Boom and Bust: What Happened to Montana's Population in the Early 20th Century

By Jeff Malcomson
Government Records Archivist

At the 39th Annual Montana History Conference, held here in Helena last weekend, several members of the MHS staff participated in sessions on the conference topic of homesteading.  In my presentation on the Homestead Boom and its impact on politics and government in MT, I included a couple Powerpoint slides detailing the remarkable population explosion Montana experienced from 1900-1920, and how it came to an end in drought and depression.  I want to share two of these slides in order to reveal their meaning for Montana at this crucial time in its development.

This map shows population growth in Montana by regions from 1900-1920.  The eastern counties grew at the highest rate for the period by far, though the central counties added more total residents.  The western counties displayed a large influx of people in the first decade of the new century, largely due to the opening of the Flathead Reservation to settlement following the allottment program.  However, the western and southwestern sections grew much more slowly than the rest of the state during the period.  By 1920 the central and eastern regions of the state held the majority of Montanans for the first time.  This distinction would hold until the census of 2000 when newcomers to areas like Missoula, Kalispell, and Bozeman would finally surpass eastern and central Montana.

Montana's population grew rapidly each year throughout the 1910s as homesteaders and others flooded into eastern and central Montana.  The chart above displays estimates for Montana's population during this period of the most rapid growth in the state's history.  The state government provided estimates of the state population each year starting in 1915 in its main promotional literature.  They appear to be rough estimates of unknown origin; the state had no real way to gauge population growth at that time.  The figures in the black boxes represent U.S. Census numbers for 1910 and 1920.  I developed my estimates by compiling state school census figures for the period as found in the annual reports of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, which documented the population of people 21 years of age and under.  I applied the rates of growth of this population of Montanans and simply applied it to the entire population.  Despite some drawbacks and possible overstatement in my methods, I believe it to be the best estimate we can obtain for the period.  It is important to note when looking at the chart above that a serious drought began impacting Montana in 1917 and continued until 1921.  The school census figures and other problems lead me to conclude that there may be undercounting issues with the 1920 U.S. Census in Montana.

Charlie Russell: It’s in the Details

By Tom Ferris
Archival Photographer
The staff of the MHS Museum and Photograph Archives has been busy over the last few months photographing our complete Charles M. Russell collection in high resolution digital format. The work is being done for a coffee table book to be published by the Montana Historical Society Press, and for the museum’s image archive.
MHS Staff are digitally photographing every item in the Society's Charles M. Russell collection, including one of Russell's most famous works, "When the Land Belonged To God." 

One benefit of doing this work is that we get to spend a considerable amount of time with each painting, both while we are shooting, and after the fact — as we check detail images, and zoom in on very small areas of each piece. We’ve become bigger fans of Russell’s work and have become aware of how much attention he paid to details. In some of his watercolors, a fully realized facial expression can be rendered with just a few brush strokes, on a person’s head that is about the size of a pea. That requires a serious skill set.

There are many good western painters, but few who had/have Russell’s sense of color or nerve to use it. This detail from the painting shows how Russell used pink, purple, and orange as highlights to paint a branch that surrounds a grouse — a detail that often goes unnoticed.

Detail of grouse from "When the Land Belonged to God." 

In another detail, you will see splashes of turquoise, indigo, and fiery red used to depict a bison skull. A lesser painter would have settled for a palette consisting of grays, browns, and various shades of beige for the branches or the skull.

Detail of bison skull from "When the Land Belonged to God." 

Charlie Russell’s work is known and loved the world over and we believe that one of the reasons for that is the details.

Married by the Mob

By Caitlin Patterson
Data Technician, Montana Digital Newspaper Project

Montana’s newspapers often published brief announcements about town visitors, residents who were injured or taken ill, and guests at private gatherings. Most “personals” were one- or two-sentence snippets, but once in awhile an event was entertaining enough to qualify for more detailed treatment.

This was the case in a November 1865 issue of the Montana Post, recounting a recent event in Helena. A young man and a young woman—strangers—happened to arrive in town on the same day. By sundown, they were married. What is interesting is the role played by Helena’s townfolk.  






This item appeared in the Montana Post (Montana's first surviving
newspaper), published in Virginia City, on November 4, 1865,
page 3. We can identify with some certainty the International
Hotel (erected in 1865 at the corner of State and Main in Helena),
but we are unable to verify the H___ House mentioned in the story.
The hapless bride and groom remain anonymous.





The term b’hoy emerges from a 1948 play about the Irish in New York’s middle-class entertainment district, the Bowery. It came to mean any spirited street lad.

You can find this and many other tales from Montana’s newspapers in the Library of Congress web site Chronicling America, where over 30,000 pages of historical Montana newspapers are available for online searching and viewing.

A new series: Tales of True Crime in Montana

By Christine Kirkham
Coordinator, Montana Digital Newspaper Project
The Montana Digital Newspaper Project team examines dozens of historical Montana newspapers each week, enumerating the issues and pages. Project deadlines don’t allow time for reading, but occasionally a headline leaps off the page. For me, the crime beat offers the most compelling tales—always lurid, often tragic, and wholly fascinating.

Today's post, Rough on Rats, is the first in our True Crime series. I'm retelling it from reports published in the Anaconda Standard, Butte Intermountain, and Butte Daily Miner on April 26-27, 1894.



ROUGH ON RATS was a black paste sold in 15- and 25-cent boxes. According to Fenner’s
Complete Formulary (1888), it was comprised of arsenic, sugar, lard and “ivory black,” a pigment made
from charred bones. [Detail from “Rough on Rats” sheet music, found at Music for the Nation]

Tales of True Crime:
No. 1--Rough on Rats 
It was Thursday, a typical morning in Butte’s St. James Hotel, across from the train depot. Longtime boarder Bill Scallon strode downstairs for his usual early breakfast before heading off to work at the Montana Central RR. Also in the dining room that morning was the hotel proprietress, Mrs. Henry Jefferson, along with Bill Williams, employed by McQueeney’s transfer line, and C. F. Jones, a foreman with the Northern Pacific. Stopping in for a quick bite was Ernest Hardcastle, a Union Freight clerk who rented a bed up the street. Hardcastle was the first to finish, eating quickly, then rushing off.

It was still early, but hotelier Henry Jefferson was already harried. Sometime after 5:30 a.m., his cook, Andrew Leo, arrived and began to prepare breakfast for the hotel’s 30-odd guests. What happened next is disputed. According to the Standard, the cook argued with the dishwasher and after an extended shouting match, Leo quit and stormed out. The Intermountain states that the argument was between Henry and Leo, while the Daily Miner explains that Leo had behaved strangely for several days and “the supposition is that he is not right in the upper story.”

Despite the backroom melodrama, by 6:30 fresh coffee, oatmeal, and other dishes had been served, and Henry was off attending to hotel business. Within fifteen minutes, screams summoned him to the dining room, where he found his wife violently sick. Williams and Jones were incapacitated, crumpled in their chairs. Scallon lay unconscious on the floor. Despite excruciating pain, Mrs. Jefferson managed to convey her suspicion: they’d been poisoned!





ROUGH ON RATS ads claimed it also destroyed mice,
roaches, flies, beetles, moths, ants, skunks, weasels,
gophers, moles and muskrats. [Image courtesy
of Worthpoint]

Henry sprang into action, running uptown in search of help. He found a physician and together the two men sprinted back to the hotel. When they arrived, the diners’ condition had worsened, and Scallon was near death. Quick action saved four lives. The doctor injected Scallon with a stimulant to restart his heart, and he distributed an antidote. Within hours, the unlucky quartet was recovering. In the commotion, poor Ernie Hardcastle had been forgotten. Shortly after leaving the hotel, he’d become too ill to make his way to work. He was discovered later that day, alone in bed. After treatment, he, too, recovered.

Detectives started their investigation in the kitchen, where they immediately noticed the familiar red and white label of ROUGH ON RATS, a common household product. The open box rested in full view on a shelf near the stove, leading reporters to speculate that after his outburst, Leo silently re-entered the kitchen long enough to spoon some ROUGH ON RATS into the simmering oatmeal. He was never apprehended.

The Butte Intermountain, April 26, 1894, page 5

Hundreds of stories like "Poison in the Oatmeal" can be found on the Library of Congress web site Chronicling America, where over 30,000 pages of historical Montana newspapers are available for searching and viewing. Stay tuned for the next installment in this series.

And keep a close eye on your breakfast.

---

Take 50 pounds of butter, 660 eggs,...

This post comes to you from Senior Archivist Ellie Arguimbau.
Two years from now, in 2014, Montana will celebrate its Territorial Sesquicentennial. For the 100th anniversary of becoming a territory, in 1964, Montana did it up big. A Centennial Train traveled to Washington, D.C. Local events were held across the state. There were beard-growing contests. And Governor and Mrs. Tim Babcock hosted a grand Centennial Ball in Helena. As part of that celebration, Montanans baked an 8 foot by 16 foot birthday cake--big enough to feed 3000! Here is the recipe. (Do not attempt this at home.)

The recipe was found in a Centennial Ball scrapbook compiled by Jean Baucus (SC 2610).