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When my great great grandfather was a young man starting out in life
he was part of the homestead movement. He moved to southwestern
Montana and staked a claim. Under certain terms (i.e. he had to
sow and harvest the land or raise some number of head of
livestock, etc.) he was given a chunk of land (to a New Yorker,
a chunk of land would be equivalent to many city blocks) and he
could build a home and work the land. Now, there weren't a whole
lot of people around. He had to go days to the nearest town so
it wasn't like he had a Home Depot near by. His first house was
of logs like the one you see above (except more well
maintained). He raised his boys and lived
with my great great grandmother there.
Indians would frequent his place.
My father tells me that on one occasion, they stopped by for some grub. They would trade
from time to time and this time it was their turn to eat. They
enjoyed the "white man" food and came often. Well, on
this occasion, he fed them a meal with the majority being beans.
It was quite some time before they came back and they declined
when they were offered a meal.
He would hunt, sell his sheep and
other crops and live off the land. Some winters were brutal but
they did well there. Their boys grew up loving the land and
being quite Montanan.
One of his sons stayed in the
area and remains there today. My grandfather eventually moved
down to a town below the mountains. They lived there for a time
and ran a shop and a handful of other businesses. My father was
raised there. The state decided that that valley was good for a
reservoir and they emptied the town and flooded it. Because of
the drought in the area, we recently went back and we could see
the tiny school house foundation where my father went to school.
We saw my grandfathers shop foundation and picked up some old
tools and things he might have used.
They had to move to a town down
stream and they started different types of business. My father
went to Texas for a couple of years as an LDS missionary. He met
my mother's family and when he got home they wrote letters back
and forth for a time. Soon they were married and after college
they returned to my father's home town to raise us.
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