The Man Who Started A Town

Years ago, on Charing Cross Road, I picked up a copy of My Lady Nicotine, an ode to tobacco by J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan. Here is my quest to find a trace of its owner.

F.S.E. to G.G.E., Great Falls, Montana, 1892. A stamped name: 'F.S. Eaton'. Inside the book was a rectangle of satin printed with the words 'Rainbow Club Reception, April 3, 1891'. I can't remember exactly how much it cost, but it was under fifteen pounds. I remember because my most expensive purchase was a 1915 copy of Jane Austen's Emma for fifteen pounds.

So began my quest for a man named F.S. Eaton who lived in Great Falls, Montana in 1892 and might have attended an event in 1891. The first three results that turned up were from three different dates of the Great Falls Weekly Tribune. It was the same ad:

"It is positively settled that the railroad stops at MONARCH Buy lots now and make a quick profit. For all information address MONARCH TOWNSITE CO, MONARCH, MONT., or F. S. EATON, Sec'y, Park Hotel,Great Falls, Mont."

I learned that Montana wasn't even a state until 1889. Great Falls had a population of under 8,750 in 1880 and by 1900 it was over 27,000. It was all land for sale, jobs, and expanding cities in the West. There was opportunity for anyone willing to take it. The railroad made new enterprises possible, and the Great Northern Rail was building a new daily route from Great Falls to Monarch, a town about 70 miles away that was full of ore.

I tried googling the Rainbow Club, but with little success. I searched for F.S. Eaton's grave but was unable to to narrow it down enough with the information that I had. I turned to census records and learned some interesting information about Cascade County, which is where Eaton was in 1892:

*Source: Wikipedia

It's incredible now, when our interests and whereabouts are being tracked simultaneously by multiple companies, to imagine a time when you could be born and no one would even write it down. Poor Mr. Eaton likely had no birth certificate, and no major records for any of these land deals he appeared to be brokering in nearby Monarch, MT.

I turned instead to the Park Hotel. There is still a New Park Hotel, built on the site of the old Park Hotel which, according to this website , burned down in 1913. The original Park Hotel, the site claimed, had been built in 1892. How, then, was our protagonist suggesting prospective buyers find him at the Park Hotel before it existed?

*Digital Commonwealth

Interestingly, there was also a Rainbow Hotel. Similarly, it did not exist in 1891 when the Rainbow Club Reception actually happened. According to the National Register for Historic Places, "the major historic hotels in the district, the "New" Park Hotel at 102 Central Avenue and the 1909 Rainbow Hotel at 203rd Street North, have both been converted to senior/retirement living." So what actually existed in Great Falls in 1891? What sort of place was it? Finally, I came across this picture of Great Falls in 1887:

The large building is the original Park Hotel in 1887. Beside that is the office of the Great Falls Tribune. And finally, there is the Townsite Company Office built by Vinegar Jones.

The Rainbow Hotel, unfortunately, wasn't built until 1911.

The Townsite Company Office is likely very similar to the sort of building our Mr. Eaton would have been starting in Monarch. Land was cheap and towns were popping up everywhere. Manifest destiny was there for taking. It seems that all you really needed to make a town is a fancy hotel, a newspaper, a townsite office, and a bank.

The Great Falls Tribune turned out to be a treasure trove of information. From the newspaper, and the sheer number of times F.S. Eaton was mentioned, it appeared that he was an important man about town in Great Falls. The newspaper kept track of his comings and goings in a section entitled "Spray of the Falls". This is essentially the gossip section. On August 20, 1895, "H.F. Collet and F.S. Eaton left yesterday for a chicken hunt in several great hunting grounds." And on March 27, 1891, a mere week before the Rainbow Club Reception, "F.S. Eaton, agent for the Monarch Townsite, started yesterday for the East to be gone for a month."

And just like that, I knew that Eaton couldn't have been at this Rainbow Club Reception. Perhaps it was G.G.E. that went, the recipient of this book. I tried to find any record of Eaton getting married, or having children or any relations with a double G name, but with no luck. There was a Gertrude Eaton running around back then. There was also a Lieutenant George Eaton who was murdered by his wife in a highly publicized case. Unfortunately neither of them have anything to do with our Mr. Eaton as far as I can tell.

Whether it was G.G.E. or not, whoever did attend the Rainbow Club Reception was in for quite a treat. An article before the opening of the Club rooms in 1889 compared it to Lord Byron's poem "The Eve of Waterloo" in which the revelers "chase the glowing hours with nimble feet".

June 20, 1889

April 3, 1891

March 8, 1891

April 8, 1891

Wherever Mr. Eaton had gone which caused him to miss the most important social event in the history of northern Montana, he was back by May 14th, according to the same newspaper which said he had returned form Helena on that day. It can be imagined that an event of such great import to the town would have been infamous at the time. There were probably little ribbons just like the one from my book in every household of note.

In 1889, he acquired a mine in Neihart with W.J. Clark, paying $16,000 to incorporate it. I was unable to find any mention of Mr. Eaton prior to his arrival in Great Falls and so I'm not sure how he made his fortune. Was it inherited? Was he a self-made man?

He began this enterprise with two men: Francis L. Street (misnamed below as 'Sweet') and William Clark. Street had come to Montana in April of 1888, five years after the death of his father, Francis S. Street. The Elder Mr. Street had made his fortune by publishing New York Weekly as Smith & Street publishing firm and presumably his son F.L. Street took his inheritance to Montana to make something of himself.

Unfortunately, I don't think things ended up quite the way Eaton imagined. The last mention of him was in 1930 when Cascade County acquired a lot of his land due to failure to pay taxes due on or before 1925. He also appeared in district court facing his partner, W.J. Clark, although the action was dismissed. William Clark appears to have been rather an unsavory character.

Clark was involved in multiple court cases for failing to pay promissory notes, suggesting he might have been one of those early prospecting men who sold more than 100% of the mineral rights for a piece of land. Either that or it's a comment on banks and lending at the time: that settling loans in court was par for the course. In 1899, he was in the papers again for disturbing the peace. His wife began divorce proceedings, and when he heard of this, he went home, kicked down the door and then "caused all sorts of trouble".

The Monarch Mining Company was also sued by the Northwestern National Bank of Great Falls in 1892 for failing to pay the interest on a $5,000 loan.

In 1893, Eaton appeared to be gallivanting around with H.F. Collet, another leader in the town of Great Falls. They organized a cricket club, went hunting and fishing, and even built a boat which they named Tramp to take down the Missouri River on a "pleasure trip". The pair even attended the World' Fair in Chicago together in 1893. The next year, they were both chosen by the mayor of Great Falls as a delegates to represent Great Falls at the trans-Mississippi Congress in San Francisco.

The last conclusive mention I found of Eaton was his purchase of the Monarch Mining Company's properties at Neihart, another small town near Monarch. I'm not sure what became of him after that. There was an F.S. Eaton that popped up in Waxahatchie, TX as the manager of Ellis County Independent Telephone Company around the time that our Eaton stopped appearing in the Great Falls Tribune. But I was unable to find any conclusive evidence that that's what happened to him.

While I was unable to turn up any evidence of GGE, I did manage to find a little piece of history. It is easy to imagine the rich landman, F.S. Eaton, reading this strange book praising the wonders of tobacco and marking his place with the ribbon from the social event of the season. Whatever their faults, the men who came to Montana from the east in 1892 were adventurers. Eaton was one of many determined to make their fortunes in the west. Their comings and goings were announced in newspapers and their arrival at hotels was similarly noted. He spent his time hunting and fishing, travelling on trains, and even starting a cricket club in Great Falls. It's incredible that over a century later, this man's life can be illuminated with nothing more than a few initials and a ribbon.

On top of everything else I've discovered about F.S. Eaton, I also know that in 1892, he held this same book in his hands.

#charingcrossroad #greatfalls #montana #FSEaton #franciseaton #monarchtownsite #rainbowclub #rainbowclubreception #cascadecounty #williamjclark #wjclark #monarchminingcompany #miningmontana #parkhotel #greatfallstribune #myladynicotine #jmbarrie