POWELL FAMILY HISTORY IN MONTANA By Irene (Decker) Powell Rudolph, wife of Harry Leslie Powell, son of Willis Burton Powell
Willis Burton Powell, son of Jacob and Emily Powell, was born 31 March 1858 near Boliver, Missouri, and married 13 June 1892 to Eva Ludora Vance, born 4 March 1868 in Ray County Missouri.
They had two sons, Harry Leslie Powell, born in Butler, Missouri, 5 March 1893, and Mac Stewart Powell, born in Buffalo Wyoming, 5 April 1895.
Willis, Eva and Harry came to Buffalo, Wyoming in 1894, to Willis' brother, Lee Powell, and family. They both worked for a large cattle and sheep ranch. Willis was foreman of the cattle end of it and Eva was a cook for the ranch "hands", as the men were called that worked there.
If I remember right, they stayed in Buffalo, Wyoming until the boys were seven and five years old. They then went back to Missouri and Willis went to Alaska to the gold rush. He came home broke. When he got back Willis took his family and went to Flagstaff, Arizona. Here he worked in the copper mines. Eva and the boys had chickens and milk cows. The boys had a milk, butter, and egg route.
I don't know how long they stayed in Arizona. I took by their stories that the boys were in their middle teens. They then went back to Butler, Missouri and stayed until both sets of parents had died.
In 1918, the Powell family loaded all their belongings and two saddle horses on an emigrant car and came to Sheridan, Wyoming. I am sure the boys and, I suppose, Willis all found work.
In 1919 Harry went to Montana horseback to find a place to live. He went to Miles City, Montana to file on a homestead of 640 acres. I am sure he rode to Miles City horseback too. Mac filed about the same time as their places joined. Willis did not homestead.
In 1922 Willis and Eva went out to Montana to live. Along with their wagon, team and stuff they also brought a few milk cows they got around Sheridan, Wyoming that were driven behind the wagon out to Montana.
The place in Montana was about 50 miles from Sheridan, Wyoming and the closest post office was seven miles away. Another homesteader said to a neighbor "If we just had a post office now it would quiet us." When they got the post office they called it "Quietus."
In the spring and fall Harry would take a four horse team, a double box wagon, camping outfit and go to Sheridan, Wyoming to get the summer supplies they needed of staple goods such as flour, sugar, salt, etc...and block salt for the livestock and whatever else was needed to do the farming, haying and ranch work. In the fall he would do likewise.
They lived off the land, with their milk cows and chickens, the large gardens they grew, and a lot of wild game such as deer, antelope, wild chickens, sage chickens, grouse and cottontail rabbits. There were also wild berries such as chokecherries and plums. The family all lived together in a two room log cabin until they could get lumber to build an addition for three small bedrooms.
The family went out there as a corporation, W. B. Powell and Sons. The country was full of wild horses and as soon as they had cut timber enough to build a corral the boys got their horses, went out and drove in a bunch of wild horses. They picked the ones that they wanted to break to work and the small lighter weight ones they broke to ride. I'm sure they had fun doing this. This is how they got into the horse business.
Eva always had chickens for eggs and also to eat. After they were in Montana a while they leased land from two men that had homesteaded next to them but did not live there. They both worked around Sheridan, Wyoming. Also leased was a "school section" of 640 acres and around 1200 acres from a lady that lived in Clearmont, Wyoming. They had quite a few range cows at the time Harry and I were married as well as some "share cows" that a friend that lived in the country around Sheridan, Wyoming had put out with the Powells. The Powells got 60% of the calf crop and the friend got 40%. That is how we got started in the cow business.
On October 9, 1930 Harry married Irene Matilda Decker, born 24 September 1912 at Greenwood, Wisconsin. We all lived together. I worked outside with Harry, farming, riding, etc... I had my own four horse team. In the morning I got the halters, went out to the corral and caught my horses (they were gentle), took them to where the harness hung, put it on them, bridled them, and went to the field to work them. Once in the field I hooked up the harrow, that had a board fastened to it and stood on the board and harrowed all day. We took our lunch to the field and would stop just long enough to eat it. Harry worked eight horses on a three bottom plow. His horses were not all gentle. He had one horse he called his "Bronco Horse" that helped handle the rest. He had horses tied to horses, so that is why we never unhooked them until time to quit. Except for me. I would come in early, unharness my horses, turn them loose, get my saddle horse and go to the pasture of 640 acres to bring in the milk cows (Mac, at that time, was living on a place that they had leased). Harry and I milked 14 to 18 cows, separated the milk and cream and sold the cream in five and eight gallon cans. Harry had a Graham truck at the time that he hauled the cream to Sheridan, Wyoming in. We didn't get much for it and when the depression hit in 1934 to 1935 we got much less; $1.50 for five gallons of cream and ten cents a dozen for eggs. We put in long, hard hours. We always raised a large garden and had many chickens. Eva and I did a lot of canning of vegetables and frying chickens, as well as stewing hens. When Willis was still able to ride horseback, he and I would get on our horses with a bucket each and a 100 pound grain sack and go pick the wild chokecherries in their season. The wild plums came later when they were ripe. Eva and I made a lot of jelly and jam.
In 1931, while our first child was on the way, I continued to help with the work outside until the last week in December when Harry brought me to the home of a friend in Sheridan, Wyoming to wait for my baby. January 15, 1932, Alice Mae was born. I did not go to the hospital. I was at the Eureka Home that was run by a nurse. It was also a place where the people from the country went from the hospital after surgery to recover before the long trip home. It didn't cost so much there. One morning as the nurse was giving me my bath, she told me she would not dismiss me until my bill was paid, which was $35 to $40. As a new mother, I really got excited. Instead of telling the friends I was staying with, which would have paid the bill then Harry could pay them back, I wrote a letter to Harry. He then caught two saddle horses, rode the 50 miles to Sheridan in the cold with the snow up to the horses knees most all the way. It took him two days to come in. He stopped for the night with the same folks about 20 miles out of Sheridan. I must say, he was a little angry with the nurse. He paid the bill, had another friend outside in his car waiting and we went as far as we could on the main traveled road in the car. The other folks met us at the road with team and sled and took us one and one half to two miles to their house. How exciting and what wonderful people, did all this without charging us a penny. I was there until the first of February when the weather broke so Harry could come get us in the Graham truck. With no heater in them in those days we had to keep warm with a large heavy quilt. I was already, by that time, to continue with outside work, while Grandma and Grandpa took care of the baby.
When spring came and Willis would go out to ride his horse, he took Alice for a horseback ride. She was six months old, still had on a white dress, and that is what started her "cowgirl career." It was 1936 that Alice got her own first saddle horse. My folks had left the country and went to Idaho. So mother gave her white pet saddle mare, named Peaches, to Alice. All the children learned to ride on her.
In 1936, when the depression got really bad, it was hard to make a living; not enough rain to raise a corp nor hay, nor gardens. That is when W. B. Powell and Sons dissolved the partnership. As Willis and Eva were going to live with us, Harry got two thirds of the cattle and machinery, Mac got the other third. Mac went to Sheridan, Wyoming, got a job on a ranch haying for the summer. Willis and Eva got $20 a month, old age pension, each. Harry and I kept on milking cows. All helped to live. That was the summer our U. S. President Roosevelt made programs called WPA and PWA, what the difference was I don't remember. A lot of the folks out our way worked on the programs. That is when we got our dirt roads from Sheridan, Wyoming graveled. Harry worked on it during October, November and one paycheck in December. When it ended, Harry had our year's supply of flour and sugar stacked in a corner of the front room along with a lot of canned vegetables and some fruit in the cellar. It was a gift from God; we sure did appreciate it.
On 19 March 1937 our son was born named Willis Alfred (Bill). By this time Grandma (Eva) was not able to care for the baby, so I got to be a housewife and mother for a while, something I did enjoy. On 30 November 1939 our second daughter, Addie Marie, was born and on 23 December 1940, our second son, Lee Stewart, was born.
In October 1940 Eva passed away. We had moved them to town for the winter as she was ill and they were boarding with a couple. She only lived a couple of weeks after moving to town so she didn't get to see her last grandson. Willis passed away at the ranch of old age on the 29th of January 1944. They were both buried in Sheridan, Wyoming.
As the years began to get better, Harry bought the two homesteads he had leased and more that we had not leased so that we had 5000 acres of deeded land, 640 school lease and 200 acres of federal lease. We were running around three hundred head of cattle. Mac also bought more land and he joined us. We ran our cows together and we all worked together. We began to have some great times doing other things besides work. We went to Tongue River Dam to picnic and fish and went to country dances.
When Alice was ready for school, she had to board away from home through the week. We lived thirteen miles from the nearest country school. Bill also had to board away from home for school. When Addie was ready for school Harry bought a one room cabin that was in the school yard (a teacher had lived in it) and Alice, Bill and Addie stayed in it through the week. When Lee was ready to go to school Harry bought a Willys Jeep and Alice drove it to school. It was handed down to Bill when Alice was out of school and when he was done with school it was my job to drive the school route. All the children went to Sheridan, Wyoming to go to high school.
In 1947 Harry had a deep well drilled on a hill from the house, 255 feet deep. It was "soda water" but a lot of it. Then we built on to the old house; a nice big kitchen and bathroom on the first floor and two bedrooms and two nice bedrooms and clothes closets upstairs. A nine hundred gallon cement water storage tank was made, a ditch and water pipe was laid to the house. The water came gravity flow and by fall we had all the conveniences of running water in the house. We also had propane hot water heater, a propane refrigerator with freezer compartment and a double sink. Hot and cold water, what a luxury and how happy we all were! Our hard work had paid off. We had gotten a new Dodge car, two tractors, machinery to go with them, and we had to milk only one or two milk cows for our own use, and had our chickens for eggs and to eat.
The time came when the two oldest children had left the nest and were feathering nests of their own. At Christmas vacation time in 1957 Range Telephone Company installed our first phone. And the following spring on the evening of April 20th, after Harry got to see five of the grandchildren, he was talking on the phone to Alice when he fell over backwards; dead. What a shock! He is buried in Sheridan, Wyoming also.
About four years after Harry died, Mac sold his place to a neighbor, and moved to Sheridan to live. In the spring 1978 Mac got quite ill and the doctor put him in the nursing home in Gillette, Wyoming as the one in Sheridan was full. I was put in as his guardian to take care of his business. I went often to see him and he was always clean and kept nice, he got good care. He died on the 12th of September, 1978 from pneumonia. He was an Elk so is buried in the Elk's cemetery plot in Sheridan, Wyoming. This comes to close the Powell family life in Montana.
Daughter Addie and family have the ranch now and I hope when she retires form teaching school she and Ace will go to live there the rest of their lives.
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