Montana, its story and biography; a history of aboriginal and territorial Montana and three decades of statehood, Volume III, Part 186

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

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ing in a hardly fought engagement there and at Fort Blakeley. Mr. West was there wounded by a piece of shell, the explosion of which killed sixteen sol- diers. In passing the shell went over the shoulder of an officer who had just stopped to pick up a portion of his equipment that had dropped, and thus escaped. The regiment then crossed the bay to Mo- bile, and from there Mr. West was transferred to Brownville, Texas, and made a part of Company B, Thirty-fifth Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, and re- mained with it doing camp duty. On March 15, 1866, Mr. West was mustered out at Madison, Wis- consin, and discharged. It was while at Mobile that he and his regiment received the disheartening news of the death of the beloved president.

His military service completed. Mr. West went to his brother William's home and was engaged in farming until 1868. On October 22, 1868, he was married to Miss Belle Hunter, born near Meadville, Pennsylvania, who, when sixteen years old had re- moved to Iowa with her parents, William and Nancy (Lantz) Hunter. Of their family of ten children Mrs. West was the third in order of birth. She was educated in the public schools of Crawford County, Pennsylvania. After their marriage Mr. and Mrs. . West went to Clinton, Iowa, where he was engaged in work as an engineer and for thirty years con- tinued to operate stationary engines in lumber and flour mills at various points. Leaving Clinton, Mr. West went to Kansas, and two years later to Cedar Springs, Michigan, and was also at Perry, Michi- gan. For nine years he was engaged with the flour- mill interests of Michigan and then went to Bar- ton County, Missouri, where he remained for ten years, his next move being to North Dakota, where he proved up à homestead and became the first post- master at Reno that state. Mr. West then located at Kalispell, where he built a home, but sold it in 1908, having previously sold his ranch. He went to Missouri on a visit in 1909 and in the following year, 1910, built his present home. In 1915 he went to live with a widowed daughter in Missouri, but in 1919 came back to Kalispell, to his present home.

Mr. and Mrs. West became the parents of eight children, namely: Nora Viola; Edgar Guy; Rena . Belle; William N .; Freeman Percy; Clair ; Nellie, who died at the age of seven months; and Maple Naomi, who was named Maple because her father planted a maple tree on the day of her birth. Nora Viola married Clay Leaming, a veteran of the war between the North and South, and a native of In- diana. He was a man of fine character, who be- came county judge of Jasper County and a resi- dent of Carthage, Missouri. Judge and Mrs. Leam- ing became the parents of five sons, Henry Clay, George Monroe, Perry West, Ried and Lester Lee. Judge Leaming died leaving a widow and five chil- dren. Edgar West married Lilly Nellis, and he is now an engineer at Roundup, Montana. Rena Belle married Alexander McCallum, and they have two children, Margaret Isabel and Anna Mae. William N. West married Nora Bright, and they have one child, Nancy Lee Belle. He is a farmer of Jasper County, Missouri, living near Carthage. Freeman Percy West married Iva Dell Myers, and they have two children, Charles Edward and Francis. He is a resident of Seattle, Washington. Clair West mar- ried Ethel McCloughlin, and they have two children, May E. and Gladys Belle. Mr. West is a lumber contractor of Pablo, Montana. Maple Naomi mar- ried Charles W. Benton, of Kalispell, and they have two children, Minnie Gertrude and Marvin Russell.

An interesting incident in the life of Mr. West occurred in 1908, when he paid a visit to his brothers in his old home in New Hampshire after they had

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been separated for nearly half a century. The three brothers were all veterans of the war, and in addi- tion to Charles M. West were Franklin and Wil- liam West. Franklin West was an engineer at Nor- folk, Virginia, at the outbreak of the war, and was detained by the Confederates, who gave him his choice between enlisting in the southern army or going to prison. A loyal patriot, he went to prison, but through his Masonic connections was liberated, General Butler making his affairs a personal mat- ter. However, he lost all his property, but at last managed to get across the line into Union terri- tory, and there enlisted in defense of his country. The brothers enjoyed their re-union and the photo- graph of the group was published in the local papers at that time.

Charles M. West is also a Mason, and he also belongs to the Odd Fellows and to the Grand Army of the Republic. Mrs. West is a member of the Seventh Day Advent Christian Church. . Mr. West is very liberal in his political views, preferring to cast his vote for the man rather than to be bound down by party ties. A man of the highest moral character, he has ordered his life according to the following rule :

"Do all the good you can to all the people you can in every way you can."

WENDELL COTTON, M. D. One of the prominent members of the medical profession of Rosebud County, Doctor Cotton is a senior member of the firm Cotton & Haywood, physicians and surgeons at Forsyth. He has been in active practice for eight years, and performed the duties of an army sur- geon during a portion of the World war.

Doctor Cotton was born at Sheridan, Wyoming, October 29, 1887. His father, Thomas M. Cotton, was a native of Pennsylvania, acquired a liberal college education, 'and became an able lawyer and one of the pioneers in his profession at Sheridan, Wyoming. He moved to Sheridan from Fort Col- lins, Colorado. He did his first practice in the ter- ritorial bar of Wyoming. He achieved a dignified place as a lawyer, also as a factor in local and state republican politics, and established the Sheridan Post, now one of the leading republican papers of North- ern Wyoming. He gained much prominence for a man of his years, since he died when only about thirty-seven years of age, in 1892. Thomas M. Cotton married at Peru, Indiana, Ella Hiatt, a native of that section of Indiana and of an old Quaker family. She is now the wife of Herman Henschke, of Sheridan.

Doctor Cotton, who was the only son of his parents, was educated in the public schools of Sheri- dan. He was only five years of age when his father died, and he also helped earn his living in spare time as a grocery clerk. After completing high school work he spent a year and a half in the Nebraska Wesleyan University and two years in the scientific department of DePauw University at Greencastle, Indiana. With a liberal college educa- tion he entered the medical school of Northwestern University, at Chicago, where he was graduated in June, 1912.

Doctor Cotton then returned to his native town of Sheridan, but soon removed to Ashland, Montana, where he conducted a drug business in addition to his practice. He was also designated by the Gov- ernment as agency physician and surgeon on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. Moving to Forsyth in 1917, Doctor Cotton formed his present partner- ship with Doctor Haywood, and the firm handle a large and profitable private practice and are also local surgeons for the railways.

Doctor Cotton made his first effort to enter the war in 1917, but was rejected on account of physical defect. When this defect was overcome he was accepted for active duty June 1, 1918, at Camp Lewis, Washington. He was assigned to the Base Hospital in the section of skin and genito-urinary diseases, and later transferred to Base Hospital No. 162 for overseas duty. ,The armistice was signed before his unit left Camp Lewis, and he was finally discharged there June 1, 1919. Before resuming private practice at Forsyth Doctor Cotton took post- graduate work in the Mayo clinic at Rochester, Min- nesota, and in the Cook County Hospital at Chicago.

Doctor Cotton is an active member of the Forsyth Chamber of Commerce, and is a republican, having cast his first presidential vote for 'Mr. Taft. He is affiliated with the Masonic fraternity and is a member of Algeria Temple of the Mystic Shrine at Helena.

At Forsyth, June 2, 1917, Doctor Cotton married Miss Ruth B. Cain, of Broadus, Montana. She was born at Elroy, Wisconsin, and was educated in the schools of that town. Prior to her marriage she was in the postoffice at Ashland, Montana. Doctor and Mrs. Cotton have two children, Beverly . and Wendell Thomas.

CHARLES B. TABER came to Montana territory nearly forty years ago as an engineer with the ori- ginal surveyors of the Northern Pacific Railway, and out of his long experience has acquired a most minute and extended knowledge of Montana from the standpoint of a civil engineer, and is probably the leading authority on irrigation projects in the Yellowstone Valley.

Mr. Taber, for many years a resident of Forsyth, was born at New Bedford, 'Massachusetts, January 20, 1860. His Americanism is the product of nearly three centuries of residence. His first American an- cestor was Thomas Taber, who settled at Plymouth Colony in 1623. His grandfather, Joseph Taber, followed the industry characteristic of most of the early generations, farming. He married Phoebe Ashley. They had five sons, Stephen, Jacob, Phineas, Abram and Marcus W. In the early years of the nineteenth century more whaling vessels were out- fitted and called their home port New Bedford than any other point along the American coast. The whaling industry was supreme at New Bedford, and it was perhaps only natural that all these five sons of Joseph Taber should become captains of whaling vessels.

Capt. Marcus W. Taber made his first voyage about 1834 and continued to follow the sea for about thirty-five years, eventually retiring and living out his life at New Bedford, where he died in 1903, at the age of eighty-four. Capt. Marcus W. Taber married Olive C. Ashley. Her father, Jefferson Ashley, was born in the New Bedford locality, and farmed a landed estate where many generations of the family had lived. This property had descended without change of title from the time of the old Plymouth Colony. An abstract of the property in recent years showed that no incumbrance had ever been recorded against it. Olive C. Ashley was one of three daughters, the others being Lovica W. and Mrs. Elizabeth Winslow. Mrs. Marcus Taber is still living at New Bedford. She is the mother of two sons, Charles B. and Edward G. Edward G. is likewise a civil engineer, now a resident of Spo- kane, Washington, and for a third of a century has been chief engineer of D. C. Corbin's opera- tions, and throughout that period identified with the far West.

Charles B. Taber grew up in New Bedford, ac-

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quired a high school education, and later completed his education in Boston. For about a year he had regular field practice with the city engineer of New Bedford, and then left his native city to come West to enter the service of the Northern Pacific Railway Company as one of the engineers of the survey of the main line. He joined the party at Glendive as instrument man on location, and was associated with the work of construction all the way from Glendive to Yellowstone National Park.

Mr. Taber, who arrived in the Yellowstone Val- ley in 1881, left the railroad when the survey. reached the National Park and became a settler and homesteader on the Rosebud, in what was then Custer County. From 1883 until 1889 he ran an increasing herd of horses and cattle with head- quarters twelve miles southeast of Forsyth. How- ever, he did not discontinue his profession altogether, since he was county surveyor of Custer County. At that time this county included a vast territory sub- sequently subdivided into seven counties. In inter- vals of his ranch work he also resumed engineering with railway companies, once in Washington and Oregon for the O. R. and N. Company, and again in location in construction for the Northern Pacific in Manitoba.

Leaving his ranch and moving to Forsyth, he re- sumed his profession as a civil engineer, and became identified with the pioneer irrigation project, and was engineer for nearly all the small systems. In 1905 he started the Cartersville Project, the first big irrigation effort in Rosebud County, and witnessed its completion within two years. The next large project, begun immediately after the Cartersville, was that of Pease Bottom, and it also was finished without delay. He built the Two Leggins Canal which irrigates the Lower Big Horn Valley below Hardin, following which he revised and extended the Yellowstone Project and the Hammond Canal, which, commenced twenty years ago, have been im- proved and extended from time to time. These canals and systems provide irrigation for all the available valley lands that can be watered by gravity flow, and thus Mr. Taber has had a big part and a big work in making this region of the Yellow- stone Valley serviceable for agriculture.

Being county surveyor of Custer County when Rosebud County was created, he became the first surveyor of the new county, and has filled that office most of the years since, only two others having held it. Mr. Taber is one of the advisory board of the engineers of the Yellowstone Irrigation Asso- ciation, an organization formed in the winter of 1919-20, with headquarters at Livingston, for the purpose of taking care of the water supply and promoting irrigation along the Yellowstone and in Eastern Montana. Through his long experience he is frequently called into consultation upon matters affecting engineering projects over the state.

Mr. Taber was elected the first mayor of Forsyth. He is one of the influential republicans of Rosebud County, and his antecedents were old whigs and became original republicans in Massachusetts. Mr. Taber cast his first vote in Montana in 1892 while with the engineering camp near Glendive.

At Glendive, June 30, 1889, he married Miss Emma Choisser, daughter of William Choisser, a venerable retired rancher of Forsyth and sister of the late Jo E. Choisser, a prominent business man of Rosebud County. Mr. and Mrs. Taber have one daughter, Jessie, who was born at Forsyth and completed her education in Bruno Hall at Spokane.

HON. JOHN E. EDWARDS, president of the Bank of Commerce of Forsyth, and who continuously for

thirteen years has sat in the Montana Senate as rep- resentative of Rosebud County, has many of the best distinctions associated with personal leadership in business and politics in the state of Montana, where he has lived for more than thirty years, in fact having come here the same year and shortly prior to the admission of Montana to the Union.

So far as ancestry counts, a worthy and useful life might properly have been predicted for him at the beginning. He is a member of the Edwards family that has been conspicuously identified with New England history from the 'earliest colonial period. In later generations the Edwards family has achieved much military distinction. His father, Gen. Oliver Edwards, was reared in Springfield, Massachusetts. He had a Yankee genius for me- chanics, and was an inventor of no mean ability. When a young man he was sent South to New Orleans to erect a sugar factory in Louisiana. After completing that work he returned North and for a time lived in Warsaw, Illinois, where he built a foundry and where it was his good fortune to find his wife, Anna E. Johnston. Her father, John E. Johnston, was born in the north of Ireland, located as a young man at Warsaw, Illinois, and for many years was one of the wealthy residents of that com- munity. With the outbreak of the Civil war Oliver Edwards returned to Springfield, Massachusetts, and entered the service of the Union as a private. He rose through the various grades to captain, and after helping organize the Thirty-seventh Massa- chusetts Infantry at Springfield and surrounding cities he was commissioned its colonel by the gov- ernor of Massachusetts. He became one of the dis- tinguished Civil war leaders, and eventually received the rank of brevet major-general and with the close of the war was made a colonel in the regular army, but soon resigned. A nephew of Gen. Oliver Ed- wards is Maj .- Gen. Clarence R. Edwards, who grad- uated from West Point in 1883, and has had a long and distinguished service in the regular army, having been in the Philippines, and early in 1917 was called from his command of the Department of the North- east to lead the Twenty-sixth Division in the Ameri- can Expeditionary Forces in France.

After leaving the army Gen. Oliver Edwards became general manager of the Florence Sewing Machine Works at Florence, Massachusetts. He remained there eight years, and then returned to Warsaw, Illinois, for the purpose of living a retired life. In 1880, however, he was persuaded to accept the general management of the Gardner Gun Com- pany of London, England, manufacturing a type of machine gun for the British navy. He was abroad engaged in that work for two years, and then re- turned to Warsaw, Illinois, and lived quietly until his death in 1904, at the age of sixty-nine. His widow died in Warsaw in January, 1920. There ' were two children, John E. and Mrs. S. E. Matzke of Warsaw.

John E. Edwards acquired an early training and education that equipped him to take his place as a man of action in the West. He was born at Warsaw, Illinois, July 17, 1866, attended the common schools of his native town and graduated from high school and completed his education at Hanover College in Hanover, Indiana. At the age of sev- enteen he went out to Colorado, and immediately began his experience on the ranch and range of the West. After a year or so his work took him to Wheeler County in the Texas Panhandle. That section was then the unrivaled center of the great cattle industry of the Southwest. In Wheeler County was the only court jurisdiction to serve seventeen unorganized counties of the Texas Panhandle. Mr.

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Edwards joined the Texas Land and Cattle Com- pany, operating under the old "laurel leaf" brand, and became a foreman of the company at the age of twenty. During his life on the southwestern range and also in Montana he came to know many conspicuous men of that period and industry. One of them in whose service he was in Texas was L. W. Stacey, a prominent capitalist and Montana citizen today at Miles City. He also knew Henry Peays, the county commissioner of Powder River County, Montana, and they had come up the trail to the North together. In Montana he worked on the roundup with Frank Murphy, the old Texan of the Mizpah. After leaving Texas he became acquainted with James Dahlman, the noted Nebraska democrat and famous mayor of Omaha.

It was in 1899 that 'Mr. Edwards made his trip over the northern trail from Texas, accompanying L. W. Stacey's outfit, which made its first stop on Powder River. He then went to work for the Niobrara Cattle Company, which soon sold its stock to Thomas Cruse, the distinguished Montana rancher. This was the original N bar outfit, with headquarters and range chiefly in Fergus County. Mr. Edwards joined the Cruse organization in the spring of 1890, and was with them for nine years, in charge of the Cruse outfit, which was one of the big cattle concerns of the state, having on the range at different times about twenty-five thousand head of cattle besides a hundred thousand sheep.

Mr. Edwards left the Cruse organization to take the agency of the Crow Indians for the purpose of obtaining the consent of the tribe to the opening of a million and a quarter acres of land, the last large slice cut off the reservation. During his three years as agent he acquired the consent of the Indians to this cession, and then resigned and settled at Forsyth.

Mr. Edwards has been identified with the town of Forsyth since July, 1902. At the request of Secretary of the Interior Hitchcock he was appointed by President Roosevelt the secretary's personal repre- sentative in the Indian field with jurisdiction over the Indian Reservation of the Northwest, but after a year resigned this office. Besides his position as agent and as special representative of the Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Edwards had another important connection with the development of the Crow Reser- vation, in the matter of irrigation. He is a practical authority on irrigation in Montana. He was chiefly instrumental in the building of a system affecting twelve thousand acres of the Yellowstone Valley in Elsworth County. His next project was the Two Leggins Canal on Big Horn River in Big Horn County, which reclaimed twenty-eight thousand acres. While agent of the Crows he performed some irrigation construction work, and had done a similar service in Fergus County.

With his removal to Forsyth Mr. Edwards found his chief interests in banking and merchandising. He was one of the partners in the Richardson Mer- cantile Company as an associate of E. A. Richard- son. At the same time he became one of the organizers of the Bank of Commerce, and for a number of years has been its president. Senator Edwards built the electric lighting plant of Forsyth & Hardin. He is a director of the Treasure State Bank of Hysham, a director of the Bank of Ash- land, and is president and managing director of the Gazette Printing Company of Billings.

During the World war Senator Edwards was an original member of the Montana Council of Defense and continuosly active in promoting the war program .of the state. A republican by inheritance as well

as by choice, he cast his first national ballot in 1888 for Benjamin Harrison. At that time he was in Texas and his was the only republican vote cast in his precinct of Wheeler County. So far as his busy career as a Montana stockman permitted he was a worker for his party and good government during all the years of his residence here. He served as chairman of the Republican State Central Com- mittee in 1912 and 1914. Senator Edwards has been a member of the State Senate since January, 1907, and in point of continuous service is one of the senior members of that body. He was elected for Rosebud County and has been re-elected every four years since. His first service was in the Tenth General Assembly, presided over by Lieutenant Gov- ernor Norris, and he has served under the republican Lieutenant Governor Allen and under the present incumbent, Lieutenant Governor McDowell. Much of the time he has been floor leader of his party, and for five terms was president pro tem. He was in the Senate while United States senators were still elected by the Legislature and cast three ballots for candidates for that office, once supporting the successful candidate. Obeying the popular mandate expressed at the primaries, he helped elect T. J. Walsh to the Senate.

In Fergus County, November 15, 1892, Senator Ed- wards married 'Miss Julia Anderson. Her father, Reese Anderson, was one of the prominent pioneers of Montana, coming from Kentucky. Mrs. Edwards was born at Deer Lodge, Montana, January 17, 1869, one of a family of five daughters and two sons. She was educated in Montana schools, and she and Senator Edwards have two daughters, Annie, Mrs. Fletcher S. Woolston, of Forsyth, and Miss Eunice I., who finished her education in Leland Stanford University in California.

WALTER E. CLARKE, manager of the Commercial Hotel of Forsyth, is a veteran railroad man, a former county official of Rosebud County, and has other- wise been prominent in the citizenship of Forsyth for nearly a quarter of a century.

He was born at Waunakee, Wisconsin, October 15, 1870, son of James and Harriet (Taylor) Clarke. His parents were born in England and as children were brought to the United States and were married in Wisconsin. His father spent all his active career as a merchant and early established his home and place of business at Waunakee. He lived there until his death on his seventy-fourth birthday, October 24, 1919. The widowed mother is still living there, and her children are: Annie, wife of William T. Riley, of Madison, Wisconsin; Walter E .; Harry T., who succeeded his father in business at Waunakee; Jessie M., wife of Ray Brown, of Lodi, Wisconsin; and Leon B., of Madison, Wisconsin.

The public school of Waunakee gave Walter E. Clarke his early education. He also gained a prac- tical business experience in his father's store, and learned telegraphy in the local office of the North- western Railway Company. His first regular assign- ment to duty by the company was as operator at Capron, Illinois, and for two and a half years he was on duty at different points along the system. He then gave up railroad work and for a time lived in his home community in Wisconsin, and from there in August, 1895, he came to Montana and readily found a place for his skill as a telegraph operator with the Northern Pacific Railway at Forsyth. He resigned in 1898 and for the following year was in the barber business. When he went back to railroading he entered the operating service as a brakeman and in 1902 was promoted to conductor,

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Montana, its story and biography; a history of aboriginal and territorial Montana and three decades of statehood, Volume III, Part 186

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