“Buried up to his ears in debt/Fighting the heat, and cold, and wet,/His chances worse than an even bet–/You’ll find the homesteader,” reads the circa-1920 poem by Elliott C. Lincoln currently hanging on the wall of the Jefferson County Museum in Clancy as part of Lee Sillman’s exhibit on the dwellings and equipment of 19th- and early 20th-century homesteaders.
This exhibit at the museum has inspired Museum Director Melody Pesta to search out information on the genealogy of families that settled in Jefferson County. Sillman’s exhibit features the “rapidly diminishing remains” of the homes and machinery of homesteaders in Montana, and now Pesta hopes to find the faces, names and stories that lived in those homes and worked the machines. Of particular interest to her are the changing hardships of the journey to the state, and then what it was like to settle here.
“They didn’t have a plane to get here,” she joked when pointing to a photo of a couple from Italy who had settled in Jefferson County.
“[Sillman’s] display is building and machinery. I, personally, am more interested in finding out about the people,” Pesta said. “If [residents] are the descendants and still living in Jefferson County, and if their ancestors were some of the original settlers of Jefferson County, I’d like to hear from them and hear their stories.”
According to Pesta, earlier is better when it comes to information and artifacts concerning the genealogical history of the county. She pointed to the Homestead Act of 1862 as a point of reference for the kind of information she is seeking out.
The Homestead Act, according to the National Archives, “gave citizens or future citizens up to 160 acres of public land, provided they live on it, improve it and pay a small registration fee. The government granted more than 270 million acres of land while the law was in effect.”
Pesta is seeking out pictures (which will be scanned and the originals returned), artifacts (which may be photographed), and an oral or written history to provide a lens into what it was like to settle in Montana.
Pesta is also doing her own research while she waits to hear from the community. Placed in front of her are books such as “Woodville-Trask and the Elk Park Valley: Its History and the People,” by Joan M. Filupa, and highlighted printouts of the research she has been doing on her own.
“Montana’s first homesteader was a woman near Helena,” she said. “Montana also had the most homestead claims.”
Her idea for a final exhibit is to mimic and replace the current railroad exhibit, by featuring each homesteader and their story under the heading of the town they settled in. The exhibit may also include, if submitted by residents, homesteaders around Radersburg, which was once part of Jefferson County and is now in Broadwater County. Part of the exhibit will feature the Native American history of the region
“I think it would be neat to have a map showing where all these people came from to Jefferson County,” Pesta said.
Pesta has also considered using the homesteaders exhibit as inspiration for the poster contest the museum holds with Jefferson High School. Currently, the museum features students’ work and posters regarding the mining history of Jefferson County.
People with information they wish to contribute to the project can visit Pesta at the Jefferson County Museum, call (406) 224-5106 or email jcmuseum.mt@gmail.com.
