The perfect Christmas gift – History in the making

Are you looking for the perfect Christmas gift? For an adult sibling? A grandchild? A good friend? Someone who loves Montana history? Someone who has connections to the "Out North" Country?

Look no further than "In the (Even More) Days Gone By!" This is a recently published book updated from a book written in 1964 about the homesteaders in the Simpson and Cottonwood areas north of Havre. It includes the first book "In the Years Gone By" with added stories and information about the second and third generations. It also includes documentation on the schools, churches and cemeteries as well as information about homesteading and the infamous Long George Francis.

Below are some excerpts from the book that I shared with the Annual Meeting of the H. Earl Clack Museum and Foundation on Oct. 15.

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I stand before you today, the proud granddaughter of Simpson homesteaders Sidney and Agnes Whaley. I can only briefly remember my grandmother Agnes. She suffered from a family history of diabetes that still plagues our family today. Not much was known of this disease at the time and she suffered greatly, eventually having her leg amputated. I can remember my mother leaving me in Grandma's nursing home room while she went to talk to the nurse and hearing my grandmother moan and cry out in pain. I wish I could go over and hold her hand.

My memories of my grandpa Sid are clearer. My mind goes back to the 4th of July, probably 1958 or 1959. My dad was in the midst of a three-year stay in the Great Falls hospital eventually resulting in his leg being amputated. My mom, my sister, my brother and I faced the holiday with the prospect of doing nothing. We were sad, to say the least. Then we saw the dust of a car coming down the road. To our surprise, Grandpa Sid arrived. But not without surprises: A & W Root Beer andvvanilla ice cream, enough to make floats "till the cows came home!" And at dusk he drove us to Fresno Reservoir and we watched an awesome display of fireworks. Truth be known: Grandpa was just as lonely as we were. Grandma was in the nursing home. But Grandpa made the choice to do something for someone else and in doing so ... made a memory I will never, ever forget.

My grandparents came from Clio, Michigan, and homesteaded near Grandpa's brother Ed and sister Winifred. In research there were also connections to the Pailthorps, Evans and others who came from nearby Mt. Morris, Michigan. There is a picture of their shack in the book. My dad is sitting in a highchair that I still have.

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Recently I re-read "In the Years Gone By." I made notes of things they mentioned in common the most. One of those was the size of their shacks.

They were required to build "a dwelling." They hauled the wood and supplies from town with a team of horses and a wagon. Most often they "threw up" the shacks by the themselves or with the help of a relative or neighbor. It didn't take long. Until the shack was built, they slept outside on the ground or on the floor of a nearby neighbor that had his shack constructed. Most of the shacks were 10-by-14 feet or 12-by-14 feet. The smallest was for Nellie Pailthorp that her father built her in anticipation of her leaving her teaching position back east and joining the family on her own homestead. Nellie's was 6-by-9 feet! She was barely old enough to file for a homestead but she (and undoubtedly her father) didn't want her to miss out on "free" land. The largest I saw was Bill Moyer's 24-by-30 feet ... a mansion!

Tina Stallcop Jones says, "My father (Dave Stallcop) built my sister and us a shack. We made a table, a bench, and a few shelves for dishes. We put hinges on bed springs to fold up against the wall, put a wide shelf over it for bedding, a curtain was put around it to hide the bed through the day. We bought a four-hole laundry stove with an oven in the pipe. I even baked bread for the bachelors. We chopped down sage brush and picked "fuel" up (cow or buffalo chips) on the prairie to burn in the stove." Tina added, "There was very little money so when catalogs came, they were soon put in 'the little old shack in the back.' One Christmas all we had extra was a box of apples. I took a large Canadian thistle and put it on the table and made paper chains out of newspaper to decorate it."

There was already a one room homestead shack on Anthony Malsam's homestead. The one room was a little unhandy when someone came, as they had to go to the chicken coop to change clothes. So, using mud blocks they built onto the shack. The floors were of wood except where the stove sat, there was a mud floor. There was only one window pane in the shack, the rest were covered with cardboard. Tony went to town after three months, with money saved from selling chickens and cream, to get more window panes. When he got home the horses were so thirsty, they went right to the reservoir to get water, and as they lunged in to get water, the window panes fell out and all but one broke. As a result, there were only two windows in the shack, one on each side.

Frank Loskot went to Gildford to get the lumber for their house. The lumber cost $85.00. With this he built a two-room house, 12-by-20 feet. His wife Mary and year and a half old daughter Lydia stayed with Mrs. Gregorovich until the house was built. Their household goods consisted of a bed, bedding, a cot, a couple of chairs, a table and a laundry stove with an oven in the stovepipe. Mary used the laundry stove for eleven years.

The shacks were most often covered with tar paper on the outside. The insides were covered with paper from magazines and catalogs. Pearl Bradbury remembers, "Mother hoarded Saturday Evening Posts that someone had given her to paper our rough walls. Paste was made from flour and water and this made the room much cleaner and lighter. Mother and I used to play a game on the walls. I'd tell mother a word or something I saw, then she would try and find it and vice versa."

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Which brings us to another subject ... heat and temperature .... Cold, freezing cold!

Sig Arntzen talked of how he went to get some coal one fall, there was 4 inches of snow on the ground and it was -59 degrees.

Frank Flechsig's house was built on stilts and when they mopped the floor, they had a skating rink.

Juletta Keller tells about a dance held at the Cottonwood Hall. The night of the dance it was 30 below zero. Sis Brower from across the line came on horseback to attend. But when she came in to warm up, her feet began to swell until she had to take her shoes off. Her feet were frozen and she never realized it until she started to get warm. She had to remain there for 10 days before she could return home.

One time Jay Buzzell and Henry Johnson left for town at midnight and came back the next day. It was really cold and Henry walked behind his outfit, but Jay didn't so he had frozen feet. One toe had to be amputated so Henry operated on it, and it turned out all right.

On New Year's Day in 1913, Alfred Sather and his neighbor Albert Boetger walked home from a New Year's celebration at Cottonwood. It was a real cold stormy day. The reached Alfred's shack first, and to warm up the place they started a fire in the stove, but it stayed too cold.

Albert said, "Let's go over to my place it is a lot warmer than yours." So, they walked a mile and a half east to his shack. He had a real nice soft mattress on his bed, with several warm fur robes. After starting a fire in the stove, they went to bed and were nice and warm. But the next morning they looked up to the ceiling and the thermometer hanging up there, and they were shocked to see it 35 below zero. They got up and started a fire to warm the place up, but the highest they got the thermometer to read all day was 10 below zero. They spent most of the day sitting by the stove, with their feet in the oven. They laid a board across the top of the stove, played cards on that until the board was smoking and it got so hot.

Blanche Springer remembered "One Christmas we drove to Cottonwood to a program, it was so cold in the hall they had to move the tree and everything over to the church, as they couldn't get the hall warm."

Marie Vander Ven wrote that one winter Oscar Thompson spent the winter living in a tent near the Red Rock Coal Mine. It was so cold they slept with their coats and even their overshoes on to keep warm.

To be continued next month, Dec. 4, Senior Living "Wisdom and Grace".

"We will not hide them from their children; we will tell the next generation the praise worthy deeds of the Lord, His power and the wonders of He has done" Psalm 78:4.

"In the (Even More) Years Gone By" may be purchased at the H. Earl Clack Museum, #2 Fifth Avenue, Havre, Montana 59501 for $60. For an additional $10, they can be mailed. Call 406-265-4000 for more information. I will also be selling them at the Northern Montana Health Care Craft Fair Nov. 17-18, 2023.

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Ila McClenahan is a retired chaplain and activity director living in the Amos area north of Havre. She keeps busy writing, directing Christian Camps for children, volunteering and speaking at various events. She and her husband Rod have four daughters and oodles of grandchildren.