The Fred J. Jenni and Grace Bell Kynett Family of Central Montana: 1929: Ben Kline remembers Lewistown's origins

Thursday, August 26, 2021

1929: Ben Kline remembers Lewistown's origins

You’ll recall that Ben Kline’s name came up previously in connection with that of Francis Janeaux, the alleged founder of Lewistown, though, as we see here, Kline disputed that attribution, claiming, instead, that a man named Conley founded the city. (There are two Conley brothers who were involved in law enforcement in Central Montana, starting in the 1870s. Could he be one of them?)

Fergus County Argus, October 03, 1929

A man by the name of Conley was the real founder of Lewistown, according to Mr. Kline and he began to build the town about five or six years after the first homestead was taken up. This man Conley wanted to give Ben Kline a lot, which would now be on Main street, but Mr. Kline did not think it worth having.

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In the beginning: Fred Sr & John (c. 1881)

From Heritage Book of the Original Fergus County Area (pp. 451-3):

¶ The Samuel Jenni family emigrated to American [sic] in 1869 from the small town of Waldeck, Switzerland, where they had operated an inn near the capitol city of Berne. The family consisted of Samuel and his wife, Anna Segesseman Jenni, and their children, Eliza, Red [Fred?], Anna, Gottlieb, and John. Eliza later became Mrs. Fred Hornkohl, and Anna married Frank Kalin. Young John was seven years old when the[y] settled on a farm in Amazonia, Missouri. His education had begun a year earlier under a tutor since there were no public schools in Switzerland at that time.

Leadville, CO pack train, 1880s

¶ In 1881, [23 year old] Fred and the nineteen year old John left Amazonia and stayed in Leedville, Colorado for a time before coming to the territory of Montana where John worked for awhile at a livery stable in Helena and then for a Prickly Pear Valley rancher until the winter of 1882 when he joined his brother on Fred’s homestead on Beaver Creek; eventually filing for one of his own just below Fred’s. A year later Gottlieb began homesteading on the land adjoining John’s and the winter of 1983-4 were busy ones as the three brothers built cabins and settled in.

Deer Lodge, MT, Masonic Lodge

¶ The Journey from Missouri to Montana had been made aboard an immigrant train departing from Omaha, Nebraska. The travelers furnished their own food, which they cooked on huge ranges, which took up much of the space in the cars. The seats made into beds at night and the train was a comfortable place from [which] to view the spectacular scenery which became increasingly more awe-inspiring as they approached the Rocky Mountains. It took four days to make the trip from Omaha to Ogden, Utah, and many lasting friendships were formed as the pioneers traveled west in congenial kinship. At Ogden, passengers bound further west were transferred to the narrow guage [sic] Utah Railroad, which was later converted to the Oregon Short Line. This train labored up through the mountains, which in winter were bitterly cold. The passengers finally arrived at Deer Lodge, Montana and the end of the line. From there, those going north took a stage to Helena, about forty miles.

Maiden, MT

¶ In 1884, Samuel Jenni died of yellow fever at New Orleans, Louisiana and his widow journeyed to Beaver Creek in September of that year with daughter, Anna; their railroad tickets, from Amazonia, Missouri to Billings, Montana, cost $46.35 apiece. Until her death of pneumonia in 1885, Mother Jenni made her home with Fred.

Gilt Edge, MT

¶ Lewiston at this time was a fur trading post only; mail and supplies were picked up at Cottonwood Town, the stage stop. John worked for Phillip Laux, making brick and then helped build the store in Cottonwood Town. He and brother Fred, who was an expert teamster, worked together on the bridge across the creek at Cottonwood; Fred handling the horses and John working with broadax, hewing trees into logs and lumber. He also helped build the church on upper Beaver Creek at the foot of the Snowy Mountains, gaining valuable experience in carpentry.

Maiden, MT 1886

¶ A man with a plow, horses and a few hand tools could till his land and raise grain crops which were hauled many miles to Billings, Fort Benton or to the roaring gold mining towns of Maiden and Gilt Edge or to the Spotted Horse Mine. Supplies were brought back so the wagons were loaded both ways. During the winter months, poles were hauled out of the mountains for building cabins, barns and fences. John could recall weather so cold that the trees would snap and literally explode when touched with an axe. Montana winters were truly a test of a man’s endurance and strength. Temperatures of 65 to 70 degrees below zero were not unknown. On one sled trip to the mountains for poles, John became hopelessly lost in a raging blizzard. Realizing that it would be foolhardy to continue in the loaded sled, he unhitched the team, hung grimly onto a tail and let the horses have their heads. After what seemed an eternity of struggling, half frozen, through hip high drifts, they stopped in a settler’s yard where the weary horses were fed and rested and John fell asleep over a bowl of hot stew as he tried to be polite and stay awake to listen as his host ramble on, eager to visit with the first company he’d had in weeks.

Leadville CO

¶ Freighting was a rugged life; John had many experiences which tried him sorely. Getting hung up on a stump was a common occurrence; frequently a load would be dumped over. One time a team and full load bogged down at a crossing and one horse got into quicksand; John hastily tied the poor beast’s head to a nearby tree, succeeded in loosening the rest of the horses and with them pulled the … foundering animal out. On another occasion he was saved from being robbed of team and provisions when a rider came along just as he was accosted by a couple of unsavory characters. The area had its share of outlaws and misfits such as “Rattlesnake Pete,” who enjoyed terrorizing the citizens, but for the most part the pioneers were hard working and honest men…. [Author unidentified]

FRED JENNI SR. WAS A SMALL, BUT MIGHTY MAN

From the Heritage Book of the Original Fergus County Area, pp. 457-9

FRED JENNI SR. WAS A SMALL, BUT MIGHTY MAN
Condensed from an article published in the Lewistown News-Argus

¶ “Mama’s dead.”
¶ With those words, little Lena Jenni, 4½ met her older sisters and brother when they returned from school, Oct. 23, 1906.
¶ When Papa—Fred Jenni—received the sad news earlier in the day, he went tearing off with the horse and buggy to the old Catholic Hospital south of Main Street in Lewistown, Montana. He refused to believe. But Emma Flueckeger Jenni had died during minor surgery at the age of 33.
¶ Her death marked a turning point in Fred’s life. At an age when a man normally puts aside the reins of parental guidance, Fred, at 50, was suddenly saddled with the dual role of father and mother to eight children, ages 2½ months to 14 years.

¶ A Swiss immigrant, Fred was a hard-working farmer. He was a small man, not much over five feet tall, with a great deal of inner strength and courage, which helped him through those trying months and years after his young wife died.
¶ He came to America from Waldeck, Switzerland in 1869 at the age of 13, with his parents, Samuel and Anna Segesseman Jenni; two sisters, Eliza and Anna; and two brothers, Gottlieb and John. They settled on a farm at Amazonia, Mo. Fred went to school there for a year.
¶ In 1881 or 82, he and John left for Helena, stopping in Leadville, Colo., to work for awhile in the mines. Fred worked on a farm at Helena, [Montana], then came to Central Montana and homesteaded on Beaver Creek, eight miles west of Lewistown. John came later and filed on the adjoining 160 acres.
¶ Fred filed a claim for water rights on Beaver Creek and the two brothers built an irrigation ditch, which they shared over the years. When Fred was installing the headgate, a stranger, who happened to be [the artist] Charlie Russell, commented “You poor bugger!”
¶ Fred built a corral for his frisky horses first, then he and John built a one-room log cabin with a dirt floor. When their mother came out in 1884, the brothers built a big, two-room log house.
¶ Two years later their mother died of pneumonia. The brothers built a casket and neighbors joined them for the funeral service, held without a minister, in the Jenni home.’
Emma Flueckeger was also an immigrant from Switzerland. She was born Jan. 18, 1872, in Hutwyl, the daughter of Fred and Maria Flueckeger. The family, which included four other children; Fritz, Alfred, Frieda (the late Mrs. Fred Huppi of Lewistown), and John, came to America in 1883 and settled in Amazonia, Mo.
¶ Another child, Carl, was born there and adopted by a neighbor when his mother died less than a year later. When Carl was studying for the ministry in 1913, he spent the summer in Central Montana and helped start a young people’s group in Glengarry, where a church was then being built.
Emma Flueckeger came to Montana in 1891 and Fred met her when she arrived in Cottonwood. Fred, who was already growing bald at the age of 35, and Emma, just 19, were married there July 2, 1891.

¶ Charlie Russell was among the wedding guests and danced with the pretty, dark-haired, dark-eyed young bride who spoke only the German-Swiss language.
¶ Emma and Fred had eight children—Anna, Louise, Marie, Fred, Hulda, Clara, Lena, and Sam—during their 15 years together.
¶ They raised a big garden and stored potatoes in one cave, vegetables in another. They raised currants, gooseberries, strawberries and rhubarb. Milk was kept in large, shallow pans in a cupboard with screened doors. The cream was skimmed from it as it rose to the top and Emma and the girls made butter.
¶ Emma also made cheese, using a wash boiler of milk. The curd was put into tin frames and weighed down. Every few days it was washed and salted. With a one horse cart pulled by a buckskin named Buck, Emma took cheese, butter and eggs to Lewistown and sold them.

¶ She cooked on a Home Comfort stove, with a warming oven and copper reservoir that held several pails of water. In the winter, Fred would make several all-day trips to the mountains to get firewood.
¶ Kerosene was not always available, since it had to be freighted into town, and it was used sparingly. Fred and Emma had two lamps in the kitchen—one above the stove and another on the table. The members of the family all sat around the table to read. Fred, interested in the news of the outside world, read a great deal, often until after midnight.
¶ Homemade candles were used in all the other rooms.
¶ Fred was one of the more progressive farmers in the area. He was one of the first to have a horse-drawn mower, a great improvement over the hand scythe, and he did custom mowing for the neighbors.
¶ He also had one of the first horse-powered hay balers and did custom bailing.
¶ Fred sold hay to the livery stable, where Penney’s store now stands in Lewistown. He also did some freighting, from Helena to Billings, Fort Benton, Gilt Edge, Kendall and Maiden.

¶ The freighters hauled oats and other grain, wool and pork to Billings. They brought back barbed wire, machinery, nails, dried fruit and canned goods to the stores and 50 gallon barrels of whiskey for the many bars.
¶ The coming of the railroad in 1904 put an end to the freighting business.
¶ The tracks for the new Jaw Bone Railroad were laid from Harlowtown to Glengarry during the summer of 1902. It was a big occasion for the Jenni family when the first engine came chugging into Glengarry one Sunday.
¶ Fred, Emma, the seven girls in their pretty white dresses, and young Fred (known as Fritz) drove to Glengarry in their three-seated buggy with the fringed top and matched team of spirited horses. As the engine rolled down the tracks, it got bigger and bigger in the eyes of the young Jenni girls.
¶ About 1900, the older girls started attending the McMillan School about three miles from their home. As they walked along the roadway they could see the bench between Cottonwood and Beaver Creeks and the stage coach coming into the relay station at the east end of the Beaver Creek Valley. Fresh horses were hitched up to the coach, and soon it would pass them on the road, horses at a trot, going west to Moore and other points.
¶ Fred and John Jenni, Julius Peterson, and Mike Brass built a school, later known as the Jenni School, in 1902. It was about 1½ miles from Fred’s place and he served on the school board for many years.
¶ When smallpox vaccine became available, he took all the students to Lewistown for vaccination. It was 40 degrees below zero, so he lined the bobsled with blankets and covered the children well.
¶ Emma’s health began to fail in 1898. In the spring of 1906 she was expecting her eighth child, and her sister, Frieda, came to help her. Emma died in October of that year.

Aunt Frieda—as a teenager

¶ Fred and Frieda took the children to see the body at the undertaker’s parlor and later to the funeral, held in the old Presbyterian Church, across Fifth Avenue and closer to Main Street than the present church.
¶ The undertaker’s parlor was a large room, part of it used for storage, located at 6th Ave. and Main Street. Nearly 70 years later, Hulda, then 8, could recall the floor of foot-wide boards with cracks between them. It was scrubbed clean. The casket rested on two chairs, with a runner carpet in front of it and curtains beyond. Members of the family sat on either side of the casket and one by one the children were taken up to it for a last look at their mother.

¶ When Aunt Frieda left in November, Fred and the older girls were left with the task of rearing the younger children. Anna, about 24, and Louise, 13, assisted by Marie, 11, took over the housekeeping duties. Fritz was nearly 10. Hulda was 8, Clara 6, Lena nearly 5 and Sam was about 3 months old.
¶ A neighbor, Mrs. Michael Trepp, took Sam and reared him, and he later took the name of Trepp.
¶ Anna had started to cut patterns of doll dresses when she was a very little girl. She began to make dresses for herself and her sisters when she was about nine and continued to do until her marriage.
¶ Louise had taken over most of the cooking before her mother died. She and her sisters did the baking, laundry, ironing and made butter, bread and cheese. They mixed bread and set it to raise before school. Papa came in to punch it down and shape the loaves, and the girls baked it after school.
¶ Anna helped her father with the outside chores. Fritz did the milking and went out in the fields to plow. The children helped Papa butcher the hogs and cure the pork. When he butchered a beef, they canned it.

¶ After his wife’s death, Fred bought an organ. He could play by ear, but he taught himself to play by note. “Nearer My God To Thee” was his favorite song. Anna learned to play from a beginner’s book and practiced by the hour.
¶ Fred’s niece, Clara Mercer, and her four children, came to spend the summer of 1907 with the John Jenni family. She started a Sunday School for the two families. They met at one home or the other and then had Sunday dinner together.
¶ Later, Sunday School was held in the Jenni School and then in a room over a store in Glengarry.
¶ As time passed, the Jenni children married and moved into their own homes, but the family ties remained strong.
¶ Fred continued to operate the home ranch and, for a time, Marie, her husband, Ernest Reuss, and their three children lived there and helped with the ranching.
¶ Fred was hard of hearing for many years making communication difficult. He died in July 1944, at the age of 88….

Local Newspapers

From Library of Congress

The Mineral Argus[/Fergus County Argus]
¶ On August 9, 1883, John Morton Vrooman and Charles S. Fell launched the Mineral Argus in the bustling gold camp of Maiden, Montana, where it remained until August 1886 when they moved their presses to nearby Lewistown, the new seat of Fergus County, and changed its name to the Fergus County Argus. Fell sold his interest in the newspaper to Vrooman in 1889 when he moved to Bozeman. Vrooman had first learned the printing trade at age fourteen at a paper in Preston, Minnesota. He then worked in newspaper offices around the Midwest from Chicago to Minneapolis for nineteen years before meeting Fell in St. Louis, where together they hatched a plan to create a newspaper in Maiden. Vrooman remained an agricultural booster and active Republican throughout his lengthy publishing career. In 1912, he sold his interest in the Fergus County Argus to Arthur T. Packard and established the Grass Range Review thirty miles east of Lewistown.
¶ The publishers printed the five-column, eight-page Mineral Argus on a Washington hand press. When the weekly moved to Lewistown, Vrooman and Fell upgraded the physical plant and in 1899 the Fergus County Argus became the first institution in the county to use electricity. With the move to Lewistown, the publishers adopted the following motto, to which they remained true: “Devoted to the Mineral, Agricultural, Stock and Wool Interests of the Great Judith Country.” The size of the paper grew, as did its subscriber base, from five columns to seven, and from 12 x 19.5 inches to 19.5 x 25.5 inches. The newspaper contained several pages of national and international news--documenting a banking crisis in Massachusetts to land prices in Niagara Falls to earthquakes in Spain--followed by coverage of significant state, county, and local news. A regular feature depicted local cattle brands, speaking to a readership dominated by cattlemen from some of Montana’s most significant ranches like the DHS, the Circle C, and the Judith Cattle Company. The newspaper faithfully documented the closing of the “open range” after the severe winter of 1886-87 when over 60 percent of Montana’s cattle herds succumbed to deep snow and subzero temperatures.
¶ In 1915, John A. Gilluly, a publisher of newspapers in Columbus, Glendive, and Forsyth, Montana, purchased the Fergus County Argus. In 1922, Gilluly sold the Argus, which went on to compete with the Lewistown Democrat News and its successor the Lewiston Daily News . On September 19, 1946, the Fergus County Argus combined with the Judith Basin Farmer to form the Argus-Farmer.
¶ Provided by: Montana Historical Society; Helena, MT

Fergus County Democrat
¶ In 1904, Tom Stout and Harry J. Kelly established one of the state's most progressive weeklies, the Fergus County Democrat, in Lewistown, Montana. Stout's political activism found an avenue for expression in his 1910 election to the state legislature and his 1912 election to the U.S. Congress. The six-column, eight-page weekly covered both state and national politics thoroughly. The Democrat, provided regular news features about unions and labor in Montana. For example, one of the early editions published the following story: "Governor Toole on Labor-A Brilliant & Able Plea for the Cause of Labor." The newspaper paid close attention to the presidential bid of Populist William Jennings Bryan. The editors did not miss an opportunity to berate the competition, the Fergus County Argus.
¶ Before coming to Montana in 1889 to work on the Missoulian, Kelly had worked for newspapers in Omaha; Leadville, Colorado; and Seattle. While in Montana, he also worked on the Butte Miner and the first edition of the Anaconda Standard. After leaving the Fergus County Democrat in 1913, Kelly was appointed the registrar of the U.S. Land Office.
¶ Provided by: Montana Historical Society; Helena, MT

Montana News[/Judith Basin News] (Lewistown, Mont.)
¶ The Socialist newspaper, the Montana News, has its roots in Lewistown, Montana, as the Judith Basin News published by J. H. Walsh, from April to June 1904. On July 6, 1904 Walsh resumed publication of the newspaper in Helena under a new name, the Montana News. The origins of the American Socialist movement are linked to the first national convention of the Social Democratic Party in Indianapolis in the summer of 1901. The Socialist upwelling in Montana can be tied to deadly working conditions in the state’s forests, smelters, and industrial copper mines. The Judith Basin News constituted the first Socialist newspaper in Montana, and its influence was reflected in the mushrooming of the party’s membership from 25 in 1901 to 400 in 1904. The Montana News, a four-page, six-column weekly continued operating until January 4, 1912, following the decline of Socialist electoral fortunes in Montana.
¶ After moving the Montana News from Lewistown to Helena, the owner and editor Walsh located the newspaper at 22 Park Avenue, the Socialist Party headquarters. Beginning in 1905, James D. Graham, state secretary of the Socialist Party and Montana’s first Socialist candidate for alderman, assumed the role of business manager. Graham, a Scot immigrant and machinist by trade, managed the newspaper during most of its life. In December of 1905 a prominent Colorado suffragist and friend of the labor movement, Ida Crouch-Hazlett, assumed the position of editor. Crouch-Hazlett had played a key role in women winning the vote in Colorado and ran for the U.S. Congress several times as a Socialist. Over the years, the Montana News covered the activities of the U.S. Socialist Party and its the state and local organizations and editorialized about the difficulties women faced in the workplace and community. The paper published front-page cartoons satirizing its political opponents and “capitalistic interests.” Crouch-Hazlett applauded the Socialists for accepting women into their fold without hesitation and affirmed party efforts to promote universal suffrage.
¶ Beginning in 1908, a major schism appeared between the officers of the Montana Socialist Party and the management of the Montana News. Lewis Duncan--a Unitarian minister, party leader, and Socialist mayor of Butte (1911-14)--accused Crouch-Hazlett and Graham of misappropriating funds. In 1910, the Montana Socialist Party brought suit against the two newspaper managers, and that same year Duncan accused Crouch-Hazlett of “living openly in an adulterous and licentious relationship with a former member of the Lewistown local.” Conflict within the ranks of the Socialist Party both in Montana and nationally contributed to its decline by the early 1920s. Despite its relatively short run, the Montana News provides insight into the rise and fall of a third party in Montana and offers a unique perspective on U.S. politics during the turbulent era framed by rapid industrialization, labor unrest, and the beginning of World War I.
¶ Provided by: Montana Historical Society; Helena, MT

The Fred J. Jenni and Grace Bell Kynett Family of Central Montana

Thursday, August 26, 2021

1929: Ben Kline remembers Lewistown's origins

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