A Flathead family memoir

Grandpa and I were born 69 years apart; he on the frontier of “Bleeding Kansas” just before the Civil War, and I in the Rocky Mountains of Northwest Montana just before the Great Depression.

I grew to love him on his farm near Rollins. There he cleared the land and started one of the first orchards on the west shore of Flathead Lake. Grandpa preached in Methodist churches across Montana for 35 years and during the same period was fondly known as the “Raspberry Preacher” when he provided sweet cherries, raspberries, and strawberries for Kalispell markets.

Grandpa loved to tell me stories of his adventures and I was eager to listen. In his early twenties, he drove mule-drawn freight wagons between Denver and San Francisco and was headed for Alaska when he was shipwrecked on Vancouver Island. He told about waving goodbye when his brother marched off to join the Union Army, and of John Brown using a broadsword to slaughter pro-slavery settlers living along Pottawatomie Creek. Old John Brown washed the blood from his hands in that creek that bordered Grandpa’s childhood home outside Garnett, Kansas.

I once asked why John Brown committed those murders. Grandpa pulled a book from the shelf and showed me what Brown said about his actions: “It must be done for the protection of the Free-State settlers,” Brown said. “It is better that a score of bad men should die than that one man who came here to make Kansas a free state should be driven out.”

Grandpa was raised in this politically charged atmosphere amid religious fervor typical of wartime; a background that influenced his decision to become a preacher. He told me one of his first memories was learning the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” in Sunday school. John Brown’s body had been “a-mouldering in the grave” for nearly three years when Julia Ward Howe’s hymn was published on the front page of the Atlantic Monthly in 1862. Grandpa said his favorite was verse five. I remember him singing it reverently, but loudly and with gusto:

“In the beauty of the lilies

Christ was born across the sea

With a glory in His bosom

That transfigures you and me.

As he died to make men holy,

Let us die to make men free,

While God is marching on.”

Grandpa taught me the song at his farm on Flathead Lake’s west shore. He in his 70s and I only 7 shouldered our hoes as we marched to slay weeds in a potato patch on the upper end of his farm. Grandpa sang the verses, but I chimed in with the chorus, singing “Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!” at the top of my voice. According to my mother, our mixed voices were loud enough to carry down to the house half a mile away.

Grandpa left the farm in Kansas on his 21st birthday with an eighth-grade education and sought his fortune across the west. Eventually he graduated from Willamette University and the Kimball School of Theology, was ordained a minister and married. When the Methodists of Whitefish completed their church on Spokane Avenue in 1905, they hired Grandpa to be their first minister.

The town of Whitefish was barely three years old when Grandpa and his family arrived by train following reports that a forest fire had destroyed the town. They found that the fire stopped at the river after burning a few buildings and charring some still-smoldering wooden sidewalks.

Whitefish was a small town; around 500 residents according to the Whitefish Pilot but only 300 according to Kalispell’s rival Daily Inter Lake, and it was primitive. There was no sewer system; each residence had a “Chic Sales” (an outhouse) out back. Fresh water came from the river and lake. A municipal water system was being installed at the time but it was a lengthy and difficult project. Picks and shovels were used to bury pipes five feet deep to withstand freezing Montana winter temperatures.

In 1905, Whitefish had two lumber mills, three grocery stores, and one each dry goods store, drug store, candy store, hardware store, bakery, and laundry. To the consternation of my Grandma, it also had thirteen saloons with “dance hall ladies.”

Shortly after Grandpa arrived, a dam was built on the river about three miles downstream from the lake. This raised the river level enough to permit motorboats to come into the residential area. It also provided a swimming hole in the summer and a skating pond in winter. A parsonage had not yet been built for the Methodist minister and his family, but the Hutchinson Lumber Co. owners, one of who would become my maternal grandfather, were active in the church and offered Grandpa one of their “company houses,” intended to house sawmill employees. The house was located at 240 Somers Ave. in what was then the disreputable part of town. Grandpa soon found a more suitable house for rent.

The family always had at least one horse, one cow, and a flock of chickens. Chores kept the boys busy. In the summer of 1906, Grandpa had a parsonage built closer to the church and to downtown. Dad and my uncles told stories of sledding on the road and of skating to and from school. E. M. Hutchinson, my grandfather, was the first principle of Riverside School. Grandma White saw to it that her boys enjoyed reading. She read to them daily until they learned to read for themselves. Each boy had a subscription to his own weekly periodical. Uncle Bruce’s magazine was the “Youth Companion.” Dad’s was “St. Nicholas.”

Grandpa loved the outdoors and often took his family on camping trips. In Uncle Bruce’s memoirs, he wrote of trips to the primitive area that would later become Glacier National Park. He recalls setting up tents and sleeping on sand bars in the Middle Fork of the Flathead River, of catching cut-throat trout, gathering huckleberries, and of a Forest Ranger telling them where to find a hidden rowboat on the shores of Lake McDonald. Much of the area was still unexplored by white men when the family was camping there.

In 1908 Grandpa was appointed district superintendent of the North Montana Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, a district that included all the towns along the Great Northern railroad from North Dakota to Idaho. He visited each community at least four times each year for quarterly conferences and became well known along the “Hi-line.”

Grandpa’s new appointment meant another move for the family, this time to Kalispell, where Grandpa bought a house and a vacant next-door lot. It was a comfortable house, and large enough for the growing boys now 12, 11, 9, and 4 years old. Grandpa built a barn at the rear of the vacant lot to house a horse and milk cow and provide shelter for a chicken flock. Not all houses were hooked up to Kalispell’s new sewer system; “Chic Sales” still lined the alleys.

In pioneer Montana, Kalispell was the seat of a county much larger than now. In 1908, Flathead County included all of present day Lincoln, Lake and Sanders Counties. In addition to the county courthouse, the town boasted two banks, two newspapers, three elementary schools, and the Flathead County Free Public High School. It was the only high school in the county with many of its 300 students coming from homes over 100 miles away. County funds provided some of the living expenses for these “out-of-towners.”

The high school building (known as “Central School,”) was large and comfortable. The curricula included the “classical,” (college preparatory,) as well as a number of “non-solids.” When the time came, both Dad and Uncle Bruce attended the Flathead County High School. Kalispell’s Carnegie Public Library was well stocked and was regularly used by the boys.