Munis (Munesi)

South of the Mungas ranch on East Fork Road was located their cousin’s ranch owned by George and Annie Munis (Munesi) (Unknown when the spelling changed). The November 1, 1912 Mail, listed registered voters of Granite county with George Munesi living at Sec. 24, T5N, R15W. 

Born in 1881 in Yugoslavia, he came to America in 1900 and moved to Philipsburg in 1903. The homestead was taken up in 1910 and he married Anna in 1912. 

Annie and George (Joe) Munis 1912

Born to Annie and George were Nick, John, George, Mitchell and Robert. George’s (often known by Joe), headstone in the Philipsburg cemetery states George Joe Munis. 

Annie Parich (Perish, Perich) born 1887 in Yugoslavia came to the Flint Creek valley in 1912 when she married George and moved to the homestead. She lived there continuously with sons George and Robert after becoming a widow, until her death in 1954, at the age of sixty-seven. 

Their son Nick, born in 1913, was under-sheriff for Bryan Hynes beginning in 1946. He continued the position when Fritz Lueck was elected to the Sheriff office and when Fritz left the office Nick was acting sheriff until the 1954 election. He won the election and served as Sheriff until he retired in 1980. Prior to under-sheriff, Nick worked on the family ranch, logged, worked the Sapphire Mines, the Anaconda Smelter and the East Fork Dam Project. He held the Philipsburg Chief of Police position and resigned as of February 1, 1953. Apparently, he was filling the job of under-sheriff and chief of police at the same time. Nick lived on the Mitchell Munis ranch after he retired until his health forced him to move to the Granite County Memorial Nursing Home. He was an active member of the Flint Creek Masonic Lodge and The Montana Law Enforcement Association. He died at the Nursing Home July 10, 1996. 

Robert (Bob), born in 1931, worked for eighteen years for the Granite County Road Department and then ranched with his brother George. He died at the age of fifty-three, in 1985 from a motor vehicle accident at the junction of Highway 38 and what is now Highway One. 

John, born in 1914 married Bessie Terkla in 1937 and went to work in the local mines. On January 18, 1944, John enlisted in the Army and served during WWII until 1945. In 1947, John and Bessie bought the Miller ranch located just off the Skalkaho Highway in Section 5 and he ranched there until his death in 1994. He was a member of the Maxville Veteran of Foreign Wars and served on the Philipsburg School Board. Survivors were: wife Bessie; sons John and wife Peggy (Mungas) of Billings and Michael and wife Nancy of Manhattan; grandchildren Dr. James Munis of Boston and Bonnie Sue of Concord, New Hampshire and five great grandchildren; Bessie continued living in Philipsburg until her death on December 18, 2002. 

Mitchell, born in 1917 began to learn the trade of raising purebred Hereford cattle at a Wyoming Hereford ranch at the age of seventeen. Next he was herdsman at the ranch of Governor Dan Thornton of Gunnison, Colorado. He was drafted into the Army in 1942 and discharged after serving in France, North Africa and Germany in 1945. Mitchell returned to the cattle business in Colorado and Wyoming, being involved in the first sale of a $100,000 bull at the Baca Grant Ranch disperser sale. He married Rosalie Moore ( a telephone operator) in Gunnison, Colorado in 1953. 

They moved back to Philipsburg in 1956 and leased then, bought the Ed Heimark ranch in 1959. They had two children: William and Betty (New). Mitchell died in Missoula at St. Patrick’s Hospital in 2001. 

Mitchell and Rosalie’s son William “Bill” (1955) graduated from Montana State University with a degree in Agriculture Mechanic and died at the age of fifty at St. Patrick’s Hospital in Missoula in 2006. Survivors were: his mother Rosalie and sister Betty New of Boise, Idaho. Rosalie lived in assisted living near her daughter Betty in Boise her final year and died in 2016. 

George born in 1916 spent his entire life on the ranch, except for WWII. He was as a sharpshooter from 1941 to 1945 with the 18th Infantry Brigade, Company F and earned the combat Infantryman’s Badge. He was wounded, received a Purple Heart and was discharged with the rank of Sgt. George married Mary Diane Sward in 1957 and they had: Brian, Joe, David, Stephen and Jennifer. They later divorced. The ranch specialized in registered Herefords and Black Angus cattle. George died in the same house he was born in at the age of ninety in 2006.. 

The fourth generation of Munis families continue to manage the ranches.