Frank D. "Sandbar" Brown

 A person enmeshed in the affairs of Charles McLure and Paul Fusz was “Sandbar” Brown. He was a manager for McLure at Combination in 1901 when financial woes caused a sheriff sale and Fusz bought most of the Company property stock for ten cents a share. Documents in the Montana Historical Society Archives (Antonioli Donation) then show Brown working for The American Gem Mining Company and numerous communications from Fusz unhappy with Brown’s behavior. He repeatedly bought supplies from Gannon and Neu against Fusz’s direction. Then about the same time as Fusz sent Sandbar notice to “deliver all books, papers, plats, letters, letter books, check books and other property you have belonging to this company to O. F. Featherman” in 1906, the claims he had patented for The American Gem Company were found to be invalid. In 1904, there was also a charge filed on Sandbar for branding a stolen colt with the Fusz brand. Judge Connolly threw the case out of court due to lack of evidence.

As early as 1881 articles were published in the New Northwest newspaper penned by “Sandbar” and to display his colorful prose is the following example on July 18, 1881:

 …As your correspondent of the future, I feel a delicacy in attempting to explain away certain occurrences of the past, neither creditable to the camp or the people thereof, providing of course, that the protection of one’s property is to be considered discreditable, for I think with you that a disagreeable reminiscence should never be recalled. I can therefore dismiss the past in the light of a more hopeful future. In my next letter I will give your readers a review of our good mines, and of those prospectively such. Of matters relating to our district and the surrounding country it is my intention to speak ex cathreda or not at all. I have conscientious scruples against lying, and cannot, therefore speak of my own property, but will endeavor to place that of others in a light that will never call my veracity into question.

 These mining articles were often lengthy but not always as current as Brown maintained. A good example was his reports about the Algonquin going well, when it was actually being closed for lack of funds during March of 1881. Sandbar published many articles in the Philipsburg Mail and may have spent time as an Editor for the paper. Numerous online statements and articles in The Mansfield Library at the University of Montana describing his papers state he at one time owned the Mail. Ownership of the Philipsburg Mail is well documented and there is no evidence F.D. Brown ever had ownership of the paper.

Frank was born on the James River in Virginia, November 21, 1845. At the age of sixteen he enlisted in the Confederate Army and his Battalion fought the last battle of the Civil War on Virginia soil. He was formally pardoned at the end of the War and with government supplied transportation headed for St. Louis. He had become friends with a man during the war that regaled him in stories of the west, so knew he wanted that experience. Frank immediately signed on with the Missouri Steamboat service and was on the maiden voyage of the Adelaide which landed him at Fort Union, September 29, 1865. 

The winter of 65-66 was spent with a Frenchman trapping the Yellowstone River and after selling his furs that spring in Bozeman, he moved on to placer mining in Radersburg. The following years were spent trapping, cutting wood, driving teams and then mining in many of Montana’s early camps. In 1875 Sandbar was a government scout on the ill fated Baker Expedition down the Yellowstone. He was at Prickly Pear, Last Chance, Bear Gulch, and one “fruitless” season prospecting in Utah. 

The story goes that Brown’s first experience with Indian fighting was in the autumn of 1866. He was a government teamster out of Fort Laramie and involved in repelling the Sioux from closing the Bozeman Trail. Frank was also involved in Indian skirmishes at Prior’s Creek and around Fort Benton. Near Fort Benton is where his nicknamed “Sandbar” was obtained. 

According to the Philipsburg Mail January 23, 1931: 

He and two companions had come upon evidence of the massacre of a wagon train; they successfully evaded a large band of Indians and were fording the Missouri with their pack train, when Brown, as they rested on a sandbar in the river, discovered three Indians in war paint following them. He killed all three of the rods before his companions knew that anything had happened. The bodies of the Indians were thrown into the river and the pack train completed the ford.

An exaggerated account of this tale was published May 4, 1923 in the Great Falls Leader: 

…Not vouching for the story, but telling it as it was told to me in the days when every man had something tacked onto the name his folks gave him, it relates to Mr. Brown and the red brothers of the day when scalp locks were more fashionable in the Indian village than short skirts to the rail bird brigade of today. Mr. Brown was rather sudden with a gun in the early time, and also a chief clerk of a large institution, between prospecting and hunting trips. The Henry Rifle, predecessor of the present Winchester had just come into use and Mr. Brown grabbed the first one off the boat…Mr. Brown was traveling along innocent like near the Missouri River one gladsome summer day and was jumped by about 20 red brothers all howling for ruddy gore and riding hell bent for a taste of it…Mr. Brown rode his horse across the river at a convenient ford, leading his pack horse. On the side where he came out was a long spit of sandbar reaching into the river and Mr. Brown rode up the sandbar to the bank, tied his horse and walked back to the open. Lo! The poor Indian had a cheerful habit of drawing the fire from the white man’s smoke stick and then charging in before he could reload; ...predicted upon the proposition that the white man had a single shot rifle and all necessary to success was to dodge the first bullet and then wade in. With twenty Indians coming across the river whooping Mr. Brown was to be made an example of... But Mr. Brown was a different kind of medicine than the red brother had ever met in his scalping entertainments as he kept right on firing while Indians kept tumbling to the sandbar in a most disconcerting fashion---the charge broke up and the Indians headed for the other shore, with seven down and Mr. Brown still shooting for good measure. Then he untied his horse filled the magazine of the little Henry and went on his blithesome way.” Mr. Brown said “Hell, I could have kivered the whole damn sandbar if they’d just kept coming!” when asked about the inequality of 20 Indians to one white man.

 This article was written at the time that Sandbar became secretary to the Society of Montana Pioneers. Frank was also the Historian for the Society for many years and “…was pioneer extraordinary as well as plenipotentiary to every ghost city of the west”, according to the May 4, 1923 Mail. 

In 1878 Sandbar and his wife Anna moved to Philipsburg where he accepted the position of Superintendent of the Northwest Company at Tower. Anna and Frank were married in 1873 in Helena, Montana. To this union was born two sons: Edward and James and three daughters: Minnie (Werning), Tina (Parker) and Amy (Spencer) plus two infants that are buried in the Philipsburg cemetery. 

For a number of years the family lived on the Brown homestead at the mouth of Brown’s Gulch on Upper Rock Creek. The first mention found of the family moving to town for the winter was October 4, 1893 in the Citizen Call. 

Earlier, Frank was also “determined to be a competent man” and because there was no Justice of the Peace in Philipsburg he was appointed Notary Public and prepared to perform such duties as lies with in that office.”(New Northwest August 5, 1881). 

He was appointed “…land commissioner for this district (June 13, 1894, Citizen Call). Also in 1894 he began writing articles for the Butte Tribune. Frank and Anna moved into Philipsburg after the youngest daughter Minnie married John Werning and the newly weds took over the Ranch. 

Frank was an agent for the Standard Fire Insurance Company, beginning in 1891, and sold real estate. He was named the Official Visitant to Camp Lewis during World War I by Governor Stewart. Anna died of cancer October 6, 1914 and Frank continued on, being very active in the Montana Society of Pioneers. He was responsible for marking all of the Mullan Trail with monuments. Other “Sandbar” monuments are also visible such as Gold Creek, Emmetsburg and headstones in the Philipsburg Cemetery. 

In December, 1918, still regarded as a mining expert, “Sandbar” and Robert McDonel were inducted to attend the American Mining Congress, attempting to stabilize manganese production. Dying “of sheer old age” January 16, 1931 in Missoula at daughter Tina’s, his wishes were honored to be buried beside Anna in the Philipsburg cemetery. His legacy: eighty-five years of history.

One cannot close this subject without also recognizing his poetry. His style is very well illustrated in the following poem published in the November 4, 1921, Philipsburg Mail.
                                               The Pass called Skalkaho
Just west of this low pass there is a gorge whose towering walls
Throw shadows dark on angry waters that ceaselessly flow
Over the witched bones of dead men, of red men, the Nez Perce,
And over these ghastly relics a requiem is even sung by stormy gales,
The coyotes whining cries and the lions fierce scream.
But for those who died there it matters not.
For they are dead, and
Forgotten, tho’ their bones gleam deadly white within the stream bed
The stalwart firs, the clinging, snakey vines there—if they could Speak—could tell the story of these white bones within the stream.
For they have kept silent watch and vigil over the litter of its bed
These many years.
And the greenward beside it, the moose and her calf
Step lightly there.
Deep hidden lay those bones of the redman.
Loftily over them storm
Clouds drift, clouds that sunshine never lifts.
Where silence is profound
And I sought this gorge again, as in years agone
I had sought it once
Before.
Then the white bones did not lie there, on the greenward or in the streambed.
I recall here now a memory, of Chief Joseph and his men.
Of the Nez Perce.
Of the men who never returned to where their skin lodge stood.
In them women wept for the warriors who had ridden away to lay their
Bones in the shadowy gorge whose waters cross the trail of the Skalkaho.
The greenward, where the moose cow and her calf, under the sailing
Moon I saw them there, dimly outlined in the gorge’s twilight gloom,
Out in the forest, and from the precipice came the rifle fire of white men.
And they held the trail until all was silent there, save the murmur of
The clear waters of the Skalkaho.
A battle bravely fought, won and lost In the
Moose glen, where the grinning skulls of red men lie to this day.
I speak of the day and time, when an Indian sign made
white men drop pick
And pan for a Winchester gun.
A war party was out in a country it
Knew all about.
It came in the night to ranches, and the gulches
Where the gold sands run.
No lights flashed from the mountain top.
No curling smoke to the sky.
No warning gave the warriors save the beat of unshod hoofs on age-worn forest paths.
From the whispering
Winds of the Northland was borne the coming of the Indian on the trail.
Beside it stood the lonely cabin of the miner, the ranch house of the
Settler, and within them lay the stark and naked forms of the dead.
And with the scalp locks of the white men, women and children, the red men
Rode away to the gorge over the low pass of the Skalkaho, where their
Bones now lie and they fell upon the greenward, along the pathway,
Where running waters leap and play, and their bones lie white to
This day.
Over the low pass, swept to bedrock by the northwest
Gale, runs the trail of Skalkaho, and in the deep gorge to its west
Along its stream and upon its greenward, in the
Moose glen, is what is
Left of the war party of fifty years ago.
And now you know the reason
Why in and out of season the shadowed waters of the gorge show white
Under the moon’s yellow glow, for here and there in the stream bed
Shows a thigh bone or a leg, and scalpless skulls lie
in the greenward below the windswept pass of the Skalkaho.

This poem is in reference to the time in 1878 when a band of renegade Nez Perce warriors came through the West Fork of Rock Creek. They were returning from Canada where they had escaped to after their Chief, Joseph was captured in the Pear Paw Mountains the year before. There are no records of any of the Nez Perce being killed during this episode, when Elliott, Joy and Hayes were killed in McKay Gulch and “Nez Perce” Jones escaped. But obviously Sandbar felt differently.

In July 1917, Sandbar was instrumental in getting headstones erected for these three men in the Philipsburg cemetery. Sandbar’s printed pamphlet, included the following: “…’The days of old, the days of gold.’ This testimonial was the gift of the lamented John G. Morony a resident of Philipsburg from his boyhood and a youthful friend of Elliott.”