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The goal of this blog is to help readers locate their lineage and discover the forces that motivated them, and learn how they lived their lives--told in their own words in the BEHIND THESE MOUNTAINS trilogy, from the 1860s to the early 1930s. The indexed names will be published here frequently, along with an excerpt and a historical photograph if available. ** Scroll Archives at right.

Order Behind These Mountains, Vols. I, II & III [.pdf editions on DVD] via email to mtscribbler [at] air-pipe [dot] com OR email: ooslegman [at] hotmail [dot] com

Thank you ~~ Mona Leeson Vanek ~aka~Montana Scribbler



Friday, November 16, 2018

Tiptoeing Into World War I

Vignette Vol. 1 No.11
Resource: BEHIND THESE MOUNTAINS 


Situated in the Clark's Fork River Valley and surrounded by mountain ranges Noxon, Montana is a spectacularly beautiful scene any time of the year and especially so when it appears serenely blanketed with fresh fallen snow, circa 1916-20, courtesy Harry and Sarah Tallmadge collection.


Excerpt - Noxon 1917. Picks swung vigorously in the frosty January air. Three men carved out a grave for John Schiller. He had the audacity to die when the ground was frozen as solid as the rocky Montana mountains sheltering the wee cemetery, hewed from shrub covered forestland a half-mile up Pilgrim Creek Road from Noxon. The old, gray haired, German had lived up along Bull River, the ribbon-like northwestern Montana valley two miles as the crow flies from the buildings huddled near the Noxon Depot on the Northern Pacific Railroad tracks. But twenty-miles by cold sleigh, and colder ferry ride across the Clark's Fork, up the riverbank, across the flats and railroad line. A stop at Maynard's Saloon. Warmed inside and out, the driver snapped reins on tired horses, and a growing crowd followed the sleigh to the cemetery.

Two feet of pure white snow muffled the laughter of the burly, young homesteaders, recounting John's most daring exploits. He was one of their own.

"Old Man" Green, with his wife and three little kids, "Dutch" Henry Scheffler, a butcher from Helena, Montana, who kept a passel of dogs, and Pete Hatch, a man referred to as "Old Man" Hatch, had been Schiller's neighbors for a time. Schiller, a frequenter of dances in Heron, had also brought beef to market there in earlier days. Until the forest service had "reserved" part of Marion Cotton's homesteader lands, and built a ranger's headquarters next to his place, in 1908.

The pick handlers recalled McJunkin had been the first one living and logging in the Bull River Valley, sixty some miles south of the Canadian border, before Schiller wandered in. Before the forest service existed. Before there was any road at all.

McJunkin had a sawmill. Doc Smith acquired the place when McJunkin pulled up stakes and left. Smith let Green and his wife have it. Greens burned out and moved to Heron. Marion Cotton and his partner, Tom Moran took up the place next. Then the forest service snatched it away from them eleven years ago. John had neighbored with them all.

Now a cold arctic storm had ushered in 1917. And they were burying "Old Man" Schiller in the Noxon cemetery.

Bull River Valley would never be the same.

But then, would anything be the same? With war raging across the ocean? The damned Kaiser was getting too big for his britches. Who could say. Who could predict what the future held, even in the security of these Montana mountains they'd called home for the past two decades.


 
 
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[Resource is also available free online @ Behind These Mountains, Volume II ]
In addition to eKindle editions PDF editions of  "Behind These Mountains, Vols. I, II & III" are available on a DVD - $50 S&H included. Plus author's permission to print or have printed buyers personal copy of each of the approximately 1200 page books which contain about 1,000 photographs from homesteaders personal albums.

Order here:

Mona Leeson Vanek
13505 E Broadway Ave., Apt. 243
Spokane Valley, WA 99216
 
 
TO HAVE AN EXCERPT PUBLISHED IN BYGONE MONTANANS ABOUT A PERSON WHO MAY BE MENTIONED IN THIS REGIONAL MONTANA TRILOGY Email mtscribbler@air-pipe.com
 
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