(1) Tom Vincent's T.V. Ranch. This was the focal point for the Hughes and Vincent families who migrated, from Iowa to Montana, in the late l890s and early l900s. "Uncle Tom" had taken over management of this ranch (owned by the Richters of the gold mining town of Virginia City) after his marriage to Lora Richter in l887.
(2) Before the Montana Power Co. built a dam in Madison Canyon, the lowland area upstream grew abundant wild hay which was harvested every year by the neighboring ranches. Tom Vincent's T. V. Ranch had a large block of this ground. This area, after flooding, became known, first, as Madison Lake, then later (when the tourist and fisherman trade became important) as Ennis Lake.
(3) Emily's brothers, Joe and Tony Mackel, had purchased this ranch at about the same time that Tom Vincent took over the Richter Ranch. Her visits from Butte, to visit her brothers, resulted in her meeting young Tom Hughes, who worked and lived, most of the time, across the road at his Uncle's ranch.
(4) Post office location before moving to McAllister. Guy Gibson and his mother ran the post office, which was in their house. Tom and Emily were married in that house.
(5) Remington Ranch. Tom worked part time here when first arriving in Montana. Ronaldo Remington was one of the young men who "chummed" around with Tom in the early days.
(6) Revenue Hill Road provided access to the rich gold mines on the hill, and for the freighters to take their loads of ore to the rail end at Sappington, later to Norris when the railroad was extended.
(7) The Norris Hill road provided a direct route to Norris from Ennis and thus was more heavily used, and better maintained. The Revenue road was nearly abandoned when the mines became worked out.
(8) Alex McAllister had a general store, service station, and rental cabins here. Eventually, the post office was moved from South Meadow Creek, and the addresses became McAllister, instead of Meadow Creek. In 1908, it was still Meadow Creek. (See detail, page 17)
9) Tom and Emily started their married life at the homestead. Tom had help building a sturdy cabin from his brother Will, and, possibly from brother Roy, who was a carpenter, and visited Montana nearly every summer.
(10) Alex McKinnon owned property below the homestead. Records are not clear but this was apparently homesteaded by Ed and Will Hughes. Edwin and Lewis remembered living on this place, for a time, before going on the west coast trip.
(11) District l3 school. One room, all grades. Emily's sister, Florence (Fodie) Gibson, was teacher when Tom and Emily were married.
(12) The McDowell place was close enough to District 13 that Edwin and Lewis could walk to school. Tom moved his family there, from Fletcher Creek, when the weather got too bad for the kids to ride horseback.
(13) Guy and Fodie Gibson owned a small place on the South Meadow Creek Road which was vacant in 1914 when the Tom Hughes family returned to Montana from their west coast trip. Bob was born there, Jan. 4th, 1915.
(14) The Gibson's were living on the Green Acre Ranch in 1915 (Guy was foreman).
(15) Maggie and Jess Frisbee had a ranch about a mile from the Gibson place. Maggie was summoned for mid-wife duties when Bob was born.
(16) The Fletcher Creek place was close to the T.V. Ranch, and the Tom Hughes family lived there a couple of times. The family moved to the old hotel building at McAllister when Tom's work at the T.V. Ranch ended.
(17) Lewis wrote that Schoenberger started building the original house on this place in l882, so it was well established when the Hughes kids went by there on their way to school from the Fletcher Creek (about 1916). The Stoker family, who had the first radio that I remember, lived there in the 1920's. I remember going there with my folks, before Tommy was born, to listen to static ridden old time music (hoedown) from Calgary.
(18) The "corduroy bridge" covered an extremely soft and swampy bottom 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 to make 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 springless 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 bridge were filled with dirt and graded. I quite clearly remember using this bridge quite a lot, in the wagon with Dad, when the logs were still there, Tommy vaguely remembers it also, so I think it must have been improved around 1927.
(19) The road from Norris to Ennis went through several modifications before becoming hard surfaced with asphalt. In 1920, when we moved to the home ranch, the road was a couple of ruts traveled mainly by team and wagon. I suppose the early autos (mostly Model T's) started using it about that time, creating 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 also got the first school bus driving job when district 48 was consolidated with the Ennis schools, about 1940. McDowells were living in Jasper Vincent's house at that time.
At left: EMILY MACKEL, Age sixteen EMILY'S STORY, covering the years, 1903, 1908.
Emily was born March 19, 1887, at Pleasant View, Norman County, Minnesota. She was l6 years old when she came by train from Ada, Minn., to Butte, Montana. Both her mother and older brother Frederick (Fritz) had died the same year, l903, at Ada. Fritz had been one of the mainstays of family support since their father died (kicked by a horse) in l888. (Emily was only one year old when her father died.) In 1903 the Ada portion of the Mackel family was tragically depleted.
Her sister, Florence, also came to Montana in l903, but apparently at a different time as one of Emily's memories was of arriving in Butte alone and, due to a misunderstanding, nobody was there to meet her. Other members of her family had already migrated to Montana. Bertha and Alex were in Butte. Joe and Tony had a ranch out in the Madison Valley. Fritz had been there, helping his brothers move in the Madison, and, like his father, also got severely injured by a horse kick to the kidney. He went back to Ada, Minnesota, and died there. His widow, Della, later married his brother, Joe, in Montana.
Dorothy Helgeson, a fourth generation granddaughter, visited the Ada cemetery and did considerable research into Mackel history,. Her research revealed that Fritz's death certificate listed cause of death as cancer.
Dorothy writes that Ignatious Mackel, the father, reportedly came from Paderborn, Germany, to Cook County, Illinois, in l858. He filed for naturalization in Cook County but the great Chicago fire (Mrs. O'Leary's cow) destroyed the courthouse and all records, so the status of Ignatious's citizenship is not clear. Legend has it that he was Catholic, was University educated, and was a cousin to the Krupp family. (The Krupps owned a German steel empire and provided canons, known as "Big Bertha's", for World War One.) His daughter, Bertha, said that Ignatious could speak Latin fluently, drunk or sober. .
This photo of Florence (left) and Emily was taken in Ada, Minnesota, when the girls were about ten and twelve years old, before they both moved to Montana Dorothy's research shows Ignatious living in Goodhue County, Minnesosta, in l870, with his wife Mary and family. There were sixteen recorded births to this couple, only eleven survived to adulthood. Four dying prior to age two, and one at age eleven
Ignatious had moved close to Ada prior to his death. Strong family ties and German discipline ruled this family, and older brothers, Henry, Frederick, and Joe, took over family support responsibility, and must have dedicated most of their younger lives to this end. Especially Henry, as his name always came up as being the authority figure.
The Mackel family, about 1892. Back row, left to right, Fred , Bertha , and Henry. Second row: Minnie, Joe, holding Florence, Mom (Mary), and Alex, holding Emily. Front row: Lou, Francis , and Tony. It is remarkable that, under the circumstances, so many educated people came out of this family group. Bertha had a medical degree from the University of Minnesota, and became one of Montana's first female doctors. Louis was a civil engineer and had a career with the U. S. Geological Survey.(Bureau of Land Management.) Florence was a school teacher and taught in the Madison near where her brothers ranched. Our Mother (Emily) had enough business training to become secretary in Alex's and Burton K. Wheeler's law office in Butte, Montana. Alex had a law degree, becoming both city attorney and county attorney in Butte, later practicing law in Yakima and Centralia, Washington. He was City Attorney in Butte during the struggle between the Daly's and W. A. Clark, for ownership of the rich copper claims, that was known as the "War of the Copper Kings".
Her brother, Louis, was five years older than Emily and was in Butte at the same time she was, and got his degree from the Montana School of Mines . They seemed to be quite close and corresponded for many years. As a youngster, I was quite impressed when the mail came with his letter bearing the U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY letter head.
We do not have much information about Emily from the time of her arrival in Butte, Montana, to the date of her marriage in l908. We know she worked for her brother Alex and his law office partner, Burton K. Wheeler, who later became the U. S. Senator from Montana. Ed thought that she lived with the Brinton family, at least part of the time, because sister Bertha moved to a small apartment (called a "flat"). Marjorie wrote in an article that Emily lived with Bertha (Mrs. McClernan), but she doesn't say for how long.
My own recollection is that Mother told me, when I decided to go to Fort Peck to look for work, to see Owen "Cap" Brinton because she knew him from having lived with his family in Butte. (It was good advice because he gave me a job and let me stay at his house for a few days until I got a room in the barracks.)
Mrs. Brinton was a widow and took in boarders. She had a large house in Butte. Mother and Edwin stayed there, in later years, when in Butte getting treatment for Ed's badly crossed eyes. I also stayed with Mrs. Brinton when in Butte to have my tonsils removed. The Brinton family and the Hughes family remained in contact for many years.
Mrs. Brinton had two sons, Owen and Ben, and a daughter, Bulah. Owen became a mining engineer and as Captain Brinton in the Army Corps of Engineers was in charge of tunnel construction at Fort Peck. Ben was a lawyer and purchased a seat on the New York Stock exchange. Bulah was one of mothers's best friends and visited our home ranch in the Madison many times with her husband, Billy Barough. Their daughter, Jane, married Ray Gallant, one of my best friends in Fort Peck. (Years later, Ray was killed in an airplane crash.)
Lewis related a story about Ben Brinton showing up at the homestead after Joe and Tony ejected him from their ranch. Dad let him sleep in the barn, and that was the beginning of their 50 year friendship. I don't know where that story fits, or the background for it, but it must have been prior to the beginning of Ben's successful career on the New York Stock exchange. I was in New York in l946 and visited Ben at his office on Wall St. He took me to the balcony of the stock exchange, and I watched the activity, on the floor below, for half a day. .
TOM'S STORY, covering the years 1900, 1908
His tombstone, in the McAllister, Montana, cemetery, gives his birthdate as May 15, 1885. I believe this to be in error as he definitely thought he was twenty one years old in 1905. (Please see his diary entry of May 15, 1905.) He was born in Iowa but there is also confusion whether in Searsboro, or Oskaloosa.
Emily's brothers, Joe and Tony,. and sister, Florence, lived in the Madison Valley in the upper Meadow Creek area It was inevitable that she meet Tom Hughes when she came out from Butte to visit, since he worked at his Uncle Tom Vincent's place, just across the road from the Mackel ranch.
Thomas S. Hughes also 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 at an earlier date, and were busy accumulating homesteads 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.
Lewis writes in his article "Meadow Creek Days" that Tom Vincent and A. J. McDowell left Oskaloosa, Iowa, in l882, wandered around working at various places, eventually ending up at Meadow Creek, Montana, where Tom Vincent married Lora Richter. The Richters had prospered with a brewery in Virginia City and owned a ranch in the upper South Meadow creek area; which, under Uncle Tom's and Aunt Lora's management, became one of the more successful ranches in the area, also focal point for the migrating Hughes and Vincent families of Iowa.
Uncle Tom and Aunt Lora Vincent ran the very successful T.V. Ranch for many years, providing a "roosting" place for the many Vincents and Hughes's that came west.
JOHN W. HUGHES
John W. Hughes, (Tom's father), was the son of John Edwin Hughes and Mary Sadler Hughes. He was born October 2, l852, at West Liberty, Iowa. He was a jack of all trades but mostly worked as bridge builder and carpenter. In 1894 he and his son William went to Alaska, but narrowly missed the Alaskan gold rush. He moved the part of his family, that was still at home in Iowa, to Sumas, Washington, in 1900, shortly after returning (broke) from the gold fields . He died in Sumas, July 30. 1912, and is buried there. It is interesting to note that he got as close to Canada as possible and still stay in the States. Sumas is exactly on the border. The Sadler family, that J. W.'s mother came from, were Canadians, and many Sadlers lived in Canada. (See page 30 for John and Mary's complete family.)
Kathy Sadler Miklovich, of Ontario, Canada, has been a source for much of the genological data for the Sadler and Hughes families. J. W.'s mother was sister to Kathy's great, great grandfather.
John Wesley Hughes had married Uncle Tom's sister, Sarah. in Iowa. They and their family of eight children all stopped over, some stayed, in the Meadow Creek area on their way to the state of Washington.
Lewis continued, "John Wesley, never known to stay long in one place, took a look at the 'rocks rollin' in the Madison valley wind' and took the female portion of the family to the West Coast to smell the flowers", and settled in Sumas, Washington."
Uncle Tom needed strong, energetic help to work his ranch. His nephew, young Tom Hughes, liked horses, ranch life, mountains, and wasn't afraid of hard work, or hard winters. He decided to stay.
He also liked the competitive atmosphere of the ranch's recreation facilities. Uncle Tom never got famous for paying high wages but he knew how to keep his young men around. Walter Vincent, another nephew, told Lewis 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 fiddle playing talent.
He (Dad) started keeping a ledger and then a diary in April of l902, and records time worked for C.C. Leavith, A. J. McDowell, Ed and Will Hughes, and O.B.Walton. Although working around at various other ranches, the T.V. Ranch was his home.
Diary of TS Hughes 1904-1905
PLEASE SEE THE DIARY TRANSCRIPT FOR HIS RECORDED ENTRIES FROM APRIL l902, TO JULY 13th, 1906.
Among the young men running around in the valley were Tom's friends Guy Gibson, Billy Fletcher, and Ronaldo Remington. Emily's sister, Florence, became Mrs. Guy Gibson in Feb. l905. Tom was not back from Arizona at that time so it is unclear whether or not he had yet met Emily.
Diary of TS Hughes 1904-1905Anyway, Emily continued visiting her relatives in the Madison and married the fiddle playing cowboy, Tom Hughes, June l3, l908. They were married at Florence's home, which happened to be the post office for the valley. Florence's husband, Guy, was the postmaster.
Diary of TS Hughes 1904-1905An interesting parallel evolved in the development of the Hughes and Gibson families. Both couples had two sons, then a daughter , another son, and several years later, the fifth child, another boy. The two families also remained in close contact with each other, visiting and corresponding throughout the years
Diary of TS Hughes 1904-1905 The Mackel family was really not impressed with Emily's choice. Tom's reputation of a fun loving, footloose, ranch roustabout cowboy did not necessarily promise the stability envisioned by the staid Mackel brothers for their youngest, and perhaps pampered, sibling. In fact, Lenny Gibson tells an anecdote of later years about the time he (Lenny) told Tom that he was going up to see Uncle Joe Mackel and Tom said, "Well, tell him that I broke my leg, that'll make him feel good for a week."
Diary of TS Hughes 1904-1905We think that Tom and Emily were planning their homestead at the time of their marriage. It was located about three quarters of a mile below the confluence of Leonard and Dry Leonard Creeks. The cabin sat on the south side of Leonard and may have been under construction and either ready, or almost ready, to move into by June l3th.
HOMESTEAD, l908, l9l3.
Edwin was born Oct. 23rd, l909, but not necessarily at the homestead. With winter coming on, perhaps one of the McAllister cabins, close to the midwife, Mrs. Bill Else, was rented for the winter. Mother mailed picture postcards to relatives in Sumas, Washington, June 20th, l910, on which she is shown sitting on the front steps of the homestead cabin, holding baby Edwin. They must have lived there until Edwin 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 remembers 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. These memories jibe with the homestead scene.
Emily and Edwin on the porch of the homestead, June 1910. 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.
Following is copy of both sides 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 read 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 picture of Emily and baby Edwin
Lewis was born August 24th, l911, probably at the homestead or at the nearby Mackel ranch. Norris Mackel related that Emily's brother Lou and trained nurse wife was visiting there at the time, and that he (Norris) was given the daily chore of walking over to the homestead with a pail of fresh milk to help feed the new baby. He also hinted that he went barefoot. Norris was 6 to 8 years old at the time.
There was no official recording of births for these two children, as well as the ones that came later. When birth certificates were required for employment or citizenship, we all had to obtain avadavits 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 subsistance 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 starting to be 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 Docter never arrived in time for a baby's birth. We think that both Edwin and Marjorie were born in one of those cabins. Edwin's birthday, October 23rd, was too close to winter for the family to still be at the homestead, and the snow would not be gone, in April, when Marjorie was born.
Marjorie wrote in one of her articles: "Tom 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. 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.
"WEST COAST TRIP, 1913, 1914. J. W. Hughes (1853 - 1912) was born in either Canada or Iowa, it is unclear which. He died in Sumas, Washington, two years prior to the visit of his son Tom with his family.
The homestead was sold, we think, (To the Mackels, no record in Virginia City) in late l9l3 or early l9l4, and the family went by train to Sumas, Washington, and Grants Pass, Oregon. Tom's father, John Wesley, had died a couple of years earlier, but Tom's mother, Sarah, lived in the Sumas area with grown children, Mattie, Roy, Lora, and Ina.
Lois Rich Bromly (Tom's niece. Mattie's daughter) dimly remembers when Tom and Emily, with three little kids, were in Sumas. She writes "There was a little house on the property next to my folks home (I think my grandfather Rich owned it) where your folks stayed while they were here. I think they just slept there and had meals with us."
The Sumas gang was growing also. Tom's sister, Mattie, was married to Bert Rich, they had three daughters, Hazel, Amy, and Lois. Sister Lora married Fred Lade and they produced sons Elmer and Owen. Roy was married to Jennie, and they had a daughter, Laura. I think all of those kids were there for the gathering, except Owen who was born later. Mother Sarah must have been delighted to see her Montana grandchildren mingling with the ones already underfoot.
Tom's youngest sister, Ina, married Clarence Kirkman, June 23rd, 1914. It's entirely possible that Tom and his family were there for that wedding, but I have no corroboration.
From Sumas, Tom took his family to see his brother, Ira, and wife Ada, in Hugo, Oregon. Ira and Ada eventually had five children. Their daughter, Martha, was born in November at Hugo, which must have been near the time of this visit in l914. Ira and Ada had been married in l910.
This house in Sumas , Washington, was the home of J. W. and Sarah Hughes, and was where the widowed Sarah lived when visited in 1914 by her son, Tom, and his family. Grandmother Sarah , according to everybody who knew her, was undoubtedly the kindest, sweetest, gentlest, woman they had ever known. Left to right, Lewis, Marjorie, Edwin. The only time Tom's family got to see their grandmother was on the West Coast Trip.
BACK IN MONTANA, 1915,1919.
Jan. 4th, l9l5. The family moved into the Gibson place upon their return and Bob was born there. Bert and Lenny Gibson remember that their family was working, and living on the Greenacre Ranch, and that their little place, (originally the Levy place) on up the road from the Greenacre, was available for Tom and his family when they returned to Montana.
Bob was two weeks premature and the closest neighbor lady, Maggie Frisbee, was summoned to be midwife. Edwin has steadfastly insisted that he was involved in the summoning, either by horseback, or a team and wagon. (He was five years, two months, and eleven days old) This was during bitter cold weather and the baby was kept warm in the oven. Mother said the Doctor came on schedule, two weeks later. (Twenty five years later I got an affidavit from Maggie so as to obtain a birth certificate needed for employment at Boeing.)
I don't know where Dad was working, but he had to be earning money somewhere after the west coast trip. Bert and Lenny thought he might have been working in the mines. Their Dad had told them that Tom was a good miner and could get a job anywhere.
We next lived at the McKinnon place on Leonard Creek. Lewis and Edwin agreed on this, but no dates surfaced. There still is no clue as to what Dad was doing but the logical assumption was that he worked around at various ranches. Perhaps he was back into freighting, but mining and ore hauling jobs were becoming scarce by that time. Lewis said, "It seems to me that he was always gone, only coming home when I had lost a shoe in the creek".
After the McKinnon place came Fletcher Creek, which more or less indicates that Dad was back working for Uncle Tom on the T.V. Ranch. Lenny, Ed and Lewis all agree that this is when Dad rode his bicycle to work. It couldn't have been very far with a derrick rope tire on the bike.
Lewis said that Uncle Tom sold Dad to Templeton when he sold the T.V.Ranch. And that Templeton sold him to Barnett, the next owner. And that Barnett was a sheep man, which meant that Dad left for some other vocation soon. He didn't like sheep. and he always said that the T.V. Ranch was supposed to be a cattle ranch.
HOME RANCH, 1919, 1948
The ranch we moved to in l9l9 eventually became the Home Ranch to us. The kids were raised there and the folks lived there until Tommy took it over in l948. That is the only place where Dad and Uncle Tom were in partnership (said partnership causing quite a bit of friction between them before it was finally terminated.). Lewis sometimes referred to it as Homestead #2, and that, surely, that was not far off the mark as a description.
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 sack at the pump in the yard.
It really was no more than a homestead when we moved there. Only three buildings; a small house, granary, and barn. I don't know if the buildings were there when Uncle Tom and Dad bought the place or whether they caused the construction. Dad started building corrals and a chicken house immediately. A few years later, recycled planks from Montana Power Co.'s old wooden water line became available, and Dad built more barns, ending up with both a cow and horse barn with a hay storage area in between. At thrashing time, one year, he had straw blown onto a framework which formed another shed, known as the straw shed, for a winter time animal shelter and refuge from flies in summer.
There was no irrigation water on the place then. The West Side Canal was being organized to bring water out of the Madison River, from a few miles above Ennis, and irrigate hundreds of acres almost to McAllister. This canal was responsible for turning the desert like terrain, when we moved there, to the lush farming land of today. Dad not only physically worked on construction of the canal, with teams and fresno (horse drawn dirt scoop), but was Secretary Treasurer and on the board of directors of the Canal Co., until he retired from ranching.
The house was a pre-fab (Dad called it "Sears-Roebuck") which came something like a kit, and the pieces were assembled on site. Apparently the pieces didn't fit very well as it took years to stop up all the cracks that admitted below zero weather. We probably lived there two or three years before Paul Shoenick built an addition onto the original, almost doubling the floor space, making a large living-kitchen-dining area and enclosing the well so that we no longer had to go out in the yard to pump water. He also stuccoed the outside which helped to plug the cracks. The new addition was better constructed so we lived very much warmer in the winter time. The old part of the house was then used mostly for sleeping, until Ed got married, and then Dad partitioned off part for Ed and Margaret to live in for a while.
The ranch was not a ranch at first. 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. 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 pig pen. 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 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.
Lewis wrote in a document entitled Homestead Two: " Uncle Tom's and Dad's oral agreement was everything half and half. Translated, it meant that Dad did the work, Uncle Tom got the money, and we half froze and half starved."
He continued, "The stoves in the shack were hungry for wood. Dad would get his team and logging outfit ready by daylight. The team pulled the bob sled, to which he bound the front ends of the poles to be sawed for wood, and drug the back ends. It was a l4 mile round trip to Daisy and Virginia Creek. On Saturday mornings, Dad told Ed and me, 'By God, you saw enough wood to get by until next Saturday. ' He laid on us a one man cross cut (saw) with a wood peg handle on the main end, (Ed's) and a big horseshoe bolted to the small end (mine)."
Lewis's sense of humor was irreverent and sardonic, sometimes sarcastic; and he loved to make his siblings squirm: "Ed and I jerked that saw back and forth a million times. However, you just can't hook an intelligent type with a bull type, no feelin' partner, and make a team. Ed's back was painless and it was most fortunate that I outsmarted him regularly. I bore down on my end on his stroke and the sawdust flew. So did his temper. He'd catch on and cry, 'Dammit, quit riding your end". Actually, with my superior intellect, I was helping him, but he never understood. Sometimes Ed would come over to my side and get plumb nasty. Mom would come out and straighten us out with 'Your Dad will be home soon, maybe I can see him now'. That got our full attention."
For a few years Dad supplemented the cream check income by freighting with a four horse team and wagon. In the winter-time he hauled mail and coal from Norris to Ennis. It was a long, cold l2 hour day for him, and I remember dressing in my warmest clothing and going outside to watch him go by on the return trip. Sometimes he would stop to warm up and get a bite to eat before going on to Ennis.
Auto and truck traffic would be stopped for weeks at a time after a big snow storm and the only traffic was horse and wagon. There was no snow removal equipment for that area so the roads usually stayed blocked. It was a county road (dirt) from Norris to Ennis and I doubt if the county owned anything resembling a snowplow. Eventually the state took over the road and graded it up higher so that the wind blew most of the snow away. They put up snow fences in strategic places but an occasional drift was still a winter time hazard for the gasoline engine vehicle.
A bunkhouse was built for the boy kids; afterwards several hired men were put up during haying or times of need. There was a stove in it, but as kids, we didn't usually bother to build a fire, especially in the winter time mornings. It would be much too cold to dress in the bunkhouse; we would dash into the house, only a few steps, and finish dressing by the kitchen stove. Mom would have me sleep in the house on the very coldest nights, but Lewis and Ed were older and bigger and had to tough it out in the bunkhouse. Marjorie had her own bedroom in the house.
When a bad blizzard came from the north, we only went out to do chores. Since I was the youngest, at that time, and the smallest, I could usually get mother to stick up for me in the nastiest weather, and let me stay in the house while the big boys did the chores. I'd pay for that the next time they caught me outdoors, out of sight of the house.
We had a game called "caroms" which was a godsend for passing time during bad weather and we had to stay in the house. It consisted of little wooden rings, about an inch in diameter, and a table about three feet square with a pocket, like a pool table, in each corner. The table had a ridge all around so that the wooden rings could not slide off. Each player had a "shooter" ring, and by snapping his middle finger sharply against the shooter, it would fly over and strike another ring, which would carom off, hopefully into a pocket. There must have been about a dozen of the little rings that had to be knocked into a pocket; you could continue shooting until you missed. All four of us would be on our hands and knees around this game for hours on end. I haven't heard of, or seen, that game since. Replaced by television, and that's a shame.
Tommy was born in l923 and my soft spot in the pecking order vanished. I was eight years old and figured I could run with the big boys now and didn't need all that attention anyhow. Life got tougher, the big boys were hard to catch.
They each had their own horse. Lewis had a mean little black mare which bucked him off every day, or managed to dislodge him someway. One neat trick was to stop abruptly, from a dead run, at the edge of a ditch, which dumped Lewis off over her head. Her name was "Meg." Meg liked to buck through the clothes line. Ed's horse "Gump" was a larger, grayish white horse which was calm enough for me to ride (supervised) once in a while. I'm sure we didn't have money to get saddles, but Dad's theory, so he said, was that kids were less apt to get hurt riding bareback. It must of worked, or Lewis would have been a meatball.
I remember watching them race across a freshly shocked grain field, knocking bundles in all directions, until Dad roared at them from out in the barn somewhere. I don't know what the rest of the penalty was, after they re-shocked the grain, but "grounded for a week" just doesn't sound like Dad's style of discipline.
An ice house was built after a few years and filled halfway with sawdust in which ice was buried in winter and slowly melted until all gone, about the last of August. Ice on the lake would get to be almost two feet thick some winters. We would saw out cakes with a one man crosscut saw, and haul them home, with a team and wagon, across the corduroy bridge which was frozen solid that time of year and easy to cross. Our milk and cream was placed in a special place next to the ice, butter was homemade, and kept on ice. The best thing to come from the ice house was homemade ice cream. We had it every Sunday in the summer time and sometimes during the week. Not being big enough to work in the fields, it was my job to crush the ice and turn the crank until the stuff froze stiff enough that I could no longer turn it.
The icehouse appears in the right background of this picture of Tommy and his dog, Mutt. The smaller building in the center, with the stovepipe, was our bunkhouse. Electricity and refrigerators were arriving which ended the days of the icehouse. Ours eventually was completely abandoned and just sat there fur years.
The ice house also served as repository for foul tasting home brew. Prohibition (l8th amendment) was not repealed until l933 so people with ice houses made their own beer. Maybe it would have tasted better with a little age but ours never seemed to last that long. I was not old enough, according to mother, to have any with the men, but she didn't know about the sampling on the sly. I didn't like it well enough to do it very much but Rex McDowell (a haying time hired man) would give me a quarter to sneak a bottle out to where he was working in the field. He thought it was good. The l8th amendment was repealed, and professionally brewed beer soon ended the home brew activity. "Putting one over on the government" probably played as big a part in generating this activity as did the actual drinking. I'm sure it wasn't the taste.
Our first attempt at electricity was a 24 volt Wind Charger system. 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.
We had no need for a garage for quite a few years because we had no car. Eventually, Porter Nelson prevailed, he was the car dealer in Ennis, and Dad built a garage and machinery shed out of the rest of his canyon planks. I think that was the last of his building projects.
The first car must have been a Model T. About the only thing I remember about it is that one day it kicked (hand cranked model) and broke Lewis's wrist. Dad was gone on a mining job, (He and Uncle Bill and Jess Frisbee had the Sunnyside Mine leased for a short time.) and he had left us kids to do the milking and chores. Our cow herd had grown to twelve head so we had plenty to do what with the milking, cleaning barns, feeding cattle and horses, cutting wood, going to school, etc.
The Model T of that era got its spark from a magneto, and if the spark was advanced too far, it would "kick" like a mule. In other words, it fired prematurely and went backwards violently. If the unlucky individual doing the cranking did not hold the handle so that it flew out of his hand, he wound up with a broken wrist. That's what happened to Lewis. He could still milk with one hand but it sure slowed him down. Ed and I extracted all kinds of "payback" promises due to his unloading all that work on us
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In a day or two they, (Ed and Lewis) had figured out how to fix the Model T so that it wouldn't kick any more. So they fixed it. I'm not sure just how I got elected to do the next crank job as I was barely big enough to turn it with all my weight on the handle, but when two big brothers tell you to do something, that's what you do. My arm looked like a pretzel after half a turn.
The neighbor who had taken Lewis to the Dr. was called again, and I soon had a cast up to my elbow. When Dad came home to pick up some groceries, I can't remember that he said much; probably was speechless, but I do remember his expression. The word is livid.
Ed always claimed that he did all our work for the rest of the winter, but it was actually only a few weeks when the casts came off. Squeezing a rubber ball to strengthen wrist and fingers is poor therapy compared to milking half a dozen cows night and morning, so it really wasn't long until we were doing our share.
The predominant memories of our young lives is that of hard work and cold winters. There was hard work and lots of it. Starting from scratch to build a ranch meant plenty to do for everybody. However, our work was balanced with opportunities for sports and relaxation, at least until Dad became too crippled to participate. After that Lewis and I more or less carried on the sports activities ourselves. Ed was handicapped with a bad eye problem and didn't enjoy sports.
Dad had the gift of turning everything into fun. It was difficult living in the high Montana country in those days; it was a hard life, hard climate, hard work, hard play. A sense of humor was essential to take the bitter edge off of the near misses and little disasters.
He loved sports and horses. Earlier he had pitched in the local baseball league, and participated in weekend bucking horse contests, forerunner of the rodeo show. He constantly traded for horses that other people did not want, due to being unbroken or an outlaw by nature. Sometimes the show at home when he hooked up a green bronc, was more exciting than the weekend gathering.
For several years Dad rode the Gravely Range mountains, west of the ranch, hoping to capture a magnificent stallion that ran wild along with a harem of mares. I vividly remember the big day one summer when Dad and Lewis and Ed came whooping and yelling a bunch of wild horses into our specially built corrals, with high fences and strong gates. "Timberline", as we now called the elusive stallion, had been captured.
I think Dad sat on the corral fence all night, watching that horse. In the morning he opened the gate and let Timberline go back to his mountains and mares. His only comment, "A horse like that should not be penned up ".
He played ball and pitched horseshoes with us kids. He dammed up the creek and made a swimming hole, complete with spring board for diving. All of us and the neighbor's kids became expert swimmers and divers in that hole.
Dad considered himself pretty good in the boxing field. Lenny Gibson tells that when Dad and Army Adams were on their way back from Arizona, they stopped in Goldfield, Nevada, where Tex Rickard (the fight promoter who later handled Jack Dempsey) was putting on a bout. Dad signed up to fight in a preliminary, but his opponent never showed.
Anyway, Lewis developed into a big, tough kid, and at age sixteen could hold his own with Dad. Dad spent lots of time coaching and training him, up to the point that Lewis was the main eventer at several fights put on at Ennis by Emmett Womack. I remember that he and Horace Dunn (an Ennis saloonkeeper's son) battled each other in a series of wins and losses for each. Lewis had a professional fight or two in Seattle after he came to Washington, but I think they must have been disastrous as his ring career went nowhere from then on.
Dad's fiddle playing had given rise to what became known as "Tom's Mountain Lion Stories". He swore as being true that he was walking back to the homestead one night after a dance when a cougar (they were called mountain lions) started to follow him. Having no weapon, he uncased his fiddle and played a lively tune. What I remember of the original version is "When I looked over my shoulder, the mountain lion jigged a couple of times and disappeared". Subsequent versions took on various dimensions, depending on the gullibility of the listener.
Another version was discovered by Larry among Lewis's papers. It goes like this: (To an eastern cattle buyer) "I was desperate, grabbed the fiddle for a lively tune and dared a glance over my shoulder. Sure 'nuff, the mountain lion was doing a polka, while wiping the sweat from his face with a red bandanna."
Lenny Gibson remembers Dad, his Uncle, in this way: "When Uncle Tom came into the room, it lit up. He always made every one feel that he, or she, was someone". Lenny tells of one time coming to our house when the kids were playing "bronc rider" and Dad was the "bronc". So of course Lenny had to try, and got tossed clear to the ceiling, hitting the floor with a resulting bloody nose. Lenny, being the oldest, and biggest, of the Gibson-Hughes gang of kids, without a doubt drew an extra energetic "bronc".
Lenny credits Dad for having invented the first retread tire. Not only did he replace the worn out tires on his bicycle with a piece of derrick rope, but when the tires on his Ford got smooth, he put a larger size on over the bald ones and riveted them together. Lennie didn't think they held air so must have been filled with sawdust. One trip over the Norris Hill wore out the rivet heads and the tires had to be re-capped again.
Another story discovered by Larry among Lewis's papers was the one about the card party. Dad was playing 500 at a table with Doris Wilson, Emma Harris, and a newcomer lady. He won the bid and after playing the Ace and King, realized he did not have the Queen and would go "bust".
Lewis describes it like this: "The noise level was deafening, with kids too strung out to be bedded down on the stage, and the ladies were concentrating on gossip loud enough to be heard over the uproar. The ladies' minds were, first, on the gossip, second, on kids, third, on the card game. Carefully he fingered the Ace from the discard pile and played it again. Still no Queen or reaction from the ladies, so he "snuk" the King out for a second run. Suddenly the newcomer lady was glaring at him "Well, I won't play cards with a crook!" Emma and Doris were in hysterics, but managed "Oh, that's just Tom, you'll get used to him.""
After his death, daughter Marjorie Cowan wrote in her article for Pioneer Trials and Trails: "The strong tree that was our father toppled April 28, 1964. He was not a gentle man and I often judged him tyrannical. He would have scorned women's lib. Yet when he died, it was if a sturdy windbreak went down and we stood flinching as the sleet hit our faces." He is buried in the McAllister cemetary beside Emily, his faithful companion of 56 years
It was sad to see him grow old and crippled with arthritis. Modern surgery could have saved him tons of pain, but joint replacement came too late to help with his arthritic knees. The buoyant personality become subdued but he could laugh at a good joke and retell one of his own until the end.
All of Dad's saddle horses seemed to be characters. He wanted his work horses to be tough and strong, but the saddle horses, in addition to being ridden, also had to keep him amused. One of Naomi's first recollections of him, when she arrived on the scene years later, was his claim about how catlike and quiet his horse of the moment, George was his name, could be. It impressed her that George could "tiptoe towards the barn" the minute Dad got off and turned his back to shut the gate.
One of the saddle horses he owned was a mare named Mabel. She must have lived all of her life, at least most of it, on our home ranch. I rode her to school part of the time in my freshman and sophomore years at the Ennis High School. Somebody had a barn not far from school and I could tie and feed her there. It was about six miles and would take about 45 minutes to go and about 30 minutes to come home. She liked coming home best.
Dad got a great big mean boar pig from somewhere which became a real neighborhood nuisance. A mean boar pig is not to be fooled around with! Their scale of "destructiveness" rates at the grizzly bear level. This one had tusks about four inches long and a mouth like an alligator. At least that's the way it looked to me at age eight or nine. I was scared to death of it.
A fence good enough to hold everything else meant nothing to this pig. After he got out, it would take everybody we could find to herd him carefully back to where he belonged. Being careful meant to not get him on the "prod".
One day I saw this monster out in the field on his way down to see the neighbor's bunch of young sows. I yelled at Dad that the boar was out. Mabel was already saddled, tied to the fence. Dad ran out, "I'm gonna teach that damn pig a lesson". and jumped on Mabel, untying his lariat from the saddle as he tore after the pig. He had just commenced to swing his loop when the pig turned and came back at them. Mabel wanted none of this and Dad was too busy with his rope to rein her in, so back toward the barn they went with the pig right behind.
The corral gates were open so Mabel went in one gate and out the other. Dad hopped off and shut the gate in front of the pig and I clanged the other one shut behind it. A little later in the house, I heard Dad proudly tell Mom: "Me an' Mabel sure brought that ol' pig home".
Sister Marjorie wrote in one of her newspaper articles about the breaking cart he 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.
Big game hunting wasn't very productive at that time. Very few deer were in our area, and to find elk, hunters had to go almost to the Yellowstone Park. Dad and Fred Shabaker used to tie their saddle horses behind a wagon filled with camping equipment, and drive a team almost to the Park boundary, to camp and hunt elk. It was a two day drive, over a rough, rocky road, with a dead axle (no springs) wagon, just to get there.
Guns were for everyday living. I had a 22 caliber rifle at age 8, and my own shotgun a year later. I had already used Dad's 25-35 rifle and his l0 gauge shotgun. Jasper Vincent lived neighbors to us on the north; I passed his place every day, walking to school, and he would go rabbit hunting with me on Saturdays.
Canadian Geese migrated through every fall and stopped on the lake to rest a few days. They would come to our grain fields to feed sometimes, and I would dig carefully hidden pits in their feeding area. Live decoys were legal, and a man in Norris, I think his name was Johnson, had a gander and three hens. Johnson and his hunting buddy would show up about three o'clock in the morning after I called him, and we would set the live decoys in the field about 50 feet in front my pits. The gander wouldn't honk to the flying geese if he was tied to a peg with string so he was put into a little wire cage. We always got our limits. Not only did we have goose for our Thanksgiving dinner, but Johnson and his buddy would each slip me ten dollars. I was the richest kid in school.
Dad had guns for a purpose, as did nearly everybody who lived in that area at that time. Guns took care of coyotes in the chicken house, and skunks wandering around in the yard. Beef and Pork, ready for home butchering, were dispatched quickly and humanely. A saddle gun was a necessity when riding the hills checking on the cow herd; maybe there would be a sick one. A rattle snake might be encountered anywhere. There were always loaded guns around the house; kids were taught to respect and handle them safely.
Dad had two Remington, lever action rifles, 25-35 caliber. One had a shorter barrel than the other; it was called a carbine. Ed and I used to tramp all over the Fletcher Creek hills looking for deer, which were very scarce at that time, carrying those two rifles. I don't remember that we ever got a deer, but every once in a while we got to shoot at a rabbit or coyote. He also had a Winchester, lever action, 10 gauge shotgun, which kicked like a mule. Anyway, at about age eight, when I fired it for the first time at a duck. I thought it kicked like a mule. Squatting on my heels on a ditch bank, aiming up at about forty five degrees, I landed flat on my back in the ditch. It didn't have much water in it, fortunately. The duck came tumbling down, but the bad news was that I had to clean it. The house rule was, whoever shoots that stuff, cleans it.
The pride and joy of Dad's arsenal was his revolver, which he used for everything from stunning fish, (as described in Larry's "A Fishing Trip With Grampa") to killing elk at close range. I don't know when, or where, he got this gun. It came before I did, I think. It looked like a 45 Colt, but it was really caliber 38 special. I wast an extremely accurate, hard shooting weapon. His stories about what he had done, and could do with this gun, were almost as extensive as his fiddle stories.
In the summer between my junior and senior year in high school, I got a job for a neighboring cattle rancher, Millard Easter, at $l5.00 a month, plus board and room. A good part of my job was riding the fence. This meant going horseback along the drift fence which had been constructed to keep his cattle herd on their summer range. . I had a little single shot, 22 caliber, Spanish made pistol that I carried to kill snakes. The coffee can, that I kept in the bunk house, got to be about half full of rattles when I bragged to Dad about what a good shot I was, and what a powerful little gun I had. His comment, "Well, that bullet goes so slow that the snake strikes at it. The only way you could miss is to be so far off that he couldn't reach it." I never bragged about marksmanship in front of him again.
ABOUT JASPER
A lot of what I remember about the early days in Meadow Creek (McAllister) came by way of the stories that Dad and Jasper Vincent used to tell. Jasper was a jovial soul who loved to talk, and visit, with everybody, including kids. Round and chubby, with never failing good humor, in a red suit and white beard, he would have been a dead ringer for Santa Claus in both appearance and personality. Jasper was the exact opposite of his half brother, Tom Vincent of the T V Ranch. His birthdate was Oct. 10, 1866, as per his tombstone in the McAllister cemetery, making him seven years younger than Uncle Tom.
Jasper lived alone and was not exactly happy with his own cooking. He developed a skill, however, at popping in at a neighbor's house at mealtime. Nobody really minded though, since the entertainment would be worth the price. It seemed to be understood that he would be at our house for Sunday afternoon dinner, and I knew, as soon as I saw him strolling up the road, that he and Dad would spend the rest of that day eating, talking, and smoking.
They smoked identical, foul smelling, black pipes. They shared tobacco out of each other's Prince Albert can, and lit up with wooden kitchen matches from their shirt pockets. After dinner, they sat in wooden rockers and prepared to light up. "Lighting up" fascinated me; it was a major event.
After filling their pipes, and tamping the tobacco down carefully with their thumbs (sometimes the bowl had to be reamed out with a pocket knife into an ashtray), each would get a match from his shirt pocket and ignite it by reaching underneath his chair seat and scratching. Dad would impress any kids present by opening his mouth wide, after lighting his pipe, and inserting the still flaming match. Shortly he would open up, to release a cloud of smoke, and the perhaps still flaming match. Jasper would get his story started while filling his pipe, and would scratch his match alive without a pause. Holding the little torch upright, the flame crept closer and closer to his fingers; at the last instant, he blew, or shook it out and reached for a new one, never missing a beat in whatever he was talking about. Sometimes it would take four matches before he found an appropriate place in his story to pause and light his pipe.
They were master story tellers. They told about the bucking horse contests in Alex McAllister's corrals, about Alex's prize Thoroughbred racehorse that got beat consistently by Tom Wilson's dirty gray buggy horse; about Frank Sangwin who couldn't ride a stick horse sober, but could, and did, ride anything after a few beers. They talked about mining, freighting, hunting, homemade snowshoes, baseball games, everything. I wish I had a tape recording of even one of those Sunday afternoons.
Jasper's house was about a half mile from our house, and I walked right by it, usually, on the way to school. Sometimes, on Saturday, he would go rabbit hunting with me, up in one corner of his field, where cottontails were abundant. With any luck, Sunday dinner would be rabbit. I left my shotgun at his place a lot, so it would be handy for a quick evening hunt. To me, Jasper was a very special person.
One cold winter morning, Dad noticed that no smoke was coming from Jasper's chimney, and hurried down to investigate. Jasper was lying out by the woodpile, victim of a heart attack. Sundays were never the same after that.
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McALLISTER, Written by: R. Beals, in Pioneer Trials and Trails.
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 ly 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
My recollection : Mother said that when she first came to the valley, Upper Meadow Creek and Lower Meadow Creek were developing as two separate communities, and for a while had two post offices. The Gibsons had a post office in their house, known as Meadow Creek, which was located about where the Bausch house was in later years. The other Meadow Creek post office gradually became known as McAllister, and became the official U. S. Post Office for the area after the 1910 census. She said that there was really no confusion about mail; everybody knew everybody else and one 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. Probably it was there until Alex McAllister took it over when he built his store about 1900.
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Tom and Emily retired from ranching in 1948 and moved to what had been the Fish Hatchery house , on lower South Meadow Creek.
They spent their last years just a few steps from where Uncle Tom and Aunt Lora had retired. The two strong men, Tom Hughes and Tom Vincent, whose lives had been interwoven since boyhood, spent their last fifteen years barely speaking to each other because of the dispute about the ranch partnership.
For the publication, Pioneer Trials and Trails, Emily wrote about her life with Tom: "--our life was one of hard times and hardship, but I remember the fun too, and would not change things. Tom did his best and was kind in his way but very stern. His was the old time honesty and his word was his bond. Our lives weren't soft and easy, but the kids grew up tough and self- reliant
She concludes her article:"..............I now live alone in the same small place. My kids take good care of me, my neighbors are wonderful, I have a place of my own, and when I go I will say "So Long" to my family and friends and hope they know that I did my best."
Mom, you were terrific!
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THE HOME RANCH. 1930 ABOUT GRAMPA, THOMAS S. HUGHES
By: His Grandchildren
A FISHING TRIP WITH GRANDPA, By Larry .
Grandpa pulls up in his Model A Ford coupe with a broken muffler underneath and smoke billowing around. Says, "Let's go fishing up to the Beaver Dam." I climbed in and away we chugged. We didn't talk much; Grampa wasn't into frivolous talk or foolish questions.
Eventually we arrived at the Beaver Dam buildings and walked over to Leonard Creek. "See the fish", he says. Sure 'nuff, in plain sight we could see a lot of fish in the creek. (It was late summer and the brook trout were spawning.) Grandpa had a gunny sack, but no fishing pole. I wondered how we were supposed to get the fish.
Grandpa reached in his back pocket and pulls out his .45 pistol. Kerblam, he shoots into the creek. Water flew, but when it settled, two fish were flopping frantically, and swimming on top of the water.
"Catch those fish," he says. I quickly realized my job was to catch the fish for Grandpa and put into the gunny sack. Grandpa explained that the shock of the bullet broke their air bladder and they couldn't stay under water.
Grandpa shot, and I ran down fish until he had what he wanted. He let me shoot the pistol once. He said to shoot under the fish, not at them.
So we headed home. When we got to Virginia Creek, Grandpa stopped, and pulled out a tin cup, and we both had a cool drink. When we got to the corner, and the turn off to Tom Vincent's old ranch, Grandpa shut off the motor of the Model A, and we coasted all the way to the Tudor house, "Saves gas," he said. It was a neat day for a little kid, and the only time I shot fish, and coasted two miles down the South Meadow Creek Road
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DAVE WROTE, March,1995
I remained in awe of Grandad. When I was l7, he and I hayed together a lot, with him driving the tractor, and me pulling bales, one by one, onto a stone boat behind. I often ended the day with a headache. At the time, people blamed it onto those Ford tractor exhausts, which came out under the rear axle and blew back onto the guy behind. I knew better. It was his Goddamn pipe, which stunk far worse than the exhaust, and which he fired up every time he got on to go get another load.
Dave continues: It's about that Model A Ford Coupe that he had. The exhaust pipe on that car ended right under the floorboards, which were just that; -boards laid across under one's feet with plentiful cracks between them. Grandad was hard of hearing, and once when he and I got into that Model A to go somewhere, the engine roared to life with smoke billowing up through the floor boards, he turned to me and yelled "What I like about this car is that I can tell when it's running".
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PAULA sent a note: "Grampa Hughes used to create his own little smoky blue sky in the living room of the house on Meadow Creek. He would sit in that big chair with his pipe and there would be a cloud of light gray smoke hanging right below the ceiling. It's kind of funny that stays with me, but it does."
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LOTS OF MONTANA MEMORIES SURVIVE THE YEARS.
DUDES FROM THE CITY, by Dixie
Being the "Dudes From the City" our family only had contact with the Montana relatives for a few weeks in the summer. Impact from the various personalities was still felt however, since many memories survive forty years later. Grandad smoking his pipe on the porch and pretending he didn't know we were there - when he did choose to notice us, he always growled, making us very respectful. If coaxed, he would often use the lit match he lit his pipe with to entertain us - putting it into his mouth while still burning, and removing it a few minutes later still lit! Then we could see his eyes twinkle, and his lips curve, because he knew we were entertained.
Grandad encourgaged us to play pool in the small garden house on the pool table he and his cronies would gather around on many evenings. He would often give us tips in the afternoons and show us better techniques than the ones we had developed on our own. Some of us got pretty good.
One time when we went down to the pool house in the evening when several of Grandad's friends were visiting, he had me take the cuestick and sink a few. I don't remember his exact words, but the inference was that "even a girl" could beat you guys. Luckily I did a credible job and could tell he was tickled when I'd sink the ball without scratching.
Grandparents always sent Christmas presents, even when we were far away in Tulsa - usually some small toy. The big step in my life came when I was eleven or twelve and received my first pair of nylons from Grandad at Christmas. That's what he always sent to the ladies of the family. I had arrived !
Often the large family get togethers, in Montana, meant many of us gathered around the large table - and gallons of ice tea. The table was presided over by Grandad while Gramma ran back and forth a lot. Many of the conversations raised an octave or two to be heard over the clatter of spoons and ice in the glasses - all Hugheses have sugar in their glasses, I guess. Grandad (or Lewis) would also delight in catching any of us "dudes" with our thumb up when passing the butter - we always ended up with a slippery thumb.
-------Icycles on the Fourth of July.
-------Firecrackers in cans make them shoot high in the air.
-------Musty smelling bunkhouse with a chest full of Zane Grey novels.
-------Learning to shoot at rockchucks.
-------The smell of wet canvas tents.
-------Cousins - some were even tolerable.
-------Gunpowder smell when Tommy's loading shells.
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Excerpts from:
" POOL", by: Larry Hughes
"Lewis stated that Walter Vincent told him that Tom Vincent had a pool table for the nephews of the T. V. Ranch, and that T. S. was champion."
This must have been the same table that Uncle Tom moved down to his Lower Meadow Creek home after selling the ranch and retiring. He had one complete building at his retirement home which , except for a small storage area, was devoted to the game of pool. Everybody knew where you where when you went to the "Pool Hall".
"About 1945 we got all gussied up because we were going to Uncle Tom's and Aunt Lora's for dinner. The women were cooking and the men were out in the building known all over the community as the pool hall. When Dad and I walked in, Tom Vincent was shooting pool. (He must have been 84 or 85 but he still milked his own cow.) He was wearing a green shaded card player's cap, and garters above his elbows to keep his sleeves off his shooting hands. He would make a shot and stalk around the table like the cue ball was where it was supposed to be. There were men in Stetson hats watching and awaiting their turn."
Uncle Tom used a small part of the pool hall for storage for grain (chicken feed, oats.,etc.) but it was mostly devoted to shooting pool. It was the favorite gathering place for the lower -valley males, many of whom spent all day Sunday there. As Larry relates, in his narrative "P00L" ,T. S. was a good pool player, but I remember another man named Griener, (a stone deaf neighbor of Uncle Tom's) who was Dad's equal, maybe a little better. Their rivalry was deadly serious. Absolute quiet reigned when either of them got up to the table, and the only thing that dared to stir was the dense cloud of Prince Albert smoke hovering near the ceiling. When Dad came home silent, you knew that "Deefy" had been the winner that day.
Larry's narrative continues.
"After Grandpa retired, he and his cousin, Walter Vincent, got real busy in the old Fish Hatchery building. Eventually they were ready. I must have wandered by about then and accidentally became the first to admire their handiwork. They were pleased as a couple of penquins with a new egg in the Antarctia. The south end was partitioned off and a pool table was sitting there. They also built a room for Walter to sleep in. There was a wood stove to heat the pool room and Walter's room. They had borrowed Edwin's truck and brought the pool table over from Pony. It was a neat table, with leather mesh pockets and wooden carved lion legs. Grandpa decided I was tall enough to play and gave me a cue stick.
After some left handed and right handed instruction, I could hit center on the cue ball. Much more instruction came with the "100 or Bust" game they played. Any other game was for "children and dudes".
Grandpa was a shark. Sometimes he would clean the table and would have to spot all l5 balls before he could continue...............he was the master of the soft shot and good position for the cue ball.................the pool hall was busy whenever Grandpa could get anybody to play. Lewis, John, Dave, Tom, Lee, Ed, and many others all played. Grandpa partnered with Walter and they would take on all comers - winners held the table. Grandpa was very competitive and would get quite harsh with Walter if the game was tight and Walter missed an easy shot. Walter never seemed to mind, he was used to his volatile cousin after all these years.
For several years Grandpa's pool hall rafters rocked from numerous pool games, but like everything else, began to fade away. Dave and Lee graduated and left the valley. Edwin sold his ranch and moved to Bozeman. Uncle Tom's original pool house, the yellow T. V. Ranch building, was sold to Lloyd and Sarah Smith; Mom and Dad moved to an apartment in the Chuckwagon - Grandpa was hard pressed for pool players......................once in a while I would manage to get down for a game with him and Walter. Tired of thrashing us, he would offer to play against both of us and still win handily. Eventually he would leave in disgust and let Walter and I while away some hours at a less strenous rate."
Click on Martha Hughes Rich "Memories of a Plain Little Girl for
a handwritten article about the family by Martha (Mattie) Hughes Rich To continue reading the stories of the 9th generation.
Click on Lora Hughes Lade Click the link to our pioneer background:.300 YEARS IN AMERICA
This picture, to me, portrays the lurking sense of humor and the "did you believe that" expression following one of his outrageous tales.
