his fortune before he died. He passed away at Skagway, October 9, 1911, when almost seventy-one years of age, and was buried in that city of the Far North. William Powell married Pauline Culbertson, who was born in Penn- sylvania, a daughter of Hiram and Virginia (Scott) Culbertson, and she is now living at Long Beach, California. Her children were: Curtis W .; Lena, wife of George J. Dunn, of Salt Lake, Utah; and Bertha, wife of George Highley, of Edgemont, South Dakota.

Curtis W. Powell was reared in Wyoming from the age of thirteen. He was presented with ideal opportunities for a liberal education, but was not disposed to take advantage of them, and had only a common school training. On his father's ranch he was made acquainted with the work of a cowboy, and when he left home in 1885 he went to work for John Kendrick, now United States senator from Wyoming, and then foreman of the "77" ranch, sixteen miles west of Lusk. After a year there he joined the Converse Cattle Company, going on the "OW" ranch under Jerry Drummond as foreman, and continued in that locality, about sixteen miles north of Lusk, until the fall of 1887.

Soon afterward Mr. Powell came into Montana and earned his first dollar in the state at common labor, hauling cordwood and banking it on the Mis- souri for steamboats. His employer was "Uncle" Bill Williams, and his work was done at the mouth of the Musselshell River. About May 15, 1888, he entered the service of the Pioneer Cattle Company, one of the old livestock concerns of the state, owned by the venerable Conrad Kohrs, now of Helena. While with the Pioneer Company Mr. Powell be- came acquainted with a number of men who were real characters of that early day. Among them were the Curry brothers, one of whom, "Kid," later became a train robber; John R. Smith, foreman, a man of wide reputation in the ranching life of the Northwest at that time; Lem Branson, now hotel proprietor at Nashua; Bill Coyle and Ben Rogers, the latter now an old man but still ranching on Squaw Creek south of Malta; Horace Brewster, a "packer" in Glacier Park, Montana; Jim Thornhill, a close friend of Kid Curry, but a good citizen and still in the stock business at Globe, Arizona; Sam Moore, known among his pals as "Hurricane Bill," a name descriptive of his wild, reckless dis- position, but ever a good citizen and a man of good intentions, who recently died at Lumpkin, Georgia, as a cotton planter. These and others frequently rendezvoused for their periods of gayety at Malta, which was tributary to the headquarters of the com- pany, but contained nothing but a stock yard, a store and saloon and an apology for a hotel, whose proprietor was Jim Hyatt. These boys all became identified with the Pioneer Company about the same time, and most of their names are only memo- ries now cherished by such permanent citizens as Mr. Powell.

The latter remained with the Pioneer Company from the spring of 1888 until the spring of 1893. While with them he shipped the first car of stock over the Great Northern, six miles east of Malta at what was then Bodoin but now Streeter Siding. Leaving the range in the spring of 1893, he and Bill Reeves engaged in the saloon business at Malta and at the same time ran a bunch of cattle on the range. Mr. Powell was at Malta until the spring of 1895. He married while there and soon after- ward went to Landusky and continued in the liquor

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HISTORY OF MONTANA

business and as a cattle man. After disposing of his saloon he took up freighting, hauling ore from Landusky to Chinook with two string teams, one of ten horses and the other of twelve horses. That business, continued for about three years, brought him some profits, and when he sold his outfit he opened a general store at Landusky and for two years was a merchant. Returning to Malta in 1900, he took up a ranch, and combined horse and cattle raising with some farming.

That region was then in Valley County, which extended some six miles west of Malta to the North Dakota line. On January 1, 1905, Mr. Powell was appointed deputy sheriff under Sheriff Griffith, now of Scobey. He continued to look after his ranching interests during his two years as deputy. In 1908 he became republican nominee for sheriff of Valley County, but was defeated in the election. His home and headquarters were on the ranch until the fall of Igro, and on the Ist of January of the following year he moved to Glasgow and served during as under-sheriff with Sheriff Stephens. On returning to Malta he engaged in the livery business, and in 1914 was again in politics as republican candidate for sheriff, being elected and succeeding Pat Nacy, now sheriff of Roosevelt County. Mr. Powell was re-elected in 1916 and in 1918, receiving the largest majority in 1916 of any candidate on the ticket.

May 1, 1895, Mr. Powell married Miss Lizzie Allen, who was born in Minnesota, May 15, 1872, daughter of Leon and Sarah (Coombs) Allen, her parents natives of Maine, and they spent their lives as farmers. There were seven children in the Allen family, five of whom are still living, two in Canada and one in North Dakota, while her mother and a sister reside in Spokane. Of the four children of Mr. and Mrs. Powell, Frank W. is in the train service of the Great Northern, Emmet J. is jailor under his father, and Cora and Evely are in school at Glasgow.

Mr. Powell cast his first presidential vote at « addition to becoming a ranchman he was manager Malta for Benjamin Harrison in 1892, and has always been a "regular" in party matters. He be- came affiliated with the Masonic Lodge at Glasgow and also the Chapter and Commandery, and is a member of the Mystic Shrine at Helena.

As this review indicates, Mr. Powell has always lived in close touch with men and affairs in his section of Montana and there should not be left out of the record some account of what he did dur- ing the World war. He was chairman of the local board for selective service, and in his official capac- ity as sheriff proved a strong arm of patriotism in combating disloyalty and sedition and kept draft evasion down to a minimum.

JACOB LYBRAND DE HART. Although during the past we Americans may have wasted some of our important national assets, a change has taken place, much attention now being given toward the preser- vation of our forests, the utilization of our natural water supply and the protection of wild life in all parts of our country. Every state in the Union has adopted fish and game laws and regulations, and has state officers to see that these laws and regu- lations are faithfully carried out. Prominent among the men thus employed is Jacob Lybrand De Hart, of Helena, state game warden of Montana and sec- retary of the Montana Game and Fish Commission, positions for which he is amply qualified, and which he is filling with credit to himself and to the satis- faction of all concerned. A native of Wisconsin, he was born March 27, 1861, in West Lima, Rich- land County, a son of the late Joseph Lepley De Hart.

His paternal grandfather, Henry B. De Hart, was born and bred in Martinsburg, West Virginia, being a lineal descendant of one of three brothers who came from France to America with General LaFayette in colonial days, one settling in Florida, one on Long Island, while the founder of the branch of the family from which he descended located in New Jersey. Following the pioneer's trail to Wis- consin, he settled in West Lima, Richland County, where he was engaged in the manufacture of shoes until his death in 1879. He was a great lover of sports, and although he was a strong believer in the protection of wild life was a noted hunter during the hunting seasons. He married Elizabeth Lepley, a daughter of Joseph, who migrated from Pennsyl- vania to Ohio, becoming a pioneer settler of the Wester Reserve. She was born in Ohio, and died at West Lima, Wisconsin. The great-grandmother of Mr. De Hart was a member of the Morrison family, Congressman Morrison of Illinois being one of her collateral kindred.

Joseph Lepley De Hart was born in Mount Ver- non, Knox County, Ohio, in 1835, and was reared and educated in Southwestern Wisconsin. A man of much energy and enterprise, he became prom- inent in the business circles of that locality, not only as a farmer and livestock raiser and dealer, but as a lumber manufacturer and dealer. Mi- grating to Minnesota in 1856, in pioneer days, he drove the stakes for a surveying party that laid out the town of Glencoe, and subsequently became interested in Government freighting from Fort Snelling near St. Paul to Fort Abercrombie. Re- turning to Wisconsin, he took unto himself a wife, and was engaged in farming, stock raising and lum- ber dealing until 1873, making his home at West Lima. Going in that year to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, he was engaged in the pioneer labor of farming and land dealing for about ten years.

Coming from there to Montana in 1883, Joseph Lepley De Hart located at Miles City, where in of the De Hart Live Stock Company, which was located on the Rosebud River, twenty miles south of the Yellowstone River, in what was then Custer County. Disposing of his interests there in 1900, he moved to Great Falls, Montana, where as a rep- resentative of the Twin City Stockyards he had charge of shipping all consignments of cattle, horses and sheep, and of purchasing all of the grain and hay for them, continuing thus occupied until his death in April, 1906. A democrat in politics, he took an active interest in party affairs, and attended many state and national conventions. He cast his first presidential vote for John C. Fremont, the repub- lican candidate. He was a member of the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons. During the Civil war he served as head of the commissary department, being located at Camp Randell, Wisconsin.

Joseph Lepley De Hart married Margaret John- son Ammerman, who was born in Muncie, Indiana, in 1839, and died in Livingston, Montana, in 1912, her body being laid to rest at Great Falls, Montana. Five children were born of their union, as follows: Ivan, who lived but six years; Jacob Lybrand, the special subject of this sketch; Alice, wife of Paul W. Mahoney, a prominent attorney of LaCrosse, Wisconsin; Bransom Bailey, a cook in the lumber woods and also for men employed in railroad con- struction, was accidentally killed in January, 1913. at Seattle, Washington, his body being buried at Great Falls, Montana; and Mary Elizabeth, whose husband, Robert M. Burris, a merchant of Great Falls, died in 1906.

Leaving the public schools of West Lima, Wis- consin, at the age of seventeen years, Jacob Ly-

JENNIE M. MORRIS AND ROBERT PEARCE

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brand De Hart engaged in the live stock business with his father, accompanying the family to South Dakota, and to Miles City, Montana. Locating in Livingston, Montana, in 1888, he was engaged in the publication of the Livingston Herald, a demo- cratic newspaper of which his brother-in-law, Paul W. Mahoney, was the editor, being its circulating manager until 1895. Sweet Grass County being created in March of that year, Mr. De Hart was elected sheriff of the county for a term of two years, and in 1897 was re-elected to the same position. Be- coming associated with the Strayhorn, Huttons, Evans Commission Company of the Chicago Stock- yards, he served as its Western representative for three years, from 1899 until 1902, and was subse- quently with Rosenbaum & Company, a Chicago live stock firm, for three years, with headquarters at Great Falls, Montana.

From 1905 until 1909 Mr. De Hart had charge of the Conrad Land & Investment Company of Valier, Montana, and for the ensuing two years had charge of the two ranches of Mr. Augustine Heinze in Teton County, Montana, and of his live stock interests. From 1910 until 1913 he was con- nected with the Humane Department of the State of Montana, with headquarters at Great Falls. In 1913 Mr. De Hart was appointed by Governor S. V. Stewart state game warden and secretary of the Montana Game and Fish Commission, positions which he has since filled most ably and satisfac- torily, his long tenure of office bearing visible evi- dence of his ability and fidelity. Mr. De Hart is also interested in other matters, being a stockholder in the "Cream of the West," a company manufac- turing a cereal at Billings, Montana, and is vice president of the Gold & Silver Mining Company of Cooke City, Montana, Politically he is a stanch democrat, and fraternally he is a thirty-second de- gree Mason. He was made a Mason at Richland Center, Wisconsin, in 1881, by special dispensation ; is a member of Livingston Consistory and of Algeria Temple, Ancient Arabic Order Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, of Helena. Mr. De Hart married in 1896 Miss Jennie Dillon, a daughter of Capt. Henry and Ann Dillon, neither of whom are now living. Her father served as a captain in the Sixth Wisconsin Battery during the Civil war, and afterward settled at Lone Rock, Wisconsin, where both he and his wife spent their closing years. Mrs. De Hart, a woman of fine mental attainments, was educated at the Platteville Normal College at Platte- ville, Wisconsin. Mr. and Mrs. De Hart have one child, Joseph Henry Dillon De Hart, born January 13, 1899. Inheriting in a large measure the patri- otic ardor of his ancestors, Joseph Henry Dillon De Hart, not waiting to be drafted, enlisted in the World war June 1, 1917, and was sent to Mare Island, California, from whence as a member of the Medical Corps he made several trips to New York, Boston and other Atlantic ports, sailing on the United States steamship "Evansville," a fast boat going by the way of the Panama Canal to the Atlantic Coast and back. He was mustered out of the service in October, 1919, and immediately resumed his studies in the high school, from which he was graduated in June, 1920.

Mr. De Hart is an ardent sportsman, and is a firm believer in the protection and propagation of wild life. In 1898 he served as enrolling clerk in the State Senate of Montana, and in 1900 was sergeant-at-arms in the Montana House of Repre- sentatives.

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Montana, its story and biography; a history of aboriginal and territorial Montana and three decades of statehood, Volume III, Part 105

Author: Stout, Tom, 1879- ed Publication date: 1921 Publisher: Chicago, American Historical Society Number of Pages: 1144

Author: Stout, Tom, 1879- ed
Publication date: 1921
Publisher: Chicago, American Historical Society
Number of Pages: 1144