The Fireboat Benton

Bill of Lading

for Jas. E. Booge & Co.,

From the collection of Lewis Brackman

The Fireboat Benton,

from C. M. Russell's

Fireboat

From the Sioux City Courier: In 1858, James Booge arrives in Sioux City. After buying a steamboat's water-logged load of wheat, he feeds the grain to a herd of hogs, butchers the animals and sells the meat to local butcher shops and the U. S. Army.

He went on to put into operation one of the largest meat packing plants in the United States at the time. In late April of 1881, Booge ships 20 sacked hams and 5 sides of bacon to J. H. McKnight, the Indian Trader at Fort Shaw, Montana Territory. It was carried by the Benton to Fort Benton, and arrived at Fort Benton on the 30th of May, or the 24th of June. One way or the the other, the pork was delivered.

Russell painted this little gem (16" X 25") in 1918, following more than one trip to New York where he was exposed to the color palettes of several well-known Eastern artists including Maxfield Parrish and Philip Goodwyn. Both of these artists were skilled in using vibrant colors and their compositions were constructed for maximum impact. Russell's fireboat would have done just fine for my version, but since the Indians had seen steamboats on the Missouri at least 30 years before the arrival of the Benton in 1881, I chose to put the Benton on this piece of steamboat history.  

  

Sugar Coated, Nickel Plated Ceegars

The Morris Brothers were here in Helena so early their business didn't even have an address, save for Main Street. This is a piece of billhead/letterhead that I acquired by trade from a patron who purchased one piece of J. H. McKnight paper from me, and commissioned me to put my art work on another similar piece which he supplied.

The only thing that the Morris Brothers didn't sell was whiskey, although I doubt that the whiskey was very far from their front door.

Fort Shaw, M. T. 1876

This is a uniform cap device for a member of K Company, 7th Infantry stationed at Fort Shaw in 1876 when this letter was penned on T. C. Power letterhead/billhead. It is lined so that it could be used as a bill or receipt, although both pieces I have seen are penned letters.

This piece is especially interesting because of the nature of the correspondence, and the individual for which it was penned. "Please let Mr. Eraux (Ereaux) have one Sk good Flour  Send bill & Chg to a/c."

I am including a link to a story about a gentleman who was known by a number of different names, but Curley Ereaux was quite a character in his own right. This article, posted by Ken Robison on his blog, is well worth the read.

It is also to be noted that very little paper exists that lists T. C. Power as a Military and Indian Trader. This piece was completed as a commission for a gentleman from Great Falls, Montana.

The Steamboat Dacotah

The Steamboat Dacotah

This is a veritable treasure as history goes. The particulars are as follows: Dated the 16th of June, 1881, Montana would not be a state for another eight years. It is a bill of lading addressed to J. H. McKnight who had the trading post at Fort Shaw, West of what is now Great Falls on the Sun River. It was one of three sister steamboats built specifically to haul freight from St. Louis, Missouri, to Fort Benton, Montana Territory. The three sisters boats were the Montana, the Dacotah and the Wyoming.Of those three boats, the Dacotah hauled the greatest tonnage of freight to Fort Benton, and did that on its second trip of the year in 1881 arriving at Fort Benton on the 4th of July.

The Dacotah was actually the 6th boat to arrive at the levee, and the date indicated on this way bill is not the day that it arrived, but rather the day the freight was unloaded. This boat actually belonged to the Coulson brothers, and was not a boat which belonged to T. C. Powers. My assumption is that some of the freight belonging to Powers was put on the landing at Coal Banks, and was then transported to Fort Benton on the Dacotah, thus explaining the reason why this is a Power way bill rather than a Coulson way bill.

Regardless of who this boat belonged to, this image was taken from the only extant photograph of the Dacotah.