Montana, its story and biography; a history of aboriginal and territorial Montana and three decades of statehood, Volume III, Part 169

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

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EDWARD McGEHEE, who is engaged in ranching in the country tributary to Birney in Rosebud County, has been a factor in the development of this region for almost forty years. He came to old Custer County to reside in 1880, and with the passing of the years he has witnessed the growth of the stock industry from its infancy to the zenith of its power, saw the ranches and ranges devastated by the dis- astrous winter of 1886, when cattle lay dead in great piles on the range, and has also seen the encroach- ment of the settler and the curtailment of the range, which threatens the cattle industry with gradual reduction.

Mr. McGehee came to Montana to hunt game for the skins, and his outfit, consisting of three men, made its headquarters on the head waters of Bloom Creek. They killed deer, elk and antelope, and also killed a few buffalo for their hides, which they utilized in the Bloom Creek shack. The hunters marketed their pelts in Miles City, a deer skin bring- ing them a dollar and sixty-five cents, the skin of an elk about the same price, and an antelope hide was worth only fifty cents. The meat they tried to sell to the merchants, but the offer was so low that rather than sell it at the small sum offered the hunters hauled it about the frontier and gave it to the washerwomen and others of the poor and needy classes.

This hunting experience of Mr. McGehee proved unprofitable, and he began work for the Circle Bar ranch on Otter Creek, owned by Howes, Strevell & Miles, the latter being the father of George M. Miles of Miles City. Mr. McGehee was made the foreman of the ranch, and remained in that capacity until the spring of 1887, when he came to the Hangingwoman and bought of Lee Brothers of New York the im- provements on their old ranch. He subsequently homesteaded there and has continued to make it his home through the intervening years.

In 1883-4 Mr. McGehee went to Texas with Cap- tain Howes and brought back a bunch of cattle to the Otter Creek ranch, and he also brought fifty head over to his own ranch, which formed the nucleus of his cattle industry. They were native Texas cattle running under the brand "W-Bar" on the left side, and he turned them on the range and has ever since carried on his stock business under the same brand. Mr. McGehee has been a member of the 'Montana Stock Growers Association since it was organized, and has been a shipper almost every years since he entered the business.

Edward McGehee was born. in Noxubee County, Mississippi, near the Town of Macon, September 20, 1843, and two years later, in 1845, his father, Francis Micaja McGehee, moved the family to Texas and settled in Bastrop County. Micaja McGehee was a native of Broad River, Georgia, and a son of Micaja McGehee, a wealthy planter of the slave-holding aristocracy of the South. His ancestors were Scotch- Irish and represented as Americans the oldest fam- ilies of the South. One of 'Micaja McGehee's sons, John Gilmer, was a soldier in the Mexican war in General Taylor's army, and another son, William, was killed at the battle of Pea Ridge in the struggle between the North and South. The family gave their allegiance to the southland in that conflict.

Micaja McGehee, Jr., married Nancy Perkins, a

member of an old Alabama family. She survived her husband many years and died in 1877, Mr. Mc- Gehee having passed away in 1858. In their family were nine children, but only six, three sons and three daughters, grew to years of maturity, and of this latter number Edward is the sole survivor. Those who lived to rear families were Thomas J., whose posterity are in Bellingham, Washington, Christiana, who married Buck Billingsley and died leaving a son, Wash Jones Billingsley, and Edward has never married.

It was in Bastrop County, Texas, that Edward McGehee grew to years of maturity and received his educational training. From there also he entered the war of the rebellion, enlisting in the fall of 1862 in Company I, Colonel Duff's regiment, Captain Cocke's company. Sickness prevented his service for several weeks during his first enlistment, but he served under Captain Cocke in Texas during the remainder of the war and fought in the very last engagement of the conflict. In this battle a number of Federals were taken prisoners, who reported the surrender of General Lee, but the Confederates refused to believe the story and retained their prison- ers until news came through Mexico of the fall of the Confederacy and the end of the war. Every- one then started for home, Mr. McGehee with the rest, and he subsequently took the oath of allegiance and resumed the duties of civil life.

His first trip out of Texas was made over the old Chisholm trail in 1869, when he drove cattle through to Salina, Kansas, and returned to the Lone Star State. He again started up the trail the follow- ing year, but changed his course and drove east to Alexandria, Louisiana, and on down the Red River to the Atchafalaya and Mississippi rivers. He had more than six hundred cattle in his herd, and he turned them loose along the big rivers, but in the following spring the waters rose and drowned the entire herd with the exception of about eighty head. Following this disaster he returned to Texas and drove herds to Ellsworth, Kansas, in 1871 and 1872. In 1873 an unfortunate deal made through his brother resulted in such financial reverses that Edward Mc- Gehee lost his fortune and was thrown back into · the saddle as a cowboy on the range. In 1875 he drove cattle to Great Bend, Kansas, for Charley and Billy Slaughter, and in the following year began work for the old time cattleman of Texas and Kansas, W. G. Grimes, taking charge of the Grimes herds near Dodge City, Kansas, and holding them there until fall, when he turned them loose and wintered a bunch of horses for Mr. Grimes on from twelve and a half to fifteen cent corn during the winter months. Following this incident Mr. McGehee went into Nebraska in 1878 with a herd of cattle from the Circle Dot ranch, and on Platte River he began work for Mark Code, a prominent cattle dealer and ranchman of that time, and in the spring of the following year hired to the Powers Company in that locality. Later he was employed by E. S. Newman, who furnished cattle for the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail agencies on White River, and Mr. McGehee assisted in that work. In the winter of 1879 he left the employ of Mr. Newman, and going to Deadwood, South Dakota, was appointed inspector of cattle by the Stock Growers Association of Dakota, continuing in that position one year, when he came to Montana to cast in his lot with the pioneers of this region.

Mr. McGehee was reared under political influences which caused him to espouse the democratic party when age gave him the right to vote, and he still continues to give allegiance to those principles, but at the same time he does not follow blindly in the

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path of the party leaders in local matters, support- ing rather the men he deems best fitted for office. He is a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and is noble grand of Birney Lodge, and he is also a member of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks at Sheridan, Wyoming.

EDWIN BOONE CRAIGHEAD. A distinguished scholar and educator, Doctor Craighead, a former president of the University of Montana, is now lending the singular gifts of his mind and the riches of his experience to the field of journalism. Doctor Craig- head has established 'several papers in Montana, and makes his home at Billings, where he is editor of the Billings Star.

He was born in Callaway County, Missouri, March 3, 1861, son of I. O. and Frances J. (Payne) Craig- head. His life from boyhood has been scholarly and his reputation as a college and university presi- dent rests on a substantial foundation. He finished his literary education in Central College of Missouri, graduating Master of Arts in 1883. He did post- graduate work in Vanderbilt University from 1884 . to 1886, and from 1886 to 1888 was abroad as a student at Leipsic and Paris. The University of Missouri conferred upon him the degree of LL. D. in 1898, while the University of the South at Sewa- nee, Tennessee, gave him the degree D. C. L. in 1907.

On returning from Europe he became an instructor in Emory College in Virginia, and from 1890 to 1893 was professor of Greek in Wofford College, South Carolina. If there is one institution of learn- ing of which South Carolinians are particularly proud it is the State Agricultural and Mechanical College, better known as Clemson College. The campus of this school is on ground donated by Mr. Clemson, a son-in-law of South Carolina's distinguished states- man John C. Calhoun, who gave the old Calhoun estate and $70,000 to South Carolina as the founda- tion of an agricultural college. Doctor Craighead was called to the presidency of that institution in 1893, and remained there four years, and as a result of his vigorous administration the founders and friends of the institution saw many of their most sanguine expectations realized or in process of fulfillment.

From Clemson Doctor Craighead was called to the presidency of his alma mater, Central College in Missouri, where he remained from 1897 to 1901. From 1901 to 1904 he was president of the Missouri State Normal School at Warrensburg and then went South to become president of Tulane University at New Orleans. Tulane is a university of old and honorable traditions, and during his eight years as president Doctor Craighead more than doubled its enrollment, increasing the student body from 1,300 to 2,600, and the annual income from $165,000 to approximately $400,000. More important than these superficial evidences of prosperity, he broadened the scope and raised the standards of Tulane to the best university traditions in the South.

Doctor Craighead resigned as president of Tulane in 1912 to answer the call of the State Board of Education of Montana to take up his duties as president of the State University at Missoula. Doctor Craighead filled that office until 1915. As all friends of the university know his administration was a progressive one, and it was his persistently progres- sive policy that eventually put him out of sympathy with the governing body. He formulated and pre- sented for consideration to the State Board of Educa- tion a plan to consolidate at one place all the higher institutions of learning, including not only the State

University but the Agricultural College at Bozeman, the School of Mines at Butte and the Normal College at Dillon. The plan was approved by the board and recommended to the Legislature. By a small major- ity a bill looking toward the, consolidation was re- jected in the Legislature. The matter was then re- ferred under the initiative and referendum to the people of the State, and again was defeated by a small majority. In the meantime changes had oc- curred in the personnel of the State Board of Edu- cation and there ensued "the consolidation fight" still fresh in the minds of Montana people. It was under these circumstances that Doctor Craighead was re- moved from the presidency.

Shortly afterward he was offered the post of commissioner of education for North Dakota, an office created by the Legislature. The commissioner of education had general supervision over all the higher institutions of learning in the State. Doctor Craighead served in that office from 1915 to 1917. While there in cooperation with a United States commissioner of education and other experts he compiled an educational survey of North Dakota, the results of which were published by the Federal Government.

The few years he had spent in Montana had com- pletely won Doctor Craighead to the people of this commonwealth, and on leaving North Dakota he returned to Montana. He had previously founded at Missoula the newspaper known as the "New North West" and has since become editor of the Billings Star and also the Mineral County Independent. . Through these papers he exerts a profound influence over public opinion in Montana and is probably the most scholarly editor in the state.

Doctor Craighead was an original and life member appointed by Mr. Carnegie to membership on the first Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. His official duties with that board brought him in personal touch with such eminent American scholars as Presi- dent Wilson, former President, Elliott of Harvard, President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia Uni- versity and others. Doctor Craighead resigned after twelve years with the board.

He is a member of the American Board of the Hibbert Journal, published at Oxford, England. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and for a number of years was a member of the State Board of Geology of Missouri. A medal for distinguished service in the cause of education was conferred upon him by the Baron d'Estournelles de Constant, as representative of the French Government. Doctor Craighead in former years gave much of his time to lecture work on educational and other studies, and has appeared before student bodies in many of the leading Amer- ican universities. In politics he is a Wilson demo- crat.

August 6, 1889, Doctor Craighead married Miss Kate A. Johnson, of Fayette, Missouri, daughter of Dr. B. F. Johnson. She was educated in the Howard Payne College at Fayette and in the Beetho- ven Conservatory at St. Louis. Doctor and Mrs. Craighead have three children, Edwin B., Jr., Bar- clay and Catherine. Edwin, who graduated from the Military Academy at Columbia, Tennessee, was eighteen months with the colors as a member of Company E, Fourteenth Infantry, being stationed on duty at Helena, Camp Lewis, Washington, and Camp Grant, Illinois. Since leaving the army he has been associated with his father and is advertising manager of the Billings Star. The son Barclay was educated in the University of 'Montana and is business man-

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ager of the New North West of Missoula. The daughter, Catherine, is a student in the University of Montana.

LATTIE M. OSGOOD. Agriculture and stock raising have been honored vocations from the earliest ages, and as a usual thing men of honorable and humane impulses, as well as those of energy and thrift, have been patrons of husbandry. The free outdoor life of the farm and ranch has a decided tendency to foster and develop that independence of mind and self reliance which characterize true manhood, and no greater blessing can befall a boy than to be reared in close touch with Nature. From such environments have sprung the moral bone and sinew of the country, and the majority of our nation's really great men are indebted to its early influence for the dis- tinction which they have attained.

Lattie M. Osgood was born in Runnells County, Texas, on March 31, 1881, and is the son of John C. and Mitt (Wheat) Osgood. John C. Osgood was a native of New Hampshire, where he was reared and educated. Sometime prior to the Civil war he went to Texas and engaged in farming, living at different times in Parker, Bostrop and Runnells counties. During the Civil war he enlisted in the Confederate army and lost an arm in battle. He died in 1907, at the age of seventy-five years, being sur- vived by his widow, who now lives in Powder River County, Montana, where she has a homestead on East Fork. To these parents were born the follow- ing children: William, of Carter County, Montana ; Robert C., a ranchman of Powder River; Majory, the wife of Boot Bly, of Cahoma, Texas; James, a ranchman on East Fork; Fannie, wife of Frank Castleberry, of Carter County, Montana ; Frank, who is a ranchman on the Cottonwood in Carter County ; John, of Boyes, Montana; Lattie 'M., the immediate subject of this sketch; Genie, the wife of Emmett Walker, of Little Powder River; Robert, of Carter County ; and 'Maude, the wife of A. M. Blackford, of Carter County.

Lattie M. Osgood was reared on the Texas home- stead and received what school education was ob- tainable in the somewhat indifferent rural schools of that location and period. He remained with his father until after he attained his majority, when he decided to locate in Montana, whither five of his older brothers had preceded him. He arrived here in 1904, locating on the East Fork of Little Powder River, where he was for some years a squatter, as the Government had not yet surveyed this section of the state. However, when the land was finally opened for settlement he entered a homestead about six miles above the mouth of the creek. During his first year here he was in the employ of the "TA" outfit, running cattle on the range on Little Powder

River. Following this he engaged in the sheep busi- ness on his own account, leasing a flock of 1,500. He was without capital, but his terms for handling, which were the same as are still in vogue, gave him an advantage in case no misfortune overtook him. He was successful and ran the sheep on lease for four years. Mr. Osgood was in partnership with a brother later on, and they started out with 2,000 head, which they ranged all over the East Fork region and on Willow Creek. The partnership lasted until 19II, when they dissolved business relations, leaving Mr. Osgood with 1,500 sheep of his own, the nucleus of the business which he has since conducted and in which he has achieved marked success. He has handled the Rambouillet and Cotswold strains, noted for their fine quality of wool and high-grade mutton. From year to year he has sheared a fine clip from his flock and the price of his product has never failed

to give him a nice profit on the business. The prices received for his wool has ranged from sixteen cents to sixty-nine and three-fourths cents a pound. Mr. Osgood has sunk two fine artesian wells on his ranch, which provide an inexhaustible supply of fine water for the stock.

He was married to Lillie Henderson, a sister of Mrs. Charles W. Watts, of Graham, Montana, who is represented elsewhere in this work. Mrs. Osgood was born in Runnells County, Texas, in 1896, and she has borne to her husband a daughter, Mary, now four years old.

In every phase of life with which he has been identified Mr. Osgood has played well his part, always striving to do as an honest conscience dictates, and he has at all times enjoyed the sincere regard and esteem of all who know him.

CHRIS RAMME. Few men of the pioneer period of Montana now living date their advent to this commonwealth at as early a period as Chris Ramme, now a retired stockman of Carter County and one of the conspicuous figures of its county seat. A record of his life activities for the forty-three years he has been in this region would recount many thrill- ing incidents and many achievements of personal combat with fate, and it would also include some of the adversities which overtake ambitious and in- dustrious countrymen of his nationality. But now in the evening of life, when more than four score years of age, he is enjoying physical vigor, is sur- rounded with friends and has a competence such as will provide for him and his family in the years remaining to them.

Chris Ramme came into this region of the far Northwest in 1877, landing at old Milestown on the 26th of July of that year. When questioned as to how he came here he was accustomed to reply that he rode in on a Buffalo. He boarded this boat at Fort Buford at the mouth of the Yellowstone, having traveled by river up to Fort Benton from Bismarck, the then terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad. His traveling companion was a French- man named Simeno, and his object in coming was to find a better location, an opening in which to carve out his destiny. This he soon discovered in the territory of Montana, and notwithstanding the rough character of the citizenship as seen at old Milestown he decided to settle among them. Upon announcing his decision to his companion in travel the latter declared: "You surely are not going to bring your family out here among these horse- thieves, road agents and gamblers?" "Yes," said Mr. Ramme, and he proceeded to make his arrange- ments to that end.

His first employment was as a butcher for the contractor furnishing meat to the troops at Fort Keough, and he remained there almost four years. The capital he secured while thus employed he in- vested in cattle and ran them on the range about the Fort. In 1880 he moved his cattle to Pumpkin Creek, fourteen miles out, built him a ranch there, but about a year and a half later he sold his interests there and engaged in the restaurant business at Miles City, but this he disposed of before the end of the year and purchased a band of sheep. During the first winter he ran them on Powder River, and then moved them to the east side of Custer County, now the neighborhood of Ekalaka. In 1885 he built two ranch houses, one for himself and one for his son, and he continued in the sheep business there until 1906, when he disposed of his flock and retired from the industry. His career of twenty-two years as a sheep man covered periods of profitable years and periods when losses predominated, and twice

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the hard winters cost him one-half his flock, yet the industry can be said to have brought him satisfaction. Cattle and horses also formed a part of his ranching enterprise, and these also contributed much toward the filling of the domestic treasury.

In those early days there were no stockmen located in this portion of Carter County who occupied a prominent position save the old "Hash Knife" outfit, and consequently the range as far as Mr. Ramme could see was open to him. Among his early neigh- bors were Robert Wear and Captain Harmon, also the noted frontiersman and plainsman David H. Russell. On the south his nearest neighbors were from sixteen to twenty-five miles away, and there was nothing between them but grass. Mr. Ramme subsequently entered his land where he built his pioneer home, and there he plowed the first sod and was among the first to plant a crop in this region. His homestead was increased by additional homesteads to three quarter sections, which area forms the present Ramme ranch.

It is a coincidence worthy of note that Chris Ramme was born in 1837, came to the United States from his native German home in 1857, and estab- lished his home in Montana in 1877, showing a pe- riod of twenty years between each event. His native place is Prussia, his birth occurring four miles west of Halberstadt, December 20, 1837. His education was secured in the schools common to the country, and when he was fifteen years old his par- ents sent him to a veterinary college, but he re- mained there only three months, deciding he did. not like the profession. He learned instead the butcher's trade, served two and a half years learn- ing the business, and even now he needs no machin- ery to make any kind of pickled meat or sausage by hand, so thoroughly did he learn the trade in every department.

Mr. Ramme accompanied to the United States two German-Americans who had been visiting their old home in the Fatherland, sailing from Bremer-Haven on the ship "Hansa" and reaching the United States coast at Boston after thirty-one days on the ocean. He left the boat, however, at New York, and passed through Castle Garden. Although his destination was Sheboygan, Wisconsin, he stopped in Phila- delphia and spent seven months in that city working at his trade. Continuing his westward journey, he finally located in the Lake Superior copper region, obtained work in the Minnesota mine near Onton- agon, and labored there with pick and shovel until 1861, a period of three years. He then moved to Menominee, Michigan, and engaged in merchandising and also operated a meat market. He continued there until 1877, when he decided to prospect in the far west and came to Montana for that purpose.

Mr. Ramme's father was Henry Ramme, who was born in Fekanstadt, Prussia, also the birthplace of his son, and he lived to the age of eighty-seven years. Throughout his industrial life he was en- gaged in the sheep and wool industry, owning a small farm, but he carried on the wool and sheep industry for a landlord on the shares. During four years he was a member of the king's body guard. Henry Ramme married Augusta Gorden, who bore him five sons and two daughters, namely: Fred- erick, who died in Germany; Christian, who also spent his life in his native land; Ernst, who passed away in Germany; Henry; Johanna; Augusta; and Chris. Both the daughters married and reared families.

Chris Ramme was the youngest of the seven chil- dren. He was married at Taycheedah, Wisconsin, in 1863, to Miss Regina Mueller, who was born on the River Moselle in Germany and was brought to the

United States in infancy. Her father was Peter Mueller. Mr. and Mrs. Ramme became the parents of three children : Louis T., of Ekalaka; Mrs. Frank Emerson, a resident of Carter County ; Ed, a musi- cian and a world traveler who has not been heard from in many years.

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Montana, its story and biography; a history of aboriginal and territorial Montana and three decades of statehood, Volume III, Part 169

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