Fur Trader and Pioneer Cattleman Johnny Grant [otd 01/07]

Johnny Grant.
National Park Service photo.

On January 7, 1833, John Francis “Johnny” Grant was born in Alberta, Canada. At the time, his father, Richard, was a clerk working for the British-Canadian Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC). John’s mother died when he was eighteen months old. Richard took a furlough and escorted Johnny and his siblings to live with a grandmother in Quebec.

The Company soon promoted Richard to a Chief Trader position at a post in central Canada. He moved to the Columbia District in the Pacific Northwest around 1840. Two years earlier, the HBC had bought Idaho’s Old Fort Hall [blog, January 29]. Richard took over management of the Fort in 1842. When traffic increased on the Oregon Trail, he began trading fresh stock for worn-out emigrant cattle.

Around 1845, Richard decided to bring his children west. If his aging mother took sick or died, there would be no one to look after Johnny and the others. Arrangements and their travel took some time, but John Francis arrived at Fort Hall early in the summer of 1847.

For various reasons, Johnny did not get along with his father at first and moved out on his own when he felt able – in about 1850. He took very well to "mountain man" life. Still a teenager, he even acquired an Indian “wife,” a woman who had run away from an abusive Indian husband. And he made many friends among the small remaining community of white fur trappers as well as the various tribes in the area.

Along with that, Johnny supported himself by dealing with Trail emigrants. In his memoir, Grant said, “Every summer we went on the road to trade with these newcomers at Soda Springs. I traded for lame cattle and they were always the best, because somehow the best got lame the quickest.”

As time passed, he reconciled with his father. When Richard’s resignation from the HBC became effective in 1853, they worked together to build up a fair-sized herd. These bands were the first significant cattle holdings in what would become the state of Idaho.

Cattle allowed to drink. Library of Congress.

In 1857, Johnny wintered in the Deer Lodge Valley of Montana, and then returned to Idaho. (By this time Richard’s health had deteriorated and he retired from the business.) For a time, he sold horses and cattle to the U. S. Army forces sent to assert Federal authority in Utah Territory. Grant returned to Montana in 1859 and built a ranch house in the Deer Lodge area.

John generally got along well with the native inhabitants, and one of his Indian wives (he apparently had several) was sister to Tendoy, a powerful chief of the Lemhi Shoshones. However, clashes between whites and Indians had become more common, and it seems likely Johnny moved to Montana to avoid getting caught up in those disputes. Grant continued to build up his cattle and horse herds in Montana.  However, when his wife died in 1866, he sold his holdings to stockman Conrad Kohrs and moved back to Canada. He died there in 1907.

Starting from the herd established by Grant, Kohrs became one of the first Montana “cattle kings.” In 1870, his crews drove two thousand head of cattle across Idaho and then turned east through Wyoming into Nebraska. The Kohrs ranch operated successfully into the next century. Its core facilities form the basis for today’s Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site.
                                                                                 

References: [B&W]

John N. Albright, Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site, Historic Resource Study, National Park Service, http://www.nps.gov/grko/hrs/hrsi.htm (March 6, 1999: last update).

John Francis Grant, Lyndel Meikle (ed.), Very Close To Trouble: The Johnny Grant Memoir, Washington State University Press, Pullman (1996).

“John Grant Biographical Sketch,” Provincial Archives of Alberta, ArchivesCanada.ca (online resource).

Army Scout, Yellowstone Park Protector and Ashton Postmaster Felix Burgess [otd 01/06]

Army scout and Fremont County postmaster Felix Burgess was born January 6, 1847 in Reading, Pennsylvania. His father, an immigrant from northern France, moved the family from Reading to St. Paul, Minnesota in 1856. After a brief time there, they moved on to Sauk Rapids, a town about 60 miles northwest of Minneapolis.

Scout Burgess. [French]

For reasons he never explained, Felix ran away from home when he was about ten years old. He was taken in by an Army captain at Fort Ripley, about 40 miles north of the family home. Thus, Burgess began his long career as an Army scout in the Dakota Indian War of 1862. Captured by a band of Indians, he was rescued just before he could be tortured to death. Despite the close call, he continue as a scout in northern Minnesota and in the Dakotas for about five years.

Burgess was next transferred to Fort Vancouver, in Washington Territory. He almost certainly took part in the Snake War, in western Idaho and eastern Oregon when Lieutenant Colonel George Crook was placed in charge [blog, November 25]. He then followed Crook to Arizona to battle Apache Indians.

He had a brief peaceful period in 1874, scouting for the geographical survey team led by Lieutenant George M. Wheeler. But for the next fifteen years or so, he would take part in conflicts with Indian tribes in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona.

Finally, in the summer of 1891, Burgess joined the Army contingent in charge at Yellowstone National Park [blog, March 1]. His main job was to track down poachers, who by this time were having a severe impact on the Park’s elk and buffalo herds. Thus, in 1893, he was featured in a watercolor created by Frederic Remington used as the basis for an illustration for the article “Policing Yellowstone,” published in Harper’s Weekly.

The following year, in March, Felix Burgess made a contribution to the Park’s future that echoes down to the present day. He caught a notorious poacher literally “red handed.” Coincidentally, a staff writer for the magazine Forest and Stream was visiting the Park just then.

Burgess Finding a Ford. Frederic Remington

The resulting publicity sparked legislation that made poaching in the Park a Federal crime. Before that, the Army could only confiscate the poacher’s gear (a legally questionable practice, actually) and expel them from the Park. Penalties under the new law included up to two years in prison and a $1,000 fine (over $29,000 in today’s values).

Besides his Army duties, Burgess also served two years as a Deputy U. S. Marshall for the district of Wyoming. He stayed with the Army until 1899 when, now over fifty years old, he decided it was time to settle down (he had married in 1892). He first tried farming on land northwest of St. Anthony, Idaho, but quickly found that that was not for him. He then opened a store along the main stage route about six miles northeast of St. Anthony.

In early 1905, Felix was appointed postmaster for an office in Squirrel, a tiny settlement about twenty miles northeast of St. Anthony. However, in late 1906, the railroad built a station that quickly became the village of Ashton. Within about a year, Burgess opened a hotel in the new town. Then, in December 1909, he was appointed postmaster for Ashton, a position he held until the spring of 1915.

Burgess operated a grocery store in Ashton until November 1919. He then sold that and he and his wife moved to Ocean Beach, a coastal suburb of San Diego, California. Felix passed away there in January 1921.
                                                                           

References: [French]

“[Felix Burgess News],” Daily Pioneer, Deadwood, South Dakota; Teton Peak-Chronicle, St. Anthony, Idaho; Idaho Statesman, Boise; San Diego Union, San Diego, California (July 1878 – January 1921).

Collections, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (retrieved, December 2018).

Glade Lyon, Ashton, Idaho: The Centennial History, 1906-2006, Waking Lion Press, West Valley, Utah (2006).

Catherine McNicol Stock, Robert D. Johnston (eds.), The Countryside in the Age of the Modern State, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York (2001).

Lewiston Normal School Receives its First Students [otd 01/06]

On Monday, January 6, 1896, Lewiston State Normal School – today’s Lewis-Clark State College – opened its doors to receive its first students. That event was a key milestone on the long path to establishing a teacher’s college in the town.

Young students with teacher, ca 1892. Arizona State University.

The second session of the Territorial Legislature, in 1864, passed a “common” school law, but the system developed slowly at first. In fact, most of the earliest local schools were private ventures, or established by churches. Still, by 1880 the system had grown enough that the legislature created two formal school districts, one in Boise City, the other in Lewiston.

A decade later, schools statewide had grown even further, and many regions began to experience a shortage of qualified teachers. In fact, far too many teachers were hired simply because they would accept the meager salaries offered. Local school boards turned a blind eye to their lack of training.

That pressure continued to build, and received further impetus in 1892 when the University of Idaho greeted its first students [blog, Oct 3]. The public school system failed to provide even one student who was qualified to begin college-level classes. (The University would continue to offer prep-school classes for over twenty years.)

Thus, the 1893 Idaho legislature authorized a Normal school in Lewiston: “Normal” schools taught the “norms and standards” of primary-school teaching. To gain support from the southern counties, that same session authorized a Normal school in Albion. Neither school, however, received any state funding at that time.

Anxious to exploit the opportunity, Lewistonians donated some mostly-vacant land on the hill that overlooked the town itself. Then private citizens dug into their own pockets for some early planning and site preparation. However, not until 1895 did the legislature issue bonds to fund construction, and the building was not completed until May of the following year.

While they waited for their building, school administrators leased the second floor of a store in town and remodeled it into space suitable for Normal school classes. It was here the three faculty members, two men and a woman, greeted 46 students on January 6. Between them, the three taught a basic curriculum: English, Latin, history, civics, physiology, commercial arithmetic, mathematics, elocution, pedagogy, commercial law, and physical education.

Lewiston State Normal School, before 1917. J. H. Hawley Photo.

Soon, the Normal School’s graduates were spread all over the state. They had to be well prepared with a broad and thorough education. Until the 1920s, one-room schools served well over half of Idaho’s primary students. In those districts, the lone Lewiston (or Albion) Normal-trained teacher was often the only person who actually knew how a school should be set up and run.

However, in the late 1920s the “Normal School” concept began to give way to a new “teacher's college” approach. By 1935, only five old-style Normal schools remained in the U. S. … and two of those were in Idaho. But financial and political infighting prevented any change in their status. Finally, in 1943, the legislature granted them four-year status: They were the last two-year teachers’ schools to make the change.

Operating as North Idaho College of Education, the school still faced opposition. It was shut down in 1951, but – plagued by a calamitous shortage of qualified teachers – the state re-opened it four years later as Lewis-Clark Normal School. It finally became Lewis-Clark State College in 1971.
                                                                           

References: [French], [Hawley]

Keith C. Petersen, Educating in the American West: One Hundred Years at Lewis-Clark State College, 1893-1993, Confluence Press, Lewiston, Idaho (© Lewis-Clark State College, 1993).

Silver City Merchant and Postmaster M. M. Getchell [otd 01/05]

Meserve Getchell.
Directory of Owyhee County.

On January 5, 1868, Postmaster Meserve M. Getchell was born in Baring, Maine, on the Canadian border and perhaps 25 miles inland from the Bay of Fundy. Mr. Getchell had a distinguished ancestry: his great-grandfather fought in the American Revolution and his mother was a Mayflower descendant.

He grew up on a farm, then found work in a sawmill as a teenager. Wanting something better, he clerked for a short while, then moved south into New Hampshire. After less than a year of working in a shoe factory, he decided to head west.

Getchell arrived in Silver City during the summer of 1889. By then, both mining and stock raising drove the economy of Owyhee County; Silver City was a thriving community. Meserve landed a job as a clerk in the drug store and also assisted an uncle at the post office. Late that year, the uncle bought the Idaho Hotel and Getchell took a position as clerk there.

Around 1892-1893, Meserve herded sheep on range north of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation. (Records don’t say, but it’s possible Getchell’s uncle received a flock in the transaction for the hotel.) He then returned to Silver City and worked in a mill while also helping out at his uncle’s hotel.

In late 1893, Meserve received a temporary appointment to fill the postmaster’s position in Silver City. The following year, President Grover Cleveland made the appointment official for a full term. Meserve had clearly done a fine job: Cleveland, a Democrat, would not ordinarily appoint a staunch Republican to such a position. (Meserve later served as chairman of the Republican Central Committee for Owyhee County.)

Silver City Post Office, Courthouse next door.
Directory of Owyhee County.

Not content with just the postal business, Getchell stocked his shop with candy, tobacco products, stationery, and other notions. He also hired his younger brother Asher to help with the operation. In 1897, President William McKinley, a Republican, appointed Meserve for another term as postmaster

The following year, Meserve also became part owner of the Idaho Hotel. He had to find new help at the post office shop, since Asher went to work in the drug store. In fact, Asher remained in the drugstore business for over thirty years, including stays in Boise City and then Twin Falls.

Meserve married in 1891, but their one child died in 1893 and his wife passed away four years later. He remarried in 1898. Mining around Silver City peaked about 1900 and then began a steady decline. (Most of the mines would be closed by 1912.)

In late 1905, Meserve received a surprise. Another Silver City businessman had politicked behind the scenes to block Getchell’s reappointment as postmaster and get the job for himself. The Idaho Statesman observed that all this had happened “before Mr. Getchell knew any one was after his job.”

After the other man was appointed, Meserve sold his store and residence and shortly thereafter moved to Seattle. There, along with his brother-in-law, he invested in a sand and gravel business. Census records show that by 1910 Merserve was the company President, and that he and his wife had made a home for Getchell’s parents.

Getchell remained as President of the sand and gravel business until his death in April 1923, at the fairly early age of 55.
                                                                                 

References: [Illust-State]

A Historical, Descriptive and Commercial Directory of Owyhee County, Idaho, Owyhee Avalanche Press (January 1898).

“Owyhee County,” Reference Series No. 336, Idaho State Historical Society.

Major Fire Devastates the Silver Mining Town of Wardner [otd 01/04]

On January 4, 1890, a major fire broke out in a laundry behind a popular restaurant in the village of Wardner, Idaho, about a mile south of Kellogg. The small fire department and “hundreds” of volunteers responded quickly, but for some reason they did not have enough water available to check the flames. This being the dead of winter, firefighters heaved snow as fast as they could. Unfortunately, that failed to stop the fire, which continued for four hours.

Mining Town Fire damage, 1893. National Archives.

The town owed its existence to the discovery of rich lead-silver lodes in the fall of 1885. The site was originally called “Kentuck,” but the Postal Service disallowed that name for a local post office. So about six months after the founding, it was renamed for railroad executive James F. Wardner. Over the next two or three years, it experienced “phenomenal growth,” especially after developers ran a rail line into the mining area.

In the summer of 1886, new telephone lines connected Wardner to the outside world, encouraging further growth. For a time, it seemed like the only limit was how fast nearby mills could deliver lumber to eager builders.

Witnesses said the fire moved rather slowly along the block after the laundry and restaurant became fully involved. (Later, this invoked bitter complaints that even a moderate improvement in the water supply would have allowed the volunteers to stop the fire’s spread.) After consuming several business structures, the flames ate through the telephone office and then a connected block of four buildings.

Citizens battled the fire for hours, then the flames began to threaten the main business district. Desperate, firefighters used “giant powder” to blast a substantial hotel and several nearby structures, but even that failed. They backed off again and totally demolished another large mercantile store, which finally provided a large enough gap to halt the flames.

The fire and counter-measures destroyed four large buildings, including the three-story Grand Central Hotel. Eighteen smaller office buildings and stores – including a jewelry, cigar emporium, barber shop, and tailor’s suite – were also lost. In addition to the telephone facility, the post office went up in smoke (officials did manage to save the mail itself, apparently).

Last but not least, the town lost two restaurants and four drinking establishments. Later, the Owyhee Avalanche in Silver City, Idaho reported (January 18, 1890) on the “very disastrous fire” and said that “Twenty-five of the business houses were destroyed, entailing a loss of $100,000.”

Wardner, 1904. Kellogg in the distance. U.S. Geological Survey.

With regional mines booming, locals quickly replaced the losses. The 1890 U.S. Census enumerated about 860 people in Wardner, out of a total Shoshone County population of 5,882. In April 1891, county commissioners approved articles of incorporation for the town. Wardner continued to grow through the following decade, despite on-going labor-management disputes and violence [blog, Apr 29], and dips in metal prices.

Published in 1903, the Illustrated History of North Idaho proclaimed, “At this writing, conditions in the Coeur d'Alene country are quite favorable. All the mines are at work in full blast; the relations between the employers of labor and their employees are, perhaps, as pleasant as they have ever been in the district; … and the rate of output is greater than ever before.”

Of course, that did not last. Today, Wardner does not exist as a town. It is simply a residential adjunct to Kellogg, and tourism largely drives the rather weak local economy.
                                                                                
References: [Hawley], [Illust-North]

Businessman Peter Sonna Dedicates an Opera House for Boise City [otd 01/03]

On January 3, 1889, the Idaho Daily Statesman, Boise City, Idaho, headlined, “Dedication of the New Opera House under the auspices of the Boise City Board of Trade … ” The article went on, “The dedication … will take place in the above opera house, in Sonna’s new block … ”

Sonna Building. Boise Architectural Project.

The location reference was to a large construction project financed and planned by businessman Peter Sonna.

Born in New York City in November 1835, Sonna followed the gold rush to California when he was a teenager. He remained a miner through 1862, prospecting successively in California, northern Idaho, and the Boise Basin. In 1863, he moved to Boise City and opened a hardware and general merchandise store.

By 1888, Sonna was a prominent leader in the Boise business community. That year, he began construction of a large project anchored at the corner of 9th and Main. The Peter Sonna Hardware Company occupied the ground floor. The second floor became the opera house – the first in Boise City – dedicated on January 3rd.

James A. Pinney, owner of a bookstore and a theater enthusiast [blog, Sept 29], served as first manager of the new opera house. The night after the dedication, the theater offered its first shows: “The brilliant social drama ‘Noemie’ …" and "the laughable farce ‘Turn Him Out’.” During the following summer, Sonna and Pinney increased the seating capacity to about 800 viewers and corrected some “slight acoustic defects.”

Mayor Sonna. City of Boise.

Three years after the dedication, Pinney built his own pavilion, the Columbia Theater. The Columbia and Sonna’s venue would be the main entertainment competition in Boise for over a decade. Over the five or six years following the dedication,  Sonna continued to add onto his structure, expanding the store floor space. He may have also added offices to the structure.

In 1893, Sonna was elected to a term as Boise City Mayor. At the time he took office, the financial “Panic of '93” had already crippled businesses across the country, including some in Boise. Still, despite a shoestring budget, the new mayor pushed through a number of civic improvements. That included a small professionalized police force, although he did have to reach into his own pocket to provide uniforms for the officers.

Around the time Sonna’s term ended, contractors completed an extension to the hardware store. In 1901, further alterations raised the roof of the opera house about eight feet, and expanded the seating to a thousand. The following year, the Statesman reported that, “A new system of lighting, including several elaborate electric chandeliers, is being installed.”

In 1903, new managers leased the facility and tried to establish its name as the “Raymond Opera House.” Although their official news releases used that name, many people still referred to it under the Sonna designation. In 1904, the Raymond announced (Statesman, January 31, 1904) that “by special request, a matinee and night performance of the scenic production, ‘A Nut-Meg Match,’ will be given.”

Then, according to Peter Sonna’s obituary, in the latter part of 1905, “the theatre was taken out of the corner building, and a third story added to conform to the rest of the block.”

Sonna died in July 1907. Within a few years, new owners converted the large store expanse into several smaller shops and restaurants. The rest of the structure became office space.

In 1976, developers had the façade remodeled to present a uniform appearance to the street. Today, the building is considered prime downtown real estate.
                                                                                 

References: “Boise’s Progress,” Idaho Statesman, Boise (January 3, 1889).

Arthur Hart, “At Turn of century, Boise Builds a Modern Police Department,” Idaho Statesman, Boise, Idaho December 11, 2016.

Multiple relevant articles: Idaho Statesman (Dec 5, 1901 - July 10, 1907).

“Peter Sonna – November 22, 1835-July 9, 1907,” Reference Series No. 598, Idaho State Historical Society (1981).

Samantha Winkle, “Sonna Building,” Boise Architecture Project, online (2009).

Boise Developers and Patrons Thomas J. Davis and Wife Julia [otd 01/02]

T. J. Davis. J. H. Hawley.

On January 2, 1837,* Boise pioneer Thomas Jefferson Davis was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. His father died when Thomas was a boy, so he and a brother were indentured to an Illinois farmer. Before June 1860 (they were not listed with the household for the 1860 census), the farmer rewarded their years of labor by outfitting them for a trip to the West. They ended up heading for the newly-discovered Idaho gold fields.

Unscrupulous guides led their wagon train into impossible country in the Lemhi area. The scammers hoped the party would abandon their vehicles and supplies, or sell them for a pittance. Instead, the angry gold-seekers loaded what they could onto the draft animals and burned everything else. After considerable hardship, they found their way to Elk City.

However, by the time they arrived, the “bloom” had gone off the North Idaho rush. Thus, after a brief period in Washington and Oregon, Davis headed for Idaho City. He prospected “with fair results,” but decided that supplying the miners offered more certain returns. In late 1862, he moved to a homestead along the Boise River. The following spring, he dug a system of irrigation ditches and planted onions, cabbages and potatoes.

A few months later, Major Pinkney Lugenbee selected a site for Fort Boise [blog July 4]. Davis then became one of the founders of Boise City, with part of his homestead being inside the new townsite. (Over the years, the city grew to encompass his entire property.)

Davis prospered by selling vegetables and fruit locally and in the mining districts. The apple orchard he planted in 1864 returned substantial profits for some 35 years before the groves gave way to urban growth.

He also branched out into stock raising. His cowboys herded horses across ranges from near the Snake River all the way into Nevada. They kept his fine herd of Hereford cattle on pastures southeast of Boise City. Ahead of his time, Davis also owned several hundred acres of winter forage land in the Boise Valley and the hills further north. He not only fed his own herds, he supplied the Army at Fort Boise.

A strong Boise City booster, Thomas owned considerable real estate, was partner in a large mercantile store, held stock in at least two banks, and had many other investments in and around the city. A leader in the state Republican Party, Davis chose not to run for public office himself.

Julia Davis. J. H. Hawley.

Still, Davis was more than just a man of affairs. He loved music, played the violin, and served in the Boise City band in the early days. In April 1871, he married Julia McCrumb, a native of Ontario, Canada and niece of an Army surgeon stationed at Fort Boise. She became renowned as a gracious hostess and warm “greeter” to Boise newcomers. In her name, Tom Davis bequeathed a grand legacy to the city of Boise.

After she died, in September 1907, Davis gave a tract of land along the Boise River to the city. He stipulated that the bequest should be maintained as a public area under the name Julia Davis Park. He survived his wife by less than nine months. Today Julia Davis Park – now more than doubled in size – is the crown jewel of Boise’s extensive system of public spaces.

* The Davis biographies list 1838 as his birth year, but he gave several different ages to successive census takers. He was most likely born in 1836 or 1837.
                                                                                 

References: [French], [Hawley], [Illust-State]

Julia Davis Park, CityofBoise.org