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!

More About Catherine (Coggan) Stanford

CHARLIE'S MOTHER-IN-LAW

Born in Derby, Derbyshire, England, on 1 March 1830, to Thomas Coggan, a printer and publisher of Derby, and Alicia Ann Tyson, Catherine Elizabeth Alicia Coggan emigrated alone to the United States. She seems to have left England under a cloud and in June of 1848 at the age of 18 came to Boston, Massachusetts, where she had relatives.

By 1854, she was living in Lynn, Mass., and was supporting herself as a seller of millinery and straw goods at No. 5, Common Street.[1] Circa 1850, she became involved with James Stanford, a man much older than herself and a businessman of Halifax, Nova Scotia. After a five-year courtship and the exchange of many letters, the two were married[2] 26 April 1855, at St. Stephen’s Church, Lynn, Massachusetts, by the Rev. J. W. Hallam, Rector.[3]  They returned to Halifax together, where they resided until his death in 1872 at the age of 68, an event which proved economically disastrous. Their first child, James Tyson Stanford, was born 15 June 1856. She and her husband were blessed with three more children: George Simmons, born 20 September 1858; Alicia Davenport, 30 August 1860 and Harry Penn, 3 October 1867.

After the death of the elder James, the family fell on hard times, and Catherine was under a great deal of stress attempting to keep her family together and support them. She eventually sent her son George to Australia where young men were needed and where he stayed for seventeen years. Her daughter she sent to live with relatives in Chester, Nova Scotia, and later moved there herself with son Harry. Her pen name was in part taken from this town. It was during this time that she wrote Hearts Versus Diamonds, a romance novel, hoping to generate a little extra income from its sale.

Her son James Tyson Stanford joined the North West Mounted Police (which later became the Royal Canadian Mounted Police) in 1875[4] and soon found himself at the newly constructed NWMP post of Ft. Macleod, Alberta, where he served as a commissary sergeant. He was discharged from the NWMP on 21 June 1878[5] at Ft. Macleod and by September of 1878[6] had settled in Ft. Benton, Montana Territory, and shortly afterwards sent for the rest of his family.

Catherine and her children, Alicia and Harry, arrived in Ft. Benton 30 May1879 on the steamer Montana[7] on its second[8] voyage, which was from Pittsburgh – where Catherine and family boarded—to Benton. Although the family tradition has Charles Conrad meeting them at the Benton levee,[9] they arrived while Charles was down river where he had gone to meet the rest of his family[10] and to accompany them back to Benton. The Conrads arrived on 9 June aboard the I. G. Baker & Company steamer Red Cloud.[11] Indeed, Charles Conrad did not yet know either James Stanford or his family.

The Stanfords quickly settled into life in Ft. Benton, and it was not long before the family’s fortunes took a substantial turn for the better. Alicia Davenport Stanford caught the most eligible bachelor in town, the aforementioned Charles Edward Conrad, and they were married by the Rev. C. S. Blackiston on 4 January 1881 at the Stanford home in Benton.[12]

C. E. Conrad was the founder of the town of Kalispell, Montana, and a very successful businessman who, with his brother, George W. Conrad (known as W. G. Conrad from 1870 onward),  created a substantial commercial empire. C. E. also built a large home in Kalispell which today is the Conrad Mansion Museum.

Mr. Conrad moved from Ft. Benton to Kalispell in 1891, but Catherine Stanford remained in Benton until the extended family moved into the recently completed new Conrad home in April of 1896 and she lived in the mansion up until her death on 1 September 1904.

©2023 Richard L. Hardesty. All rights reserved.

Notes

1.    1854 Lynn City Directory, Burrill to Cotter. Transcribed/submitted by Shaun Cook. http://www.lynnhistory.com/Directories/1854/pg4.html. She was in business for herself and received some financial support and much business advice from her father in England during this period.

2.    She was his second wife, his first having died some years earlier and by whom he had several daughters. Catherine was of similar age to her new step-daughters!

3.    Stanford family Bible in collection of the Conrad Mansion Museum. The curricula vitae for the family is also recorded therein.

4.    NWMP Personnel Records, 1873-1904, RG18, vol. 10037, Reg No. (Old Series) 330A, pg. 9, Official discharge.

5.  NWMP Personnel Records, op. cit. His rank at discharge was Acting Constable. “Commissary sergeant,” supra, is a job title and not a rank.

6.    Letter from JTS to his mother, 12 September 1878 (on letterhead of Custom House, Helena, Montana, with Helena crossed out and “Ft. Benton” written in): “I have had no steady employment so far and am not likely to have this winter. So I am first at one thing and then at another. I have been employed at the Custom House here for the last month and am now in charge for another month as the Collector is away on business in Helena.... I am heartily tired of knocking about; I have been all over Montana and across the range (Rocky’s)...” A later letter indicates he was working for an unnamed attorney and expected to be able to find plenty of work come spring. He obviously was not working for the Conrads at this point in his life.

7.    Murphy, James E. Half-Interest in a Silver Dollar: The Saga of Charles Edward Conrad.  Missoula, MT: Mountain Press Publishing Co., 1983. p. 187. Catherine’s history as given beginning on page 73 is entirely fictional, and contradicts materials given elsewhere in the book, a not uncommon problem with this work. The correct account is given on p. 187.

8.    The steamboat Montana, a stern wheel packet with a wood hull, was built in California, Pa. (hull) and completed at Pittsburgh in 1879. She was in Bismarck, Dakota Territory, on 30 June 1879, preparing to reload for a third trip to Fort Benton when a tornado completely stripped the cabin off. In 1884, she was upbound on the Missouri when she veered, hit a pier, and sank.  The captain on the June 1879 Benton run was Nicholas Buisson/Beusen.

9.    This story was told by her granddaughter, Alicia Ann Conrad Campbell, and she got it from her grandmother. It would seem that the story-teller in Catherine Stanford often led to her telling some stories that she did not always identify as tales. The story of her journey across the Atlantic that Alicia Campbell related to James Murphy and which he in turn recorded in his book (op. cit. p. 73-75) is an example. One thing that alerts the reader to not take it as gospel is that in that tale, she claimed to have been accompanied by Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of the radio telegraph (wireless). Catherine emigrated in 1848, and Mr. Marconi was not born until 1874! Virtually all of the rest of that tale is apocryphal and bears some resemblance to the plot of her novel. She made an excursion to Bismarck from Ft. Benton in 1883 on the Red Cloud, and upon her return from that trip—after his marriage to her daughter, Charley was at the levee to pick her up in a buggy.

10.    The previous year, Charles Conrad had fetched to Benton his widowed oldest sister, Martha Elizabeth Hawkins, and a younger sister, Mary Blanche “Mollie” Conrad. Reported in the 9 June 1878 Extra issue of the Benton Record and carried in the 14 June 1878 issue of the Helena Independent, p. 3 (Vol. 9, No. 73). Also on board the Red Cloud was Shirley Carter Ashby and his wife and a nurse. Shirley was Charles Conrad’s 3rd cousin on his mother’s side. He had arrived in Benton in 1867, sold his 10% interest in the Baker company to the Conrad boys in 1870, moved to Helena and built a home at 642 Dearborn St. which still stands today and is an historic landmark. See also Ashby, Shirley C. An Opportunity Presented Itself, in Silliman, Eugene Lee, ed., We Seized Our Rifles, Missoula: Mountain Press Publ. Co., [1982], pp. 85-96.

11.    Helena Independent, 14 June 1879 (Vol. 10, No. 78), p. 3, as previously reported in the 9 June1879 issue of the Benton Record. His sister Martha had evidently gone with him, as she, too, is listed on the passenger list along with Alice, Arthur, Joseph, James W. (father) and Mrs. Conrad (Maria). 

12.   Reported in the 5 January 1881 issue of the Benton Record and carried in the 11 January 1881 issue of the Helena Independent. Rev. Blackiston was an Episcopal clergyman.

Charles Edward Conrad, Jr -- the half-blood prince

Spotted Capʼs first-born son has been given short shrift in the family history. He's been falsely portrayed as a drunken ne'er-do-well, but the truth is far from that. The son of a Kainai lass by the name of Kaiyis and Charles, Sr., his step-mother did not accept him and did what ever she could to undermine him, especially after his father's death. That whole story will be written in time, but until then, I offer this review of his life through the places where he lived. It is rather long, so I offer a link to a PDF rather than post it directly.

Link: Charles Edward Conrad, Jr.: The Landscape of a Life

For more on Edwardʼs mother, see this blog page: Who Was Charlie Conrad's First Wife?