Empty Mansions

by Bill Dedman

  After Plummer and his associates were hanged, W.A. came to know many of the Vigilante leaders, who included the leading men of that territory. In early 1864, he became a Mason, joining the ancient fraternal organization’s lodge in Virginia City, where the Masonic leader was also the president of the first group of Vigilantes. As the state lodge’s longtime secretary, Cornelius Hedges, told it, “We will not say that all the Vigilantes were Masons, but we would not go astray to say that all Masons were Vigilantes.” W.A. would rise in 1877 to be the state grand master, or president, his first elected position of leadership.

  Although the Vigilante trials swiftly established law and order in the region, their actions are controversial today. The guilt or innocence of Sheriff Plummer is still debated, and many of the later executions, carried out by successors to the original Vigilantes, may have been little more than murder.

  But to W.A. and his friends, the morality of the early Vigilante trials was clear. “They had undoubted proof,” he told a reunion of the Montana Pioneers in 1917, “of the criminal action of all these men.” In a speech the year before in Virginia City, at a Masonic reunion, W.A. joked about the violent period, suggesting that some of his listeners had been far more active participants: “While I had considerable knowledge of the bandits then in the country … I did not personally know as much about them as some of you people did.” He praised the Masons, among other early members of the Vigilantes, for making the uncivilized Montana Territory safe so honest men like him could earn a living.

  “I BEGAN TO REALIZE MY SITUATION”

  “THERE WAS NO LACK,” W.A. wrote in his journal, “of opportunities for those who were on the alert for making money.”

  W.A.’s striving and a good head for figures began to pay off as he bought and sold in dizzying fashion whatever a miner might need. He “traded tobacco at ten dollars a pound for boots at sixteen dollars a pair,” earning from the miners such insulting monikers as “Tobacco Billy.” When he sold flour, they called him “Yeast Powder Bill.”

  Here was a man prospering by his wits in the rough high country in winter, trading on his reputation as an honest businessman. He lent money at rates of about 2 percent per month, which would be usurious today but was not out of line in that time and place. His ledgers show him keeping track of every expenditure—at breakfast how much for molasses and butter, in the evening how much for tea. He would open a store, then close it, travel over mountains for new goods, and return to open a new store. When his peaches froze solid on the journey, he sold them as “chilly peaches.” He bought tobacco at $1.50 a pound in Boise, Idaho, “with every dollar I had,” and sold it in Helena, Montana, at “$5 to $6 a pound.” A contemporary marveled at W.A.’s entrepreneurship, saying, “He never touched a dollar except twenty came back in its place.”

  • • •

  In 1867, W.A. found that he could earn a bigger profit by hauling the U.S. mail from the headwaters of the Columbia River, near Missoula in western Montana, through northern Idaho to Walla Walla, then the largest community in Washington Territory, a distance of more than 450 miles. As a subcontractor of the U.S. government, he organized a system of ponies, riders, boats, and way stations that provided mail delivery three times a week.

  The dangers of these mountain trails were real and present, but at age twenty-eight, W.A. was courageous—or headstrong. In 1868, he spent days riding his Cayuse pony, a cheap working horse, on his turn on the trail. W.A. followed the Clark Fork§ through Indian country, then along the northeast flank of the Bitterroot Mountains into Idaho Territory. At night, he wrote in his journal, marveling at the scenic beauty, grumbling about the difficulty of finding a decent book to read in the wilderness, and calmly recording the dangers.

  At one stop, he wrote:

  I was entertained while drinking my tea by this young Welshman, whom I employ to take care of this station on account of the massacre at Ft. Phil Kearney, he having been there at the time, Dec. 21st, 1866, 94 men were massacred within 3 miles of the Post. All were scalped save two and all save one were stripped of their clothing, turned with their faces downward and their backs stuck full of arrow. No bows were found and the arrows were recognized by their peculiar shape to belong to the Sioux, the Arapaho, and the Cheyenne. One was not scalped because of his baldness, but in lieu thereof they took his whiskers and mustache, and another for some reason was not scalped, was left with his face upward, was not stripped of his clothing, and was covered with a buffalo robe. It is supposed they knew him and perhaps had received some act of kindness from his hands, and thus thanked him with respect.

  The news of the massacre was fresh in his mind as he traveled through the wilderness, often hearing sounds in the trees. “The weather is very cold and frosty,” he wrote in his journal, “and as I rode along solitary through this dense forest of pines I was frequently startled by a loud report near me like the explosion of a blast.” It was not gunfire, but was instead “caused by the expansion bursting of the wood or bark of the trees by the frost.” Relieved, he stopped at a way station “and took my supper cheerfully by a sparkling fire.”

  • • •

  Indian massacres were not the only dangers W.A. faced. On January 30, 1868, he stepped into a situation that nearly cost him his life.

  Clear and cold morning, reached crossing of Deer Lodge river at McCarthy’s ferry at 10. Found the river frozen over and a beaten track on both sides of the river that led me to believe it a regular crossing. I therefore got off my horse and led him on, feeling carefully and trying to test the ice with my heel.

  It gave no indication of breaking and perhaps would have borne me safely over, but no sooner had my horse stepped his whole weight upon it than down we went in five feet of water.

  I was fortunate enough to catch on the edge of the ice and prevented myself being swept down by the current and endeavored to raise myself out, but loaded down with overshoes, overcoat and muffler my efforts were futile and in vain did I cry for help.

  The ice being very slippery, it was with difficulty I retained my hold until I succeeded in pulling my gloves successively from each hand with my teeth. At this moment my poor horse came up close behind, and placing one foot against his shoulder I made a desperate effort and scrambled out upon the ice next to the shore where it was very thick and firm. My horse again came up to me, nothing being visible except his head and the top of my saddle. I plunged my arm down by the water, uncinched the saddle and threw it off with cantinas on the pommel which contained seven or eight hundred dollars.

  Knowing of no means by which I could rescue my horse I began to realize my situation and danger of freezing, being thoroughly drenched in a temperature of 10 degrees below zero. I started to run back one-quarter mile to a house and met two men who had heard my cries and were coming to my relief. They were in time to save my horse, … drawing him on the ice with a rope.

  I reached the fire just in time as my legs began to get benumbed and my feet were frozen tight in my shoes. Here I remained until evening drying myself and clothes and had a log fire built near which I stood my horse to get warm and dry.

  Meticulous as ever, W.A. recorded in his ledger book the cost of his near-death experience:

  Paid for getting horse out, $4.00.

  • • •

  After his narrow—and rather expensive—escape, W.A. was ready for a vacation. His journal reveals his growing interest in the arts, as well as his talent for spotting new sources of revenue.

  “Arrived in Helena,” he wrote, “when I met numerous friends and acquaintances. Took board at the International Hotel. I was engaged reading among others ‘Pickwick Papers’ by Dickens.” He spent the next few weeks “at Helena amusing myself sleigh riding, attending theaters, reading, writing and billiards.”

  But Dickens and billiards were not the primary objects of W.A.’s vision. His diary entry for March 6, 1868, reads: “Sent a proposal to convey U.S. Mail from Helena to Missoula for two more years commencing July 1st, ’68, f
or the sum of $22,400 per annum.” That’s about $400,000 in today’s dollars.

  W.A. had no intention of hauling the mail through Indian country for the rest of his life, however. In the fall of 1868, he subcontracted out the mail delivery business and took a trip east. He boarded a mackinaw flat-bottomed boat at Fort Benton on the Missouri River. He told friends he was going to bring back a wife.

  * * *

  * Scotch-Irish, not Scots-Irish, has long been the standard name in America for this immigrant group, who were the product not of Scottish and Irish parents, but of Protestant families from Scotland and England who settled in the north of Ireland in the seventeenth century and then moved on to the United States.

  † Eight more Clarks were born in Pennsylvania: John Reed, who died in infancy; Joseph Kithcart; Elizabeth; Margaret Johnson, who died in infancy; Mary Margaret; James Ross; George; and Anna Belle.

  ‡ They settled in Van Buren County, near the Missouri border and the Des Moines River village of Bentonsport. The youngest child, Anna Belle, was only six months old. In Iowa, three-year-old George died of whooping cough, and the last child, Effie Ellen, was born. Known as Ella, she was the grandmother of co-author Paul Newell.

  § Named for William Clark (no relation), one of the leaders of the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804–1806.

  KATE

  W.A. HAD SET OFF down the Missouri, intent on seeing a childhood friend back in Pennsylvania. He recalled a girl with dark brown eyes and curly brown hair “who was dear to me when we were children together.” In the fall of 1868, the flat-bottom boat W.A. had boarded at Fort Benton docked in Sioux City, Iowa. There W.A. visited with his parents. He then rode by rail back to Pennsylvania to see this childhood friend. At age twenty-nine, he took his mother along for the courting.

  The courting began in an Odd Fellows Hall in Connellsville, where W.A. asked Katherine Louise Stauffer to a dance. Brown-eyed “Kate” was no longer a girl, but a beautiful, bright young woman of twenty-four. W.A., a worldly veteran of the western mines, Indian territory, and freewheeling commerce, “wooed and won” her. On the morning of March 17, 1869, they were wed at her parents’ large brick house in Connellsville, where her father was a prosperous businessman. A minister of the Church of Christ performed the ceremony. After a morning breakfast reception, everyone went uptown to watch the St. Patrick’s Day parade. The couple boarded a train heading west, stopping in St. Louis for a working honeymoon, as W.A. bought goods to ship west. They continued by train and stagecoach to their new home, the mining camp of Helena, Montana. When they arrived, they discovered that most of Helena had been destroyed by a fire. The newlyweds set up housekeeping in a friend’s spare bedroom.

  W. A. Clark’s first wife, Katherine Louise “Kate” Stauffer Clark, a childhood friend from Pennsylvania. (illustration credit3.1)

  In addition to a new wife, W.A. had a new business venture. Time and again, he showed great adaptability, switching businesses and cities in search of greater profit. In partnership with a Missouri merchant, he had formed a wholesale mercantile business in 1868. Donnell & Clark shipped groceries and eastern goods to Helena, Montana, by river, rail, and bull or mule teams—a lot of effort for very little profit. After a rough season of drought and poor sales, they consolidated the business in Deer Lodge, a growing town to the west of Helena, in cattle and mining country, and added a third partner, becoming Donnell, Clark & Larabie. In 1870, they adapted to circumstances again, whittling their business down to its most profitable element, banking, which was mostly the business of making the rounds of mining camps, assaying and buying gold dust.

  W.A. was shrewd in business, but he was known, like his father, for fair dealing. “When we first knew him he was a ragged, dirty, lousy miner,” Montana’s Missoula Gazette recalled in 1888. “But beneath those rags and gray-backs there was industry, energy, determination and brains, and behind all a resolute, fixed, determined purpose to succeed in the struggle for wealth and honorable distinction.”

  He had become a family man, too. Kate bore a daughter that January, named Mary Joaquina, usually called May or Maizie. She was followed by Charles Walker, or Charlie, in 1871. In 1874, an unnamed son died at only eight days old. Twin girls, Jessie and Katherine Louise, were born in 1875; the twin Jessie died at age two. William Andrews, Jr., called Will, was born in 1877, and Francis Paul followed in 1880. They were then a family of seven, with W.A., Kate, and the five surviving children.

  The Clarks were now prosperous, at least by Deer Lodge standards. The federal census of 1870 shows W.A. as a grocer and banker, with a net worth of $15,000, equal to about $275,000 today. That made him the fourth-wealthiest banker in Deer Lodge, a town of 788 people. The young family lived on a side street in a white frame house with five rooms. Attached to the house was a log lean-to that W.A. used for his assay office. The Clarks traveled the dirt streets in a little horse-drawn buggy.

  His wealth began to afford him social status, even a short-term military commission in an Indian war. During the Nez Percé War of 1877, W.A. raised three companies of volunteers and was assigned the rank of major. The fight was then taken over by regular U.S. Army soldiers, who drove Chief Joseph and his band of four hundred warriors off their ancestral lands, in violation of a U.S. treaty with the Indians. The soldiers captured the largest group of Nez Percé refugees near the Canadian border. Although W.A. saw no fighting, his son Charlie recalled watching his father ride off toward the Bitterroot Mountains “to sound the alarm about the Indians,” sitting atop a horse called Wild Bill.

  In 1872, W.A. gained greater respectability as a banker when he and his partners organized the First National Bank of Deer Lodge, capitalized at $50,000. They soon opened a branch forty miles to the south in Butte, Montana, a failed gold camp with the beginnings of a rebirth as a mining camp for silver and copper. Two of W.A.’s younger brothers, Joseph and Ross, eventually joined him in Butte. After they arrived, W.A. bought out his other partners. It was now solely a Clark operation. Although he may have been something of a loner, his feelings toward family members were deep and affectionate, generously inducting his brothers into his enterprises as soon as they were of age. Joseph worked in the mining operations, and Ross in banking.

  There was never any doubt, however, about which Clark was the boss. Their bank, for example, was not called Clark Brothers Bank.

  Nor was it W.A. and J. Ross Clark Bank.

  The name was W. A. Clark & Brother, Bankers.

  ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD

  THE STREETS OF BUTTE were unpaved and muddy when W.A. brought his banking business there in 1872. The town’s gold rush days had passed. Even if underground veins of silver and copper could be found, it would be hard to make them profitable. The town was four hundred miles from the nearest railroad.

  In that depressed environment, W.A. saw the right time for an investment. In 1872, the banker bought four old mining claims of uncertain value. They were called the Original, the Colusa, the Gambetta, and the Mountain Chief. To develop his investments, W.A. didn’t go at the opportunity the same way most men would. He had two obvious options: He could bear all the risk himself, starting immediately to drill into the Butte hill—he knew something about geology and mining, but he was not by nature a gambler. Or he could wait for others to develop mines nearby, letting them chew up their capital and reap the rewards. But W.A. was not much for waiting.

  So he created a third option: Recognizing that his single volume of Hitchcock’s Elements of Geology was not a sufficient education, he went back to college. Although thirty-three years old and married with two children, the banker took his family east in the winter of 1872–73 to New York, where he studied practical assaying and mineralogy at the School of Mines at Columbia College (now Columbia University). It’s hard to imagine that any student ever got a better return on his investment of a single year’s tuition.

  W.A. learned how to field-test metal-bearing quartz with a blowpipe. He learned how to roast and smelt and refine the ore t
o remove the precious metals. His ore samples from his four claims in Butte tested out to be promising, particularly in copper. Ore that yielded 5 percent copper would have been rich enough to be worth mining, but the Butte samples were testing closer to 50 percent.

  • • •

  Copper was about to become the essential conductor of modern life. In 1858, the warships HMS Agamemnon and USS Niagara had laid the first transatlantic telegraph cable. In 1876, Bell would patent his telephone. By 1879, Edison would create the first commercially practical incandescent lightbulb. And in 1882, Eduard Rubin of Switzerland would invent the full metal jacket bullet, increasing the distance one could stand from a man while killing him.

  All of these advances in communication, everyday life, and warfare would depend on W. A. Clark’s copper.

  Back in Butte in 1873, W.A. began to explore the Colusa and Gambetta claims, shipping the copper ore by wagon to the nearest point on the Union Pacific at Corinne, Utah Territory. Transportation costs ate up most of the mining profits, so Clark built a smelter to use heat and chemicals to extract the copper locally, increasing his profits considerably. When the Utah & Northern Railway arrived in 1881, connecting Butte to the Union Pacific and valuable markets in the East and West, he was there to meet the first train.

  W.A. had an advantage over other entrepreneurs. As a shrewd banker, he had the opportunity to see which mining properties were profitable and which were undercapitalized. And if loans weren’t paid, he could foreclose. Although W.A. was not the one who discovered silver in Butte, he found a way into the business. In 1874, a man named Bill Farlin struck silver, and with a loan from Clark’s First National Bank of Deer Lodge, he built a stamp mill to process the quartz. When Farlin got overextended in 1880, Clark and his partners became the new owners of both the mine and the mill through foreclosure. Butte would produce 24,000 tons of silver, but its 11 million tons of copper would earn its nickname, “the Richest Hill on Earth.”