Montana, its story and biography; a history of aboriginal and territorial Montana and three decades of statehood, Volume III, Part 113

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 113

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In May, 1895, he came to Montana, where he did his first work as a section hand at Culbertson. This brief employment stiffened his back and .hardened his muscles, and during the summer he tended the flock and put up hay for C. N. Smith, a sheep man. His next employment was with Homer Armstrong at "Hardscrabble" on the Missouri River, and later he worked on the ranch of J. S. Day. In those early years as a cowpuncher and sheep tender Mr. Kelley rode up and down the Big Muddy around the pres- ent locality of Plentywood, and frequently would see no human being for fifty or sixty miles except a lonely sheep tender here and there. The first set- tler to establish himself on the townsite of Plenty- wood was George E. Bolster, to whose initiative and enterprise the early business of the town was due. Mr. Kelley came to Northeastern Montana soon after the buffalo had disappeared, though deer

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and antelope remained in abundance and almost un- disturbed until the occupation of the country by per- manent settlers drove them away.

One of his first employers in the Big Muddy country was Jud Matkin, now one of the leading citizens and ranchmen of Sheridan County. Then after an interval of a few years he returned from the Missouri River country and entered the employ of Peter Marren, also another leading character of Sheridan County. For three years he rode the range and tended sheep for this typical Irish neighbor of the old plains country. He then used his capital and experience to engage in the cattle industry on his own account on Beaver Creek. A few years later he identified himself with Plentywood, which at that time was just beginning to take on life as a town. He built one of the first business houses on the townsite, and entered the retail liquor business, which he continued until state wide prohibition became effective.

Mr. Kelley took advantage of the opportunities to acquire a farm by entering public land. His farm was near Archer on the Great Northern Scobey branch. The home for himself and wife was a frame shack of two rooms. There he collected a few horses, planted crops and cultivated them while proving up. After securing title he left the farm as å place of residence, but still owns it, and has made it the nucleus of a generous and well de- veloped ranch of 1,000 acres.

Mr. Kelley has never been a laggard in throwing his energy and resources into the development of Plentywood. He joined in the movement for the telephone system, the Farmers Store, the creamery and the drug store, taking stock in all those enter- prises. He has never been active in politics, merely expressing his sentiments in national affairs as a republican. He is affiliated with the Knights of Columbus and his family are communicants of the Catholic Church.

Mr. Kelley found his wife while she was a home- steader in the Plentywood locality. Her maiden name was Johanna Armstrong. Mrs. Kelley was born at Anoka, Minnesota, in 1872, daughter of William T. and Sarah (Farrington) Armstrong, the former still living and at the Kelley home. Mrs. Kelley has one sister, Mrs. Arthur Charlesworth. Mr. and Mrs. Kelley were married at Glasgow, Montana, June 19, 1911. They have an adopted son, Gerald.

Mr. Kelley has contributed to the material growth of Plentywood with the erection of one of the best residences in Sheridan County. It is a two-story, semi-bungalow pattern, with basement, hot water heat and other modern equipment such as electric washer, fan, and a public water supply. For emer- gency two pumps are provided, and a cistern fur- nishes soft water for laundry purposes. The house contains six rooms and a glass-enclosed sun parlor on the south. The conspicuous wall decorations of the home are the work of the artist's brush, per- formed by Mrs. Kelley. She possesses a spon- taneous artistic taste, and her study has developed some interesting results both in landscape and china decorating.

ROY HUGHES. A man of undoubted business in- telligence and ability, and thoroughly familiar with all of the details connected with the mining indus- try, Roy Hughes, as he always signs his name, which is really Irving Le Roy Hughes, is rendering valu- able and appreciative service to the Anaconda Cop- per Mining Company as superintendent of the Badger State Mine, which is located on the northern part of the company's property. A son of Newton L. Hughes, he was born August 4, 1881, in Fremont,

Nebraska, and spent his early life on the home farm.

Born in New York State in 1847, Newton L. Hughes migrated to Nebraska when a young man, being impressed with the many opportunities a newer country offered a young man of energy and indus- try. Taking up wild land in Fremont, he cleared a good farm, which he is still actively and success- fully managing. He is a republican in politics, and an active member of the Baptist Church. He mar- ried in Fremont, Nebraska, Clara J. Rarrick, who was born in 1854 at Cedar Falls, Iowa, and of their union two children were born, Irving Le Roy, the subject of this sketch, and Walter Earl, a student in the Creighton Medical College at Omaha, Ne- braska, died at the early age of twenty years.

Educated in his native town, Roy Hughes com- pleted the studies of the sophomore year in the Fremont High School, and on the home farm was well trained in agricultural pursuits. Leaving home at the age of seventeen years in search of fame and fortune, he visited Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and California, working his way from state to state at any respectable job, but found no place in which he desired to make a permanent lo- cation until his arrival in Butte, Montana, in Feb- ruary, 1903. Beginning life here as an under- ground miner, he was for six months in the employ of the Old Parrot Mining Company for six months, receiving $3.50 a day compensation for his labors, and subsequently worked an equal length of time for the Heinze Mining Company. Becoming associated then with the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, Mr. Hughes began work as a common miner, and proved himself so capable that in 1907 he was made shift boss at the Diamond Mine. In 1910 he began work as a miner at the Badger State Mine, and in 1911 was made shift boss at that mine. In 1915 he was advanced to assistant superintendent of the mine, and in August, 1919, was promoted to his present responsible position of superintendent of the mine, an important office which he is ably and faith- fully filling, having under his supervision 375 men, his offices being located at the mine.

Mr. Hughes married at Butte, in IgII, Mrs. Clara (Gibbons) Lund. Mrs. Hughes's father, A. J. Gib- bons, is proprietor of a hotel at Edina, Missouri, but her mother is not living. Mr. and Mrs. Hughes have no children.

WILLIAM ELMER ROOD. While the greater part of his time since becoming a Montanian has been devoted to ranching, Mr. Rood in 1918 turned his experience and skill as a printer and newspaper man to the editorial management of the Twin Bridges Independent, and is now the responsible director of the affairs of that well known Montana newspaper.

Mr. Rood was born at Faribault, Minnesota, Au- gust 29; 1881. His father, Nelson Rood, was born at Christiania, Norway, in 1849, came to the United States when about twenty years of age, and has since lived at Faribault, Minnesota, where he was an early settler. He now lives retired. He is a republican and a member of the Lutheran Church, and before coming to this country served in the Norwegian Army. William Elmer Rood is the only son and the youngest of three children. His sister Agnes lives at home and his sister Elma is a pro- fessional nurse with home at Minneapolis and dur- ing the late war was an army nurse at Fort Snelling.

William Elmer Rood was educated in the public schools of Faribault and left school at the age of sixteen to learn the printing trade in a local office. For one year he worked as a printer at Tacoma, Washington, for another year was editor of the

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Oregon Observer at Grant's Pass, and for a year and a half did newspaper work at Park River, North Dakota. He was also editor for one year of the Eveleth News at Eveleth, Minnesota. On coming to Montana in 1913 Mr. Rood took up a homestead on the McHessor Bench, eighteen miles south of Twin Bridges. He still owns his homestead and a quarter section besides, and in the intervals of his duties as a newspaper man gives his active supervision to this property. In 1918 he accepted a proposition from the stockholders of the Twin Bridges Independent to assume the editorship and business management of that journal. The Independent was established in 1915, is a republican paper, and circulates in Madison and surrounding counties, being issued every Friday. The stockholders of the organiza- tion are A. J. Wilcomb, Al Weingard, of Waterloo, J. C. Siedensticker, of Twin Bridges, and J. R. Jones, a Twin Bridges attorney.

Mr. Rood is clerk of School District No. 61. Politically he is a republican voter. He married at Faribault, Minnesota, in 1913, Miss Edith S. Schmidt, daughter of Bernard and Elizabeth Schmidt. Her mother lives at Sauk Center, Minnesota. Her father, deceased, was a Faribault merchant. Mr. and Mrs. Rood have three children: Charlotte, born in June, 1915; William Elmer, Jr., born in November, 1916; and Helen Elizabeth, born in July, 1918.

JOHN D. RYAN. During the first decade of the present century the fame of Montana so far as it rested upon news and newspaper publicity was largely involved in the prolonged and recurrent civil, industrial and political warfare waged between the Amalgamated Copper Mining Company and the in- terests led by Augustus Heintze. The great "copper war," which divided the State of Montana into hos- tile camps, is the proper subject for consideration on other pages of this publication. The subject is intro- duced here only to give credit where credit is due, since it was John D. Ryan whose power and influ- ence in the industrial world, whose tact and diplo- macy and great forcefulness, were the instruments chiefly responsible for the settlement of that fac- tional warfare which had done so much to retard the growth and development of the Northwest.

Since then John D. Ryan has been one of the great national figures in finance and industry and makes his home at the heart of the nation's finance and business, New York, but as president of the Ana- conda Copper Mining Company he is properly re- garded as the head and front of Montana's greatest single industry.

John D. Ryan was born at Hancock, Michigan, October 10, 1864, and his birthplace in a Northern Michigan mining town seemed to point the destiny of his mature career. He came to Butte in 1901, and with his accession to authority in the affairs of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, bitterness and strife quickly vanished, and he became the mediator in one of the greatest industrial disputes in all his- tory.

He made peace in the Montana copper district, but he made it through the dominant power he exer- cised through the sheer force of his will and his powerful intellect, which convinced men associated with him that his was the reasonable and effective course. Only a few men have rivaled John D. Ryan as a business organizer. Taking the constituent com- panies of the Amalgamated, including the Anaconda Company, and scores of subsidiary mining, smelting, railroad, lumber and other industries, he welded them all into a coherent whole until this industrial group today stands second in resources, power and effi- ciency, only to the United States Steel Corporation.

It was also largely due to Mr. Ryan's genius Vol. III-26

that the Amalgamated broadened the scope of its efforts into many other fields than mining, and has been responsible for the development of some of the great hydro-electric powers of the state and the irrigation of great bodies of fertile lands.

Mr. Ryan was one of the great American business executives called to the service of the Government during the World war. In April, 1918, President Wilson appointed him director of aircraft produc- tion, and he also served as chairman of the Air Craft Board. He was a member of the War Coun- cil, of the American National Red Cross.

A few of his official titles in the business and financial world are as follows: President of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, United Metals Selling Company, Montana Power Company, vice president and director of the Greene-Cananea Cop- per Company, director of the Mechanics and Metals National Bank, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Company, the American International Cor- poration, the Inspiration Consolidated Copper Com- pany, and is a trustee of the American Surety Com- pany and the Emigrants' Industrial Savings Bank.

In 1896 Mr. Ryan married Miss Nettie Gardner, and they have one son, John Carlos, born September 26, 1898, at Denver, Colorado.

ROBERT W. LOWERY. One of the representative business men and citizens for a number of years in Great Falls was Robert W. Lowery. Owing to his close application to his business and his hon- orable methods he won the prosperity that he richly merited, and he enjoyed the friendship and esteem of the people of his community.

Robert W. Lowery was born at Dixon's Corners, Ontario, Canada, March II, 1856, and his death oc- curred at Great Falls, Montana, June 22, 1914. He was educated in the public schools of Ontario, but as he was quite young when his father died he was obliged to begin work at a comparatively early age. His first employment was as a clerk in a mer- cantile establishment in Canada, but somewhat later he removed to St. Vincent, Minnesota, where he was engaged in the mercantile business on his own ac- count for about ten years. In 1888 he came to Helena, Montana, where he became interested in the whole- sale fruit and produce business, in which he met with pronounced success. In 1900 he came to Great Falls, where he continued in the same line of busi- ness up to the time of his death. His methods were ever progressive, and he was ever quick to adopt new ideas which he believed would prove of practical value in his business. Though an ardent democrat in politics, he never cared for public preferment. Fraternally he was a member of Great Falls Lodge No. 214, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.

In his early life Mr. Lowery was united in mar- riage with Margaret LaFlamme, and to this union there was born but one child, Charles R. Mr. Lowery was a public spirited citizen, never with- holding his co-operation from movements which were intended to promote public improvement. What he achieved in life proved the force of his character and illustrates his steadfastness of purpose. By his own efforts he advanced to a position of credit and honor in the business circles of this locality.

The only son of this Montana pioneer and business man, Charles R. Lowery, is a native son of the Treas- ure State, born at Helena, April 12, 1889. He attended first the public schools of Helena and Great Falls, and then became a student in the University of Pennsylvania. With the close of his school life he became interested in business with his father, and after the latter's death he continued the business until February, 1917, when he sold it. He then en- gaged in the real estate and insurance business, and

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in the insurance department he sells fire, tornado, au- tomobile and other general lines of insurance, rep- resenting some of the best American companies.

On April 14, 1914, Mr. Lowery was married to Helen A. Leslie, a daughter of Judge J. B. Leslie, and to them have been born three children, Helena Margaret, Robert Leslie and Norma Jean. In his political affiliations Mr. Lowery is a democrat. Fra- ternally he is a member of Cascade Lodge No. 34, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, and Great Falls Lodge No. 214, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.

JOHN A. COLLINS. In the past thirty years no name was more closely identified with the real wel- fare and business prosperity and upbuilding of the City of Great Falls than that of John A. Collins, a business man through all these years and twice honored by the people of his city and home county with the office of mayor and that of sheriff. His death occurred on the 5th of April, 1920.

He was born on his father's farm in Bruce County, Ontario, September 11, 1865, a son of William and Mary Ann (Lewis) Collins. His father was born in the north of Ireland in 1834, came to the United States in the early '50s and spent his active life as a farmer in Ontario. He died in 1917, at the age of eighty-three. His wife was born near Ottawa, Ontario, in 1845 and is now living in her seventy- fourth year. They had eleven children, eight still living, John A. being the second in age. The parents were members of the Episcopal Church.

John A. Collins spent his early life on the Canada farm, had only limited opportunities in the common schools, and at the age of nineteen started out to make his own way in the world. He came to Mon- tana in the spring of 1885, and worked as a carpenter in the construction of a flume for the Anaconda Copper Smelting Company, subsequently worked in the smelter, and was in and around Anaconda until the spring of 1887, when he became a wood chopper at Granite. His first employment at Great Falls, where he arrived in the fall of 1887, was as a pipe fitter in the silver smelter. Mr. Collins' business for a great many years was plumbing. Until 1892 he was employed by the pioneer plumbing firm of Great Falls, and then formed a partnership with Frank Goss, continuing until 1896, after which he was in the hardware and plumbing business with Frank Huy, and from 1898 until 1903 the business was conducted by the firm of Collins & Brown under the name Western Hardware Company. In 1903 the partnership was dissolved and Mr. Collins afterward concentrated his time and energies on the plumbing and heating business. He was one of the leading contractors of plumbing work in the state, and some of his larger contracts were in furnishing the plumb- ing equipment for the Rainbow Hotel, the First Na- tional Bank Building, and many other large struc- tures in Great Falls and elsewhere.

Mr. Collins was elected mayor of Great Falls in 1899. He gave that city the business administration which had been the basis of his support as a can- didate, and on the record of his first term was af- forded a re-election in 1901. He also twice served in the office of sheriff, beginning his first term January I, 1909, and was re-elected two years later. Mr. Collins was vice president of the Great Falls Dairy Products Company.

He was a republican in politics, and active in fra- ternal affairs, having been a past master of Euclid Lodge No. 58, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, a member of Algeria Temple of the Mystic Shrine, past grand master of the Grand Lodge of Odd Fel- lows and a member of Rainbow Lodge No. 28, and

was affiliated with Cataract Lodge No. 18, Knights of Pythias.

January 26, 1905, Mr. Collins married Mary Kaina, now deceased. He married for his second wife Helen (Schilling) Johnson.

HENRY HALL JOHNSON, though a resident of Mon- tana only a few years before his death, had achieved distinction as an architect and as a man of the finest qualities of citizenship in Great Falls.

He was born at Dowagiac, Michigan, December 14, 1877, son of Samuel and Sarah (Hall) Johnson. His father, who died March I, 1915, was for many years president of the Michigan Agricultural Col- lege. The mother of Henry Hall Johnson is still living at the old family home built and occupied by the family at Dowagiac since 1860.

Henry Hall Johnson had every opportunity to make the best of his individual talents and capaci- ties. His early training was acquired in the home of his cultured parents until he entered high school, and he pursued his technical studies in the Michigan Agricultural College and in the Chicago Art Insti- tute. When his education as an architect was com- pleted he came to the northwest, and for seven years practiced at Seattle. He then removed to Great Falls, and for a couple of years continued his office at Seattle, after which he gave his entire time to his growing practice in Montana.

MIr. Johnson was president of the Great Falls Rotary Club at the time of his death. He also served as vice president of the Cascade County Good Roads Association, as a director of the Commercial Club, and was keenly interested in every good work in his community. He was a republican voter, a member of the Masonic Lodge and of the Congre- gational Church. Mr. Johnson exemplified the best traditions of Americanism, and his people on both sides of the house have been in this country from the time of the seventeenth century. His mother was directly related to the distinguished family of Anne Hathaway, wife of Shakespeare.

April 15, 1914, at Lewistown, Montana, Henry Hall Johnson married Helen I. Schilling, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. E. W. Schilling, pioneer residents of Missoula, who have been in Montana since 1884. Mrs. Johnson is now the widow of Mr. John A. Collins of Great Falls.

RAY LEWIS CAMPBELL. Twenty years a resident of Montana, Ray Lewis Campbell has spent the greater part of that time in what is now Phillips County and has done his part as a pioneer in the development of the region. He was a homesteader, has developed some extensive ranching interests, has had an active part in business, and as a leader in pub- lic affairs enjoys his present responsibilities as county treasurer.

His early life was spent in Minnesota. He was born in Hennepin County, March 18, 1882, and is of Scotch ancestry on both sides. . His father, Jona- than N. Campbell, who was born near Shuban- acadia in Nova Scotia, was trained to farming and the carpenter's trade, was married in his native vicinity and in 1879 moved to the United States and settled near Long Lake, Minnesota, and has been identified with that section as a farmer for the past forty years. After acquiring American citizenship le identified himself with the republican party, and is a member of the Presbyterian Church. His wife was Jennie Logan, a daughter of William Logan, and their children are: James E., of Jamestown, North Dakota; William, of Vancouver, Washington ; Ethel, wife of B. F. Joslyn, of Minneapolis; Ray L .; Cath- crine, wife of Adolph Beck, of Norfolk, Nebraska;

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George, of Big Sandy, Montana; and Paul J., a commercial salesman living at Minot, North Dakota.

Ray L. Campbell spent the years of his boyhood and youth on a farm, attended a country school near Long Lake, and remained at home until he was eighteen, when he came out to Montana and earned his first dollar in this state pitching hay on a ranch at Big Sandy. He remained in that locality for several years, and most of the time was em- ployed as clerk in the store of McNamara & Marlow.

Mr. Campbell came to Malta in 1903, and the first year was a ranch hand and cowboy. About that time he filed on a homestead twenty miles north of Malta, and spent all the time in labor necessary to acquire title. His first building was a one-room log cabin, in which he lived as a bachelor, and since his work on the ranch had no immediate returns he made a living handling horses and working at wages for ranchers. He was also a clerk in the Trafton store at Malta. On completing proof of his claim he served four years as assistant postmaster of Malta under F. W. St. Hill. Mr. Campbell then engaged in the stock business with his father-in-law, R. M. Trafton, a noted pioneer in this region of the state and one of its most notable citizens. Mr. Campbell is still actively interested in ranching, and is owner of a valuable property four miles north of Malta. Under irrigation this has become a highly productive farm, its chief crops being alfalfa and blue joint hay.

Mr. Campbell gave practically all his time to the management of the ranch until March, 1919, when he entered the office of county treasurer as successor to Maurice J. Dabney. He was elected in November, 1918, on the republican ticket. He received a nom- ination at the primaries in the summer of that year against one competitor and in November was chosen by two-thirds of the total vote of the county. He was re-elected to that office on the 2d of November, 1920. Mr. Campbell was reared in a republican home and cast his first vote for Colonel Roosevelt for president. During the war Mr. Campbell served as chief clerk of the local Selective Service Board for Phillips County. Fraternally 'he is affiliated with the Masonic Order and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.

April 27, 1908, at Glasgow, he married Miss Emma l'rafton, only child of R. M. and Marian (Knowlton) Trafton. She was born in Minnesota in 1888, and finished her education at Faribault, Minnesota. The three daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Campbell are Jennie Marion, Ethel May and Ray Lois, and their one son is Robert Mackantosh Campbell, born June 23, 1920.

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Montana, its story and biography; a history of aboriginal and territorial Montana and three decades of statehood, Volume III, Part 113

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