by Bill Dedman
2 HE CHEERFULLY TOOK CENTER STAGE: W.A.’s singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” is recorded, for example, in Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention Held in the City of Helena, Montana, July 4th, 1889, August 17th, 1889 (Helena: State Publishing, 1921), 974.
3 HAUL FARM PRODUCE: Elizabeth Clark Abascal, unpublished memoir.
4 WHO WERE LEAVING BY FLATBOAT: Connellsville’s role as a departure point is described by the Connellsville Area Historical Society in “Connellsville History,” http://connellsvillehistoricalsociety.com/connellsville_history: “Early settlers went into the boat and barge construction business in the late 1700s as more people moved west. People headed toward the Youghiogheny River at Stewart’s Crossing, after crossing the Allegheny Mountains, to continue their westward travel by water.”
5 SCOTCH-IRISH HERITAGE: The longtime proper use of the term “Scotch-Irish,” not Scots-Irish, is described, for example, in Wayland F. Dunaway, The Scotch-Irish of Colonial Pennsylvania (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944). They are known in Great Britain as Ulster Scots.
6 “WHAT FUN WE HAD”: Abascal memoir.
7 HE HELPED HIS FATHER BUILD: Abascal memoir.
8 MORE THAN 160 YEARS: The Clark home was still standing outside Dunbar as late as 2013, confirmed by matching current photos with historic ones.
9 “SUCH GOOD COMMON SENSE”: Ibid.
10 “ABOUT GROWN UP”: Abascal memoir.
11 CHOOSING BRAINS OVER BRAWN: Clark established the dates for his education and early travels in “Early Days in Montana: Being Some Reminiscences Dictated by Senator William A. Clark and Written Down by Frank Harmon Garver,” typewritten pages in the collection of the Montana Historical Society Research Center.
12 ONE-ROOM SCHOOL: In 1859–60, W.A. taught in a one-room school in north-central Missouri, near Milan, where his older sister, Sarah, had moved.
13 “YOUNG MAN, YOU ARE”: Abascal memoir.
14 IN 1860, HE ENROLLED: Records of Iowa Wesleyan University, now Iowa Wesleyan College, were provided by archivist Lynn Ellsworth. The freshman curriculum included Cicero’s orations and the poetry of Virgil and Ovid, in Latin; the histories of Herodotus and Homer’s Iliad, in Greek; higher algebra and geometry; English language and grammar; and the customs, beliefs, and mythology of the ancient world. The readings for the first year of law study were Blackstone’s Commentaries, Vattel’s The Law of Nations, Smith’s treatise on constitutional law, Story on promissory notes and bills of exchange, Edward on bailments, and Story’s Commentaries on Equity Jurisprudence.
15 IOWA WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY: Now known as Iowa Wesleyan College.
16 HE DROPPED OUT OF SCHOOL: The records of Iowa Wesleyan University show W. A. Clark enrolled in both general freshman studies and the law department in 1860–61. In several of his later public speeches, he described attending a second year, though the university catalog for 1861–62 is lost. He is not listed among the graduates for any year and is not known to have described himself as a graduate. Nearly sixty years later, in response to a University of Montana request for a financial contribution, W.A. offered his assessment of the value of a college education. Writing on October 10, 1921, to associate W. M. Bickford in Montana, he said, “I have never been fully impressed with the idea of indiscriminate college education for young men. A great many of them are not qualified to take on a classical education. The result is that after graduating they feel as though they should adopt some profession, which in many cases they are unable to succeed in.… Young men who are better fitted for business than for a professional life should not spend so many years pondering over Latin and Greek, but would profit much more by a business education for which they are better adapted. Personally I do not feel inclined to be very liberal in promoting the cause of education, when there are so many people starving or at least suffering for the necessaries of life.”
17 “SIT AROUND IN OFFICES”: W. A. Clark to W. M. Bickford, letter, October 28, 1921. The full passage: “No one appreciates the importance of educational advantages more than myself, but the important part of it is obtained in the common schools. The colleges and other institutions of learning are going too far, in my opinion. I think 50% of those attending educational institutions, having the professions in view, would be better off with a common school education that would enable them to earn a living, rather than to sit around in offices and wait for clients.”
18 THE CONFEDERACY BEGAN DRAFTING: The history of the Confederate and Union drafts is described, for example, in Jennifer L. Weber, “Service Problems,” Opinionator (blog), The New York Times, March 8, 2013, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/service-problems/.
19 AFTER W.A. DIED: The apparently false claim regarding W.A.’s Confederate war service, often repeated, was made by William D. Mangam in The Clarks: An American Phenomenon (New York: Silver Bow Press, 1941), which was originally published as The Clarks of Montana in 1939. (Changes between the editions are minor. For example, Anna became “good looking.”) It has often been said that W.A.’s heirs tried to buy up all the copies of the book, though we’ve seen no substantiation of that. Mangam’s bitter tell-all presents an interesting challenge, because he clearly held great animus toward W. A. Clark and his former law school classmate and employer, W.A. Jr. At the same time, he was privy to certain letters and documents during his long employment by the younger Clark. We have tried to check his claims and have relied on him only as a source for material he quotes and as an indicator of the stories passed around by the Clark family.
20 NO W. A. CLARK OF HIS AGE: In 2013, the staff of Ancestry.com searched muster rolls and other service records from Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Missouri and found no one matching W.A.’s age and county serving on either the Union or Confederate side.
21 HE RECALLED HEARING: W. A. Clark, Address to the Semi-Centennial Celebration of the Grand Lodge of Montana (Virginia City, 1916).
22 W.A. CHOSE THREE BOOKS: W. A. Clark, Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (Livingston, September 5–7, 1917).
23 IN THE SOUVENIR PHOTOS: This photograph (see page 24) was handed down through the Clark and Newell families with the oral tradition that the man on the right is W.A. There is considerable circumstantial evidence to support this claim. Paul Newell found the photo among his parents’ family memorabilia. Paul’s grandmother, W.A.’s sister Ella Clark Newell, cared for their mother in her old age. The photo bears on the back the imprint of Reed & McKenney, Photographers, with studios in Central City and Georgetown, Colorado. One inscription indicates that it was received in February 1870. The facial features appear consistent with those in other photos of W.A. and with how he might have looked at about age twenty-four. A separate copy of the photo was handed down through the Southmayd family, with the matching oral tradition that the man in the center is Nathan Leroy Southmayd and the man on the right became a U.S. senator.
24 HIS PASSPORT APPLICATIONS: An 1889 passport application obtained via Ancestry.com describes W.A. as being five feet nine inches. He was listed as an inch taller in 1894, then back down to five eight and a half in 1909, and five feet nine in 1914. These descriptions were written in by the clerks; perhaps he didn’t give false information, but just looked taller than he was.
25 FIVE FEET FIVE: Testimony of Charlie Clark and others in the Montana probate trial in 1926, after W.A.’s death (In the matter of the estate of William A. Clark, deceased, case 7594, District Court of the Second Judicial District, Silver Bow County, Montana, 1926. Transcript in the Newell family collection, referred to hereafter as “1926 probate transcript”). Charlie testified, “My father was a man about five feet five to five feet five and a half in height; I don’t think he ever weighed 130 pounds in his life, and in the latter years of his life he declined to about 108 pounds.”
26 HIS HANDS WERE CONSTANTLY: Ibid. Charlie testified, “He was very wiry, nervous, untiring physically.… His hands were what would be described
as a nervous type, constantly in motion.”
27 “WITH THREE OTHERS”: Clark, Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1917). In “Early Days in Montana,” Clark said he first stopped at Breckenridge, then went on to Central City. His friend from Iowa Wesleyan, James Rand, got him a job on the windlass, where he worked from September 1862 to May 1863.
28 NOW MONTANA: It wasn’t easy to say what part of America this Bannack was in. The gold rush had birthed the town of Bannack, named for the Bannock people, a Native American tribe that had fished for salmon and hunted buffalo in the western mountains for at least ten thousand years. Bannack was located on leftover land that had been acquired from France in the massive Louisiana Purchase (1803). Just west of the Continental Divide, it was originally part of Louisiana Territory. In 1812, it became part of Missouri Territory, in 1821 it became an unorganized area with no name at all, and in 1861 it was absorbed by Dakota Territory. After gold was discovered there, it passed to the new Idaho Territory in 1863. The following year, the new boomtown of Bannack, with nearly ten thousand people, briefly became the capital of another new territory, Montana.
29 “THE REPORT GOT”: Clark, “Early Days in Montana” and Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1917).
30 “OUR MOTTO THEN”: Clark, Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1917).
31 “SAW THE NEWLY MADE GRAVES”: Ibid.
32 “THIS WE BEGAN”: Ibid. Also described briefly in Clark, “Early Days in Montana.”
33 “WE FOUND SOME STAMPEDERS”: Clark, Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1917).
34 “UPON MY ARRIVAL”: Ibid.
35 “DURING OUR PROSPECTING TRIP”: Ibid.
36 “THERE I FOUND”: Clark, Address to the Semi-Centennial Celebration of the Grand Lodge of Montana.
37 “THE THIRD DAY”: Clark, Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1917).
38 BRIGHAM YOUNG: Clark described having a later opportunity to talk with Brigham Young, a fellow Mason, in Salt Lake City in 1867 in Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (Deer Lodge, 1923).
39 W.A. SAW THE BODY: Clark, “Early Days in Montana.”
40 “I HAVE THOUGHT IT A MYSTERY”: Clark, Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1917).
41 THE MASONIC LEADER: Paris Pfouts was the head of the Virginia City Masonic lodge when W.A. joined in the winter of 1863–64, and during the same period was the first chosen leader of the Vigilance Committee. See Paris Swazy Pfouts, Four Firsts for a Modest Hero: The Autobiography of Paris Swazy Pfouts (Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of Montana, Helena, 1968).
42 “WE WILL NOT SAY”: Cornelius Hedges, past grand master of the Masonic Lodge in Montana and longtime grand secretary, set down his description of the Vigilante history in “Freemasonry in the State of Montana,” in John Milton Hodson, William H. Upton, Jonas W. Brown, and Cornelius Hedges, Masonic History of the Northwest (History Publishing, 1902). This chapter is available online at http://www.freemason.com/library/norwst29.htm. The Masonic connection to the early Vigilantes has been debated, but contemporaneous accounts by Masons, including Hedges and Clark, show they took great pride in the connection.
43 “THEY HAD UNDOUBTED PROOF”: Clark, Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1917).
44 “WHILE I HAD CONSIDERABLE KNOWLEDGE”: Clark’s memories of the Vigilante days were included in his Address to the Semi-Centennial Celebration of the Grand Lodge of Montana, in which other speakers also laid out the history of the Masonic involvement in forming the Vigilantes (records of the Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of Montana).
45 “THERE WAS NO LACK”: Clark, Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1923).
46 “TRADED TOBACCO”: Clark, “Early Days in Montana.”
47 RATES OF ABOUT 2 PERCENT: Clark, Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1923).
48 “WITH EVERY DOLLAR I HAD”: Clark described these days in “Early Days in Montana.”
49 EARN A BIGGER PROFIT: Clark described this contract in his Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1923).
50 “I WAS ENTERTAINED”: 1926 probate transcript.
51 “MASSACRE AT FT. PHIL KEARNEY”: This massacre became known as the Fetterman Fight. It took place along the Bozeman Trail in northern Wyoming, near the Montana border, and was part of Red Cloud’s War, a series of conflicts between the U.S. Army and Native Americans.
52 “THE WEATHER IS VERY COLD”: 1926 probate transcript.
53 “CLEAR AND COLD MORNING”: Ibid.
54 “ARRIVED IN HELENA”: Ibid.
55 “SENT A PROPOSAL”: Ibid.
Chapter 3: The Copper King Mansion
1 COPPER KING MANSION: Known then as simply the Clark home, it became a school and convent in the 1930s, and since the 1990s has been a bed-and-breakfast called the Copper King Mansion.
2 “WHO WAS DEAR TO ME”: W. A. Clark, Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (Deer Lodge, 1923).
3 “WOOED AND WON”: Ibid.
4 THEIR NEW HOME: Ibid.
5 DONNELL & CLARK: Ibid.
6 “WHEN WE FIRST KNEW HIM”: Missoula Gazette, 1888.
7 THE FEDERAL CENSUS: Accessed via Ancestry.com.
8 HORSE-DRAWN BUGGY: Charlie Clark testimony, 1926 probate transcript. W.A. described his experience in his Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1923).
9 “TO SOUND THE ALARM”: Ibid.
10 FIRST NATIONAL BANK: Clark, Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1923).
11 W.A. LEARNED HOW TO FIELD-TEST: Clark, Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1923).
12 WHEN FARLIN GOT OVEREXTENDED: Michael P. Malone, The Battle for Butte: Mining and Politics on the Western Frontier, 1864–1906 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981), 17.
13 BUTTE WOULD PRODUCE: The output of the Butte mines was calculated by geologist Richard I. Gibson, who provided the estimates in interviews with Dedman in August 2012.
14 “RICHEST HILL ON EARTH”: The five thousand miles of horizontal tunnels under the Butte hill have yielded about 100 tons of gold, which is nothing compared with its 24,000 tons of silver, which again is nothing compared with its 11.5 million tons of copper. Those aren’t the quantities of raw ore removed, but of pure metal extracted. And that’s not to mention the vast quantities of zinc for brass, manganese for stainless steel, lead for bullets, cadmium for batteries, sulfuric acid for drain cleaner, and selenium for dandruff shampoo.
15 PANIC ROOM: One can see the panic room on a tour of the Copper King Mansion bed-and-breakfast in Butte, http://www.thecopperkingmansion.com.
16 “I MUST SAY THAT THE LADIES”: Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention Held in the City of Helena, Montana, July 4th, 1889, August 17th, 1889 (Helena: State Publishing, 1921).
17 SHE CONTRACTED TYPHOID FEVER: Helen Fitzgerald Sanders, A History of Montana, vol. 1 (Chicago: Lewis, 1913).
18 OFFICIALS HAD ASSURED FAIRGOERS: The Official Directory of the World’s Columbian Exposition, May 1st to October 30th, 1893 (Chicago: W. B. Conkey, 1893.
19 W.A. DEMONSTRATED HIS LOVE: W.A.’s care in designing the mausoleum is shown in his detailed correspondence with Paul Bartlett, at the Library of Congress.
20 HIS FIRST PROTÉGÉE: Kathlyn Williams described her association with W.A. in a fan magazine interview in 1912 (New York Clipper, April 20, 1912; reprinted in Taylorology, no. 48 [December 1996]).
21 STARRING IN MORE THAN 170 FILMS: Kathlyn Williams starred in the first cliffhanger serial, The Adventures of Kathlyn (1913), and the first film version of the gold rush drama The Spoilers (1914), in a role Marlene Dietrich later played in the talkies.
22 “TOOK A GREAT INTEREST”: Ibid.
23 IN 1893 OR 1894: Anna’s introduction to W.A. is set in 1893, the year she turned fifteen, in William D. Mangam, The Clarks: An American Phenomenon (New York: Silver Bow Press, 1941), 94–95. Mangam sides with the story of Anna first approaching banker Ja
mes A. Murray, who sent her to Clark.
24 ANNA EUGENIA LACHAPELLE WAS BORN: Anna’s birth certificate spells the name phonetically as “Lashpell.” Located through Ancestry.com.
25 ANNA WAS THE OLDEST: U.S. Census, Calumet, MI, 1880.
26 THE LACHAPELLES RENTED OUT: U.S. Census, Butte, MT, 1900.
27 ANNA’S MOTHER, PHILOMENE, COULD SPEAK: Ibid.
28 STUDYING THE CONCERT HARP: Anna’s harp teacher was Alphonse Hasselmans, a Belgian-born French harpist who trained the most well-known harpists of his day.
29 COURT RECORDS IN BUTTE: Search conducted for authors in 2013.
30 SHE HAD A PUCKISH: Paul Newell discussed Anna’s stay in Paris with Anita Mackenzie and Mary Abascal, who were there with their mother, Elizabeth Clark Abascal, W.A.’s sister.
31 HER UNUSUAL EYES: The Abascal sisters described Anna’s heterochromia iridum, having eyes of different colors, blue and brown. Anna’s passport application from 1920, via Ancestry.com, confirms that she had “different coloring in eyes,” which are described as blue gray.
32 “MOST INTERESTING LADY IN WASHINGTON”: W.A., serving in the Senate in Washington, was also sponsoring Anna’s sister, Amelia, at the National Park Seminary, a girls’ finishing school in the suburb of Forest Glen, Maryland. See “She May Marry Senator Clark,” The Denver Post, March 26, 1900. This article misidentifies Anna as “Miss Ada La Chappelle.”
33 HATTIE ROSE LAUBE: “Senator Clark to Wed Again? Bride-Elect Said to Be Miss Laube, an Effective Campaign Speaker,” The New York Times, April 13, 1901.
34 THE PATERNITY SUIT: “Senator Clark in Breach of Promise Suit,” The New York Times, April 19, 1903. The case is Mary McNellis v. William A. Clark, Supreme Court, City and County of New York, March 1901. See also “She Asks $150,49 of Senator Clark,” New York Herald, April 19, 1903.
35 BRACELET WITH 36 SAPPHIRES: Anna’s jewelry is described in detail in HMC papers.
36 THERE HE TOURED: A history of W.A.’s acquisition of the United Verde mine and details of the operation appeared in a company-sponsored series of articles in The Mining Congress Journal, April 1930. W.A. described the New Orleans exposition in his Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1923).
