Conrad Haters

When the City of Kalispell was contemplating accepting Alicia Conrad's proposed gift of the Conrad Mansion, there were quite a few long-time residents who objected and sometimes rather vehemently while others were staunch supporters of the idea. Why the disparity?

I think the following incident, as related fourteen years ago by my late wife, Johanna, will clearly explain the problem. She was Flathead County's Records Manager at the time, and folks would drop by from time to time to search county records for genealogical purposes. The following conversation was with one such couple. I've redacted personal names, as they aren't germane to the point.

I had just had another family of Conrad haters walk out of my office with a bit less dragon breath than when they came in!

    Mr. & Mrs. P. are third/fourth generation Flathead residents who came to my office this afternoon to do some genealogy work when, inevitably, the name 'Conrad Cemetery' came up, I immediately got the usual reaction from the old timers. Mr. P. is a tall bright fellow in his eighties and at the name Conrad his head came up, his nostrils flared, he turned red in the face and he literally snarled, "Those @#$%!!& Kalispell Conrads! My mother knew that @#$#%^&!! Indian cheating, rum running, wh***mongering Charles Conrad and his uppity $%$^&*@@$#!! wife! He stole my grandfather's land, the #$$%^@! they ought to tear that #&^$@ Conrad Mansion down. It's a $%&^%$# insult that this town honors that son-of-a-#$#%&^!!"

    Now, the first time a few years ago when I got this kind of reaction from the Z_____ clan, I was, as you might expect, a bit taken aback, but this time I was more-or-less expecting it! So, while his wife was bawling him out for his language, I asked him what year this had happened.

    The reply was predictable: "It was 1927 and that #$%^*& Charles Conrad gave my grandfather a loan at a rate he couldn't possible pay back and then forced him into default and stole his land! The #$#%^@!!"

    Needless to say, I pointed out that Charlie died in 1902, so it was not the Charles Conrad who built the Mansion and with whom Mr. P's grandfather had dealt. We then discussed who Charles Davenport Conrad was and his relation to the Conrad National Bank in 1927. We discussed the fact that Charlie had died too soon and the memory this town has of the Conrads is of his widow and second son and not C. E. Conrad, the founder of Kalispell. We discussed that Mr. P. sadly had the correct impression of C. D. Conrad and Lettie, but not Charlie.

    by the time they had completed their business, his wife was willing to admit that maybe they needed to learn a bit more about Charlie 'the elder' as she put it. On his way out, Mr. P. said, "I'm sorry for soundin' off like that, but those #$@%&! Conrads get under my hide. I'm sure glad I found someone who understands my disliking the Conrads."

    His wife looked at me, smiled and said, 'but not Charlie 'the elder', dear."

    His parting shot as the door closed was priceless:  "Alright, woman, I'm willin' to give the old man the benefit of the doubt, but that kid of his was a rotten [SOB]!! You have a nice day, young lady!"

And there you have it. Now you know why many Kalispell old-timers were against preserving the Mansion and would have preferred to see it demolished.

Richard L. Hardesty, ©2025, All Rights Reserved

Posted 4/14/25

    

UPDATE

 I've been busy with another project that has been five years in the making, but is now complete. Five years ago, I began researching and writing a book centered on another interest of mine, the private press movement in Montana and Wyoming. The result is Small Presses in the Rocky Mountain West which was finished when I published it in January.

    It is a niche work of interest primarily to collectors and institutional libraries as a reference work. It is now out there and is garnering some interest and is slowly appearing in  the collections of various university libraries and collectors of private press books, which is gratifying.

    In addition to the research and writing, I also took upon myself the task of designing the book as I can't afford to pay someone else to do it it. I'm a fair hand at book design, so it wasn't a chore, but a pleasure. I spent several months refining the design (with a little help from my friends) and can say I am very pleased with the results.

    You can find out more about it on the website of Rising Wolf Press, my own private press, if you are curious.

    With its publication and attendant publicity efforts done, I can now turn my attention back to Charlie & company. Look for a new post or page on the subject of this blog soon. I don't know what I'm going to write just yet, but I'll come up with something!

--- R. L. Hardesty 3/11/25 Copyright 2025 by Richard L. Hardesty. All rights reserved.

Sorry for the lack of recent posts here. I have been occupied with other projects not related to the Conrads. Hope to get back to this blog shortly, assuming somethng else doesn't get in the way!

--- Richard, 11/12/24

IN THE PIPELINE

Coming down the pike sooner or later will be an article on someone who was not associated with Charley Conrad or his family, but was definitely part of the Flathead Valley community---he's buried in Columbia Falls. I've just started writing The Hunt for Hunt. Watch for it.

Quick Facts About Charley, et alia

 Here are a few facts about Charley and family. I'm not citing sources here. Future posts will address these items in greater detail and source citations will be provided then or they have already been dealt with in past posts/pages.  Here we go!

1. C. E. Conrad, Jr. (Edward) was not a drunk, despite assertions to the contrary. He did maintain a decent liquor cabinet in his home in Montreal, but that was expected of any gentleman of the period in order to properly entertain guests.

2. Edward did not commit suicide. The circumstances surrounding his death are rather suspicious, and at some future time I will delve into them in some depth, but note that a life insurance policy claim was paid off without any problems and he received a full Catholic funeral in the main cathedral in Montreal and was buried in the Catholic cemetery there as well. This was during a period when the Catholic Church would not conduct funeral services for persons who killed themselves, and they could not be buried in a Catholic cemetery which prohibition was not lifted until the 1980s.

3. Charley Conrad had nothing to do with bringing the Stanfords to Ft. Benton. That was entirely the doing of Lettie's brother, James. In fact, at that time Charley and James Stanford were not known to each other despite the latter's having served at Ft. Macleod while Charley was running the Baker operation there. Their paths there never crossed. They did not become acquainted until Charley began courting Lettie. James benefitted from that courtship and later marriage as he was now C. E. Conrad's brother-in-law and was soon working for the Conrads and became rather wealthy as a result.

4. Charley and J. J. Hill were business associates only. Charley referred to Hill as "Mr. Hill," and Hill referred to Charley as "Conrad." Charley was often summoned to St. Paul to confer with Mr. Hill who visited Kalispell rarely and always stayed in his private Pullman car and not in the Conrad mansion when he did.

5. Charlie loved to help people out whenever he could, but he was always mindful of the pride of these fiercely independent frontier folk with whom he dealt. A small rancher might be struggling to make a go of it and Charley would offer to lend a hand by loaning them some capital (an outright gift would have been an insult), but he would make it an "on demand" note and simply not call it in, knowing that in time, that loan would be made good, and if not, well he would just write it off. These loans were always made with his personal funds.

6. Having ridden with Mosby's Rangers, he had learned how to accurately shoot pistols from horseback while riding. Pistols were preferred to rifles or carbines as being much easier to handle from the hurricane deck of a cavalry mount. He was known as a crack shot, but never made anything of it. One 4th of July, Kalispell was having a target shooting contest and several of the old-timers prevailed upon Charlie to enter. He reluctantly did so and easily won to the delight of his compatriots.

7. Charlie's Civil War experiences inculcated in him a permanent abhorrence of war. He never spoke of his time with Mosby's command and never attended any of the Mosby reunions. He also used his influence to keep his son Charles Davenport Conrad out of the Spanish-American War, as he was absolutely terrified of the possibility of the boy's involvement.

That's it for this time. There is much yet to come, but it will take some time to put it together, so be patient and keep your eyeballs peeled for future posts and pages.

-- Richard

    ©2024 Richard L. Hardesty. All rights reserved.

#MontanaHistory

   

The Shotgun in Charley's Armory

 Charlie had a shotgun, rather unsurprising as he did enjoy hunting game birds, but it was a special shotgun, and not because it was one of the Big Five shotguns of the period (late 1800s to early 1900s), which it was, but because of a family connection. He owned an "Elsie" shotgun manufactured by the Hunter Arms Co. of Fulton, New York.

So, what's the family connection, you ask. Well, John Hunter, one of the Hunter brothers who owned the company, was Charley's uncle, having married his aunt Mary Elizabeth Conrad in 1855 in Virginia.

The tale is told in a bit more detail on this page.

Oh, and that page also explains Charley's connection to typewriters, a somewhat tenuous one, to be sure, but still, a connection.

Ah! Lest I forget, for those of you who don't know what the other four of the Big Five shotguns were, they were Fox, Ithaca, Lefever and Parker.

For more information on the Elsie shotgun itself if you are so inclined,  I suggest you read this article. It's pretty thorough. 

©2024 Richard L. Hardesty.  All rights reserved.

What's in the future?

 The Conrad boys had their fingers in many pies; banking, ranching, mercantile, and mining were their major fields of endeavor. I'll be looking into all of those activities in the future, but I will also be posting notes about their business associates as well as life in general during their lifetimes. There is much yet to come, so stay tuned!