In a November 11, 1915 news article it was reported that "Kachia is the name of the new post office of the Rose Store on Antelope Creek, northwest of here. Mr. Rose is building a new store building to accommodate his increasing business." There was a tri-weekly stage service to Kachia from Roy.
  After the death of Rose, William T. Harris was the postmaster. The store, in later years, as Ava Zahn recalls "had just a few groceries in stock. It was in Harris' private home. The Kachia school was about one-half mile up on the hill, away from the post office. It was pretty well gone by the time I remember."
  In later years, Dunn and Drake who ran the post office and store at Valentine, moved the Kachia house and post office building to Valentine. That was the house that Connolly's lived in. ^{P.  227}

  The district was created in 1917. There were 3 schools in this district. The first trustees were John Beedy, Henry Ludeman and Harry Martin.

  Antelope school was being held before the district was formed. It was continued with Maude Watkins as the teacher. The last term for this school was 1920-21 with Alice Martindale as the teacher. Other teachers were Carl Watkins and Louise Hirchey.

This school was also running when the district was formed. The first teacher was Mabelle Galloway. The last term for this school was 1919-20 with Mabel Rossiter as teacher. Other teachers were Olga Iuam and Addis Miller.

The first teacher for this school was B.L. Greenfield. Other teachers were Marie Dorsey, Mabel Rossiter and Ivy Davis. In the fall of 1922 there were only George Martin children in the district so the district paid for them to go to Boulevard school. Because of funding problems and few children there was no school in this district for 3 years. In 1925 they moved a school to a central location and held school with Mabell Galloway Peoples as the teacher. Mabel Rossiter taught here for 8 years. Stella Myers taught one year and Nora Lund was the last teacher in 1938-39. In 1942 the district was abandoned and annexed to #140 Valley View. The Kachia building was used as a meeting place for the grazing district and a polling place until 1967 when the district was annexed to Roy and the building sold to Monte Lund. ^{P.  228}

  In the spring of 1914, Elizabeth Blum and her two daughters, Anna and Barbara, traveled by train from Janesville, Wisconsin to Roy, Montana. They were met by Mathias in a newly acquired wagon, drawn by two horses, named Jim and Prince. All their household goods and baggage were loaded onto the wagon. The homestead lay 25 miles away to the east.
  Mathias had made the journey several weeks earlier and had built a tar paper shack which the family would call home for many years and through many tears.
  It was a new life for Elizabeth and Mathias who were Austrian emigrants. The "Homestead Act" would make it possible to become land owners and to work towards bettering themselves. What a heady dream! Eight years of drought, hail, endless work, privation and then finally defeat.
  It was to Roy that they had to go for supplies of every kind. These trips, made about twice a year were made by the faithful team pulling the wagon. Here the children had to be taken to get vaccinated, when word came that vaccinations were required for everyone in school.
  As time went by, mail delivery by car two times a week, became a reality, from Roy to Kachia, about 3 miles from their place.
  They had cows to milk, milk to separate, cream to sell for some income. They would take their cream, grocery list and outgoing mail to Kachia. The mailman would sell the cream to the creamery; with the money he would buy the staple grocery items needed and then do the 22 miles back to Kachia with the empty can, groceries and mail. After Anna went to Lewistown to high school, it was Barbara's chore to ride her horse to the meeting place and return home with all those items.
 Good old Roy -- what would "we have done without YOU!"
  Matt took his family to Lewistown where he again plied his trade as a barber. His shop was in the Burke Hotel for a number of years.
  Anna taught school two terms at Brooks, and then married Sidney Geary. She became ill with the birth of her son and was unable to care for her baby. Her parents, Matt and Elizabeth, were caring for the child when Anna passed away approximately 6 months later at the age of 25. The father having two older sons, was unable to take the baby. He gave his consent and the child was legally adopted by Matt and Elizabeth. They named him Joseph Mathias Blum. He was born in Lewistown.
  Barbara went to St. Leo's grade school when it was in the basement of the church, and then graduated from Fergus County High School in 1928. She then had two years of nurses training at St. Joseph's Hospital.
  Mathias passed away in Harlowtown on November 28, 1964 at the age of 82. He was born in Pardany, Austria March 30, 1883. He was preceded in death by his wife.
  Barbara now lives in Colorado and Joseph in South Dakota.

  Roy E. Brownlee homesteaded at Kachia. He married Ora King and they lived at Clarinda, Iowa, where two children were born to them: a son, Clarence King Brownlee and daughter, Mary. Another child was born, 19 August 1916, after they came to Montana. It lived only a few hours and is buried in the Roy Cemetery.
  Mary was a graduate of the first high school class at Roy in 1922. Her mother, Ora Brownlee, cooked at the Roy dormitory at this time. Mary had two marriages and no children.
  Clarence King Brownlee and Nina Fargher were married, 20 August 1926, at Lewistown, Montana. She was born in England, the daughter of John Fargher and Mary Barren Fargher. They lived on the family homestead for awhile.
  Five children were born to them: Bill Holt, one of twins, the other child did not live and is buried on the Brownlee ranch. Lorraine, who lives in Washington; John LeRoy and Barren are in western Montana, and Lenore, the youngest, lives in Billings.
  Nina and Clarence divorced and she remarried, to Ray Brown of Lewistown. Nina was a school teacher, and taught the Beaver Creek school, 1924-25 term; Brooks (Phillips) school, 1926-27; Sunnyside at Denton, fall quarter 1927 and the Fishburn school at Heath, 1943-44. Nina was born, 12 November 1905. She had ^{P.  229} been in the state of Montana for 35 years when she died, 7 October 1946, at the age of 40 years. After cremation, her remains were interred at the Forest Grove Cemetery.
  It is believed that Clarence Brownlee died in California. No date or information.
  Bill Holt Brownlee Brown, born 24 April 1928, the oldest child and twin, died at Lewistown, 31 May 1952, age 24 years, and is buried in the Lewistown City Cemetery. Survived by his brother: John LeRoy and Barren and sisters, Lorraine and Lenore and his stepfather Ray Brown.
 Lenore Brownlee Brown Harcharek, youngest daughter of Clarence and Nina Brownlee, lives in Billings.

  James Madison Galloway, his wife Elizabeth, a teacher and their children, Mabelle, William, Geneva and Carrie Belle came to Montana from Kansas and homesteaded northeast of Kachia, near the Valentine Mail-route in 1913. They ranched beside the buttes that Gene later made famous in her paintings.
  Mr. Galloway passed away at the age of eighty, after spending fourteen years on the homestead. In later years he and Mrs. Galloway would spend the winter in Lewistown.
  Their daughter, Mabelle, who was a teacher in this area, was married to Joe Peoples, a neighboring rancher on July 6, 1922. She passed away April 14, 1935. Son William took great interest in the ranch, successfully developing it and caring for his parents. Bill never married. He passed away at St. Joseph's Hospital in Lewistown at age sixty years on January 21, 1943.
  Mrs. Elizabeth Galloway, a charming intellectual, lived to be eighty-eight years when she died at St. Joseph's Hospital on December 28, 1947.
  Gene studied art and received her BA Degree from the University of California at Berkley.
  She spent several years working for an art gallery in New York. She was married there, but returned to the ranch and took back her maiden name. She did some splendid art work from her gallery by the ranch home. She loved to paint the "big sky" and her buttes evident in so many of her paintings.
  Gene enlisted in the WAAC. She clerked at both stock yards in Lewistown and worked at the Fergus County Court House for many years.
  Carrie Belle married Robert Daniels and later moved to the Billings area. They had a family of three sons, Bob, John and Bill and two daughters, Mrs. Elizabeth Todd, Billings and Naomi Paronto of Douglas, Wyoming.
  Bill Daniels married Charlotte Townsend who graduated from Roy High in the class of 1936 with his sister, Elizabeth Todd who passed away several years ago.

  My first contact with the Blood Creek area was in the spring of 1936 when my mother, Carrie Hardy, was hired by Joe Peoples to cook for his lambing crew. I was 9 years old and hadn't been away from the immediate Lewistown area since before I started school. The country was so big and the people were so few that it was quite an experience to ride the two hours in Snowball Hughes pickup out to the Mabelle Galloway place.
  I well remember the vacant homesteader shacks that were within sight. John Beedy, Harry Mead, Charles Foreman, Grant Gore and Rueben Murphy places; all vacant and lonely looking. Although you could see for miles, the only inhabited houses within sight were the Galloways. Bill, his sister, Gene, and their mother lived a quarter mile north. Frank and Helen Messenger lived on the Will Schlecter homestead two and a half miles southwest. It was lonely but there were lots of new experiences such as new born lambs and learning to ride a horse.
  There was still one month of school to complete so I walked the three miles to the Kachia school. Mrs. Mike Myers was the teacher. There were only two other students, both older than myself. One was Don Myers. My new life was an exciting and adventurous time.
  Joe Peoples was born in Ballyscallon, Ireland and had emigrated to Canada. He worked on the Hudson Bay extension of the Canadian Northern Railway in the Pas area of Manitoba. Later he operated a hotel in Strasburg, Saskatchewan. At the time of the Titanic disaster he had saved enough money to return to Ireland for a visit. In fact, he had started his trip when he heard of the sinking and decided to forego it. With the outbreak of WWI he came to the Roy area; working on the section for the Milwaukee Railroad and homesteading on Little Crooked Creek, about 12 miles north of Valentine. He married Mabelle Galloway and moved to her homestead on Blood Creek, where I first got to know him. Mabelle was a school teacher and had died in 1935. He had at least one brother living in North Dakota but as far as I know there was never any contact between them.
  Mom cooked for the lambing crew again the ^{P.  230} following spring. On New Years Day 1938, Mom and Joe were married. I remember they went up to St. Joseph's Hospital to see Snowball Hughes that day. This was the last they saw him, as we were in Illinois when he died. The community had lost one of its real pioneers. After his death, his wife, Mary, and her sister continued to run the ranch for many years.
  My grandparents wanted Mom and Joe to get a farm in Illinois. They did look at some but he was never very enthusiastic about the idea. Neither was I and was glad that when spring arrived he returned to Montana and put in a crop on Mabelle's place. Mom and I followed later.
  In September I enrolled in the 7th grade at Kachia. The other two students were Margaret and Raymond Spiroff. I only lasted two days at school, then spent the next year in bed. That was a bad year for me, but I was helped by Bill Galloway. He brought me some old National Geographics to help spend the time. It was in these that I first discovered the railroad advertisements which lead to my love of maps and map making. I started writing for railroad timetables. Bill Galloway usually rode his horse the 3 miles to get our mail and I waited eagerly for his cheery knock on maildays.
  In 1939 Joe bought the Andrew Murphy homestead down on the main Valentine road and we "temporarily" moved into the one-room log cabin for lambing season. There was one big advantage; Andy had a good well of drinking water, which was very scarce in the area. That temporary move became permanent. We remained in that cabin until 1943 when Joe purchased the house Rollie Rossiter had built on his homestead, and moved it to the Murphy place. It was a big improvement having three rooms. Joe had Fred Bauman build an additional two on the back.
  During WWII prices of lambs and wool were very good. Joe prospered and added the Robert Covert, James Weir and 160 acres of Fergus Sheep Company land to his holdings.
  I attended 7th grade in Lewistown. The next year I started 8th grade at Valentine school. Zell ConoIly was the teacher and the other kids were Alice and Ida Potter and Joe, Earl and Harry Bevis. I rode the 7 miles to school and back on a bicycle until the weather got too bad then I transferred back to Lewistown.
  The summer before I started my freshman year (1941) the principal made a special trip to the ranch to try to recruit me for the Roy High School. Even then they were having trouble keeping their enrollment up. He was unsuccessful. I wanted to go to Lewistown with the kids that I had been with the previous year.
  During my high school days I worked part time as a janitor at the school and used part of my earnings to buy some of the, then, very abundant tax title land. I purchased the Charles Little, John Anderson and Tim Green homesteads. Mom had already purchased the Mabelle Galloway homestead from the Union Central Life Insurance Co. I was looking forward to graduation and becoming a full-fledged rancher on Blood Creek.
  Uncle Sam had other ideas. After high school I found myself in the army. Upon returning after my discharge I immediately resumed my plans. With the land I had purchased along with what Mom had and with the addition of the Mary Stevens homestead I had 6 homesteads. I was sure that I would succeed where so many others had failed. Mom and Joe had separated before I went in the army so she joined me on Mabelle's place.
  Even in the late 1940's we still had our monthly dances at the Valentine hall. I remember that one time we even had a movie there. It was a Joe E. Brown comedy. One Sunday morning I returned home from the dance just as the sun was coming up. Since I had plowing to do I started up the tractor and went to the field. All went well until I fell asleep and ran through a barbwire fence. Little damage was done but it convinced me I needed some sleep.
  Short crops, dry years and insufficient financing turned my dream into a nightmare. I was spending more and more time away, working to pay the bills. In 1951 1 gave up, made a deal with Ed and Mildred Styer to run my cattle and went to work for Greyhound. I hoped to return to the ranch, even maintained my voting residence at Kachia, but as the years piled up I realized that even though I had a special spot in my heart for the area I would never return. It was in talking to some of the younger people at the Roy 75th celebration that I realized I had left my mark on the community when they said they knew the Hardy place, but didn't know the former owner.

  Enoch Houtes and his family lived about four miles southwest of Valentine. He had been a miner at Butte. He and his wife had several children, including daughters, Evelyn born in 1909 and Inez born in 1904 and a son, Harold born in 1906.
  Inez married "Doc" Jackson and they had several children. ^{P.  231}

  Lawrence Kauth was born February 15, 1892 in York, Nebraska. Margie Howe was born February 4, 1892 in Holly Springs, Iowa. They met and were married in York, Nebraska on December 27, 1911.
  I, Ava Mae, was born in 1916 in Roy, Montana. There was a midwife in Roy who had a little place set up behind her home where she would deliver babies and this is where I was born on a fall day in October. Her name was Mrs. Andrew Norby.
  I weighed 4 pounds and was the smallest one at birth of my brother and sisters. I have three sisters and one brother, but my brother died when he was a baby. Homer Lawrence was the oldest of the children in our family. Then came Ruth Evelena, myself, Thelma Lucille and Edythe Viola.
  My folks moved from Geneva, Nebraska about 1914 or 1915 to Montana. First Daddy took up a homestead about 30 miles southeast of Roy, then my Grandpa (Gusty Kauth) came out from Nebraska and took up a homestead. My grandmother had died so he left Nebraska and brought with him two of his youngest children, my uncle, Cecil Oren, who was about 12 and my aunt, May Alta Kauth (Walker), who was about 10 years old.
  My mom and dad had my oldest sister, Ruth, and they took up homesteads side by side. They lived in Grampa's house after they had proved up on my dad's land to make it a legal homestead.
  While they were improving on their land they lived in a sod dugout.
  They would cut special sized sod blocks of hard packed dirt with grass mixed in it and build them stacked one on top of the other for a house. They were like bricks or stone only they were sod pieces. There were no trees to cut lumber to build with. What few pieces of lumber that were found were put on across the top of the house and dirt or sod was put on top of that to make a roof. Then lumber was hauled or bought and a house was built. Grampa Kauth had one section and we lived in the other.
  I recall my mother being unhappy about the new house as she said she didn't sleep well at night because she was always afraid of snakes coming in through the sod and dirt. But it sure was nice in the summer when it was so hot outside, it always stayed an even temperature inside.
  This is where they were living when Momma and Daddy brought me home after I was born.
  About 1921 we moved into the W.E. Jones place and improved on it for a homestead. Each time we moved, it was to a better homesite and house.
  My dad and grandfather farmed and raised cattle together for a living. My mother helped to raise Aunt May and Uncle Cecil.
  Our finances were pretty rough but we always seemed to have enough to get by with. Hand-me-down clothes and enough to eat, that was what was important.
  I started school at age six and attended Valley View school way out in the country. My first year of school, Momma or Daddy would take me to school or my older sister, Ruth and I would ride horseback to school and when it started to get cold my folks would take us on Monday and leave us there all week till Friday night. We would board right in the school house. All the parents of the children that boarded at school would furnish food and everything that was needed while we stayed at school during the cold weather. We had cloak rooms we would put our beds in during the day and there was a basement big enough where we had a table and the teacher would cook in the basement for us. We would live like that from Monday until Friday, then our parents would come and pick us up and we would go home for the weekend.
  My teachers name was Mrs. Rossiter. She was my teacher all the way through my grade school years except for about the last three months of my eighth grade. We changed schools from the Valley View school over to the Kachia school and when we moved it was in February. I stayed in a private home and then my teacher's name was Mable Peoples. She taught me for three months. Then the next fall there were enough students in this area that they moved the school house. This was closer to Mrs. Rossiter's home so she continued teaching. She rode horseback about three miles. I don't think she missed a day. We were all girls in the school. My best friend through all the grade school years was Louise Beal.
  I recall a trip we took as a family in the fall of 1928; we went from Montana out further west to Washington. Daddy had just bought a new Chevy car and Momma had a brother and two sisters that lived there. We visited all over the country. On the way we were exposed to chicken pox. We came home to Roy and exposed others and it went through the whole country. It was around Christmas time, we went to all the Christmas programs and it really got spread around. Our teachers always had Christmas programs and everyone attended in the community.
  I can remember always having Christmas in our home and all the fun and excitement that went with it. We would open our gifts on Christmas morning. We would get up early and go for the Christmas tree. We hung up our stockings too. We always had a lot of community parties where everyone would get together and visit or dance.
  The spring of 1930 we moved to a different farm, my parents were still continuing to dry land farm and raise beef cattle for a living. This was a better farm but with the move I changed schools. ^{P.  232}
  I recall that Halloween while we were growing up. Momma and Daddy had gone to town. I was about 12 or 14 years old. We were old enough to stay at home by ourselves. We had gone to a Halloween party and they gave us these things you blow on and they unwind and whistle or squeak and they usually have a feather at the end. So it was after dark when Momma and Daddy came home and we blew out the light so it was dark in the house and about the time Momma opened the door, I blew this thing in her face and she just keeled over, fainted. I went to work and grabbed the wash dish with old dirty water in it and threw it all over her. Her clothes were just soaked. She came out of it. She sure was angry and we learned not to play pranks like that again!
  The house we moved to had a big kitchen with a kind of "lean-to" built on to another house. There was a big living room and a big room which we made into a bedroom at night. We didn't have indoor plumbing or water inside the house. We had good water on this place. We had to haul it from the well quite a ways from the house.
  While we were living on the W.E. Jones place, us kids got big enough to go to church. They held church in the little community church (Waverly). We girls walked to church just about every Sunday. It was about two miles from our house. There was a caretaker that took care of the church; a Mr. Frank Barrels. I was baptized in the Presbyterian Church. This was about 1926.
  I graduated from the eighth grade at the Kachia school in 1930.
  I started high school in 1930-31 at Roy. Ruth and I batched in one room my folks rented from some people. We had our bed and we cooked and ate and everything in that one room. We heated it with coal. When Lucille graduated from grade school, the folks moved out east of Roy in 1932. My sister, Ruth, married Harry Wright November 7, 1932.
  Louise Beal moved away when she graduated from the eighth grade. Sarah Beuchner and I were close friends during my high school years.
  I played on the Roy high school basketball team and played some baseball. I liked music and loved to dance.
  I was about 16 when I was operated on for appendicitis. An old ewe got down and couldn't get up and I tried to help her up and get to the shed and I lifted on her too hard and ruptured my appendix.
  I didn't notice much pain before that time, but we didn't pay much attention to all our aches and pains. My parents took me to Lewistown to be operated on. It was quite an impressive event to be in the hospital for an operation at that time.
  After my folks moved out east of Roy, my mother moved to town with us. She took in boarders. She later purchased the Roy Cafe and Hotel. My mother and father were divorced in May of 1943.
  After I graduated from high school, in 1935, I started to work in the restaurant, for Nickolson, for $10.00 a month and my board and room.
  We always thought a lot of both our mom and dad and respected them. Being farmers and ranchers, we had time together as a family.
  Dad passed away in 1953. Mom passed away in 1966. Both are buried in Lewistown.
  Lucille married Dick Komarek in December of 1935. I married Wilbert Zahn in September of 1936 and Edythe married Russell Oquist in the early 40's and they moved to Washington where they made their home. The rest of us all stayed in the Roy area.

  Coy A. Lovitt was born October 15, 1886 in Illinois and as a very young child moved to Nebraska with his parents, George and Pleasant Jane Lovitt.
  Mae McCoy was born January 8, 1889 at Tamora, Nebraska. Coy and Mae were married in Nebraska and came to Roy where they homesteaded. Coy was granted the patent on November 7, 1917 for his land.
  They returned to Nebraska two years later. Coy died March 3, 1955 and Mae died April 24, 1966.
  They had two daughters: Meads (Mrs. James Curran) of York, Nebraska and Jane (Mrs. Pete Steeb) of Omaha, Nebraska. ^{P.  233}

 Henry and Anna came from Utica, Nebraska in 1914 to homestead on Antelope Creek. They lived there until 1917 when they moved to the Judith Basin area. They had two children. Ray was 9 and Eva was 7 when they moved here. They attended a log school not far from their home. Henry had a blacksmith shop and people of the area brought their work to him. All four members of the family are gone. Henry died in 1956, Ray in 1980 and Eva Bourke in 1983. Annie died shortly before her 103rd birthday after living at Valley Vista Manor for many years.
  Henry Ludeman, Sr. and his wife homesteaded some miles north about the same time. (T 19N R 25E Sec. 8, 17)

  George Martin Sr., Harry Martin and Lott Martin (brothers) all settled in the Valentine area. They, along with their families all came from York, Nebraska area.

  The George Martin family came to the Kachia area in September of 1916, later than the Harry and Lott Martins. He did not homestead but leased various places and farmed.
  After they left the Kachia area they farmed in the Black Butte area until George passed away in November of 1937 at the age of 70. After his death Lillie moved to Lewistown and in 1954 to Great Falls where she passed away in November of 1962 at the age of 83.
  George and Lillie had a large family of 10 children. They were: Gertrude Irene (Dodd), Minnie May "Peggy" (Bennyhoff), Clyde Elmer, Harold Edwin, Clara Bell (Noble), George Eldridge, Ivel Viola (Bickler), Verl,
Marion Stella (Harvey) and Madeline Adeline "Melba" (Turpack). Marian and Madeline were born after they came to Montana.
  Clara and Peggy left in 1926 and went to live in Great Falls where they became hair stylists. Clara owned her own beauty shop in Great Falls.
  Clyde married Florence Hall in 1941. He worked as a barber in Lewistown. He died in November of 1971. He had a stepdaughter, Monette Gilpatrick.
  George Jr. and Harold both remained around the Roy area for many years. (See individual histories.) Of the ten children only Melba and Clara still survive in 1988.

  Kachia became a post office in 1916. It was located, which would be as of now, twelve miles east and three and one-half miles north of Bohemian Hall.
  We lived in York, Nebraska. By profession my father was a barber and had his own shop. He became involved with politics and was appointed Deputy Sheriff of our county.
  I'll never forget the evening at the supper table when papa announced that he had quit his job that day. I was old enough to realize that meant no income. In a day or two it came out - he was going to Montana and file on a homestead; he wanted a piece of land. Within a week he was on his way. His ticket on the train cost $25.01.
  In a few weeks time he and others had each spotted a place, but this particular area had not been opened up by the government for filing. My father was asked to spend the winter here and watch that no one came in and jumped the claims. People living on unfiled claims were called squatters.
  In the meantime my father had written my mother telling her to sell everything and come to Montana. Reluctantly my mother did. She cried the day her piano was sold. The proceeds of this sale bought our tickets.
  We left York, Nebraska at 3 a.m., Tuesday, December 9, 1913. At noon on Thursday, December 11th we got off the train at Moccasin, Montana. The train for Lewistown didn't come until evening.
 My mother took us up the street a block or two to a hotel. The proprietor, a cheerful lady, asked my mother where she was going and my mother told her we were going to a homestead. The cheerful lady threw up her hands and said a mother with four babies had no business on a homestead. A number of times, in later years, I heard my mother say that she had enough money to take her and the children back to Nebraska and maybe she should have returned.
  There was a restaurant across the street and my brother, DeLette and I were allowed to go over there for sandwiches. I suppose we stayed with the younger
^{P.  234} children while my mother went to the restaurant.
  It was there that I saw the mountains for the first time. Here I also heard people talking about the new railroad trestle at Hanover.
  Early evening we boarded the train for Lewistown. My father met us at the Great Northern Depot and we walked up town to our hotel. I remember the brightly lighted store windows, especially Powers. It was the Holiday Season. We stayed at the Judith Hotel. Today that would have been a three story building right next to the T. V. Appliance Store.
  During the days my folks shopped for a sheepherder's stove and groceries. They took the middle two youngsters, DeLette and Lois, with them. I walked up and down main street with my younger brother, Richard. We would walk as far as the mill and we would also watch them building on the new Milwaukee Depot. It was on one of these walks that I saw a man kick and roll another man across the street. Now it would have been like from Deal's across to the Country Junction.
  After staying in the hotel for three days, which really cut into our budget, my mother insisted we get on the road. So with three wagons and four children we left Lewistown in the evening.
  Our first night we stayed at some old sheep sheds which now is the saw mill site east of town. We slept under the wagons on the ground. There was a good road over the Judith Mountains then, but we were so heavily loaded that we would probably have had numerous break downs so we had to drive around the mountains.
  After five days of slow boring travel we arrived at the home of Rollie and Mable Rossiter. They had a one room cabin and how they put us up I don't recall, probably the men slept in the barn.
  For December the weather was good and today if we have a storm or blizzard in December I say to myself, "The Lord surely had his arms around us on that trip" I think my mother walked a good share of the way and carried Richard, who was two at that time. I must have walked too, as I don't remember riding in any of the wagons.
  In about three days papa had the cabin we were to spend the winter in ready for occupancy. How six of us existed in a 12 x 12 tarpaper cabin for a few months, I just don't know.
  It wasn't but a matter of days before Christmas was upon us. Papa went to the hills west of us and got a very small tree. There just wasn't room to set up a tree in our cabin so my mother tied it to a bed post.
  Late afternoon of December 24th my father started across country, a foot, to play for a wedding dance. He walked several miles and played the violin all night, the only piece of music there. He caught a ride part way home the next morning. We had our Christmas dinner, which was a pot luck, at the home of Harry and Bernice Blank. There we met our future neighbors.
  During the winter my father would borrow a team of horses and he and my brother, DeLette, would go to the timber for logs. Then they erected the log cabin which was to be our home for three and one-half years.
  Early in April my father walked to Roy, caught a ride to Lewistown where he met my grandparents, Joe and Emily Fountain, from York, Nebraska. They unloaded a team and wagon and started out for the homestead. The rest of their freight came into Roy on the first train. This time they were able to drive over the Judith Mountains, the route the mail man traveled daily from Lewistown to Gilt Edge. This trip took two days.
  While in Lewistown papa found out that our area had been opened up for filing. The first day home grandpa and papa stepped off our additional 160 acres and then 320 acres for grandpa which joined our 320 acres.
  Grandpa built a nice frame house about an eighth of a mile from our house. One day papa was breaking ground between the two houses. Richard and Lois had been to Grandma's and were returning home by way of newly-plowed ground when Richard suddenly said to Lois, "Looky dere, Lois". There was a big rattlesnake coiled. Their squeals brought both papa and mama. After things had quieted down someone asked Lois how she knew what it was and her reply was, "I saw snakes in the carnival."
  Richard and Lois had a teeter-totter. A log on the corner and lower part of the cabin stuck out and this is what they put a board on. One day they were on it and not thinking Lois stepped off and Richard dropped down with a bang. He had broken the small bone in the elbow cavity. Needless to say, he wasn't taken to a doctor. My mother rocked him for three nights and still had to hold him when he slept.
  Our first fourth of July came and our neighbor, Harry Blank, sent word out there would be a come-one-come all picnic at his place, with a dance. I remember there being races. Mary Brownlee came in first and I came in second in the girls race. The dance lasted all night. Those who could play the fiddle took turns for playing as did ones who could call square dances and the Virginia Reel. My father was always one of the fiddlers. A huge crowd came, some people driving ten or fifteen miles.
  Now my mother started talking school and writing to the County Superintendent as to how to get one started in a new community. It wasn't too long before the ball started to roll. Men hauled logs and erected a good sized building -- all volunteer labor. There was a big box supper and dance on Halloween to help defray expenses.
 School started in November and our first teacher was Mable Galloway, aunt of Lewistown's Bob Daniels. Our school was for six months. In due time there were two other schools organized. Our school had an enrollment of twenty-five students while the other schools had ^{P.  235} twelve to fifteen students each. There was always a school picnic the last day of school. There was no playground equipment, so we made our own fun. Our favorite game was pump, pump pull-away. Another was ante-over. These games all children could participate in.
  Early in the winter of 1914 grandpa came down with pneumonia. My mother and grandma did what they could for him but he still worsened. My father drove to Roy and sent Dr. Faulds out, who drove a car. The doctor said they were doing all that could be done for him, and he did recover. The doctor's bill was $20.00 which they thought reasonable. My grandparents returned to Nebraska in the fall of 1914; grandpa returned in the spring of 1915 to prove up on his homestead. Being a Civil War Veteran he could do that in twenty one months.
  In 1915 Rev. Arthur Richey and wife, Diva, and three little girls arrived from Nebraska and located on a homestead. They were only there seven months out of the year, but they were an asset to the community. Church services and Sunday School were held in the school house. The Richey homestead is still owned by the family.
  In the spring of 1917 our teacher Bertice L. Greenfield decided to take the four seventh graders to a track meet in Lewistown. Ida Green participated in the math contest, Carl Beedy in spelling and Frank Southworth in running. I was in memorized speech but there was no competition in that area. However, I did present my memorized poem on one of the programs. What a thrill for all of us. A neighbor took us to Roy in his car and from there we took the train. We four students stayed at the high school dormitory and that was the ultimate. What a comedown to have to go back to our homestead school.
  By the next year I had finished the eighth grade and my mother was determined I should attend high school. At that time girls could work for their room and board, but my mother knew I wasn't smart enough to do that and go to school, so that meant moving to Lewistown. My sister, Virginia Grace, was born when we moved to Lewistown.
  We had many frustrations. One in particular I remember well. In the fall mama sent an order to National Cloak and Suit Company for shoes, galoshes, caps, mittens, etc. At that time our post office was Lindstrom and the mail was brought out from Roy in a sack or two by anyone that happened to be in Roy. Then the mail was spread on a table and anyone could come in and pick up mail for himself and a nearby neighbor. Mama had to reorder three times before we got our order and then it was spring.
  Our first post office, Kachia, was maintained by Wm. Rose. He passed away and it was then assigned to Belle Harris. The Kachia post office was abandoned about 1920.
  By the end of four years I think we all had our fill of hard times. The gardens were fair, crops poor - no water, every bit of water we used from a barrel hauled from the one good well in the community; this was at John Beedy's. Every year men would have to take time off and go to the Missouri River timber breaks for fire wood. The head of the family usually had to go down to the Basin as they called it and work in the harvest fields to make a grub stake. Our years on the homestead were rough and we wouldn't forget them for anything, in fact, it developed stamina in all of us.
  The family moved to a place just 1 mile east of Lewistown in 1918 and lived there for four years before moving on into town.
  Harry was a barber in Lewistown for many years. He passed away in 1939. Cora passed away in 1969. Both are buried in Lewistown.
  Murna married Frank Southworth. (See F. Southworth)
  Lois married Burleigh Allen. He was with the FBI and they lived in many different places before finally settling in Billings, where they still reside. They had one daughter, Cora, named after her grandmother.
  DeLette worked for the Lewistown Democrat News for 15 years after he completed school and then moved to Arizona in 1941. He lived there until 1974 when he returned to Montana to attend a family reunion and never went back to Arizona. He lives in Lewistown.
  Richard became a barber like his father. In 1941 he moved to Portland, Oregon where he made his home.
 Virginia married Dick Kalina. (See Kalina) She was a well known piano player for dances throughout Central Montana for years. She passed away in 1980.
^{P.  236} 

  Lott Martin came to Montana to homestead in 1916 with his wife, Isabelle, and five children: Mildred, Lenora, Lester, Leta and Robert. The following account of their three years in the area is the result of a taped interview with Leta McClure, "the only one left", with Illa Willmore.
  Harry Martin, Lott's brother, had come to Montana first. Lott and his family had moved from near York, Nebraska to North Dakota. But that didn't work out. They were in Dakota only one year, just for the crop, which hailed out. Harry encouraged Lott to come to Montana. "The folks were in a moving mood so that's where we came. It seemed like the thing to do." On Lott's 40th birthday, in April of 1916, he came to Montana to file on a homestead. He went right back to Dakota, rented an emigrant car and returned to Montana. He came with the emigrant car, the family by train.
  "I can just remember so well, out there on the homestead--you see, we were just 26 miles east and a little north of Roy, 7 miles west of Valentine, by that range of hills with the pine trees on it. I can't remember how we got from Roy to Uncle Harrys but I do remember when we got there, there were seven of us, and Uncle Harry's family of seven, and Aunt Cora went out to pick potatoes for supper and they were such little marbles and I thought,' How's she gonna feed us'.
  "Right near the log school house there was a bachelor. Ed Foresman, who had a cabin, one room, but he was gone for the winter, so we stayed there that winter, seven of us, and we kids went to school and my Dad spent the winter building the homestead house. That was about 4 miles to the east (of the homestead).
  "The homestead was near Gene Galloways. I remember her the most, in fact, Mable and Geneva Galloway, two young women, taught us over at our school when they got a school going near us, a mile or so west of us.
  "I can see Gene yet. I was probably about 8 years old. She had the most beautiful saddle horse, a bay, and she would ride across from the ranch to the school. Mable too.
  "My folks were on the homestead three years, until 1919. It was during the flu epidemic that my Dad's brother, George, who lived west of us had sent over for my Mother and Dad to come because they were all down with the flu. They went.
  "Lester had spent the weekend with a boy friend, the Livingstons, and came home sick. He had gotten the flu. The folks came back home.
  "I remember it was just beautiful weather. Les was so sick. He was 14. Dad went to Roy to fetch the doctor; which he did. He examined Lester, then after they talked he and Father walked out towards the barns. The doctor left and my dad came in. I can hear him say yet, "The doctor said it was fatal." And there I was -- at that age (about 10), just couldn't accept"-- -- her voice trails off as the memory of those terrible words she heard as a child, once again shock and hurt.
  "Lee died. Dad went to get the coffin and Uncle George went with him. They had to go clear to Lewistown to get it. Uncle Harry had moved to town by that time, out on the Grass Range road. They came back with the coffin.
  "A neighbor lady came and prepared the body. Some neighbors to the north -- name of Martin too, no relation -- he came and preached the service. (I don't recall his first name, he had a son named Ernest.) He was not a minister, just a very religious person and he could read from the Bible. The service was held in the home.
  "I can still see my dad, he had squatted down by the stove; there weren't enough chairs, and he was crying. And of course that hit me -- I'd never seen my dad cry.
  "Out in our community there were two people (one a Mr. Blank), with Ford cars. We went to Roy. The coffin was in one car, we followed in the other car.
  "Dad had gone to Jones, he handled things like that (at the time Lott had gone in after the coffin) and had picked out a grave. When we got into Roy the grave hadn't been dug. Naturally there was no money for 5 or 6 of us to stay in a hotel so we had to go back home and Lester was buried without us there.
  "After Lester's death the folks couldn't leave the homestead fast enough. He died early in the year of 1919, we left that spring."
  "Mother always wanted to have Lester's body moved into Lewistown, but somehow it's never gotten done and he is still at Roy."
  After the family moved to Lewistown, Lott would go back out to the homestead to plow and farm until he had proved up on it. Leta and a cousin would go along and cook for him. After he proved up he sold to Gene Galloway.
  Another incident, a happy one, that Leta remembered about her childhood occured before Lester's death and proves that kids then, were no different than they are today.
  Her mother was entertaining on this particular day and had told Les and Leta to 'be good'. They were -- in their own way. They decided to blacken themselves, as vaudeville actors did in those days, and they used Axel grease. On their faces and their arms. "Mother was not happy."
  Lott worked with his brother, Harry, as a barber after he moved to Lewistown. Lott passed away in April of 1937. His wife, Isabelle, passed away in March of 1945. Mildred married Milo Buck of the Little Crooked area. Lenora married Milo's brother, Monte. The Bucks had come from Illinois.
  Leta, now a widow, married Earl McClure and lives in Lewistown. She worked at Safeway for several years until retirement.
  Robert Martin married Claire Ramsey and they also lived in Lewistown. He worked at UBC for many years.

• The Kachia Post Office on the William Rose Homestead, 1918. Mary Brownlee pictured.
• The Women folk and kids. Back row. L. to R: Cora Martin, ? Chambers, Diva Richey, Mae Levitt, Anna Ludeman, Clara Miller, Murna Martin, Mable Rossiter and ? Levitt. Middle row: Lola May Richey, Richard Martin, Lorene Richey, Lois Richey, Lois Martin, Eva Ludeman and Rupert Miller. Front: Mary Brownlee and Lydia Miller.
• The Kachia Schoolhouse 1914.
• A Sunday afternoon gathering at the Alex Millers in 1916. The men folk. Back row, L. to R: Milton Soverign, ? Lovitt, ? Chambers, Clarence Miller, Harry Martin, Walter Knudson, Arthur Richey, Alex Miller and Coy Lovitt.
• The Blum family: Elizabeth, Anna and Mathias with Barbara in front.
• Lawrence and Margie Kauth, December of 1911.
• Mrs. Kauth and her four daughters taken in 1948 at a family reunion held in Roy. From left to right: Edythe Oquist, Lucille Komarek, Margie Kauth, Ava Zahn and Ruth Wright.
• Taken in front of the Harry Martin log home on July 4, 1914. Back row, L. to R. Cora, Harry, Grandma Emily Fountain and Grandpa Joe Fountain. Front row: the Martin children; Murna, Lois, Richard and DeLette.