Volume 3, No. 10 Buffalo County Historical Society November-December, 1980
THREE FROM BUFFALO COUNTY
by Mrs. Ruth M. Anderson
As each generation moved another step West to a new frontier, our country grew and expanded across the continent. This is the story of three children of Buffalo County pioneers, who were, in their turn, to become pioneers of Montana. The three were Jay W. Gitchel, Fannie Graves and Dr. Lawrence R. Packard from, respectively, Buckeye Valley and Amherst, Shelton, and Kearney. Each was to come at last to the small town of Whitehall on the Jefferson River west of Three Forks in Montana.
Jay Gitchel was born January 16, 1882 at the homestead of B. S. and Mary Gitchel in Buckeye Valley. There was still open prairie and frontier living in Buckeye Valley in 1882, although it was eleven years since the Homestead Colony came to Gibbon. Jay recalled drawing water by bucket from a hand dug well, herding cattle on the open prairie and sowing grain broadcast by hand. He remembered harvesting, first with a header, then with a reaper and at last with a binder. He remembered when the grain was threshed by horse power and when the binder twine was cut by hand. He was proud to have that job. It was a great day later when the first steam threshing machine came to the farm. Jay himself lived to harvest with a combine.
|
One of Jay's first memories was of going about three-fourths of a mile from his home to where his father was building the school house for the newly organized District 97. He wrote in a reminiscence published in Where the Buffalo Roamed that:Jay also experienced the terrible blizzard of 1888 and wrote:I enjoyed playing about the newly placed foundations, sills and floor joists, and a little later watching entranced as the workmen slacked lime for the plaster in a shallow pit in front of the building, and of watching the mason deftly applying the mortar. Still later, when school was keeping of how we boys made countless darts from the waste shingles and shot them way up, clear out of sight, and even imagined we would like to wing a wild goose if some would go flying by.
Sometimes in springtime great long strings of cattle were driven up the valley right past our school house, perhaps on way to the Loup Valley country, or to the Sandhill grazing country, or, "Goodness knows," maybe way up here into what was then known as Montana Territory.They were more fortunate than some as a number of people lost their lives in the blizzard of 1888 in Nebraska.I was just six years old and in my first year of school. We boys were playing a little distance from the school house during noon hour. It was sunny and warm, but suddenly we realized a black and vicious cloud was approaching from the north. Quickly we all started on the run for the school house, I, being the youngest, bringing up the rear. Dust and driving, blinding snow blocked out all visibility just as we arrived and I just barely made it around the corner and inside with the help of one of the older boys. Our parents came for us early and all succeeded in making it home safely.
The winter of 1899 Jay Gitchel attended high school in Kearney and was encouraged in his aspirations to become a teacher, a writer and orator. But the next year, because of his father's ill health and the move from Buckeye Valley to a farm north of Amherst, he was kept out of school. In the fall of 1902, however, his hopes were renewed when he was hired to teach at the Glatter school on the Loup. That was to have been the beginning of his career, but, again he was forestalled. His next younger brother, who would have taken Jay's place on the farm, met his death by drowning. Jay returned to operate the farm and did not feel free to leave until 1910. It was then too late to return to school to prepare for a profession, and besides, Jay did not dislike farming. He liked the outdoor life; he liked growing things. He liked to raise and train young horses, to experiment and to try out new methods, machinery and varieties of crops. In January of 1911 Jay Gitchel left Buffalo County to take up a homestead on the harsh high plains of Montana, just east of the continental divide and south of the Canadian border where the Great Northern railroad had opened lands for settlement. Here, in 1913, Jay will marry Elsie Mollard, the daughter of John and Augusta Mollard, pioneers from the Amherst area.
The second of our three, Fannie Graves, was born in Shelton in August, 1885, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. S. H. Graves. Compared to Jay Gitchel, Fannie Graves was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, a diploma from Vassar in her little fist. Her father, Sidney Graves was an owner and the cashier of the Shelton State Bank. Her mother was a Fisk of Vermont; she and her female relatives and friends were Vassar women and planned the same course for Fannie.
Although Shelton remained her home, Fannie was much away during her childhood. During the summer, Mrs. Graves and Fannie often fled from the Nebraska winds and heat to the paradise of the Fisk home on the Isle LaMotte at the north end of Lake Champlain, only a few miles from Canada. There the Fisks owned and operated a black marble quarry, at that time the only one in the United States. Their home was a mansion built of the black marble. On September 6, 1901 Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was a guest in the Fisk home when he received word that President William McKinley had been shot.
Too, Fannie Graves was sometimes sent to Eastern boarding schools but she did complete all four years of high school at Shelton, graduating in 1902 at the age of sixteen. She took Vassar for granted for her next step, but her Shelton credits did not meet the Vassar entrance requirements. To prepare for Vassar, Fannie went to Terry Hall in Lake Forest, a suburb of Chicago. On Saturdays, groups attended by a teacher would take trips to downtown Chicago for shopping, lunch, a matinee or a museum. She spent money freely and had a wonderful year. She liked Terry Hall and was not unhappy that it would take another year to be ready for Vassar.
|
Her father was not so pleased. Suddenly he became impatient with all the Vassar nonsense and put his foot down hard. He said, "Young lady, you are going to the University of Nebraska. You go to Vassar, you'll become so refined you'll not be able to spread butter to your bread. You are living in the West. In all probability you will live all your life in the West. The University of Nebraska is the school for you." So that was that.
Fannie Graves went to the University of Nebraska and liked it. She was a sorority girl and made friends with whom she still corresponds. She traveled to and from school by train, which was rather awkward as Shelton is on the Union Pacific and Lincoln on the Burlington. Fannie made connections by taking an afternoon train to Grand Island, then transferring to the Burlington and taking a Pullman on the night train to Lincoln. I would guess that she did not flit back and forth every weekend as young people do now in their cars.
After graduation from the University of Nebraska, Fannie Graves does not seem to have rushed into immediate employment. She was on the teaching staff at Shelton during the term of 1909-1910, although she had to take some time off. The Shelton Clipper for April 28, 1910 reported: "Miss Fannie Graves, who has been off duty for some time past as result of a broken limb, has again resumed her duties as assistant principal in the Shelton High School." The following year, 1910-1911, Miss Graves was principal at Gibbon. The Clipper for January 2, 1911 noted that she "came home to spend Sunday and was accompanied by Miss Ethel Haggart, the assistant principal." When school was out, Fannie again left Shelton for the summer. This time she went to Whitehall, Montana. Unbeknownst to her, it was a momentous decision.
At Whitehall, Fannie was offered a teaching position. The inducements were considerable. The school building was new, the wages much better, and Fannie liked adventure. She accepted the offer and has lived in Whitehall to this day, never returning to Shelton.
Lawrence R. Packard, the last of our three subjects, unlike Jay Gitchel and Fannie Graves, was not a native of Buffalo County. He and his brother Gerald came to Kearney September 1, 1886 with their parents, Dr. and Mrs. Frank Ashton Packard. The father practiced medicine in Kearney up to his death in 1918. Mrs. Packard, however, died in 1892, a few months after Lawrence graduated from high school at the age of fifteen.
Following in his father's footsteps, Lawrence studied medicine at the Northwestern University Medical School in Evanston, Illinois, one of the better medical colleges of the day. He practiced in the Chicago area for about two years prior to removing to Whitehall, Montana where he was well established when Fannie Graves arrived in 1911.
The two ex-Nebraskans struck up more than an acquaintance. In June of 1913 Dr. Lawrence R. Packard and Miss Fannie Graves were married at Livingston, Montana where Packard's younger brother, Gerald, was a practicing dentist. Fannie Graves now quips that she was accused of marrying Dr. Packard for his bathroom, then the only one in Whitehall. All that remains of this private water system today is the windmill tower covered with ivy, a footnote to the past.
Jay Gitchel, the first of our pioneer trio discussed here, was the last to come to Whitehall, Montana, moving there in 1972 at the age of ninety to be near his daughter, Mrs. Al Graeser. He died there in 1973, but not before he completed a book, One Lone Sower, relating his memories of a childhood in Buffalo County. Dr. Packard, having presided at the birth of 2,700 children and given a life of service to the area, passed away in 1957. Fannie Graves Packard alone survives, and, although she has never returned to Buffalo County, she maintains an interest in her old home, having renewed her subscription to the Shelton Clipper for 1980. Thus we have come full circle: three individuals nurtured in Buffalo County, moved on as their parents had before them to make a new life on yet another frontier, and thereby became a part of a greater story, that of a growing nation.
S. C. Bassett, History of Buffalo County and Its People; Jay Gitchel, One Lone Sower and We Bet Our Lives; Where the Buffalo Roamed; Shelton Clipper; Gibbon Reporter.
Proofread 10-3-2003
Back to :Buffalo Tales Homepage..
Back to Buffalo County Historical Society home page