Karl Edward Vetter, Part 2

I wanted to use a second post to talk more about my grandfather.

My mother wrote me a note after my last entry. This is what she had to say about her father:

[Karl Vetter] only had formal education through the fourth grade.  Boys had to spend a lot of their time working on the ranch.  My dad educated himself.  He was a very intelligent person.  We always had lots of books at home.  He studied books on  a lot of subjects, and read a lot from the Bible. He had memorized a lot of scriptures.

Let me add here that my mother also loved reading. When we were growing up, she read to us nearly every evening -- not just kids' books, but adult books from the bookmobile that stopped near our home once or twice a month.

His handwriting was very nice for a man.  The last letter I got from my sister refers to how smart my dad was.  Elsie asked me if I remembered when we were kids and some neighbor kids were running around loose and daddy noticed the “tracks” on their skin from mites and ringworm.  He made up a solution of Vaseline and sulfur.  Mama was so scared the neighbors would make trouble, but they never did, they didn’t even care their kids were smeared all over with the yellow stuff.  According to the literature from the Mayo Clinic that is the only home remedy that works. 

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My grandfather never talked much about his childhood. But we can guess some things about it.

Karl Vetter was born and raised on a cattle ranch. But, his ancestors were shoemakers. He learned the shoemaking trade from his great-uncle, who first convinced the family to move from Ohio to Montana.

He was raised in the Madison Valley, Montana. As you come north out of Yellowstone, you enter this valley. It is absolutely beautiful!

I was wandering in the Seattle Public Library's genealogical section one day, when I found a book titled "History of Madison County". Since my grandfather was born in Madison County, Montana, I grabbed the book and looked to see if there was any information about the Vetter family. I found the following entries:

JOHN G. VETTER was born in Wurtenberg, Germany, December 22, 1833. He came to America with his family in 1857. He built his first business in Pacific City, Missouri, where his property was estimated to be worth over half a million dollars when the Civil War wiped him out. He was a shoemaker by trade and invested the $3000 he was able to salvage in an ox-drawn freight wagon and supplies to take to the Idaho Mines. He had the leather goods needed to start his shoe shop and much general equipment. He had medical supplies and when the doctor for the wagon train did not have what he needed to take care of an emergency, he supplied what was needed. The doctor was so impressed he told John his medical kit had the best possible selection of drugs to carry West.

Mr. Vetter arrived in Virginia City and started his shoe shop in 1863. He was the first of his family to move to Montana, and it was twenty years before his nephews and nieces started to follow him. Except for a brief unsuccessful marriage to the wide of Dr. Lev Daems, he lived alone. He was a Mason, having joined the order in Pacific City, Missouri in 1858. He was elected to membership in Virginia City Lodge No. 1, April 14, 1866. 

 

Mr. Vetter's Virginia City shoe shop was prosperous. He had as many as fourteen shoemakers working for him. he was proud that when Acting Territorial Governor Thomas Francis Meagher disappeared at Fort Benton he was wearing a pair of boots from his shop that had not been paid for. He like to tell about the shoes his shop made for the hurdy-gurdy girls. He personally set the 25 cent coins in the heels so that they would ring properly when the girls danced. 

 

When Helena became more prosperous than Virginia City, he moved. The Helena shop was replaced three times because of fires, but each new building was larger. 

 

History says that in 1877 Doctors Armistead H. Mitchell and C.F. Mussigbrod made a contract with the Territory to take custody of insane persons. Oral tradition in the Vetter family said that Doctors Mussigbrod and Scanland asked John Vetter to be their partner in this venture, but he did not like the project. He loaned them the money to build their hospital, and started to work for them when his investment was in danger. His load was paid, and he continued to work there until Warm Springs became a State institution in 1912. 

 

Ernest Vetter, a nephew of John, came to stay with him while he was at Warm Springs. Ernest had just left his home in Ohio and worked with him during the winter of 1899. Young Ernest was depressed by the hospital but was impressed with the way his Uncle John's quiet strength calmed the patients. He was enormously strong with very long arms, and rather than use a straight jacket, he picked up patients bodily and carried them to their quarters, or quieted them. 

 

When John developed an incurable throat cancer which he had diagnosed at Rochester, he lived in the Jack Creek home of his nephew and niece, John and Mary Vetter. He died in 1913 and was buried in the Virginia City Cemetery. 

 

CHARLES VETTER was the second of his family to come to Montana. His uncle, John G. Vetter, had arrived in 1863. Charles bought a ranch on Jack Creek from Mr. Walsh in 1888. About 1900 he sold to his brother, John, and purchased the Horace Bull ranch on Jack Creek bench, then he moved to the Lowe Ranch, which later became part of the Granger Ranches. He sold the Lowe Ranch in 1905 and moved his family to Canada. His wife died during the first winter in Canada. His daughter Nell brought he younger sister, Loula, back to the Madison Valley where she was adopted by her aunt, Minnie Vetter Paugh. Charles died in British Columbia. His children were: Omar, who married Elizabeth Daems; Olive, who married Harry Baker; Nellie, who married Steve McGuire; Carl, who married Hattie Smith Keller; Justina, who married Russell McLees; Bert, who married Josephine Daems; and Loula, who married Robert Wilson. 

 

Minnie Vetter and her sister Mary came West by train to Bozeman in 1888 to join their brother Charles. He had a job for them at the mining camp of Red Bluff. One sister worked in the Tanner home and the other worked at the hotel which is the stone building at the Montana Experimental Farm at Red Bluff. The girls worked there for almost a year until Mary cut her hand seriously. When she recovered both girls worked in the home of Myron D. Jeffers. Minnie later cared for Mrs. George Watts when Jack was born. In 1891, Minnie married Erastus Paugh and Mary soon started keeping house for her brother John. 

 

John Vetter worked for L.S. Briggs when he came to Madison Valley. The Briggs ranch was north of the present channel, Dude Ranch. John kept this position until he had saved $1000. Mary, his sister, was often in the Briggs home where she delivered one of the children while Mr. Briggs was trying to locate the doctor. 

 

Ernest and Florence came after their father married a widow with family of her own. Ernest spent his first winter in Montana with his Uncle John at Warm Springs, as an attendant at the hospital. In summer, he took his brother JohnÕs job herding sheep for L.S. Briggs. He saved enough money in two years to buy the Erastus Paugh homestead in 1901, and his sister Florence became his housekeeper. IN 1903, he had 200 head of cattle and he bought 150 head of range horses from L.S. Briggs in 1904.

 

Florence married Jefferson R. Allenburg ÒJeffÓ in 1911 and move to the Clarence Jeffers Ranch which he managed until Austin Jeffers took it over when discharged from the Army after World War I. Jeff was from Carthage, Missouri, and came to Montana early enough to have had his first job working for William Ennis. The Madison climate made him so hungry that he was embarrassed to satisfy himself at the table and bought extra food at the store. He was a tall robust man. He worked for the VF Ranch and took up a homestead in the Varney area. Jeff was a relative of Mrs. Dan Thornton whose ranch was on Cedar Creek. After Jeff died in 1926, Florence made her home in Jeffers. 

 

Before World War I, John Vetter sold his ranch on Jack Creek to his brother Ernest who had married Josephine Daems. John moved to Bozeman with his sister Mary in 1917. He bought a lot on the corner of Wallace and Mendenhall where he had a gasoline station. He also acquired a ranch near Belgrade. John died of influenza in 1919. Mary died in 1934. They are both buried in the Bozeman cemetery. 

 

Ernest Vetter ran his ranch as a hay and cattle operation. He kept a hired man on the ranch he bought from John and usually had one at his main ranch. In 1929, he sold his land and livestock to Wetmore Hodges, which became the Jumping Horse Ranch. At the time when he sold, he had 1260 acres of land, 600 cattle, and 80 head of horses. 

 

Ernest retired to Ennis where he and his family ran a tourist court and the Ennis Cafe. When his wife "Josie" died in 1948 he retired to his daughter's home in Butte where he was joined by his sister Florence. He died in 1959, and Florence in 1959. Both the Vetters and the Allenburgs are buried in the Madison Valley Cemetery

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Ernest had one daughter, Buena Belle, who married Dale Koelzer and lives at West Yellowstone. The children of Josie and Bert Vetter were raised in Ernest's home. Ernest W. "Tim" lives in Seattle, and Berta is deceased.

 

Next: How did a Montana rancher meet and marry a beautiful young woman from Iowa?