Montana, its story and biography; a history of aboriginal and territorial Montana and three decades of statehood, Volume III, Part 217

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 217

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On February 21, 1895, at Belle Fourche, Mr. Van-

Vol. II1-49

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nett was married to Christine Johnstone. She was born at Moingona, Boone County, Iowa, November I, 1876, daughter of Robert and Janet Johnstone. She was fourteen years four months old when her father died. In 1894 her mother was married to Mr. George Whitney, and eleven months later Miss Christine became the bride of Mr. Vannett. Mr. and Mrs. Vannett had the following children : Howard on the ranch with his father enlisted in the army during the World war, spending nine months in France and a part of the time with the Army of Occupation ; he escaped wounds and capture and was discharged from Hospital Corps No. 29 in July, 1919. The two younger children are Hazel, a student in a business college at South Bend, Indiana, and Freda.

Politically Mr. Vannett is nominally a republican and supports that party in national elections, but in local elections he disregards political lines and sup- ports only those men and measures which in his judgment will be to the advantage of the public good. He has always taken a strong interest in educational matters and for seven years he has ren- dered effective and appreciated service as a member of the school board of District No. 23, it having been during his incumbency that the new schoolhouse was erected. By a straightforward and commend- able course he has made his way from a somewhat humble beginning to a respectable position in the business world, winning the hearty admiration of the people of his adopted state and earning a repu- lation as an enterprising, progressive man of affairs and a broad-minded, charitable and upright citizen.

SAMUEL D. GOZA. It is a commonplace remark in Montana that Sam D. Goza has a wider personal acquaintance throughout the state than any other man. For twenty years he has been the Montana General Agent of the Northwestern Life Insurance Company. That designation, however, only ex- presses one phase of his twenty years' activities in the state.

In all matters political and in most civic matters, he has been one of the real leaders in Montana affairs.

Mr. Goza has never sought public honors for himself, but has exerted a great influence in the inner councils of the leaders of the republican forces in the state. He is generally accepted as Gov- ernor Dixon's closest political friend and adviser, as he was likewise an intimate associate of the late Senator Thomas H. Carter during his lifetime.

While he has never attended a political conven- tion in an official capacity, yet he has probably exerted as great an influence in the politics of the state as any one single individual.

He was a sincere follower of Theodore Roose- velt and when the 1912 presidential campaign de- veloped was one of his trusted leaders, both in Mon- tana and at the nominating convention in Chicago.

During the World war he was a member of the Hoover Food Administration activities in Montana, as well as the various relief organizations that were formed during and after the war.

He was born in Bolivar County, Mississippi, Octo- ber 21, 1866, son of Samuel D. and Mary (Pickett) Goza, the former a native of Louisville, Kentucky, and the latter of Mississippi. The father was a Mississippi planter and a Confederate soldier. He died in 1867, having lost the greater part of his property during the war.

By the death of the mother soon afterward, Samuel D. Goza was left an orphan, and spent most of his early years in the home of an aunt

and uncle, who, in 1879 removed to Leadville, Colorado. He had little opportunity to attend school after the age of thirteen, but some years later spent two terms in Denver University, and by diligent self effort acquired the equivalent of a college edu- cation.

Mr. Goza entered the service of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company in 1890, writing business at Aspen and Leadville, Colorado. He soon proved a man of splendid qualifications for the exacting role of life insurance, and eventually was made district manager for Western Colorado with headquarters at Denver. In May, 1902, the com- pany sent him to Montana' as state manager, and later gave him added territory in the northern part of Wyoming. During his first ten years as gen- eral manager of Montana, he increased the busi- ness in his territory from a little less than $4,000,000 to $10,000,000.

Mr. Goza, though a southerner by birth and son of a Confederate soldier, became affiliated with the republican party early in life. One of his early experiences in Colorado was conducting a newspaper at Aspen in the support of the Harrison campaign of 1888. He was in the newspaper business there until he took up the life insurance work.

February 9, 1890, at Leadville, he married Miss Etta Newby, who was born in Iowa February 9, 1872, daughter of J. L. and Martha (Williams) Newby. Of the four children born to their union, two grew up, Ned S. and Samuel D., Jr., both of whom saw service in the United States army during the late war.

FRED A. PRIESS, a merchant at Ismay, began his business career with the history of Ismay as a rail- road town. He arrived in Montana in 1908 and immediately entered a homestead six miles from the town, where he built a little shack 14 by 14 feet, and this pioneer home sheltered him and his family while he was proving up his claim. His farming experience had been gained in Minnesota, and of the four crops he planted on his Montana land he harvested three, his farming experience thus mark- ing a single failure. When he decided to take up work along a different line he rented his farm, but has still clung to its title. He came into the coun- try without capital, and when he left the farm he took from it in addition to its improvements about $700 or $800, all of which had been made from the land.

Mr. Priess left his farm to take charge of the Ismay Hotel, but after a year spent as a hotel proprietor he engaged in the clothing business as the successor of Jo Schaivitsch, beginning the in- dustry with a stock of men's and ladies' furnishings valued at $2,600, and he is still identified with Ismay's business activities as a clothing merchant.

Mr. Priess came to Montana from his native state of Minnesota, where he was born in Ottertail County December 16, 1882. He remained on the farm un- til reaching his nineteenth year, obtained his educa- tion in the country schools with an additional year in a business college at Fergus Falls, and then en- tering his brother's store at Beroun, Minnesota, as a clerk, obtained his first experience as a merchant. From this position he went to Holloway, Minnesota, from there to Farwell, serving a clerkship in both towns, was next in Portland, North Dakota, and there terminated his connection with the middle west, making his way out to Montana and taking up a new career in a new location.

Mr. Priess' father, Adolph Priess, was of German birth and although he came to the United States

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before his marriage he wedded a lady from his native place, Christina Pfeffer, in Minnesota. They became the parents of fourteen children, nine sons and five daughters, and of this large family twelve survive, eight sons and four daughters.

Fred A. Priess was married at Buxton, North Dakota, December 14, 1907, to Miss Lottie Cooper, who was born in North Dakota in 1883, a daughter of George and Mary (Rouck) Cooper. The father was born and reared in Canada, was married in North Dakota, and spent his life as a farmer. Mr. and Mrs. Cooper became the parents of seven living children, three daughters and four sons. Two chil- dren, Ethel and Leroy, have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Priess.

Mr. Priess owns his own business house in Ismay, and also erected his own home there, and he is serving his fellow townsmen as a member of the Board of Aldermen and as a school director. He cast his first vote as a republican, having been reared in the faith of that party, and is an entered ap- prentice in Masonry.

GUY T. HAYWOOD, M. D. Rosebud County and the community of Forsyth in particular have a high respect and appreciation for the professional abili- ties and service of the medical firm of Cotton and Haywood. Of this firm Doctor Haywood has car- ried the burdens of his profession here for six years, and is also well known to the citizenship of the county as a native son.

He was born at the south end of the county, on the old Fred Ramsey ranch, then in Custer County, on August 28, 1887. His father is the well known and prominent pioneer character James Haywood of Birney, Custer County. James Haywood was `born at Tignish, Prince Edward Island, Canada, in 1859, son of a well-to-do miller and farmer. The Haywoods were English pioneers in Canada, com- ing prior to the seven years of French and Indian wars, and were granted lands from the domain in which General Wolf's claims were allotted. James Haywood practically grew up in the atmosphere of his father's grist mill, an old time water plant. When his father married a second time he left home and came to the United States, and in the summer of 1874 made the interesting voyage on a river boat up the Yellowstone to Miles City. From that year to the present, more than forty-five years, he has lived in as close touch as possible with the wilderness aspects of the northwest. For the first ten years he was a trapper and hunter, and was one of the old coterie of hunters to which the noted Oscar Brackett of Ismay belongs. He and his cousin, Archie McMurdy, one of the hest known buffalo hunters of the day along the Yellowstone, were partners. In their expeditions they hunted all over the Porcupine and Sarpey country and over much of what was then Custer County. When it came time to settle down James Haywood located on what is now the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. When those lands were designated as the home of the Indians he was compelled to give up his loca- tion, and subsequently moved to Birney. However, he remained on the reservation as Boss farmer for the Northern Cheyennes a few years, and gave those wild and untutored Indians their first instruc- tion in agriculture, performing thereby a useful service both to the Government and to the tribe. Since removing to Birney he has maintained a modest home and a modest business as a farmer and rancher, and is still an enthusiastic sportsman with rod and gun.

The mother of Doctor Haywood bore the maiden

name of Elizabeth Miller. She was born at Wick, a small town in the north of Scotland, where the chief industry is herring fishing. Her father was James Miller and her mother a member of the Southerland family. When she was a small girl her parents came to America and settled at Tignish, Prince Edward Island, where her father continued fishing and also as a sailor on coasting vessels. At Tignish, Elizabeth was well educated, but finished her education in Boston, becoming a teacher, and for a time was employed as a governess in the prominent Tainter family of Boston. In 1886 she married James Haywood. They were married in Chicago and as a bride she came to Montana and as a woman of distinctive culture she rendered many services outside her home interests. She taught school in Custer County and later was elected county superintendent of Rosebud County, and was serving her first term when she died September 11, 1909, at the age of forty-five. She was the mother of three children: Dr. Guy T .; Gertrude, who died in young womanhood; and Miss Edna, who owns and operates a cattle ranch at Birney.

Dr. Guy T. Haywood spent the first nine years of his life in the Birney locality, and then accom- panied his mother back to her home community at Tignish in Prince Edward Island, where he lived to the age of nineteen. He received most of his early education in that town, but later from his own work provided the means for his professional train- ing. For three years he did preparatory work at the University of Iowa, and in 1913 graduated from the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia. After a year in hospital work and general practice at Philadelphia he returned to Montana, practiced at Ismay two years, and since then has been busily engaged in his profession at Forsyth as a member of the firm Cotton & Haywood. This firm repre- sents as physicians and surgeons both the Milwau- kee and the Northern Pacific Railways of Forsyth. Doctor Haywood is also the present county physician of Rosebud County.

He was reared in a democratic home and his mother was elected on the ticket of that party as county superintendent of schools, though Rosebud County was normally republican. Doctor Haywood cast his first presidential vote for President Wilson. Fraternally he is a member of the Masonic Order, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Woodmen of the World, and is a member and di- rector of the Forsyth Commercial Club.

For his first wife Doctor Haywood married Miss Pauline Schrag, a native of Germany. By this union he has one son, Guy, Jr. At Forsyth December 26, 1919, Doctor Haywood married Miss Ethel Drake. She was born in Green County, Wisconsin, in 1889, and was liberally educated as an artist and musi- cian. She graduated from the Valley City Normal of North Dakota, finished her musical education in the Warren Academy at Warren, Illinois, and also attended the Academy of Fine Arts at Chicago. For four years before her marriage she was a teacher of music and drawing in the Forsyth High School.

JOSIAH J. SIGAFOOS. Starting his career in Mon- tana as a ranch rider thirty-eight years ago, Josiah J. Sigafoos is today one of the wealthy, prominent and influential stockmen, farmers and landowners of Fergus County, and in more recent years has come into prominence as an inventor. The success which has awarded his efforts is but the just reward of industry and perseverance, for everything that he owns has been self acquired, and in its acquire-

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ment he has held steadfastly to the code of honor- able and straightforward dealing.

Mr. Sigafoos was born in Holmes County, Ohio, March 2, 1852, a son of Daniel Sigafoos. As he was but eleven days old when his mother died he naturally has no recollection of her, and as his father did not like to discuss the subject of his be- reavement in later years the son has no record of her maiden name. Daniel Sigafoos was born in Holmes County, Ohio, a son of a pioneer of the Western Reserve, and died when seventy-four years of age, in 1893. In that state and county he con- tinued to be engaged in agricultural pursuits until the year 1861, when he removed to Louisa County, Iowa, and was engaged there in farming and rais- ing stock up to the time of his death. In politics he was first a whig and later a republican.

The youngest in a family of four children, Josiah J. Sigafoos received his education in the public schools of Holmes County, Ohio, and Louisa County, Iowa, and later spent two years, those of 1875 and 1876, in attending the Iowa State Agricultural Col- lege at Ames, Iowa. His initial venture on his own responsibility was launched in Leavenworth County, Kansas, where he was engaged in farming until the spring of 1882, at which time he came to Montana to take up the work which was later to bring him fortune and position. From Dillon, Montana, which point he reached by rail, he made his way by stage coach to Helena, and then went sixty miles north of the latter city and began his work of riding the range as a cowboy. In the fall of 1882 he changed his base of operations to White Sulphur Springs, continuing to ride the range until the fall of the following year, when he went to U Bet, Meagher (now Fergus) County, still riding the range.

Mr. Sigafoos' real career started in the spring of 1884, when he homesteaded a tract on Ross Fork, two miles from U Bet, a community in which he has continued to centralize his activities to the present time. From his original homestead he has built up holdings aggregating 1,980 acres, on which he has from 600 to 750 head of cattle. In the year 1918 he put 100 acres of his land into wheat and 150 acres into barley, while in 1919 he devoted 600 acres to these two grains. His operations have al- ways been carried on in the most approved style, and his aggressiveness, untiring energy and per- severance have been backed by an intimate knowl- edge of the science of his vocation and of soil and climatic conditions.

More recently Mr. Sigafoos has come into promi- nence as the inventor of the Sigafoos Automobile Steering Device. This invention provides one of the most novel, simple and practical devices of its kind that has ever been brought before the public. This invention enables the operator of an automobile to steer the car as easily with his feet as with his hands, so that when he desires he may rest his hands. Mr. Sigafoos' reputation is that of an honorable man of business. He has never cared to enter the lists as a candidate for political office, but is politi- cally a staunch republican. He has never married.

FREDERICK WILMORE PECKOVER. In May, 1887, Frederick Wilmore Peckover came to Montana. He has had a great variety of business experience, but for a number of years has been one of the leading real estate and insurance men in Anaconda.

He was born in Nicholasville, Kentucky, April 7, 1865, but was reared from very early babyhood in Cynthiana, Kentucky. Both his father and grand- father belonged to that old school of dentists who were also physicians. For many years, Richard, the

grandfather, practiced his profession in Lexington, Kentucky, where he died in 1877.

Edmund, father of the Anaconda business man, was born in 1837, and in 1861 he enlisted in the Union army. All through the war he served in the Quartermaster's Department. He was a repub- lican, a very active member of the Episcopal Church, and belonged to the Masonic fraternity. He died at Cynthiana, Kentucky, in 1875. His wife was Jane Elizabeth Ridgley, a member of the Colonial family of that name. Her death occurred in Florida in 1920.

Frederick W. Peckover attended school in Cyn- thiana, but from the age of fourteen has been earn- ing his own way in the world. As a boy he learned telegraphy and was employed at Cynthiana as an operator until 1879, when he became telegraph oper- ator at Covington, and, later, at Cincinnati. In 1882 he joined the staff of the Denver and Rio Grande Railway at Colorado Springs. In 1884 he transferred to the Union Pacific as timekeeper and division clerk at Pocatello, Idaho, in the motor power department.

In May, 1887, Mr. Peckover came to Anaconda to take a position as timekeeper with the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, under Mr. Marcus Daly. He remained in this position for two years, after which he conducted an independent mercantile busi- ness until the fall of 1890, when he joined the Great Northern Railway as chief clerk of construction during the building of their line from Havre, Mon- tana, to Spokane, Washington. Upon completion of this construction he entered the train service as con- ductor.

In 1895, at Anaconda, Mr. Peckover married Miss Martha Harwood Durston, a daughter of John H. Durston, Ph. D., and Mary Harwood Durston.

In 1896 Mr. Peckover returned to Anaconda and became deputy clerk and recorder, under Martin Martin. In 1898 he entered into a partnership with J. T. O'Brien and engaged in the real estate and insurance business. Later he bought the O'Brien interest and in the course of another year con- solidated with G. P. Welcome. The firm name be- came Welcome and Peckover, and the business expanded to include, on a large scale, both ranch- ing and cattle raising. In 1914 the partnership of Welcome and Peckover was dissolved, and Mr. Peckover engaged independently in the insurance and coal business.

Mr. Peckover is an independent voter and a mem- ber of the Episcopal Church. He is affiliated with the Anaconda Lodge of Elks, Rotarians, Country Club, Anaconda Club, Angler's Club, Good' Roads Association, Bowlers Association, and the Gun Club of which he has been president for five years. At different times, especially during the war, both he and his wife have given much time to Government, charitable, school or other public activities.

THOMAS J. MCDONOUGH. One of the largest com- mercial organizations in the northwest is the Stone- Ordean-Wells Company, wholesale grocers. With headquarters at Duluth, the business ramifies over many states, with distributing centers and branch houses from the Great Lakes to the Cascade Range. The manager of the branch house at Billings is Thomas J. McDonough, who began with this com- pany as a city salesman, and as branch house man -. ager is now head of a business that exceeds in volume most of the independent establishments at Billings.

Mr. McDonough was born at Superior, Wiscon- sin, January 17, 1877. His grandfather, F. H. Mc-

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HISTORY OF MONTANA

Donough, was a native of Ireland. He brought his { of the Woman's Club, a federated club, and is now family to Canada, where he followed his trade as a a member of the Billings Board of Education. carpenter, but after fifteen years went back to Ire- land and died there. His son, Henry McDonough, JOHN FRANCIS ROCHE came to Montana from the Middle West where he was born and reared, made himself valuable if not indispensable to several of the electric power corporations of the . state, and recently, much to the regret of his many friends in Butte, Billings and elsewhere who know him as "Jack" Roche, he returned to the Middle West at Chicago, where he is assistant to the president of the Edison Electric Appliance Company, Inc. was born at Quebec, Canada, in 1826, grew up and married in his native province and became a skilled wood worker. In 1862 he moved to Superior, Wis- consin, where he followed his profession until his death in 1882. He was quite active in democratic politics, and served as supervisor of Douglas County, Wisconsin. He was a Catholic in religion. Henry McDonough married Ellen Kegenay, who was born in 1837 at Hochelaga, Canada, and died at Superior, Mr. Roche was born at Rickersville, Iowa, April 23, 1874, son of Michael and Catherine Roche. His parents came to this country with their parents in 1849, and spent their lives as farmers at Rickersville, a little village twelve miles west of Dubuque. Wisconsin, in 1899. She was the mother of seven children, Thomas J. being the youngest. A. J. McDonough, the oldest, is manager for Armour & Company at Superior, Wisconsin. Michael, who died at the age of thirty-two, was dock foreman for the Youghiogheny-Lehigh Coal Company at Superior. Anna died in childhood. John H. is con- nected with the Peevey Elevator Company at Superior. Charles H. lives at Superior and is with the Motor Traffic Company. George F. is an em- ploye of the Great Northern Railway Company at Superior.

Thomas J. McDonough, after leaving school at the age of fourteen, went to work in a grocery store and acquired a thorough knowledge of the retail business by a period of service lasting for six years. Then for five years he was with the Duluth branch of Armour & Company, spent four years with the Tuohy Mercantile Company of Superior, and in 1905 entered the service of the Stone-Ordean-Wells Company at Superior as city salesman. He was with the firm there 31/2 years, and in 1909 was sent to Billings to take the management of the branch house. The plant and offices at Billings are on Twenty-seventh Street and Montana Avenue, and the building is one of the finest business struc- tures in the city, being of modern type of commer- cial architecture, expressly equipped and fitted for the utmost efficiency in handling a wholesale grocery business.

The branch houses of the Stone-Ordean-Wells Company are located at Minneapolis, Fargo, Grand Forks and Minot, North Dakota, Billings, Great Falls and Missoula, Montana, while storage houses are located at Casper, Wyoming, and Bozeman, Helena and Lewistown, Montana. The officers and chief executives of the business, all residents of Duluth, are A. R. Orlean, president ; James E. Granger, vice president; R. A. Barthold, secretary ; W. L. Mackay, treasurer; R. A. Horr, general man- ager; and W. K. Gill, vice president of the coffee mills.

The plant under Mr. McDonough's supervision has a total working force of twenty-four, including seven road salesmen, with eight office employes and nine warehouse and truck employes. Mr. McDon- ough in politics is independent, is a member of the Catholic Church and is a third degree Knight of Columbus, being affiliated with Billings Council No. 1259. His home is a modern bungalow, built in 1912, and located at 42 Lewis Avenue.

Mr. McDonough married at Deer Creek, Minne- sota, in 1907, Miss Anna L. Nelson, daughter of O. H. and Ellen (Wilson) Nelson, the latter now de- ceased. Her father is an old time Minnesota resi- dent, and has lived at Deer Creek for forty-two years. He is a retired farmer. Mrs. McDonough is a graduate of the North Dakota Normal School at Fargo, and was a teacher in Minnesota before her marriage. She has been prominent in social and civic affairs at Billings, was president in 1915

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Montana, its story and biography; a history of aboriginal and territorial Montana and three decades of statehood, Volume III, Part 217

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