The history of patriotism in Montana is well documented. Prior to immigration to Montana a large portion of the population was involved in the Civil War. This is apparent in the disagreement over the name of the first territorial capital. D. Pace in 1962 writes in Golden Gulch: “Varina was the name chosen by some of the Confederate sympathizer’s among the miners;… Jefferson Davis being as much a hero to those whose sympathies were with the south as Abraham Lincoln was to the others, it occurred to the town company to name the new camp after Davis’s wife. ..Judge Giles Gaylord Bissell of Connecticut had been named Judge on June 12, 1863, whose sympathies were just as strong for the northern cause and Bissell legend, states The doctor struck his desk , exclaiming, “I’ll be damned if I’ll sign it that way”. Crossing out Varina he substituted Virginia, allegedly with the further remark that “…no such blot as this shall stain the honor of the camp.”
Tombstones in the Philipsburg Cemetery, Valley Cemetery and newspaper obituaries, attest to the presence of these men who served in the early military and Civil War:
John Jeffrey died at his home in Granite, Thursday April 18, 1890 of inflammation of the heart. A native of Cornwall England he came to Canada as a youth. He married Emma Will (?? unable to read) 1878 and they had three children, according to the Granite Mountain Star. There is no mention in his brief obituary about serving in the civil war, but his headstone in the Philipsburg cemetery is a Veterans headstone.
Veteran, John Hart Williams, born February 16, 1842 near Richmond, Virginia, was the oldest of four children, but his obituary does not identify the names of his parents. His father died in 1848 and one year later his mother moved with the children to Missouri. At the age of nineteen, John enlisted in the Confederate Army and served throughout the war. In 1865 he came west across the plains and located in upper Deer Lodge valley where he took up a ranch on Racetrack creek and engaged in ranching and stock raising, according to the August 29, 1913, Mail. He married Annie Butcher in Colorado in 1877 and they raised one son and two daughters. About twenty years before his death, they sold the ranch and moved into Deer Lodge, for a short time, then moved to Philipsburg, where he worked in numerous positions, in the mines of Granite County. During the winter of 1912/13, he suffered from pneumonia and was not well after that. Seeking medical care, he had traveled to Deer Lodge, in July and died there, on August 26. After a funeral at the Christian Church, he was interred in the Deer Lodge cemetery. He was a lifelong member of the Christian Church; a Democrat; a member of the United Confederate Veteran’s and The Society of Montana Pioneers. Survivors were: his wife Annie of Philipsburg; daughter Miss Lucille Williams of Philipsburg; daughter Mrs. Harry A. Miller of Livingston and son Lytle L. Williams, an electrical engineer in Lewistown, Montana.
A veteran who was an active person in early Montana history was Reverend George W. Jenkins. Born September 9, 1836 in Minersville, Pennsylvania to English parents, he spent his early years in Jackson County, Iowa, then in 1861, enlisted in Company M, Second Calvary and served until 1864, in the Civil War. He married Sarah E. King on December 28, 1865, at Andrew, Iowa. Employed as a newspaper man, he was granted his license to preach on August 13, 1859. The family came to Montana in 1888, where he spent his first five years, in the Methodist pastorate in Philipsburg and Granite and erected the churches in both places, plus the parsonage in Philipsburg. He also conducted religious services at Rumsey during this time, stated the August 16, 1890 Granite Mountain Star.
He was serving his second year, as Pastor in Marysville, Montana, when he died four days before his sixty fifth birthday, on September 5, 1901. The Reverend was a member of Burnside Post Number 22 Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) and all the old soldiers of Philipsburg attended his funeral. He was the father of six children: Mrs. G. S. Williams d.1896; Miss Cora, Wm. S., Mrs. D.R. McRae, Mrs. J.J. Carmichael, Miss Belle and foster-daughter, Mrs. C.M. Oates His daughter Maria had married John J. Carmichael, at the Methodist Parsonage with her father presiding on December 31, 1896 and in 1937, she came to Philipsburg to celebrate the fifty year anniversary, of the St. Paul Methodist Episcopal church, her father built, and gave the roll call of all the pastor’s that had served in the church.
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