Kate Price Dingwall

Lucy Coberley's  grand daughter Kate (Catherine) Price arrived with her brother John in the Deer Lodge Valley at the age of eighteen. She first stayed with Aunt Fedelia on the Stark ranch then went to live with Grandma Lucy at her hotel near Gold Creek. She attended school at New Chicago for a short time, before marrying William Dingwall.

The Dingwall brothers were friends of Grandma Lucy as they established a ranch near New Chicago in 1871. Kate crossed the plains three times before she arrived in Montana. First from Kansas to Colorado at the age of six months. Then the Price family crossed the plains back to Nebraska when she was five years old. Her last trip was from Nebraska to Montana in June of 1876. She married William Dingwall thirteen years her senior on December 20, 1877. On her wedding day she moved into a house that was near the spring on the Walter Olson ranch. Next they moved to a home that John Featherman had built in New Chicago. The original Dingwall ranch established in 1871 ultimately acquired more than 4,000 acres in the New Chicago area and became known as “The William Dingwall Company.”

 Kate was very busy running the household and raising four children. John born October 18, 1878 lived on the ranch until his death at the age of 77 on June 6, 1960. Leona’s birth followed shortly on December 12, 1879. She lived on the ranch except for a short time when she stayed with her mother in Missoula. Leona died on March 10, 1966 at the age of 86. William Duncan, the third child was born on October 26, 1881 and spent his life on the ranch until his death on October 15, 1943 just short of his 62nd birthday. James, the youngest, was born December 22, 1885 and lived his entire life on the ranch until his death on March 17, 1960.

Kate’s husband, William was born on October 14, 1844 in Ontario, Canada. After attending two years of High School he left for New York. He worked for six years as a clerk in a lumber store before deciding to travel west. William and his brother Duncan traveled by rail to Sioux City, then overland to the Missouri River where they caught a boat to Fort Benton, Montana. They joined a party of eighteen and engaged a freighting outfit to take them to Helena. Arriving at Helena in 1868, William worked for three years at a lumber yard before he and Duncan bought a herd of cattle and drove them to the Flint Creek Valley. William spent the next 58 years there, first with Duncan and then Kate and the children. After a short illness William died on the ranch July 16, 1929, at the age of 84. 

After years of hard work on the ranch, interrupted only once, when she broke her hip in 1941 and spent 93 days in the hospital, Kate and her daughter Leona moved into the Palace Hotel in Missoula December 20, 1944. She had lived for 67 years on the Dingwall ranch in the lower Flint Creek Valley. In April Kate became ill with pneumonia and died a week later on April 15, 1945. Both William and Kate were members of the Montana Society of Pioneers and William was an active Republican who served as Granite County Commissioner. He was the Chairperson when the new Court House was built in 1912. William was an organizer and stockholder in the First State Bank in Philipsburg and the Deer Lodge Bank and Trust Company at Deer Lodge. 

The Carl and Johana (Johanna) Nelson family had five children. Carl “had a butcher wagon and sold meat to the ranchers and farmers in the area” according to Jill Brody in the Coffee Table publication, “Drummond: Ranch Life in the West. The family lived on the edge of New Chicago when Jack (their third child was born) and lived next to the Dingwall’s for a while when Jack was a youngster. This was when Jack began working for the Dingwalls. The book cover of the book referred to above has a wonderful picture of Jack with his arms around two horses. The body of this book contains many pictures and a lot of conversation from the Nelson family. Jack literally became one of the Dingwall family and spent the rest of his life on the ranch. 

None of the Dingwall children married thus the William Dingwall Company was willed to Jack and Onita Nelson. Onita Kolbeck met Jack when they attended the first grade in Hall. She became Leona’s chauffeur in High School. As Dingwall employees, they asked for time off during the busy haying season useing the State Fair as a ruse and were married August 6, 1942, in Great Falls. The Nelson descendants continue to run this very important ranch in the lower Flint Creek Valley