At the time we moved to Forsyth, in April, 1887, there was one meat market and I remember that they gave liver away. The tents had been replaced by a number of false-front buildings with residences on the second floors and a few single story buildings. Main Street was still about the same length as when Papa had first arrived in 1882, and there were still 12 saloons. There were also two small general stores, one owned by Thomas Alexander the other by H.R. Marcyes. Of the names of the saloon owners, I remember only two and those, because they were in Forsyth many years later. One was Nels Gunderson and the other Andrew Jackson Kimball, a Civil War veteran from Maine who stood six feet, four inches tall, the exact height of President Lincoln. When the martyred president lay in state in Washington, men of his exact height were chosen from the Army to stand guard with a flag at each of the corners of the bier. Mr. Kimball was very proud of the fact that he was one who was chosen.

A year or two after we arrived, he married and left the saloon and moved to his ranch. Later he built a small residence next door to us.

I remember the name Bosworth from early days of Forsyth. They ran a hotel in a building owned by Tom Alexander. They arrived in Forsyth just before, or just after we did. There was a son, Irving, and a daughter, Martha, who married a man named William Becker. His brother, Bert Becker, worked in the Alexander store and later started his first hardware store in Forsyth.

There was a ram-shackle livery stable around the corner from the East end of Main Street which was owned by Ed Kennealy, but it was not paying expenses. Mr. Kennealy and Papa heard that work was to be had in Great Falls. Mr.Kennealy had a buckboard and team and Papa had enough money to "grub-stake" the trip so they drove over and both got work on a park being built there.

Late in the summer, with the park finished, they went to Anaconda and other western Montana cities. No work was to be had so they returned to Forsyth. Papa bought the livery stable from Mr. Kennealy as he thought he saw a chance to build up a business.

He was the first to sell coal in Forsyth and also to put up ice from the Yellowstone, which he furnished at $3 per month per family during the summer. He drove traveling salesmen from Forsyth to Rosebud, and, for a number of years, ran the stage route from Forsyth to Ashland and from Forsyth to Lame Deer, carrying mail and passengers. He also got out stone for foundations and had wood cut and sawed into stove lengths for winter freezing when it was easier to split.

There were always a number of hired men which were boarded at our house. It was said that Papa put most of the profit from the business into the men's stomachs. Papa replied that they all worked hard and had to eat well. All I know is that Papa could always get help and that, though he had a real good business, we were always hard up. Probably the real reason for the lack of profits was that Papa gave too much credit to strangers who, no doubt, were moving west and living on credit, moving on when it ran out. A bad luck story always got them coal or wood or, during hot weather, ice, although we three girls were clothed mostly from the old Jewish peddler's pack.

I wonder if anyone in Forsyth remembers this old bent man? Not so old at first, perhaps, as he was still making rounds when I was raising my family in Forsyth, but always very bent. He walked from town to town carrying a large pack on his back and a good sized valise in his hand. Papa often picked him up on his trips to and from Rosebud and allowed him to keep his pack at the livery stable and sleep in the hay.

After he had finished his rounds in Forsyth, he would come to our house, where he would give Mamma a piece of material for a dress. It was always exciting for us children as we always hoped that Mamma would be allowed to select some pretty material for our winter dresses as we each got just one wool dress a year. He gave her material which would make a dress apiece for two of us and one dress for herself. Mamma showed her preference but almost always had to take whatever he gave her and be thankful for that. We had some freaky looking dresses. When he opened his valise, which was filled with laces, embroideries and ribbons, he gave each of us girls a hair ribbon or a small piece of lace or embroidery. He once gave Ida a particularly ugly ribbon and she went straight to the kitchen and put it into the fire. Still, Papa could not pass the old fellow on the road without picking him up.

I am enclosing a picture of the building where Forsyth's first full term of school was held. During the fall of 1886, a man had conducted three months of school in a small frame shack on Cedar Street, but it was torn down or moved before we arrived in the Spring of 1887.

Olive Keise taught two terms, I believe, of nine months each in the building shown in the picture. It was a log house with a dirt roof and was located west of the two story, square brick house built by H.R. Marcyes on the south side of the tracks. Olive Keise, who was a niece of our landlady, became a good friend of our mother. She came to our house often. Since my sister was going to school, I insisted that I was going to go, too, as we had never been separated. Miss Keise told Mamma to let me come as there would be few students, even though I was only four years old.

The school equipment consisted of perhaps four or five double school desks which were occupied by the older students. The smaller students including my sister and I, sat at an improved desk made by fastening a long board to the wall and using a long bench fastened to the floor. I clearly remember that the boards weren't very smooth and we had to sit carefully or we got slivers. There were a couple of slate blackboards and above them were pictures of animals and objects. Miss Keise printed the names on the blackboard as well as the alphabet and numbers. Ida knew her letters. Mr. Glen had taught her how to print them on the homestead, using a stick on a sandbar in the Yellowstone, since we had no paper or pencil. A few of the older students had books, but they were the exception during the first few months. Miss Keise, no doubt, also had a few books.

The names of the students during the first year that I remember were Florence and Ethel Waddington, Claude, Ida and Eva Marcyes, Will Wood, (a cousin of Mrs. Thomas Hammond), two or three of the McHough boys, Mabel Brown, Porter McDonald, Harry and Tom Slater, Clela Smith, my sister, Ida, and I, and two or three others whose names I do not remember. I believe it was the following year that Nora, John and Cora Hough entered the school.

A third year of school was started with a man teacher but was not completed as the teacher disappeared, together with the credentials, Bible and clothing of a visiting minister who was staying at the same rooming house as the teacher.

The following year, school was held in the frame building on Main Street and, the next year, a frame school building was constructed on Cedar Street to hold about 30 students, but it soon had to accommodate about twice that number so, eventually, a second and then a third room were added. About 1900, a brick school house was built on East Main Street and the old school was used as a county court house. The building was eventually occupied by the American Legion.

Until the fall of 1889, the schools were upgraded. After completing the limited subjects, the older students began to repeat the books of the year before, starting at the beginning of the book each year and going through it as far as was convenient. As a result, some of the students who should have been studying high school subjects, or even should have graduated from high school, were still repeating grade school subjects.

Teachers were hard to find in the new western towns. Living conditions were poor and salaries were low. Until 1899, I believe I had one outstanding teacher, excepting Olive Keise and I was too young to profit much from her instruction, other than learning to like school. The time was not all lost, however. One year, less than a week before school was to start, Papa, who was a perennial school board member, had been unable to find a teacher for the upper classes. He had met a young archeologist by the name of Butler and thought him to be a very intelligent young man. He was touring the west on a bicycle, searching for fossils. Papa broached the subject of teaching to him and he accepted.

I can't say that we did too much book work that year but he opened up the outside world to us. He was a well informed student of mythology. Regardless of the class being conducted, it always led to one of his fascinating mythological stories. We heard the myths of Greece, Rome and the Norse countries, as well as a little ancient history.

Mr. James Hopkins had discovered the remains of a very large prehistoric animal just southeast of Castle Butte. He told Mr. Butler about this and I believe that is why he accepted the position Papa offered him in the school. He had begun the work of taking out this specimen and wanted to remain in Forsyth until he had finished. He called it a dinosaur.

By late summer of the next year he had the head, one claw, and many of the vertebra free from the soil in which it rested. He shipped the head and claw to Washington, D.C., and expected to ship the entire animal later, but for some reason, the vertebra are still there or were when we used to drive over for a picnic in the 1920's. They ranged in size, as I remember, up to 20 inches, or more in diameter. Our children skipped from stone to stone.

My sister, Ida, saw them in Washington several years later, but they were labeled as brontosaurus.
In the fall of 1899, Henry V. Beeman took over the Forsyth school and organized it into grades. He gathered the older pupils into an 8th grade and added several high school subjects. Thus, we who remained in the class were able to cover the accredited State High School course in three years. Forsyth's first high school class graduated in 1903.

I was happy to hear of the honor paid Mr. Beeman for his 50 years service to the state as an attorney, but I believe that he deserves greater honor from the city for laying the foundations for Forsyth's good schools.