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MEADOW
CREEK HISTORY
BY: ROBERT R. HUGHES (1915 – 2012)
INCLUDING:
MONTANA POWER ADDENDUM
and
LIFE IN THE CANYON
BY: MARION MORTON
MEADOW CREEK (MONTANA) HISTORY, 100 Years Ago and Now.
Compiled
By: Robert R. Hughes, February, 2010
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Download WORD copy of document
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CONTENTS
INTRODUCION: PAGE 4
CHAPTER ONE: McAllister - PAGE 6
Written by: R. Beals, in Pioneer
Trials and Trails.
CHAPTER TWO: Early Days - PAGE 7
By: R. R. Hughes
CHAPTER THREE: - PAGE 11
James
Alexander McAllister – A Stockman
Madison
County
Prepared
by Dr. Mae Pankey
CHAPTER FOUR: Mining - PAGE 17
By: R. R. Hughes
CHAPTER FIVE: Homesteading: - PAGE
21
By: R. R. Hughes
Picture, post card
CHAPTER SIX: The TV Ranch - PAGE 26
By: R. Hughes
Pictures: Vincent, McDowell, Uncle
Tom and Aunt Lora
CHAPTER SEVEN: The Old Road - PAGE 29
By: R. R. Hughes
CHAPTER EIGHT: The Fletcher Story - PAGE 34
BY: Edith Evans Fletcher (Mrs. Wm. A Fletcher)
CHAPTER NINE: Ranching 1920s - PAGE
33
By: R. R. Hughes
CHAPTER TEN: School and Schooling - PAGE 42
By: R. R.Hughes
CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Double/Wilson Place - PAGE 44
By: Doris Wilson
CHAPTER TWELVE: Religion and Church - PAGE 49
By: By: R. R. Hughes
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN: 1910 MAP “DOWNTOWN” MEADOW
CREEK - PAGE 51
Reconstructed by: R R. Hughes, February 2010
Addendum - PAGE 52
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INTRODUCTION
By: R. R. Hughes
McAllister, Montana, as you whiz by it at 60 miles per hour, is only another intersection on the map, or maybe just a crossroad. There is not time to reflect that at one time this was the hub of a thriving little community, complete with cows and pigs, roosters that crowed in the morning, and people that got up to do what they had to do to be what we now call being pioneer. Thousands of little communities were growing up in the western areas of this country one hundred years ago. Yesterday’s pioneer is now your neighbor. It is small wonder that McAllister escaped public notice and still attracts only the attention of a few fishermen, hunters and curious tourists.
I don’t know where they all went but I hope this work will give readers a slight inkling of why the people of Meadow Creek, now McAllister, got up in the morning. It was a nice place to live. The reader will note that I have made generous use of certain documents authored by others. The lifeblood of a community comes from many different sources and chances of finding essays written in other perspectives is a great stroke of luck. In the following narration I give full credit to the authors and their articles that recorded pieces of Meadow Creek history, as they knew it. It just happens that the subjects for these little articles; McAllister, Fletcher, Wilson, and the Church history, plus my own resurrection of some Hughes history, describes the central community of Meadow Creek as I knew it during the early 1900s and 1920s.
There is map in the narrative which helps to locate geographically features of Meadow Creek as it was one hundred years ago. Your highway map will still show tentacles that reach from this centrally located hub in all directions to Ennis, Norris, and the numerous ranches, each that has its own little history to tell.
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Thank you very much to the following people:
- Ruth Beals, for “McAllister“
- Dr. Mae Pankey, for James Alexander McAllister
- Edith Fletcher “The Fletcher Family,”
- Doris Wilson: for the history of the Deuble Family and the Wilson place.
- Mary Lindsay, for “McAllister Church History”.
Note: The original manuscripts for these articles are on file at the Merrill G. Burlingame Special Collections, The Libraries, Montana State University, PO Box 173320, Bozeman,Montan,.59717-3220. Phone (406) 994- 4242.
Collection 100 - McAllister, Montana Collection, 1869-1964
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CHAPTER
ONE
By R. Beals in Pioneer Trials and Trails
McALLISTER
Quote “Nearly midway between Norris and Ennis is situated McAllister, Montana, altitude 5050 feet, near the west shore of Meadow Lake. This area was formerly known as Meadow Creek and was settled in the late 1860s. The old Meadow Creek post office was established perhaps in the 1870s. A. M. Berry was the first postmaster. In 1880, George Bess was postmaster, he also had a hotel.
The first school building was a log structure built in the early 1870s and the first teacher was a Mr. Done. This building burned later and school was held in the community hall. The hall was enlarged in the early 1900s. In 1901 a brick school building was completed.
A Methodist church was completed in 1887.
The settlement now known as McAllister was settled in December 1896, on ground bought by Alex McAllister from the Northern Pacific Railroad Company. Mr. McAllister had settled near this spot with his parents in 1871. The post office was established in 1902. Dave Lindsay was the first postmaster. Unquote.
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CHAPTER
TWO
By:
R. R. Hughes
EARLY DAYS
My mother told me that when she first came to the valley, in 1903, Upper Meadow Creek and Lower Meadow Creek were developing as two separate communities, and for a while there were two post offices. The Gibson’s had a post office in their house, known as Meadow Creek, which was located about two miles up the South Meadow Creek Road from where the McAllister post office is now. She said that there was really no confusion about mail; everybody knew everybody else and she seldom went to the post office - neighbors would bring the mail. Ruth Beal writes in her article, “McAllister” that George Bess had a post office in the hotel. The post office moved around a lot and probably it was in the hotel until Alex McAllister moved it to the store when he built his store about 1902. He added onto his store building in order to accommodate the post office. The community that Alex McAllister nurtured had a general store, service station, rental cabins and eventually the post office. Alex also had considerable hay growing acreage and he built a big barn and a corral system where he produced amateur rodeos on weekends.
The week -end rodeos that Alex produced were rough and tumble affairs. They did not have anything resembling a chute so they did it the hard way. Several husky ranch hands would hold a horse immobile, even if they had to throw it, while more helpers positioned a saddle, if one was to be used, and then a hopeful cowboy would get on. He had to ride the horse into submission as it probably soon would be somebody’s saddle horse or would join the outlaw bunch to be tried again at a later date.
Another event in the weekend rodeo was a horse race. Dad and Jasper would tell stories and snicker about how Tom Wilson’s dirty gray buggy horse consistently beat Alex’s Thoroughbred racehorse, They also had the story about Frank Sanguin, who couldn’t ride a stick horse sober but after a few beers, could ride the worst outlaw horse in the bunch.
The two streams named Meadow Creek are fed by melting snow from the Tobacco Root mountains, plus occasional contribution from fresh water springs. The snow waters flow down as North and South Meadow Creek to eventually empty into what is now Ennis Lake. All along their length, irrigation water is taken out of both of these streams for the thousands of acres on the ranches that were founded in this farm and ranch area.
Over the years beaver dams and other natural causes had created a swampy area down where the two creeks emptied into the lake and up the creeks for about a mile. If the area had been bigger and more important, like the Mississippi River, I could call it a “delta”. However, being in Montana, it remains a “swamp”. A short section of the road that went past McAllister and served the area below had to cross this swamp by crossing on the corduroy bridge. The "corduroy bridge" went across an extremely soft and swampy stretch caused by poor drainage of South Meadow Creek into the lake. In the early days, when nothing but horses and wagons used this road, it was made passable by cutting short logs and laying them side by side in the approaches on both sides of the wooden bridge that spanned the channel. It was an ordeal to cross even with a team and wagon. The horses stumbled and fell, or their legs went through the cracks, wagon wheels bounced violently, it was almost impossible to ride in the bed of a “dead axle” wagon. In the spring it became completely impassable for a few days during run-off. Those living below were stranded. When people started to try to cross over this monstrosity with automobiles, it became a community peril. Finally work crews were organized to clear out the creek for better drainage, and with the county's help, the approaches to the channel bridge were filled with dirt and graded.
I clearly remember using the old corduroy bridge riding in the wagon with Dad, when the logs were still there. We hauled ice from the lake over the corduroy bridge several winters. The road must have been improved around 1927 as the Potter Hotel was open for business by that time and “summer” people from Butte had started to build their cabins across the creek. Uncle Tom and Aunt Lora had retired and lived down there. He (Uncle Tom) bought a new Reo automobile every year or two and he certainly added to the pressure to tear out that menace to automobile traffic.
100 years ago, in the 1910 census, the area was listed as Meadow Creek, but by 1960 popular use of “McAllister” as the name forced an official change. The history of McAllister by Dr. Mae Pankey is actually a biography of Alex McAllister. She brings out the important place this stock man, rancher, mercantile dealer, keeper of race horses, all around jack of all trades, played in the area and left his family name to a section of Montana
Note: Dr. Pankey’s original manuscript is on file at the Merrill G. Burlingame Special Collections, The Libraries, Montana State University, PO Bo x 173320, Bozeman,Montan,.59717-3220. Phone (406) 994- 4242
Collection 100 - McAllister, Montana Collection, 1869-1964
It can be viewed there, or photo-copies can be obtained at a charge. The full text follows:
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CHAPTER THREE
QUOTE: “James Alexander McAllister” – A Stockman
Madison County
Prepared by Dr. Mae Pankey
James Alexander McAllister was born at Malad, Idaho, January 12, 1868. He was the youngest of three children, two boys and a girl, born to James McAllister, a native of Glascow, Scotland, and Elizabeth Powell McAllister, born in Wales. His father carried freight between Corine, Utah, and Virginia City, Montana, as early as 1864. He decided he wanted to live in Montana so he left Idaho bringing his family, two wagons, one yoke of oxen, one team of horses, three extra horses and ten or twelve head of cattle, and arrived at Meadow Creek in the Madison Valley in June, 1871 after being several weeks on the road. They noticed the ranch owned by Don O. Spaulding at Meadow Creek and made inquiries about the locations. When they found the land was unsurveyed, they drove on to Lower Willow Creek on a tour of inspection. Not being satisfied they returned to Meadow Creek and bought the Spaulding property, which consisted of 160 acres of land and several log buildings. They immediately went in the dairy and cheese business, making large quantities of cheese. Their market was in Virginia City and sometimes they took a load of cheese to Bozeman.
James McAllister was the first white man in the Madison Valley to have white face cattle. He bought his first white face calf from Alex Metzel in the Upper Ruby Valley and paid $50 for it. His dairy cattle were a cross between Hereford and Durham stock and he kept up the strain as long as he was in the business. Aside from his dairy stock he raised short-horn and Herford cattle and increased his herd to about 150 head.
Alex got all his common schooling at Meadow Creek and in 1888 and 1889 went to school in Valparaiso, Indiana, a popular place for students in those days. On March 4, 1894 he was married to Miss Annie Alice Thexton, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. George Thexton of Virginia City where she was born, although the family was living at the Thexton ranch on the Madison Valley when she was married and that is where the wedding took place. She was educated in Virginia City, Deer Lodge, and Madison, Wisconsin. The young couple rented the McAllister home place and lived there for two years after which Alex bought 120 acres from the Northern Pacific railroad, at $1.25 an acre, built a home and settled on the place where he still lives. At this time he had about thirty head of cattle and 25 horses, mostly saddle animals, with which to begin his stock business. With his father and brother he had bought a section of railroad land in 1889 and he later bought their share and thus added to his land holdings. He also increased his land by homesteading 160 acres. The railroad section cost $1.40 an acre. He later bought 320 acres on North Meadow Creek, the ranch known as the Pinckney place. In 1897 he went into the general mercantile business. He carried on in the same building in which the family lived and it was not long until he had established a good sound business. In 1899 he enlarged his building and again in 1902 when the McAllister post office was established. He built an addition especially for the post office and separate rooms for the residence of the first postmaster, David Lindsay. Mr. Lindsay kept the position only about six months when he resigned to move to another locality. The next postmaster appointed was a sister of Mrs. McAllister, Mrs. Margaret Deyarmon. She was followed by Miss Marguerite McAllister, Miss Marcella McAllister, and Miss Lorena, all daughters of Alex McAllister. In 1906 Mr. McAllister enlarged his building again adding more rooms for the use of the family and removing the store into the post office building. He carried a large stock of merchandise and built up a big business. He was carrying on his business at the same time and building it up with his own finances. There was plenty of free range covered with grass and wild hay. In 1880, when his father was in the stock business, cows and big calves sold for $14; four-year-old and five-year-old steers sold right along for $18 and $20. Alex shipped his cattle to eastern markets, usually Omaha and Chicago. The prices varied from 2.5 cents to 3 and 4 cents a pound. In 1906 prices began to rise and increased considerably for some time. About 1912 cattle brought five cents right on the ground. Mr. McAllister cut hay on his ground from the beginning of his ownership, and also raised grain-wheat, oats, and barley. His peak operations in the stock industry were in 1916 and 1917 when he had 350 head of cattle and 125 horses. At this time he began to decrease the number of his cattle because of poor range. The dry summer season of 1919 and the following severe winter caused a big loss to Mr. McAllister and all other stockmen in this vicinity. Hay was very poor and during the winter cost from $35 to $50 a ton. The fall of 1918 Mr. McAllister branded 105 calves. The fall of 1919 he branded 13 calves. During this period he also lost 50% of his horses. In the years preceding he lost heavily to horse thieves who would drive off a band at a time. His horse brand is M bar J ( ) on the right shoulder and monogram JAM , also on the right shoulder. His cattle brand was the latter brand on the right hip. All brands are registered.
After the severe winter of 1919 – 1920, Mr. McAllister soon went out of the stock business.
In Virginia City, on July 4, 1885, when he was 17 years old, he entered a horse in the pony race, 250 yards, and came out a most successful winner. After this he had ponies in the races each year at the July 4th celebrations in Virginia City, placing entries in the 250 yards, 300 yards, and quarter mile races. As time went on he also entered horses at Dillon, Bozeman, Billings, the Madison County Fair at Twin Bridges and the state fair at Helena, and always succeeded in carrying off more than his share of the blue ribbons. About 1910 he entered four horses in a relay race in Helena and rode against the champion lady rider of the world. The relay horses were champions, also, and Mr. McAllister’s horses came out in third place. He owned a black quarter-miler that won races whenever and wherever he was entered. Although he was a quarter-mile horse, he was entered one time in Billings against “Colonel T,” a half-mile horse belonging to an Indian and considered one of the best horses in that part of the country, but “McAllister’s Black” won the race. This horse was raised at the McAllister ranch and sired by “Virtringa The Second,” a Marcus Daly horse, bought from James Henderson, a horseman of the Upper Madison Valley. Other stallions owned by Mr. McAllister were “Harry Bluff,” shipped from Missouri and bought in the Gallatin Valley; “Recall” and “Durham” were government horses; all these horses were thoroughbreds. “Mentor Mick”, the stallion Mr. Mcallister has at present was raised in Nebraska and is also a government horse. The black horse, (named Brownie), so well known throughout the state as McAllister’s black, was killed by lightning on the ranch in 1921.
Mr. and Mrs. McAllister were the parents of twelve children, six boys and six girls. In order of their birth, they were Owen, Laura, Elsie, Marguerite, Marcella, Rhea, Kenneth, Harold, Edward, James, Leonard, and Lorena. Of these seven are living. Kenneth and Herold were twins and lived only a couple of months. Leonard and Lorena are also twins, and with Edward and James, live at home with their father. Lorena is the present postmaster. Owen holds a position with the Montana Power Company and with his family lives at the Kerr dam near Polson. Marcella (Mrs. Dave Tudor) lives at Norris, and Laura (Mrs. Joe Oliver) lives at Albinon , Montana. The mother of this large family passed away in 1934; her death being the result of burns sustained when her clothing caught fire from a miner’s candle when she was making a trip of inspection, with visitors, through a mine she owned in Virginia City.
Mr. McAllister retired from the stock business and closed out his mercantile business in 1930. He keeps 4 milk cows and 30 head of horses including several thoroughbreds. These are nearly all saddle horses.
Politically Mr. McAllister has always been a very staunch Democrat. He is now and has always been one of the highly respected citizens of Madison County.
Dated July 20, 1940 by Dr. Mae Pankey; source of information was Mr. McAllister.” end of Dr. Mae Pankey’s article.
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CHAPTER
FOUR
By:
R. R. Hughes
MINING
Economic hard times in the 1880s and the early 1900s plus an extended drought caused unrest in the eastern seaboard and middle-west, triggering a migration to the exciting gold fields and homesteading opportunities opening up in the west and northwest.
Alder gulch, just over the hill to the west of Meadow Creek fueled Montana’s most exciting placer gold rush, and the Revenue hill, with its rich gold mines bordering the Meadow Creek area to the north, were attractive destinations for migrating land and gold seekers. Meadow Creek, situated in between those two industrious areas, did not go unnoticed by the ambitious settlers.
The Monitor Mine was famous for having produced some fantastically rich ore during its productive years. One special deposit yielded some ore that assayed six thousand dollars a ton “The mine superintendent, Roger Knox, sent a sample of this ore to the World's Fair in San Francisco in 1895 and received first prize.
(Source:http://www.deq.state.mt.us/AbandonedMines/linkdocs/techdocs/117Ctech.asp”).
My Uncle Ed was employed in the Revenue Mine about 190l or 1902. During rescue operations, after some kind of a blasting accident, he severely smoke damaged his lungs, dying of pneumonia in l908. My Uncle Bill, also worked in various mines on the Revenue Hill, including the Monitor.
Hard rock mining, on the Revenue Hill, in the early days was not easy, One factor being that the rich ore was close to the surface. Even when available, pneumatic tools could not be used due to the vibration would cause a cave-in. The drilling had to be done by hand with a short handled, two pound, hammer called a "single jack". A "double jack" was a long handled eight-pound hammer but it could not be used in the stopes and drifts because of low ceilings. The single jack had a leather thong loop which went around your wrist and, if you became adept enough, you could release your grip on the handle on the down stroke and whip the head of the hammer down on top of the drill without jarring your hand.
The drills were of tempered steel with hand forged star points. All of the steel for a shift had to be sharpened for the next shift. Miners who learned how to sharpen steel to just the right temper qualified for top pay and a top job. The steel had to be tempered just right so as to not break or flatten. Uncle Bill was an expert, having worked in both the Revenue and the Monitor mines. The drills were of various lengths; short for starting holes, which were replaced with longer ones as the hole got deeper. Each time, after hitting the drill, you had to lift the drill with the other hand and turn it slightly in order to break out a clean hole down which dynamite sticks could be tamped. Every once in a while it was necessary to pull the drill out of the hole, clean the hole with a little long handled spoon, and pour in a little water in order to keep down the dust and perhaps make the solid rock drill easier.
In 1938 and 1939 Uncle Bill and his son leased the Monitor mine property. The old mines on the hill had been abandoned long enough that the remote owners were glad to lease them to anybody who wanted to try their luck. The price of gold had gone up to 32 dollars an ounce and hard workers could pick over the old mines, inside and out, sort out good ore, run the waste dump stuff through a screen, and send to the smelter. Unemployed cousins, like myself and my brothers, could come along at their own risk and take their chances on striking it rich, What actually happened was that we barely made groceries if we worked hard and carefully.
The Monitor Mine adjoined the Revenue and Uncle Bill knew that ore had also been left in it, up near the surface. Being near the surface, the rock was all broken up, dangerous to work in there was no solid ceiling, like it would have been farther down. The drifts (tunnels) left by the old timers, were only big enough to crawl through on hands and knees. The mining procedure we had to use consisted of scraping and picking ore into a sack and dragging it back out to the entrance, carefully. Any unwise bump on the ceiling might bring the whole thing crashing down on your head. This is what they were doing when I joined the crew.
Real trouble developed only a few days later. I had learned enough to identify good ore by that time and had been given a spot of my own to clean out. My brother Ed had another spot, also John and Uncle Bill. Lewis may have been outside sorting ore. All at once we heard this crash and rumble and a cry for help. Uncle Bill was buried. He was pinned down by a big rock. I don't know how John got him out of there but pretty quick he came out, dragging his Dad behind him. Bill was a tough old character and refused to go to the doctor. He crippled around for a while, with what must have been broken ribs, but he didn't believe in lying around much and soon was back on the active list.
We wanted to get rich, but not that badly, so we picked up our tools and sent what ore we had to the smelter.
This picture is one that was taken of the Monitor mine the winter of 1939 when we had it leased.
The old Monitor Mine, which had been worked in the early days, had only a waste dump and crumpled shaft house left when we worked it in 1939.
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CHAPTER FIVE:
By: R R Hughes
Homesteading
By 1910 most of the prime homesteading acreage, suitable for locating ranch homes in the South Meadow Creek area, had been claimed. Sometimes adjoining acreage, usually isolated, was still available. Opportunistic follow up homesteaders could file on specific land, which they knew they could sell as soon as they proved up on it. The following personal experience of my folks’ homestead life is offered as typical of that era.
Based on the picture below my folks were living on their homestead, on Leonard Creek, in 1910. Homesteading must have figured prominently in their plans when they got married in 1908.
My sister Marjorie wrote in one of her articles for the Montana Standard: "Our father took any kind of work to support his rapidly growing family. He hauled freight, taking supplies to mines like the Sunnyside and Revenue, returning down the chute like roads with ore. He ran the Savage Grade with six to eight horses and a two-ton load, the sled and wagon “rough locked." Emily's postcard to her sister-in-law, Mattie Rich, in Sumas, Washington, dated June 10th, 1910, said that Tom was freighting.
The picture postcards that my mother mailed to relatives in Sumas, Washington, June 20th, l910, in which she is shown sitting on the front steps of the homestead cabin, holding baby Edwin. They must have lived there until my oldest brother was about four years old as one of his first memories is of being in a cabin with a horse trough outside and a small creek with willows. He remembered a small building with no floor, which Dad had built on or over the creek. This was probably a "cooler" for keeping fresh milk and foodstuffs. 5
Typical of homestead two room shacks that
were erected to be lived in long enough for the homestead to be proved up on.
The picture shows my mother with her oldest child, Edwin. June -1910.
Above is copy of a post card sent by Emily, June 20, 1910. It was addressed to her sister-in-law, Mrs. Bert Rich, Sumas, Washington. The text reads as follows:
"Dear Mattie, Believe you owe me a letter. Seems strange I don't owe you. We are all real well. Tom is still freighting. Baby is real well and good. He has two teeth. Lots of love, Emily. June l9, l910."
Front of postcard is copy of picture of Emily and baby Edwin.
Her own words: "We homesteaded on Leonard Creek and there were times I would not see another woman for months," The dog's name was Curly; she often remarked what a comfort Curley was for her when she was alone so much.
It was not all work and no play, however, Marjorie continues, "On Sundays baseball was the entertainment after a hard week's work. Tom was a noted pitcher. According to his cousin, Walter Vincent, a game was extended until the following Sunday to allow Tom time to recover somewhat from a broken jaw he received from a bad ball.
Two more children were to be born before the homestead was sold, I think, in 1914. There was no official recording of births for these three children, as well as the next one. When birth certificates were required for employment or citizenship, we all had to obtain sworn statements from people who knew we had been born.
They could not stay at the homestead in winter. Woodcutters and moonshiners, maybe, could survive the bitter cold and deep snow in those mountains, but they could come out on snowshoes when they wished. Leaving a young bride there, with two little ones, was definitely not in the cards. Tom was scratching for subsistence money, wherever work could be found, and had not a chance of getting back to a snowbound mountain cabin every evening. A couple of rental cabins were available, down at the Meadow Creek community, now becoming known as McAllister, which provided the solution for most winters. The family lived in at least two of those cabins, which came with the additional comfort of being neighbors to Bill Else and his wife. Bill was the blacksmith, but even more important, was that his wife served as the community midwife, at a time when the arrival of the doctor in time for a baby's birth was problematical.
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CHAPTER
SIX: THE TV Ranch
By; R. Hughes
The TV Ranch
"Thomas Vincent, Allen Vincent, and Jasper Vincent, settled in Madison Valley as ranchers about 1885 to 1890. Eventually two daughters, Jennie Vincent McDowell and Flora Vincent Miller also came to Meadow Creek to live". (source: Ina (Hughes) Kirkman, 9th generation historian)
Lewis writes in his article "Meadow Creek Days" that Tom Vincent and A. J. McDowell left Oskaloosa, Iowa, about l882, wandered around working at various places, eventually ending up in Meadow Creek, Montana
Tom
Vincent, Jack McDowell,
about
1920 about 1920
Two early day settlers in Madison Valley
In the late 1880s the Richters, of
Virginia City, had done well in the brewery business, and they owned some
attractive ranch property in the South Meadow Creek area of Madison Valley.
They also had an attractive daughter who helped shape the future of a
considerable chunk of Madison Valley when she married the wandering Tom
Vincent, The Richter property became the TV Ranch and under Tom's and Lora's
management became influential, 
successful,
and prosperous. Their influence on the
area, especially Meadow Creek, continued
for all the rest of their active ranching experience and also after they moved
to their retirement home on lower Meadow Creek.
Over time and with common usage, Tom Vincent and Lora Richter Vincent
became Uncle Tom and Aunt Lora to everybody. A thumb up from them was a big
help if you wanted to do something of importance in the Meadow Creek area.
Thomas S. Hughes (1884 - 1964) came to Montana at age sixteen, according to his own recollection. This indicates that he came west in l900, if l884 is his correct birth date. (May l5th). Other information indicates that Tom was part of the migration when Tom's dad, John Wesley , moved the bulk of his family west from Iowa in l900.
The two oldest brothers, Edwin and William, had gone to Montana around 1898, and were working in the mines and looking for opportunities to begin ranching. Bill's son, John, relates that the two brothers walked from Bozeman to Meadow Creek, with an over night stay at a stage stop near where the Madison River Bridge was later constructed. They had to wade the river. Their destination was the ranch of their uncle, Tom Vincent.
Uncle Tom needed strong, energetic help to work his ranch. His nephew, 16 year old Tom Hughes, liked horses, ranch life, mountains, and wasn't afraid of hard work, or hard winters. He decided to stay. He was employed on the TV Ranch, most of the time, until 1919 when Tom Vincent and Tom Hughes became partners on the Hughes home ranch.
Tom Hughes also liked the competitive atmosphere of the ranch's recreation facilities. Uncle Tom (Vincent) never got famous for paying high wages but he knew how to keep his young men around. Walter Vincent, another nephew, told that Uncle Tom had a baseball diamond and track field in his meadow, horseshoe pits and a swimming hole by the buildings, and a pool table inside. Walter also said that Tom (Hughes) was a whiz at all those sports and was undisputed champion. Adding to his popularity was his talent for playing old time music on the fiddle and he was always asked to perform for the old time dances at the McAllister community hall.
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CHAPTER
SEVEN
By: R. R. Hughes
The Old Road
Ruth Beals mentions in her article “McAllister” that George Bess had a hotel and post office at Meadow Creek in 1902. The hotel was a stage stop for traffic going through McAllister to Virginia City and Ennis. When we moved onto our ranch property in 1919, deep ruts marking where the abandoned stagecoach road ran from the community of Meadow Creek out through the field and across the northwest corner of our ranch property. At an earlier time this route from McAllister, through Fletcher Creek and up the Virginia Grade over the Continental Divide and down the other side to Alder Gulch, was a shortcut to Virginia City favored by wagon traffic and stagecoaches.
Virginia City had retained the County Seat when the capitol moved out so there was still considerable activity requiring presence at the Court House or other places where official business was conducted. Although popular with stagecoach travelers, the automobile traffic found the route up through Fletcher Creek and the Virginia Grade to be very rough and steep. This was a shorter route to Virginia City rather than going through Ennis, but Ennis was gradually becoming the destination of choice because Ennis was growing and prospering, while Virginia City was on the decline. When it came time to upgrade roads due to the increased commerce going to Ennis the shortcut road was abandoned.
My sister Marjorie wrote in one of her newspaper articles about the breaking cart our Dad had made in the earlier homestead days. It was two wagon wheels with a board for a seat and a tongue long enough so that the frantic colts couldn't kick the driver's head off. Seldom did anybody want to be a passenger but Fred Lade wanted to go to Virginia City for a marriage license. He was marrying Dad's sister Lora. Fred said they made the four-hour trip in two, hog tied the broncs to a hitching rack, and ate a twenty five cent meal. Fred wasn't sure whether to get the license or arrange for his own funeral.
Robbing a stagecoach was a popular road agent activity in the late 1860s. However, road agents mostly worked in the Alder gulch and Bannack areas and coaches coming from McAllister generally had little to fear. Still, that must have been a primary consideration when deciding to make that trip. One can only imagine traveling this primitive road from Meadow Creek through Fletcher Creek to Alder Gulch during the time when road agents could be springing out from behind every bush or boulder. Small wonder that people with business in Virginia City took the longer but safer route to Ennis and over the hill.
Since there never had been any official right of way established, through the various private fields, for the old road, it just sat there and faded away. Up in Fletcher Creek, an area thick with brush and boulders, as a boy, I could fantasize the stagecoach rocking and careening up the Virginia grade, just two jumps ahead of the robbery-bent horsemen. There are no markers along the road that says Sam Jones was robbed of 12 ounces of gold at this spot, maybe because both sides were in a hurry to be somewhere else. By 1920 the ruts marking the route through our field were barely distinguishable and were due to be plowed under because my family needed a crop of wheat or barley. Hardly anybody bothered to notice that a bit of history was going under for the last time. Traces of the old road could still be found up through what had been the Schoenberger homestead, Fletcher Creek, and of course, the infamous Virginia Grade. It is still being used by loggers, cow herders, power-crews, hunters, and a few tourists with a curiosity about history of the locality.
MAP
OF OLD STAGECOACH ROAD THAT WAS THE MAIN ROAD FROM BOZEMAN TO VIRGINIA CIIY.
The old hotel was still standing in 1919 – 1920 but was being used as residence instead of a stage stop. George Bess and family owned and had lived in the hotel and operated the post office and stage depot for years but they had now moved on and were renting the hotel out. Thomas S. and Emily Hughes (My family) lived in it just prior to moving onto the ranch in 1919. It had become our place of residence due to its proximity to school and to the place that was to be our home ranch. The kids could go to school and Dad was near to where he was building a house, a granary, and a chicken house on the property that was to be the Hughes home and ranch for the next 50 years.
The road from Norris to Ennis that became more popular and put the old stagecoach road out of business went right past our place. It went through several modifications before becoming hard surfaced with asphalt. In 1919, when we moved to the home ranch, the route was hardly more than a dirt road traveled mainly by team and wagon. I suppose the early autos that were starting to use it about that time created pressure to upgrade it, which was done the first time about 1928 or 1930. In l934 and 1935, a rock crusher was set up on the McAtee Hill and upgrading on the road started again. Maurice McDowell tried to keep the corrugations out with a small, horse drawn grader for a few years until the asphalt process came along. Maurice and Bing Elinghouse served as school bus drivers when McAlliister district 48 was consolidated with the Ennis schools, about 1940.
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CHAPTER EIGHT
by Edith Evans Fletcher (Mrs. Wm. A Fletcher)
The Fletcher Story
William A. Fletcher was born in Watertown, N.Y., March 24, 1829. Sometime in the early ‘50s he came to Nebraska. We have an old letter dated in 1856 that his mother wrote to him there, beautifully written and with may bible quotations and signed, “Your affectionate but unworthy mother.”
His wife passed away in Nebraska and he returned to New York with their infant daughter. Later he came west again and located in Bannock, Montana, but in 1863 stampeded to Virginia City – the gold rush was on. In 1865 he returned to New York and in March, 1866, was married to Ellen Gordon. From Council Bluffs, Iowa, they came via wagon train back to Alder Gulch – were three months in the crossing and had many hardships. This was their honeymoon trip and she kept a diary which has been typed and most members of the family have a copy.
Mr. Fletcher followed the butchering business and had a shop at Summit and also one a Nevada City. The latter one was run by his brother, John Townsend Fletcher. In March, 1867, a daughter, Blanche, was born. A year or two later he took up a claim out in the Madison Valley and the creek flowing thru this area still bears the name Fletcher Creek. Two more of the family, Samuel and Mary, were born. Some time in the early ‘70s he bought a relinquishment to a ranch down on the river bottom and the family moved there and two more girls were born there, Winifred and Ruth. For a time he also rented the Spaulding ranch and his namesake, Wm.A. Fletcher was born there in March 1883. That fall the house burned to the ground and the baby was wrapped in a feather bed and thrown from an upstairs window – with no ill effects at the time except almost smothering to death. The family then moved back to the river log cabin and in November of 1886, Carl was born.
Mr. Fletcher still followed the butchering trade – ran a wagon to surrounding areas – Red Bluff and Sterling were big mining districts at that time.
Grandma Fletcher used to tell us of frequent visitors from the Bannock Indians – they were a friendly tribe and used to like to camp near the slaughter house as meat was handy.
I should have mentioned earlier that John T. Fletcher took up a claim on Norwegian Creek and for a few years the two brothers were together there and two more daughters were born there – Margaret in 1872 and Florence in 1873. There was now a family of nine children, six girls and three boys. In 1892 he bought the Shelton ranch where we lived for so many years and is now Tommy Hughes’s new home. Mr. Fletcher passed away in May, 1905 and Ellen Gordon Fletcher in November, 1919.
Two of Grandma Fletcher’s brothers – Leon and Chas. Gordon – came to the valley in the early ‘70s and settled on a ranch still known as the Gordon place. Grandpa Fletcher had a sister, Dorasca Fletcher, who married John Ormiston and they were early valley settlers. They were known as Aunt and Uncle Johnny to everyone. She was so immaculate and scrubbed and scoured all her life – even the board walk leading to the kitchen was without a speck of dirt. The hill is still “Uncle Johnny’s Hill”.
Tom Vincent and Jack McDowell came to the Madison valley from Iowa in the spring of 1882. Later Allen Vincent and Jasper Vincent settled there. Jasper married Mary Fletcher and in November 1887 Tom married Lora Richter. Her father, Chris Richter, was also a pioneer – first connected with the brewery in Virginia City with Henry Gilbert. I remember my Aunt Lora Vincent telling of Mrs. Slade’s ride into Virginia City in a vain effort to save her husband, Jack Slade, from the gallows. Later Mr. Richter took up a ranch in the Madison Valley near the mountains. A family, Megees, lived there now. Mr. and Mrs. Vincent celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in November, 1947. She passed away the following year and he died in March, 1955.
My father died in 1890 and my mother and I came to Montana. In 1891 my mother and Jack McDowell were married. For the first few years they worked for Dan Spaulding who had a big sheep ranch. His place was sort of a half-way house for freighters and many stopped overnight. The Spaulding lane (between N.Meadow Creek and the corner south) was notorious for the mud and a team was kept handy to pull other vehicles out of the mire. I used to walk to school thru the lane and I can remember getting stuck also. Many tramps were on the road then and occasionally an unusually rough looking customer would give us a scare. They always stopped for a handout. In Iowa my mother had been fond of mutton but after life on a sheep ranch, she changed her mind.
Tom Shirley was another old settler. He drove stage for years – Miles City to Virgina City and later Miles City to Helena. He used to tell me many hair raising adventures. One was of wrapping his horses’ feet in gunny sacks one time as he knew of some Indians on the warpath and he drove his route by night.
Some of the early settlers were the Ennis family, Jeffers, Watkins, Pinckey – Calvin Pinckey was the county doctor for a good many years. He and his wife also ran the Washington Bar post office – the same building I think that Mr. Bowersox now lives in. The Bess family had what is known as the Meadow Creek post office and it was down under the hill – about half a mile south of what is John Bausch’s place now.
Others were the McAllister, Shoenbergers, Ed Gleason, Higbee, and Hawkins – the latter ran the saw mill.
This is all we can remember and hope it may be of some interest to old time folk.
Note: The original manuscript for this article is on file at the Merrill G. Burlingame Special Collections, The Libraries, Montana State University, PO Box 173320, Bozeman,Montana,.59717-3220. Phone (406) 994- 4242
Collection 100 - McAllister, Montana Collection, 1869-1964
It may be viewed there or photo copies are prepared at a charge
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CHAPTER NINE
By
R. R. Hughes
RANCHING:
At first ranch life for us when we moved to our new home, was more like the homestead life that the family had experienced a few years earlier. My brother Lewis called it “Homestead #2” which pretty well was the case. The house was small and cold. Two wood burning stoves, a cooking range in the kitchen and a pot bellied model in the front room, which was also supposed to heat the bedrooms, comprised the heating system. Water came in buckets from a pump out side, which froze up in winter and had to be thawed out with hot water from a tea- kettle heated on the kitchen range inside. We had kerosene lamps and lanterns augmented with Coleman gas lamps when they became available.
I only have a couple of dim memories of events during the early home ranch days. One is a vague recollection of moving to the ranch from the big old hotel building at McAllister where we had been living temporarily. I think Dad had either owned or had the use of a Model T when we lived at Fletcher Creek, but this move was with horses and wagon. I remember sitting at the rear of the wagon, full of household effects, and pulling my own little red wagon along behind in the dirt road
Another memory is of watching a group of soldiers coming home from World War One. It must have been shortly after we moved to the ranch when I saw a group of men walking up the road toward Ennis. Mother told me they were soldiers coming home from the war. (Armistice Day was Nov. 11th, l9l8) They had to walk from the rail end at Norris to their homes in the Ennis area. Mother made sandwiches for them and filled their canvas water sacks at the pump in the yard.
Dad and the two older boys immediately got busy building a small bunkhouse for the boys. It also had a pot bellied stove that did a good job heating the bunkhouse but since no one would volunteer to get up and build a fire you learned to get dressed rapidly and maybe even go the few steps to the house half dressed. Mother would fix a bed for me in the house during real bitter cold weather. Long johns were on 24-hour duty those winter days.
It would be several years before the cow herd, grain crops, chicken and pig production equaled what the family needed to live on. What was later to be a substantial herd of cattle started out as four milk cows. Of special importance was a Holstein named Spot. She had twin calves at least every other year and filled a five - gallon bucket with milk twice a day. Spot helped us survive. As the milking herd grew, we separated milk from cream with a hand-cranked separator and sold the cream to the "Creamery Man" who came once a week. The skim milk was fed to the pigs out in the pigpen. We had thick cream for our cereal, and super thick cream, skimmed off of the top of thick cream, went on pancakes. When the pigs were close to butcher time, we would fatten them with liberal helpings of grain and soon would be able to add fat pork with home grown potatoes to our diet. Now days that kind of a diet is lethal, but we didn't know any better so it didn't hurt us.
I don’t remember how long we lived in the original house but as soon as Dad could arrange the finances, he had Paul Schonick build an extension that really helped. It enclosed the pump so that we had water inside and more than doubled the kitchen floor space. We became quite comfortable with the large wood and coal burning range heating the area that was now our dining and living area.
I was asked the other day what I would count as the most important development of my lifetime. I suppose it was invented prior to my lifetime (1915) but as a development Electricity didn’t hit our house until about 1930. Our first attempt at electricity was a 24 volt Wind Charger system. Brother Lewis took a correspondence course and became an electrician overnight. We soon had wires running everywhere and little direct current bulbs glowing dimly where kerosene (called "coal oil") lamps had been. We only had two batteries, wired together, and on long winter evenings our batteries lasted until about supper time and then the lights got dimmer and dimmer until we had to light the kerosene lamps to see what was on the table. I remember doing school work on the kitchen table, probably 8th grade and freshman high school, with both a kerosene lamp and a D.C. bulb going at the same time. I told Lewis that I had to light the lamp so as to see his bulb. In spite of my scoffing, when Montana Power came with the real thing, Lewis was able to put in adequate wiring for our needs at that time. There was no inspection or anything so if it worked, it was ok
Lewis and I pooled our resources and bought an automatic washing machine. Our poor mother, bless her soul, had been washing clothes by hand, with scrub board and galvanized tub, for too many years. The first one was powered with a gasoline engine to wash, but the wringer had to be turned by hand. We soon updated that model, when electricity came, to a new Maytag, electric wringer and everything. That was the one that could tear your arm off, if you were not careful. Ralph Nader would have had a field day in those times
Dogs lived outside and were fed table scraps. There was an opening into the crawl space under the house and the dogs slept there most of the time. In really bitter cold weather, Dad would let them sleep in the house but they had to stay on a rug near the door.
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CHAPTER
TEN
By: R. R. Hughes
School and Schooling
Ruth Beals says in her article “McAllister” that the school house was built in 1901, It was moved, about 1940, west, a short ways, to adjoin the community hall and to serve as part of that facility. The community hall, old school building, everything was torn down about 1950.
When I went to school there, the McAllister School was one room with a one teacher for all eight grades. I went to the red brick McAllister schoolhouse for 8 years, graduating from the 8th grade in 1929. There were only two of us, Malvin Estes and myself, in my class and we went all through grade school at McAlister and then high school at Ennis together.
Phyllis Mills Speck, who went to the McAllister school for three years in the 1920s, says in her Wagon Tongue article, that “I attended the little one-room school house for those three years--grades 4th, 5th and 6th.” I don’t remember Phyllis for sure but we must have both been there at the same time, perhaps even in the same grade. Some shelves in one corner of the room served as our library. Well-worn text books were in the library and were used by each grade when it reached that level of learning. Doris (I don’t remember her maiden name) Wilson was my 2nd or 3rd grade teacher and young Harry Wilson, who lived across the road, used to come over and build a fire for the new “school marm” in the pot bellied stove that occupied the center of the room. They were married some time later and lived the rest of their lives in the house that Doris wrote the article about the pioneers who first occupied the Wilson place. (See Chapter 111)
I’m not so sure about the layout inside the schoolhouse. I remember bookshelves in the southeast corner. This was the library. Desks and tables for the students filled up the floor space except for the teacher’s desk and the stove in the north end. The desks were different sizes and were moved around to fit the student. Each grade had floor area according to size of class. As noted above, there was only myself and one other boy, Malvin Estes, in my class so we never took up much room
Outside, another building, the woodshed, stood to the south end of the school building. The teacher was responsible for building a fire in the morning but it was the duty of the older boys to bring wood and coal around and inside as needed during the day. At each side around the woodshed were two outhouses, one for boys and one for girls. They always managed to get up set at Halloween time. Also, there was not money for toilet paper; Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck catalogs had to do
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
By:
Doris Wilson
The Deuble-Wilson Place (Meadow Creek) 1864
John Jacob Deuble was born in the Black Swamp country at Liverpool, Medina Co., Ohio, on January 28, 1840, the oldest son in a family of eleven children. At the age of sixteen, when the next older brother was able to do the home chores, he left for a more adventuresome life. For some years he drove oxen teams for overland freight companies between Omaha and Denver, walking in relay. He also drove a wagon train for Bill Cody, finally stopping near Denver to prospect for gold. When his partner was killed in a fall down a mineshaft, Deuble decided to go to Montana Territory which had just been opened up for homesteading.
He arrived in Montana in 1863 and selected his 160 A. in the bottom land just south of the Madisonian Range. His first cabin was located just south of what is now known as North Meadow Creek and near a good spring and well sheltered from the north wind by brush. He soon moved it about half a mile to the south after he awakened one morning to find that beavers had built a dam in the creek and flooded the cabin with a foot of water.
In 1873 he built a larger house, which had two downstairs rooms and a large attic. He was assisted by Will Clark (grandfather to Ed Clark) who later lived in Ennis. J.A. McAllister told of coming from school at noon to play on the logs as the house was being built. The older children ran back to school when the bell rang, leaving him on the top log. He was afraid to come down by himself so stayed there crying until the carpenters returned from their lunch. A well was dug just west of the house, a team being used to scoop out the soil so it wouldn’t be necessary to dig so deeply by hand.
In about 1875-6 Mr. and Mrs. E.A. Maynard (grandfather to Ed) who lived east of the river, came by team and stayed the night with Mr. Deuble. The next day the three started by team for Fort Benton where they boarded a raft to float down the Missouri River. The raft was tied to the bank at night so the passengers could prepare their evening meals. The Maynards were going back east to visit relatives and Deuble was going back to be married.
Sarah Kurfess, a pioneer school teacher in Wood County, Ohio, and returned to Montana December 24, 1880. The new log house was ready and the couple was now the parents of a son, John A., who was born on October 25, 1880. On March 17, 1883 another son was born, Paul F. There was a bad north blizzard on when Paul decided to come into the world, so Mr. Deuble went horseback facing into the wind to Harrison where the nearest doctor was located. He did not know that just a mile or so ahead of him a neighbor, Wm. Fletcher was also going for the doctor as they too were expecting the stork. Both babies arrived safely.
The Bannock Indians were friendly and camped along the creeks on their way to and from the hunting grounds. The Deuble boys could remember the Indians trailing down the slopes of the hills to make camp. The mother, when she thought she would be alone for any length of time would bake up plenty of sweet food so if the Indians did come begging, she could lower the windows from the top and hand the food down to them. At one time an Indian child was very sick and the father came to get her to help. The child got well and the Indian gave Mrs. Deuble a pair of beautifully beaded moccasins, which are still in the family’s possession.
At the time of the Big Hole Battle the settlers expected Chief Joseph and his war party to come through the Madison Valley as that route would have been the easiest. The hurried to Virginia City to obtain guns and ammunition with which to protect themselves. The women and children were to be put in the Deuble cellar and the men were to use the house as a fort and shoot from between the logs. Fortunately, Chief Joseph decided to take a much more difficult route. Needless, to say, many of the guns were never returned. At that time the cellar must have been dry. Later, before being drained about 1924, the water was about four feet deep.
Deubles, being close to school, boarded the teacher, and they also had a young hired man who stuttered badly and was very bashful who was so smitten with the teacher that he wanted to work for his board so he could be near her. One of the memories of the Deuble boys was the long, long row of cedar posts that the young man cut and piled that year. Many of these posts are still in use and in perfect condition.
At one time Deuble had approximately 125 head of horses on the place. An old newspaper pasted to an upstairs wall of the house stated that the horse range for the V F Ranch (Varney and Farrel) extended from the Madisonian Range to Henry’s Lake so it is probably the Deuble also turned his horses out to range.
The Deuble brand was JD on the right hip. Apparently the pioneers had their choice of brands and as a rule picked their initials or most any symbol which took their fancy. The cattle in an old picture are the Durham type breed and the horse which Mr. Deuble is holding a Percheron type stallion.
During World War II, when scrap iron was being collected, a plow was found in a stream bed which had apparently been made from old wagon tire irons welded together. It is not know if Mr. Deuble did the iron work himself. The plow is now in a museum in Virginia City.
As a small boy John remembers a rattle snake coiled up by the chicken coop. He stood so still his folks thought he was charmed by it, but he said he was just too frightened to move. Walter Vincent said his mother killed a rattler by the southeast corner of the house. In the last fifty years no poisonous snakes have been seen on the place.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Deuble were most helpful in getting a Methodist Church started in the community although they were both Lutherans. They donated land for a school house.
The Deubles left their Meadow Creek ranch permanently in the early part of 1891. The land was rented to various people until 1909 when it was sold to Pete Morrison. In 1912 it was purchased by T.J. Wilson ($5000) and is still owned by that family. As it was conveniently located to a small store, post office, school, and church, the house has always been inhabited and at least 28 different families have called it home.
Note: The original manuscript for this article is on file at the Merrill G. Burlingame Special Collections, The Libraries, Montana State University, PO Box 173320, Bozeman,Montana,.59717-3220. Phone (406) 994- 4242
Collection 100 - McAllister, Montana Collection, 1869-1964
It may be viewed there or photocopies are prepared at a charge
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The old church. built in 1887, is still standing. (2010)
CHAPTER
TWELVE
By: R. R. Hughes
More about the Church
In 1932, Mary B. Lindsay wrote a history of the McAllister church and the original manuscript of her article is on file at the Merrill G. Burlingame Special Collections, The Libraries, Montana State University, PO Box 173320, Bozeman,Montana,.59717-3220. Phone (406) 994- 4242
Collection 100 - McAllister, Montana Collection, 1869-1964
It may be viewed there or photo copies are prepared at a charge
Also please see Rose Megee’s update to Mary Lindsay’s article. Published in the WAGON TONGUE, VOLUME 4,ISSUE 1, JANUARY 2006
I remember the outside geographical layout of the church and school area as it was when I went to school there in the 1920s. The church was farthest west and is still in the same place where it had been built. The South Meadow Creek road has been mostly straightened out where it used to take a small S curve right there and the community hall and schoolhouse were tucked into the S curve. Everything is gone now, and just where the old buildings stood would be hard to find if you did not know where to look.
A house (parsonage) for the minister and his family was next to the church on the east side and then a large building (community hall). The old community hall had a nice dance floor area with a stage on one end. We (the school) held our Christmas programs in the hall. I remember the last few of the old time dances that were held there. My Dad and Myrtle McDowell were the music. Uncle Tom claimed all the lumber when the old hall was demolished. I don't know if he owned the property or had paid for the lumber when the hall was built. The parsonage house was moved and used as a kitchen for the community hall for years. It is gone now too.
I remember that at least two families lived in the parsonage after they no longer had a minister. I know that the Estes family lived there. There may have been other families who lived in the old house. Eventually, sometime in the early 1930s, it was moved over and attached to the community hall. Both buildings were torn down not long after that. The 15 or 16 acres that had belonged to the parsonage was an attractive bonus for a minister to live there, as he could keep a cow or grow a garden to augment his ministerial services. It was abruptly sold without a vote or approval of the community and this effectively made the church obsolete. Church earnings alone were not enough to support a minister and his family. Mary Lindsay says that this was done by District Superintendent Jesse Lacklen around 1928 – 29. This action left the community without access to the cemetery and it was ten years before the right of way was bought back and returned to the community.
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MAP OF “DOWNTOWN” MEADOW CREEK/MCALLISTER AREA - ABOUT 1910
Dr. Mae Pankey has related in her article “James
Alexander McAllister – Stockman, Madison County” that James McAllister (Alex’s
father) was looking for a place, in1871, to settle on that would support his dairy and cheese
business and provide a location for his
stock ranch. The choice of bottom land
formed by the two Meadow Creeks just before they emptied into the lake turned
out to be appropriate for what he needed and also situated so that son Alex could
expand and prosper with a thriving community center,
100 years ago downtown Meadow Creek was busy with
stagecoaches and freight wagons plying the route from Bozeman to Virginia City.
The cumbersome six and eight horse team freight wagons would soon be obsolete. However, the high speed rubber tired
replacements for the freight wagons also sometimes stopped on Saturday night to
take in the old time festivities in the community hall.
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ADDENDUM:
MEADOW CREEK HISTORY
The
following section added February, 2011.
MEADOW
CREEK AND MONTANA POWER
By
Robert Hughes and Marion Morton
The history of Meadow Creek and McAllister would not be complete without reporting about Montana Power. Everybody who has researched the subject knows that what is now Ennis Lake at one time was lush hay land and the neighboring ranches hauled tons of hay home to store in stacks and hay mows. Montana ranches in the winter require prodigious amounts of feed for their ever-expanding herds. Most of this feed was, and is still, fed to stock in the form of natural grass (wild hay) and/or alfalfa in its various forms of curing.
In order to get to the influence of Montana Power to Meadow Creek, I would like to refer to what was written in the History of Meadow Creek article. (Please see page 40). Some of which is being repeated.
“What has been the most important development in your life time?” My answer to that is “Electricity.” That surprises most people because they have always had electricity. The Montana ranch where I was raised did not get power until about 1930. We were a year or two behind most of the valley in becoming electrified due to our isolated location requiring that a special line had to be run up the road from McAllister to our house. We were the only house in the neighborhood for a long time and finally Bob Wilson built a house across the road.
Everyday inconveniences that made living so tough became immeasurably better. That was when my brother and I pooled our resources and bought a shiny new Maytag washing machine, wringer and everything for my mother. Montana Power not only ended our experimentation with 12 volt direct current wind chargers it ended forever the galvanized tub and scrub board that so many wives had slaved over for a multitude of years. This same tub was an item of importance Saturday night at bath time. We threw those tubs as far as we could over the dump when our new bathroom, complete with running water and tub, became active.
The old hand pump out in the yard, which froze up in the winter, was replaced by the hum of a little electric pump sending water to the house and indoor plumbing. A modern bath room with toilet tissue replaced the out house and Sears Roebuck catalogue. Sticking a piece of bread into a pop up toaster was better than burning your eye brows pulling a burned piece of toast out of the oven. Radio and then television became commonplace. People were really becoming spoiled – and they liked it. Power was here to stay.
Outside the house and kitchen, power made some popular changes too, Instead of shivering on the back porch, and peering into the moonlit yard with a shotgun under arm, one click of a little switch illuminated the whole yard and that unlucky skunk out by the chicken coop, Some genius invented a little device that turned the lights on at dark if you wanted. Without electricity we could not have displays like Las Vegas and Reno. Yes, with due respect to the automobile industry, television and everything else that came during my lifetime, I say “Electricity” is the most important. Generally it made all those others possible. Montana Power brought us a whole new world.
The Madison River flows from Yellowstone Park to Three Forks, Montana. Pioneer ranchers fed their livestock on hay from the lush bottom lands of the river.
Montana Power utilizes the river to provide the valley with all the wonders of an electrified land. It is now recognized as one of the finest fly fishing streams in the country, spawning a whole new Industry
There was another side to Montana Power to which we never gave a thought. How about the people who made and delivered the power? We knew of course that there was a dam in the canyon that held back the water to make the lake and that there was a power plant down there that made all this electricity that we used at home. Occasionally we impressed visitors by taking them over the perilous road down the canyon to the dam and powerhouse. We knew that people lived there making electricity for us but we never stopped to think that they had their own small world
Marian McAllister was born in Dr. Clancey’s office in Ennis to Mr. and Mrs. Owen McAllister. Owen was chief operator for Montana Power and Mrs. McAllister was the former Clara Box from Pony.. From then until the 6th grade Marian’s world was the Madison canyon. Her memoirs tell the story best.
MY FIRST MEMORIES: BY MARIAN (McALLISTER) MORTON
I was born in Ennis, Montana, and spent the first 12 years of my life near the Madison River. My father worked for Montana Power and the power plant was on one side of the river and our house on th other. A swinging bridge connected the two. The Co. decided to build another house next to ours and when they were blasting some rock, a fire started. In seconds the entire mountain was in flames. The men said they couldn’t fight the fie because there were too many snakes. The wind blew the fire away from our house so we were very lucky..
My first memory of my parents was the day our car went in the Madison River. I was told the steering wheel broke. The road, which is parallel with the river, is very narrow. If you meet a car going the opposite direction, one of you must back up to an area where you can pass.
I was sitting in the back seat, but my brother, who was fourteen months old, was on my mother’s lap.
I remember Mother trying to get me to roll down the window so I could climb out of the car. She was already out. Before my father could get my brother out it was too late.
Note: The following account of this accident appeared in the Madisonian,
Infant Son of Owen and Mrs., McAllister Dies after Car Plunges into Water.
A child is dead and his mother on the verge of collapse as the result of an accident in which an auto plunged into the Madison River half a mile below the dam of the Montana Power Company, Tuesday evening.
The child is Owen Silas McAllister, Jr., 14 month old son of Mr. and Mrs. Owen “Si” McAllister. The father is chief operator at the Madison power plant.
The child died yesterday morning from exhaustion and from water in its lungs, the death certificate, signed by a doctor with the authorization of the Madison county coroner, shows.
Steering Gear Breaks
The accident happened when the tie-rod on the steering gear of McAllister’s auto cam unfastened as he and his wife and their two children were driving to their home at the power plant. They were driving along a narrow grade which follows the river from the Madison Lake bridge down to the power plant.
The car plunged off about an eight-foot embankment into the river. It may have turned over once, but it settled down on its wheels in about five feet, six inches of water.
Parents Rescue Children
All four – Mr. and Mrs. McAllister, their daughter, Marian, aged four, and the baby – were in the front seat. The youngest child was riding on Mrs. McAllister’s lap, but was jarred out of her grasp by the motion of the car as it hurtled down the bank.
McAllister attempted to get out of the car and help the others, but was carried away by the swift current as he climbed out of the car window. The water is fast on the side of the car he crawled out, men who dragged the auto out of the river yesterday say.
He was able to swim into the bank about 200 feet downstream and ran back up the bank. In the meantime Mrs. McAllister, working heroically, had extricated herself and the daughter from the car on the side toward the river bank and had swum to land with the older child.
Funeral Friday
McAllister swam to the car and brought the baby from the machine, while Mrs. McAllister went to a telephone. A doctor came while the parents worked hurriedly over the unconscious baby. The child revived and was believed to be recovering until its condition became worse early yesterday morning.
Funeral services will be held at the Episcopal church at Pony Friday afternoon at 2 o’clock. Burial will be in the Valley View cemetery near that Madison County town.
Note:
The newspaper account differs in a couple details from how Marion remembers.
(1) She thinks she was in the back seat, inasmuch as she remembers her mother telling her to roll down the window. Being only four years old, she could have been tossed into the rear seat when the car rolled.
(2) Going for a telephone is questionable. More likely another car cAAme along.,
MARIAN CONTINUES:
To get to our house you had to cross the Madison River on a swinging bridge, and I remember being afraid I might fall into the river.
We had a washing machine with a wringer, to squeeze most of the water out of the clothes, but they had to be hung outside to dry. One time my mother stepped on a porcupine while hanging out clothes on the clothesline.
Another time I remember she got her hair caught I in the wringer.
We had a telephone, but there were 15 people on our party line.
Rattlesnakes were a problem, and my father used to shoot them.
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The
McAllister Family
By Marian Morton
Twelve children were Born at McAllister, Montana to Alex McAllister and Anne (Thexton) McAllister my grandparents.
A relative of Anne’s was a blacksmith in Virginia (City), Montana at a time when the vigilanties hung the sheriff.
Alex’s father drove a stage from Salt Lake City to Virginia City, MT.
McAllister, MT was named after my grandparents who owned the general store and post office.
Things I remember about the McAllister Ranch:
1. Warm bread baked in a wood stove
2. A well outside with a pump and a metal dipper for drinking water.
3. Playing in a hayloft.
4. Sleeping in a feather bed.
5. Watching Grandpa put sheep dip on a horse whose skin was torn by a barbed wire.
My father told me a colt was raised in their separator room, which is where cream is separated from milk. It’s mother died so it was raised as one of the family.
Alex and Anne had two sets of twins, but one set died o diphtheria. Two other children died at the same time!
Grandpa McAllister raised quarter horses and when my father was ten years old, he, on his horse, wan the world’s record for the quarter mile.
Things I remember about my grandparent’s home:
Taking baths in a tub in front of a wood stove. Water was brought in from a well outside; the outhouse used the Sear’s catalog for toilet paper; Grandma made hooked rugs and my great Grandma, next door, made handmade quilts; Grandpa made ice cream on the back porch; but when he killed the chickens, I remember I didn’t like that; ice was delivered daily and a root cellar was used to keep vegetables. like potatoes. cool.
I’ve been told my grandmother McAllister nursed the president of Montana Power back to health when he fell while fishing at the Madison River. He was very grateful, and asked Grandma what he could do for her.
She said, “It would help if you could give my number one son a job.”
He did and my father worked for the Montana Power until he retired.
My grandmother burned to death while going through a mine she owned.
My father was badly burned while working on a hot switch, but his life was saved because the miracle drugs had just been invented – sulfa and penicillin. Montana Power paid all his hospital bills and gave him his job back when he got out of a one year hospital stay.
I remember something my grandfather said; “It is always good to change political parties every now and then, because it takes the new party a little while to find the feed bag.”
My father was the oldest of twelve children.
School Days
My mother had to go to Rochester, MT to have a kidney removed so I started the first grade in Pony, Montana, where my mother’s parents lived. Sargent Harris was my first boy friend, and we walked to school together. On our way home we walked through the mud so Grandma would put my shoes on the oven door to dry them.
When Mother returned from Rochester, my dad hired a teacher to teach myself and 3 other children.
We lived at a Montana Power camp on the Madison River, and our schoolhouse was a small cabin.
The camp was seven miles from the nearest town – Ennis – so every Saturday we would go in for groceries and a movie.
When I was in the sixth grade, my father was badly burned and had to be in the hospital in Butte. School in Butte was very different from the Madison. We had a woman principal, who used a horsewhip on anyone who got out of line.
Marian continues that her high school education was at Polson, Montana, and that she also graduated from the University of Montana, majoring in Home Economics and Music. She had fun in college, pledging
Sigma Kappa Sorority and becoming the Sweetheart of Sigma Chi. After graduation she applied to the airlines for employment and was hired by Pan American as a stewardess. For Pan American she flew South
America and Alaska. Marion was out of the canyon and Montana Power about as far as she could get.
On Alaska flights when we only had passengers in one direction the pilots taught Marian to fly instrument. She is qualified to fly with a commercial pilots license and a helicopter rating.
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OUT OF GAS
The following is an excerpt from Ella Savina’s account of what Marian herself calls an unforgettable experience:
Marian’s 2nd husband was a doctor, a widower with two children who shared her love of flying. They always had their own plane, a seaplane which they traded every few years for a bigger faster one. It was a great life, flying south for the winter and here and there cross country whenever the notion struck them. Marion says that often when they landed in a dry country like Kansas, people would gather a around, look at the pontoons quizzically and ask “What kind of plane is that”?
What Marian herself says was her most unforgettable experience was when Marian and her10 year-old daughter were coming back from a visit in Montana to Seattle. The engine sputtered and quit just as they were approaching the Cascades. She had no time to consider how terrified the child must have been. She later heard Karen telling friends that she prayed all the way, confessed her sins, and told everyone that she loved them, just in case they didn’t make it. Marian was busy talking to emergency radio and trying to guide the crippled plane to the nearest lake which happened to be Lake Sammamish.
Marian didn’t know it at the time but she later learned that a friend and her husband were in the air overhead. Hearing Marian’s transmissions, they circled overhead until they knew she was down. Her friend said, “You sounded like it was just an everyday occurrence”. . That soft voice again!
When they reached Lake Sammamish Marian then faced the problem of where to land. There were swimmers on one side of the lake and a boat launch on the other. Between the two there were no people, but lts of bushes. By using full flaps the plane got enough lift to get over the bushes. When Marian got out of the plane she could see that the tail was covered with gasoline. What had happened ...the young man who had filled their gas tank in Chelan had put the cap back on without noticing that the chain that was attached to the cap was wound around the neck of the tank; thus, the cap was on lopsided and gas began to leak immediately.
Marian now lives in a retirement home in Bothell, Washington. Her daughter is planning a family reunion for the McAllister family in the summer of 2011. Not many families can boast that their name is on the map. To the tourists on their way to Yellowstone Park, McAllister, Montana is only an intersection in the highway. If you stop there is a post office and a delightful little community with small store, bar, some cabins and the Montana imprint left by Alex and Anne one hundred years ago. The generations following Alex and Anne can be proud of their legacy.
The End (back to top)