Grant-Kohrs Ranch Kohrs and Bielenberg Home Ranch Historic Resource Study/Historic Structure Report/Historical Data

A. The Stock

The home ranch served as the headquarters for the range cattle herds, and supported the purebred stock that was used in upgrading the range herds. The equine stock at the home ranch served as the core of the remudas used in the range operations and provided both race and draft horses for the ranch and for public sale. The bull business, run carefully by John Bielenberg almost to the moment of his death, [1] also accounted for much of the daily stock raising routine. The ranch always had cattle and horses (with varying breeds among each often present), as well as the normal complement of dogs and chickens. It was somewhat different from many Montana ranches in that it also fostered a sizeable turkey population. [2]

Kohrs and Bielenberg are well known in Montana cattle history for their early efforts to introduce purebred stock into the territory. Many credit them with being the first; surely they were among the first. [3] The Kohrs and Bielenberg Short Horn Breeding Journal (reproduced in condensed form as Appendix 9) carries numerous entries noting cattle born to the herd in 1871. Other entries, most heavy in the decade of the 1870s, show that the herd's numbers grew by importation, mostly from Iowa and Illinois, and that animals were added to the herd until the mid-1880s. The Short Horns were a major source of upgrading stock for the range cattle herds.

An 1881 letter from Con Kohrs to his daughter (Appendix 10) is written on Stationery with the letterhead "Kohrs and Bielenberg, Breeders of Short Horn Cattle, Thoroughbred, Clydesdale, and Coach Horses." Assuming that this accurately reflected the types of animals at the ranch in 1881, then there were one kind of purebred bovine as well as racing, riding, coach, and draft horses. By 1884 the ranch enjoyed milk from Ayrshire cattle as well. Kohrs and Bielenberg even entered Ayrshires in the 1884 Territorial Fair.

Within a matter of only two to four years, more blooded stock had been added to the home ranch. M. A. Leeson"s History of Montana, published in the late 1880s, contains an illustration of the home ranch carrying the caption "Residence of Conrad Kohrs, Deer Lodge, Mont. Kohrs and Bielenberg, Breeders of Short-Horn & Hereford Cattle, Thoroughbred, Clydesdale, Percheron-Norman, and Coach Horses" (see Illustration 3). Dating this view at about 1885—and it is probably no later than that—it is inferable that Kohrs and Bielenberg had imported some Hereford cattle and Percherons (draft horses). By this date, the home ranch housed two distinct breeds of cattle of English origin and one breed of riding/racing horses (thoroughbreds), two types of draft horses, and coach horses. Presumably at this time the western quarter horse also formed part of the equine stock at the ranch. It is almost inconceivable that it did not, but no definitive proof has yet been noted—except the comment in a letter dated 1887 that "we have got twice the number of cattle Con Kohrs has here [on the DHS ranges] & our expense has not been twice as much. We have had to buy horses & he has raised his." [4] The horses in use on the range would have been quarter horses, possibly with an additional thoroughbred strain. Both John and Con, but most especially John Bielenberg, were devoted animal breeders and it is likely that the horses they raised at the home ranch for the ranges represented the best mix of horse breeds they could blend.

An advertisement in The New Northwest is the next piece of definitive evidence that has surfaced dealing with stock at the ranch. The notice, posted in May and June of 1887, just as the full extent of the disaster of the previous winter was making itself known, listed a third type of English-origin cow at the ranch. It offered

About 40 head of cross-bred Polled Angus and Short Horn Heifers. Also a lot of cross-bred Hereford and Short Horn Heifers. It being a condition of such lease that the lease shall have good range, sufficient hay and facilities to keep the breeds distinct. [5]

Obviously, then, Kohrs and Bielenberg had Polled Angus cattle on hand, at least in limited numbers, by 1887. Yet the Polled Angus has not been commonly associated with the ranch in family tradition or in the many references to Kohrs and Bielenberg in publications about the cattle empire. Presumably, then, the strain did not represent a major Kohrs and Bielenberg effort, although it was present at the ranch in the spring of 1887 along with the Short Horns and Herefords.

The 1893 Kohrs and Bielenberg Stock Farm Catalog (Appendix 6) lists thirty one thoroughbred horses. Whether all were for sale, or whether they were advertised for breeding only, was not stated. The number of horses advertised, however, shows the considerable size of the thoroughbred business at the ranch.

No other types of cattle were introduced by Kohrs and Bielenberg, but another type of draft horse, the Belgian, was added. The exact date it was brought in is not known. Belgians were there during the caretaker period of the 1920s along with the Hereford herd. Most of the Short Horns had long since blended in with the commercial herd or had been sold, so that when Con Warren took over active management of the ranch in 1932, only two distinct breeds—Hereford cattle (the Helena herd) and a few Belgian mares—were present. No doubt the appropriate number of utilitarian riding and work horses were there too. Warren introduced no new breeds, but, as noted in Chapter VI, upgraded the quality of the existing herds.

Family tradition adds another breed of draft horses to the ranch -- Shires, [6] a large English draft horse originally from central England. They arrived after 1885, the approximate date of the M. A. Leeson illustration. Apparently Shires formed part of the ranch's equine stock in 1906.

The stock-carrying capacity of the home ranch at the height of its productivity is not known exactly. Because portions of the pastures included in the ranch were naturally well watered, while others were somewhat dry and still others were richly irrigated, the usual figures of acres-per-cow do not apply very well. Con Warren suggested that the home ranch never carried more than 1,500 cows in its pastures. Using this figure, and recognizing that Kohrs and Bielenberg had breeding stock, both horses and cattle, for sale at all times, an accurate estimate might be that the home ranch held possibly 2,000 cattle of all types and perhaps 150 to 200 horses.

Until the Warren era, the ranch did not primarily raise commercial cattle, but instead sold horses and cattle for breeding purposes—the cattle to upgrade the range herds and the horses to be used in range cattle operations. During the Warren era, both commercial and breeding cattle and draft horses added to the economic base of the ranch. And for most of the 1930s a small dairy herd of Guernseys and Durhams even formed part of the stock assets of the establishment.

The development of the herds at the home ranch paralleled the changes taking place throughout the West. Short Horns, the first of the purebred cattle, were introduced after the breed had established itself as the dominant one in America. (While Con Kohrs can be called a pioneer because he was among the very first to bring Short Horns into Montana, the breed was quite well established in the midwest and Canada when he decided to upgrade his Montana herds.) Herefords had proved their value in Kansas in the late 1860s and early 1870s, but did not be come nationally important until the 1880s, the years Kohrs and Bielenberg introduced them into Montana. Like the rest of the serious breeders among American stock-raisers Con and John experimented with crossbreeds -- Herefords and Short Horns—and with some of the lesser known types, such as Polled Angus, during the 1880s.

By the turn of the century, and certainly by the end of their first decade here, the Herefords had established their supremacy in the American West. By then the number of Short Horns at the home ranch had dwindled and the Helena herd of Herefords had become the largest prime quality herd. A few Short Horns remained, however, until as late as 1919, when they were sold off. As the 20th century progressed, and ranchers throughout America strove to strengthen the good qualities of their Herefords, Con Warren moved in exactly the same direction. His Herefords gained national recognition as one of the Northwest's finest herds, firmly establishing Warren's position in the mainstream of stockraising in America in mid-century. Con Warren's cattle were among the very best of the standard breed, emphasizing his link with John Bielenberg and Con Kohrs, who also succeeded in building herds of the very best quality. There is another trait common to these three stockmen, and that is the pride that both generations took in their animals beyond the mere recognition that the herds formed the core of the ranch's economic life. That pride was also the result of hard work with the animals, the great amounts of capital lavished on them, and the closeness to the animals brought about by intense daily contact.

"Regent," "Strideaway," and "Leeds-Lion" lived in memory at the home ranch long after they had ceased their active lives there. "The Duke of Deer Lodge," "Horace Greely," and "Cambridge Wild Eyes" received both economic attention and real devotion from Conrad Kohrs and John Bielenberg.

Con Warren's attachment to his fine stock is apparent as well in his reminiscences of "Bloc II de Nederswalm of Antwerp" and his other fine Belgian horses. "Prince Blanchard the Fifth" and other Herefords remain an important part of the legend, as strongly remembered today as they were precisely and energetically cared for in their lifetimes.

The particular mix of feelings towards the animals was an individual thing with each man. But each rancher was cognizant of the same two truths: That the animal must pay and be economically worthwhile, and, equally important, that working with them was an immensely satisfying experience.

Ranching is hard and chancy work. It requires strong determination from its participants. And that devotion is inextricably tied up with the stock that forms the core of the ranching effort. This was as true at the ranch in Deer Lodge as anywhere else. Indeed, both generations at the home ranch led their peers in animal development and improvement, and their closeness to their herds might well have been correspondingly stronger than that felt by their contemporaries.

B. Old Ranching and New

The question of old ranching methods versus the new, when put to Conrad K. Warren, elicited a somewhat laconic response. Size was the difference, he reasoned, "the scale they operated on in comparison to the scale that I operated on." [7] And size is the key to a comparison of the Kohrs and Bielenberg period and the Warren era. Cattle ranching in the open-range days involved thousands and thousands of cattle grazing over the public domain of the West as the Indians went onto reservations and the numbers of buffalo dwindled. The herds grazed freely, were only loosely controlled, and were gathered twice a year for branding, culling out, and shipping. Vast distances and huge numbers of cattle characterized the business.

But the passage of time brought the bad winter of 1886 and 1887. Then close on its heels came the influx of homesteaders onto the dry lands that had supported first the buffalo and then millions of cattle. By the 20th century even the large sections of public domain that had escaped the plow of the homesteader were privately owned and fenced, so that the technique of throwing cattle onto free grass for five or six months, branding the offspring and shipping the fat ones off to market simply could no longer be applied. By then the changes in the industry and the shape of things to come could be summed up well in one word -- "smaller." The cattle themselves improved as breeders learned to emphasize weight gain and marketability, while the ranches grew smaller, more self contained, and self sufficient. [8] Stock growers began to raise some of their own feed and to cut hay for the winter months. With smaller land areas and fewer cattle came the need to make more money from each cow or steer. Breeding became important, and the growing of economical and nutritious feed for the animals paramount.

Kohrs and Bielenberg moved with the rest of the cattle-growing West, and the development of their herds and the modification of their operation was indicative of what was happening in the rest of Montana and in the western stock industry. Sequentially, the growth of the home ranch in the late 1880s through out the 1890s and up to about 1906 meant that less and less public land stood open to take the herds. In order to keep the profitable open-range cattle-growing operation afloat, Conrad Kohrs purchased large amounts of land. But he purchased the land instead of simply appropriating it. That could not be done any more, because the demands on the range no longer allowed it. The halcyon days of grass for the taking had passed with the end of the century. Large herds of cattle still grazed, but on leased or owned land, not on the public domain with squatter's rights as the procedure. This gradual winding down of open range and public domain grazing beginning in the 1890s (1899 for Kohrs and Bielenberg, when they purchased the N-N) was the first change from the old ways to the new.

The second major change, a result of the first, was the development of smaller ranches with more ranchers raising fewer cattle. For two reasons this step came a little later for Kohrs and Bielenberg than for most of their contemporaries: first, they had been able to purchase the large acreage of the home ranch (just under 27,000 acres) by about 1900, and secondly, they owned the N-N and water rights over possibly a million acres contiguous to the new ranch. This situation passed by 1919 when The Kohrs and Bielenberg Land and Livestock Company, The Conrad Kohrs Company, and The Rock Creek Ditch and Mining Company began to sell off the land carefully accrued since 1866. Had Con and John not been very old men at the time, it is possible that they would not have sold. But it is almost certain that the grand empire of land and cattle that they had created would soon have had to face the realities of greater taxes and rising land values, and before too long, would have yielded to the pressures that many other large outfits had already felt. But chronologically this second step, ranch size shrinkage, did not come for Kohrs and Bielenberg until about 1918. But then it came with a vengeance, the home ranch shrinking to miniscule proportions compared to its earlier size.

After a hiatus in the twenties the resurrection of the ranch began under Con Warren, as it grew again and served new cattle marketing procedures and a new cattle business. This step, the third one, brought the ranch into the modern mold with carefully managed and planned herd of one dominant breed (Herefords). Warren's techniques, like those of his contemporaries, combined all that had been learned in the business to date, plus all the burgeoning knowledge the new land grant colleges, their animal husbandry schools, and the experimental stations could provide. Medicines abounded, as did new genetic knowledge to use in breeding concerning size, handling, meat production and resistance to disease. Ranching had come full swing in at least one arena. It had been gloriously informal, but now operated under strong control, with each step taken based on an almost certain result in an almost exact given period. Testing scientifically for disease and pregnancy replaced the practiced eye of the line rider, trained only in the school of the drive, the roundup, and the branding fire. The process continued as the 20th century progressed, and by the early 1970s, when Con Warren sold his Hereford Ranch to the National Park Foundation, breeding had progressed even beyond the state of the art he had practiced from the 1930s almost to the 1960s. Cattle feed, too, had developed from the grains grown by the ranchers and fed not long afterward, to programmed feeding of blended feeds prepared in distant mills, feeds supplemented by minerals, growth-inducing chemicals, and antibiotics to ensure fast and sickness-free growth.

Great differences had taken place between the Kohrs and Bielenberg era on one hand and the Warren era on the other. These changes—the closing of the open lands resulting in smaller ranches, the growth of supplemental feed, and the dominance of the Hereford—showed clearly in the operations of the Warren Hereford Ranch as opposed to those of the earlier home ranch of Kohrs and Bielenberg.

The Wilson article, "6,000 Acres and a Microscope," dwells at some length on the differences that could be discerned in 1937. Con Kohrs, Wilson noted, could figure on hiring three cowboys for every thousand cattle, but modern ranching, with its attendant care of the animals, required three times that many. Kohrs and Bielenberg raised cattle "to be butchered and eaten," while Warren raised them to become "parents and grandparents of cattle to be eaten." The old system certainly focused on raising the fattest, fastest growing, and strongest cattle possible. The new style continued this emphasis, but "as a student of cattle eugenics Con Warren is now more ambitious, better primed with details." [9] So even in the similarities, differences existed.

The cattle drover, that folk hero of many a Saturday afternoon matinee and, more recently, the center stage character of the adult psychological western, changed as well:

A cowboy is an agricultural laborer who has been fantastically romanticised. In the movies he still rides a bronco at breakneck speed and waves a ten gallon Stetson. But the demands of modern ranching are more mundane and practical. As soon as late snows thaw, they man the two tractors, tear into the fields for spring planting. [10]

Yet the new and old ways still converge at certain basic points. The cattle must still be raised as economically as possible. They must still be watched, helped as needed, shipped, and sold. The investment in them now, as before, is based on hope and chance. The money must be spent for two, sometimes three, years before it can be recouped, hopefully with a profit. Cattle bought cheap might sell cheaper, or they might sell at considerable profit. But just as the old cattlemen watched so do the new -- the market at sale time, both equally vulnerable to its gyrations. Likewise, weather, then as now, played an unpredictable game. So some things in the cattle business have not changed much, and it is likely that they won't change in the future, either.

Con Kohrs lived a long life spanning both these eras. In 1913 he and many of his contemporaries began closing down the vast cattle growing businesses they had long directed. Kohrs saw the new times coming and addressed the challenges that faced future generations of cattle growers:

The principal actors of the early periods have nearly all passed away. They were a rugged set of men, these pioneers, well qualified for their self-assumed task. In the pursuit of wealth a few succeeded and the majority failed, as in all other spheres of activity. The pioneers ousted the aborigine, utilizing the country for what it was best adapted at that period, and the range cattle industry has seen its inception, zenith, and partial extinction all within half a century. The changes of the past have been many; these of the future may be of even more revolutionary character. What was the beef-producing ground of the nation a few years back is now being used for other purposes, whether practically or not, time will tell.

The cattle industry as it existed a quarter of a century ago is no longer possible. Eventually the problems now confronting the West will reach the self-solution state. It is destined to be a populous and wealth-producing country. The pioneers did their part and it is reasonable to assume that posterity will successfully solve each problem as it presents itself. Nature, while imposing some handicaps, has done much for humanity in this vast region, and humanity have ever manifested an ability to make the most of nature's lavishness. [11]

C. The Family

"Town is very still and our old ranch don't look like home without you all," wrote Conrad Kohrs in 1881. "It is so still," he continued, "so quite have not been mutch at home, it makes me feel to bad to stay here." [12] This excerpt came from an affectionate letter Con wrote to his eldest daughter Anna. She was with the family in Germany, and he was at home attending to business affairs. The letter illustrates well the strong ties that bound the Kohrs-Bielenberg family at Deer Lodge. While Conrad Kohrs's public image and, to a great extent, his personality as gleaned from his papers, present the picture of a somewhat restrained and controlled man presiding over a rather formal family, letters such as this one balance out the view, revealing a close-knit family living at the home ranch in Deer Lodge.

Kohrs had come to Montana alone in 1862 and begun his career then. Within a few years he had reached the stage where he could help his brothers out, and he invited them to Montana. Apparently the half brothers, John, Charles, and Nicolas Bielenberg, did come out about then, and Kohrs soon had them placed operating his butcher shops throughout the territory. [13] They all stayed on, remaining partners with Con in various business arrangements for most of their lives. He refers to each on occasion as "my brother" in his autobiography. Yet of the three, John was the closest to Con, and after Con and Augusta's marriage, he remained close to both of them. There are references to the relationship of the other brothers to Con and Augusta, such as in the 1881 letter in which Con writes "I have not seen Onkel Nick or Aunt Annie, will try and go up this week." Yet John and Con lived together, probably from the beginning of their partnership. After Con married Augusta, the couple provided a place for John in their home, and he lived with them until he died.

Part of the Kohrs family lived in Iowa, and Davenport remained the home of Con's mother and his stepfather, Claus Bielenberg. Conrad and Henry Kohrs's father had died at their home village of Wewelfleth, in Holstein, in Denmark (soon to become Prussian and then German-owned) when Con was a small boy. Mrs. Kohrs had married Claus Bielenberg later and had emigrated with the family to Iowa.

On trips east family members almost always stopped by Davenport to visit. Con took his fiancee to the home manse to wed her, and Augusta and the children frequently paid prolonged visits there. J. H. Gehrmann, part of the Henry Kohrs family at Davenport, recalled that

Just after my parent's wedding, Conrad Kohrs' family of five was returning from Europe and stopped to visit with his brother Henry. They invited my mother and father to return with them and stay at the ranch until they could get properly settled. As mother said, "Aunt Augusta was like a mother to me and was with me in Walkerville [Iowa] when both boys were born." This close relationship continued throughout our lives. Our second home was the ranch. [14]

The pages of The New Northwest record the visits of the elder Bielenberg to the home ranch in Deer Lodge with some frequency. The local press reported one such trip in 1885:

Mr. C. Bielenberg, of Davenport, Iowa, father of N. J. Johnnie, and Charlie Bielenberg and almost as young-looking as the boys, arrived last Sunday and will spend a few weeks with them. He was here three years ago and has many friends in the community. [15]

So the visits went both ways. Con's autobiography mentions travelling to see his sister in California at least twice, as well, and J. H. Gehrmann noted that

every fall Conrad's sister, Catherine Berwald, [nee Kohrs] packed dried fruit at her home in California to send to Conrad and Henry. This was really the only fruit available in Deer Lodge. The same time grandmother packed Sauerkraut and cut beans or "Snitzelbohnen" packed in salt in special oak kegs for shipment to Montana. These were considered especial treats on the ranch. [16]

Because of the closeness of the family at the ranch house, birthdays and anniversaries received appropriate celebration and recognition. Even the local press took note of the family's warm relationship, noting that "If there is any place our worthy representative [Con Kohrs] would rather be than with his family, we don't think he has found it yet—and don't think he ever will." [17]

The grandest event of that nature had to be the time that Con bought Augusta a house. They had moved to Helena for the winter of 1899 and found that they enjoyed it there. Augusta decided she wanted to live in Helena in their rented home. That was sufficient to prompt Con to action, "So without her knowledge I telegraphed to Mr. D'archeul and bought the house, presenting it to her on our wedding anniversary." [18]

The family showed its happy solidarity in other ways as well. With Con on the road so much, many trips had to combine business and family interests. The family went along whenever possible. An example is the Yellowstone trip in 1883. With horses, a provision wagon, a cook, and assistants, Con, Augusta, Miss King, and the children travelled from Deer Lodge to Yellowstone National Park and leisurely wandered through it for six weeks. The local newspaper note on the story reported that "the family will return by rail from Mammoth Springs. Mr. Kohrs goes to Chicago before returning." [19] This combination of a business and family trip was typical.

The Deer Lodge family cherished its friends too. Their actions upon Tom Hooban's death—transporting his remains to his home in Wisconsin and journeying there for the funeral—testify strongly to their devotion to him. Likewise, the children's governess, Miss Anna King, became virtually a member of the family, accompanying them to Europe and taking trips with them throughout Montana. After Anna King left the employ of the Kohrs to pursue a singing career, she would return for lengthy stays, as she did in the fall of 1884. [20]

Con Warren remembered the family during the summers at Deer Lodge. In the years following Con and Augusta's move to Helena, both Con and Augusta would telephone John Bielenberg at the ranch in Deer Lodge once or twice a week just to see how he was doing. If they hadn't called for a few days, John would call them. They always remained in close contact. In the evenings, Con Warren recalled, "They would sit down and talk for hours on end." Even taciturn John Bielenberg, who seldom spoke except when absolutely necessary, would join in. They would gather in the dining room "in the evenings . . . around the table and talk, talk, talk." Con Warren observed that "they really were a close-knit family. And they had this extraordinary regard for each other." [21]

Con and Augusta and John remained the core of the family, but of course there were the children too: initially Anna Kohrs (born 18 December 1868) , then Katie (Katherine, born 2 March 1870), and finally William or "Willie" (born 1 November 1879) . Anna married first, in 1891. She wedded John Boardman, who eventually became manager of many of the Kohrs and Bielenberg interests. The younger daughter, Katherine, married a physician, Dr. Otey Yancey Warren, a few years later. Dr. Warren died just a few months after the birth, in 1907, of the couple's youngest child, Conrad Kohrs Warren, who became manager and later owner of the ranch.

Con and Augusta's only son, William, died on 20 March 1901, while attending college in the East. Willie's death must have been a major shock to Con and Augusta, but an exact measure of its impact remains unknown. Con Kohrs apparently could not bring himself to mention the tragedy in his autobiography. In as intimate a group as the Kohrs family, any death would be strongly felt. That the first child to die was the only son must have brought even greater pain to Con and Augusta. Family tradition infers that this is so. The only major response to the death in the family that is known for certain is that shortly after William's death, Con, John, and Augusta initiated the construction of the "Wm. K. Kohrs Memorial Library" in Deer Lodge. The building survives today unaltered on the exterior. The stained glass window, donated by John Bielenberg, and the neoclassic lines of the structure, along with the ranch itself, serve as reminders of the Kohrs family in Deer Lodge.

Probably Con, John, and Augusta would not have proceeded along the lines they took in the management and ultimately the disposal of the property they had accumulated if William had not died. Had he lived, he would have been the logical heir and business manager, and the formation of the three landholding companies would have been unnecessary. By about 1903 he would have been ready to begin whatever apprenticeship his father and uncle might have felt he needed. Yet this is speculation, not fact. Suffice it to say that the death of William endangered the continuity of family ownership of the ranch -- this much is fact.

But some continuity did, indeed, prevail through the two sons-in-law, John Boardman and O. Y. Warren. Boardman began helping with the Kohrs and Bielenberg cattle interests in the early 1890s. By the turn of the century he had progressed to even more active participation. In 1900 he took over management of the Pioneer Cattle Company (the DHS Ranch operations) and soon was managing the Redwater Land and Livestock Company, which controlled the Kohrs and Bielenberg eastern Montana cattle interests. [22] Both he and Warren took an active part in politics, as did Conrad Kohrs. It must have been a source of real satisfaction for Con Kohrs to see both his sons-in-law in the state legislature with him. He, Boardman, and Warren served in the state senate, and all pursued active avocational careers in state politics. [23]

Dr. Warren died in 1907, and over the succeeding years the Warren children (Con, Robert, and Anna) and their grandparents and granduncle John Bielenberg became quite close, closer, in fact, than most children are to their grandparents. A photograph dated about 1917 shows Con Warren and his brother at a YMCA "Father-Son Banquet." Con's brother and John Boardman are together, while Conrad Kohrs and Conrad Kohrs Warren are sitting together at a table a few seats away with the other fathers and sons.

This close relationship of Con Warren to the Kohrses and to John Bielenberg may well account for the care and attention that Con Warren and his wife Nell later paid to preserving the materials, buildings, papers, and even many of the original furnishings and equipment at the ranch. Warren, in close and frequent contact with Con and Augusta, who had built up the ranch, felt a kinship to it that would have been denied him in a more routine relationship with his grandparents. In a way this was but a continuation of the close family ties that had bound them all together.

Con Warren carried on the tradition of Kohrs and Bielenberg in at least three areas: He bred fine stock, improving the quality of Montana herds in the process, as did they; he ran the home ranch; and he took time, as did Kohrs, to participate actively in State cattle-growing organizations. He served as President of the Montana Stockgrowers Association in 1950 and 1951 and served on the State Livestock Commission for twelve years, beginning in 1949. Although he was a third generation grandson, he served as the immediate heir of the Conrad Kohrs family in the cattle business. [24]

D. Vignettes of Daily Life at the Ranch

At a whist party one Saturday early in the spring of 1885, the guests enjoyed cards and conversation. During the evening someone calculated the time spent in Montana by the group of twelve, and came up with the impressive total of 239 years. The most senior pioneer present was none other than Conrad Kohrs— who had arrived on 2 August 1862. This prompted the anonymous reporter to enquire of Mr. Kohrs what his age might be. Con replied " 'There are no spring chickens here' and the games went on." [25] In the years prior to the more sedate whist party era at the home ranch, dances lasting all night had brightened the place more than once [26] Young Con Kohrs continued Johnny Grant's practice of hosting dances with real gusto.

But work formed the main routine of the ranch, dominating the life there. The pattern, stemming from the earliest days of the ranch's history, was a set one: having herding cattle, mending fences, hanging gates at corrals, feeding animals, and slaughtering an occasional beef for the house or the bunkhouse crew. Wagons needed repair, buildings needed paint or whitewash, and calves and colts needed caring for from time to time. The crew at the ranch put in a busy day. But they enjoyed compensations. The tradition of the range—hard work expected and good food provided—manifested itself at the ranchhands' dinner table in the bunkhouse.

Chinese made their name there as cooks. Possibly the best known, who returned to China and died early in the 20th century, carried the alliterative name "Ham Sam the Chinaman." Tom Sing succeeded Ham Sam, and Tom Wing succeeded Tom Sing. They all featured that rich and fulsome cattle country cuisine, the legendary reports of which in pulp westerns and movies are probably closer to fact than fiction. Sourdough biscuits and bread, [27] beef, and beans furnished much of the core of the menu at the bunkhouse, but other items appeared on the table as well. One ranch hand, looking back in the late winter of 1975 to his summers as a teenager working at the ranch about 1917 to 1920, recalled the typical breakfast for the hands at about 6:00 A.M. It consisted of bacon and eggs, hotcakes, oatmeal biscuits, coffee, and milk. He added that the hands sat down to eat only after the horses had been fed. At noon the hot meal featured beef, beans, one or two vegetables, and for dessert, pies and cakes. The noon meal was the major one of the day, but the evening meal usually featured almost as much as that at midday. [28]

A particular feature at the bunkhouse table during the Warren era, reputedly always welcomed on the earlier roundups, and probably a staple of the northwest ranching diet, was the "bannock." Con Warren described it. Squares of a mixture of lard, flour, milk, baking powder, and sugar blended into a sweet biscuit dough were cooked in deep grease and came out as hot, semisweet fried bread, with no syrup needed. On the roundups, beans (buried in the iron pot under the coals of the fire in a lard can) and bannocks at breakfast, served with hot coffee, made a popular and simple breakfast. Warren recalled that one old white mule, up in the high pastures east of the ranch house, would "nuzzle up really friendly when he smelled a bannock being fried." Con always remembered to present the equine gourmet with the first fruit of the pan. [29]

The copious meals that graced the table at the bunkhouse began after the dinner gong sounded. Located just outside the door of the kitchen, its peals, awaited with sincere anticipation, brought the crew from the sheds and barns in the vicinity.

At the ranch house the quantity of food featured about equalled that of the bunkhouse, but the variety was larger. Dinners often featured beef, lamb, or veal, and often lots of roast turkey. Stew and heavy soups began most meals, and pie almost always closed them. [30] Coffee appeared at every meal, in large amounts, and at other times as well. Conrad and Augusta and their guests, Con Warren recalled, would sit on the porch for morning and afternoon coffee. The afternoon coffee featured cake, chocolates, and cookies as well, and young Con Warren especially relished an invitation to join the adults for "afternoon coffee." [31]

The reminiscences of those such as Con Warren and J. H. Gehrmann, recalling their days at the ranch as young boys, help round out the story of the daily routine, and seem to bring it into balance with the accounts of cattle raising, transportation, and marketing. They show that ingenuity and fun blended with the daily routine of the business. Coyote control, as practiced in 1904, serves as an example.

The home ranch maintained its own flock of turkeys for the table at the main house and at the bunkhouse. The turkey house sheltered the birds usually, but in the summer they would roost in a big tree near the stallion barn. Coyotes often circled underneath at night to attack any bird that lost its balance. When the coyote population reached uncomfortable proportions, the ranch hands killed a lamb and slivered its carcass, injecting it with arsenic. The hands then hung it on a gate arch near the turkey roost, high enough that the coyotes would have to jump to get to the meat. This they would do, and tearing off a chuck, have the meat ingested before they realized the danger—if they ever had time to think about it. The carcasses often lasted less than a week when the coyote population was particularly heavy. [32]

Birthdays and Christmas sparkled at the home ranch. Relatives and invited friends came for dinner, and Augusta's cook served fancy meals.

On those special days particularly, but every other day as well, flowers formed much of the scene in and about the house. The lilac bushes on the south, irrigated by the running water coming through the yard, created a tunnel through which children would run. A large flower garden lay just south of the house and down the bluff, but within the fenced house yard, and added its profusion of colors to the scene. [33] Round plots of flowers in the front yard stood on each side of the entrance, and in the house sprays of roses stood in vases—especially in the dining room. [34]

The ranch house served as a colorful center for the ranch and its myriad activities. The bright green yard and cottonwood trees, the white house and green shutters, and the flowers, set the ranch house apart from the rest of the complex, its particular mix of colors and brightness in sharp contrast to the raw dirt of the corrals. The focus of the social scene at the ranch, and separated in distance by about forty feet (but in social status by a wide gulf) from the bunkhouse, the ranch house, its visitors, guests, and occupants enjoyed the benefits resulting from the long period of success that had crowned the life of Con and Augusta Kohrs and John Bielenberg.

E. Conrad Kohrs (Born 5 August 1835, Wewelfleth, Denmark; Died 23 July 1920, Helena, Montana)

Stories about Conrad Kohrs abound in Montana literature. No doubt many are apocryphal. Yet one of them neatly illustrates why Con Kohrs succeeded in his myriad business ventures. Kohrs had a rival in the butcher business in Virginia City in the early 1860s, the story goes, who had a big advantage over him because he had a horse to use in making deliveries, while Kohrs had none. But an assistant in Kohrs's shop had $500 in savings. Con borrowed it, bought a horse, and soon outstripped the competition, repaid the money, and soared on to big profits. Kohrs was paying him out of his own money, the assistant would occasionally joke. But the lesson in the episode was that the assistant made a small profit on the money by investing it, and Con Kohrs used it to bring thousands of dollars into the business, amply demonstrating his legendary money making abilities. [35]

And above anything else, Con Kohrs did prove his ability to make money. He made it in mining and in cattle. He invested profits from his stock and mineral enterprises in real estate, in other businesses, and back into cattle and mining. He blended an ability to work exceptionally hard with a sense of business timing little short of miraculous. The result was usually success in whatever activity he entered. In short, he was a classic nineteenth-century entrepreneur, except that he proved himself more successful than most.

He earned the respect of his fellows in the cow business. Of the many who wrote about Kohrs in 1920 when he died, few perceived him as sympathetically, yet as accurately, as John Clay, who penned "The Passing of Conrad Kohrs" for the Breeder's Gazette. [36] Clay had participated in the grandest period of the cattleman's era and had reported it as well. He had watched Conrad Kohrs worked with him, and shared in the bad and good times of those early days. John Clay recalled that Kohrs "threw his whole soul into his work." While surely not the most original thing that Clay ever wrote, it precisely illustrated Kohrs's approach to life and to business. Clay discussed the Kohrs "presence": "Like imperial Caeser, he came, he saw, he conquered. No man could withstand the magnetism, the fascination the human side of Kohrs' character."

Clay, Conrad Kohrs, and a few other old cattlemen spent a pleasant afternoon in the Montana Club one day in 1918 just two years before Con died. That afternoon Clay recalled that Con's words fell somewhat slowly, but surely, a mellow unflection on them that seemed to cover sentences. Kohrs had "a soft voice with a touch of firmness in it, a faint accent of his Danish home still remaining after years of absence." [37]

An old colleague from the 1880s and the early days of the stockmen's associations, Theodore Roosevelt, always remembered his friend Con Kohrs. Once a person met Kohrs, he did not easily forget him.

Another who knew Kohrs described him graphically hut somewhat less than poetically. Kohrs was "a fine, big Dutchman and a likeable man." [38] Like those who knew him, those who studied the cattle empire many years after his death were impressed by his accomplishments and personality. "Of all the cattlemen one of the greatest was Conrad Kohrs," one book notes. The study continues:

As a cattleman Kohrs had his ups and downs, but in the opinion of a contemporary he had a magnetic personality, a great wealth of common sense and splendid judgment, a kind heart, and a definite sense of fair play. He was a great figure, and the color of his personality lay in his vision and the quiet manner in which he worked toward his goals. [39]

Conrad Kohrs holds a high position both in the opinion of his contemporaries and in the writings of those who strive to re-create the era of the great cattle men.

The key to Conrad Kohrs's success in life lay in his judgement. He had the ability, either native to him or a carefully developed virtue, to sense what action to take and when to take it. Displaying a strong, quiet, and firm demeanor to the world, Con Kohrs presented the image of a man who could be trusted to do the right thing. He displayed this quality of sound business judgement from the time he entered Montana. The elements always seemed to be the same, although as he grew more wealthy and powerful the stakes became bigger. The particular mix of prescience and hunch that caused him to drop the fruitless search for quick wealth in mining and pick up three cows to slaughter and sell for meat in 1862 is the early example of his exercise of business acumen. Later deals involving possibly half a million dollars in cattle interests and, perhaps as much in mining ventures resulted from this same shrewdness; only the magnitude was different.

Certainly his contemporaries trusted his judgement, for even a cursory look at his account book reveals that he had no dearth of partners. And these co-investors—fellow entrepreneurs—showed their willingness to enter into deals with Kohrs in about as many and disparate business ventures as existed in Montana during Kohrs's lifetime. The offices in which they placed him in the counsels of the state government, county government, and in the cattlemen's associations also testified to their trust in him.

It seems, too, that Kohrs moved within and not ahead of the most workable and proven ideas of his day. This is not to say he could not innovate when the occasion demanded. He strongly bucked the tide in 1862 when he moved out of the mainstream of those seeking wealth in the mines and perceived that the money was to be made in selling to those who worked the ground. He chose to become a permanent resident in a transient community—a decision that proved profitable. After the disaster of 1887 he realized that more than recouping was possible in the cattle business, and he invested while others fled. But in the main he watched trends and moved when the probability of success looked high. Take his introduction of purebred cattle, for example.

No doubt Con Kohrs and John Bielenberg, like any other cattlemen, took real pleasure in working with blooded stock, beautiful animals representing the highest qualities of their respective breeds. In this they paralleled the joy that a bibliophile finds in a perfectly bound first edition of a rare book, or a hunter might feel in acquiring the best gun dog in the area. But for Conrad Kohrs the overriding factor in any deal remained utility. If a project had value and would probably be successful, it would be undertaken if the time was right. And with the introduction of purebred cattle, timing and planning did mean everything to Con. When he introduced Short Horns into Montana to upgrade the herds that were ranging in the valleys of the western part of the state and beginning to cross over to the eastern slope, he did so with the knowledge that the Short Horn had proven itself in the Mississippi Valley, in the East, and in Canada. Short Horn values were known, certain, and predictable. So in the introduction of the cattle to Montana he is a pioneer of sorts since he began the large-scale upgrading of the range herds. But the animal he chose was a well-established breed from back East, the standard one whose capabilities were known.

As with the Short Horns, Kohrs moved well ahead of his contemporaries in introducing Herefords to Montana. But again it was a firmly established breed, an animal that had demonstrated its value in Kansas and Missouri before Kohrs imported it. [40]

But there is another side to Conrad Kohrs's "pioneering" efforts . In addition to his early endeavors in the development of good quality cattle, in land investments, and in business activities, he lived as a pioneer, a new citizen in a fresh new frontier community, who was interested in building that community he had helped found. Those institutions that permitted a stable business atmosphere should be supported, he felt, and those that tended to bring disorder should he quelled. When the mining camps began to suffer from the constant assaults by outlaws and brigands that seemed the way of life in the new territory, young Con Kohrs joined with the vigilantes who rooted out these undesirables and restored order. On Kohrs's part, it was an early and conscious decision favoring stability. He made many more such judgements . For example, he had not owned the ranch two years when he entered county politics and worked with others who were interested in creating a healthy and active local government in Deer Lodge. When the cattlemen and the cattle grew so numerous in Montana that some regulation was needed, Con Kohrs, along with many others, worked to bring stability and self-regulation to the movement. By this time he had begun to enter state politics as well.

None of these actions were accidental. In fact, little that Kohrs ever did was on the spur of the moment. He saw that the community needed to build, that schools, churches, businesses, and a government needed to be encouraged. He did his part as a businessman, as a cattleman, and as an individual to see that these necessities developed. He began as a community builder and never ceased to be one. [41]

F. John Bielenberg (Born 1 May 1846, Hamburg, Germany; Died 16 June 1922. Helena, Montana)

John Bielenberg's fine penmanship frequently graces the letterbooks among the ranch documents, and in its controlled and measured form seems to illuminate a personality that otherwise eludes description. In the old family pictures John stares directly at the camera. He betrays no strong emotion, his calm and neutral look effectively hiding the feelings of the inner man. His dress is always rough work clothes, somewhat carelessly fitted onto a considerable frame. Yet he is remembered today as a major presence in the life of the home ranch, and as the one brother most closely involved with its operations, (He was also a full brother in emotional ties to Con and Augusta.) Bielenberg managed the ranch while Con ranged far and wide in pursuit of profits for the partnership. He served as the home ranch portion of a symbiotic Kohrs-Bielenberg enterprise that spanned much of early Montana's economic life. Con Warren spent many years with his Uncle John and remembers the way Conrad Kohrs and John Bielenberg worked together:

They were very devoted, and apparently they had considerable mutual admiration. And grandfather needed a man like John, because John was the one who stayed home and looked after the business, particularly the range cattle part of it. But whenever they needed a man real bad, like when the DHS sold those cattle to the Army and agreed to deliver them to Dickinson, North Dakota, grandfather sent John and Nick down to see that the cattle got there safely. And John trouble-shot for him, time and time again. [42]

John is remembered today as a pleasant enough man, but a taciturn one who never spoke an unnecessary word. When the occasion required he would employ a quiet and noncommittal "Oh my God," or "me too." [43] The longest sentence most can recall from Bielenberg was the laconic one that has been heard before in the American West: "Anything you can't do on a horse isn't worth doing." [44]

From the earliest days in Montana, John and Con worked together as partners. The mutual trust in each other that they felt is verified time and time again in the legal documents on file at the county courthouse. In one deal John buys the land, in another Con does. But they use it jointly. When John remains at the ranch while Con and Augusta go to Germany for a visit, he receives the full power of attorney.

John's closeness to the family included the children as well. Apparently they wrote to Uncle Johnny as faithfully as they did to their father in 1881 when both Con and John remained in Montana while the girls, Willy, and their mother lived in Hamburg. One of Con's letters to Anna notes that "Onkle Johney got letters from all of you, I had forgotten about his birthday and Onkel Johney says he had not thought of it himself." [45] John and Con and Augusta were the adults in the family, and as the girls grew older and married they retained their closeness to John as well as to their parents.

Yet John remains little known outside the ranch area, except as the Bielenberg of "Kohrs and Bielenberg." But around Deer Lodge the memory of John Bielenberg is still strong. Stories of his ranch management are legion. Of the many, two will suffice.

One involves John's approach to breaking the yearling colts at the ranch to the harness. John's considerable size, about 6 feet in height and perhaps 240 pounds in weight, was an asset in the process. On the more recalcitrant animals Bielenberg would

grab one out, [and] pull it out of the corral. If it gave [him] too much trouble he would grab an ear and lip and twist it to the ground. It would kick and thrash and John would sit on its head, pull out a cigar, bite off the end and light up for as long as it took to get them settled down. Usually [he] had them mowing in a field the first day. [The] best way to break them is [to] team them up and work them. [46]

Con Warren recalled an incident in 1918 when Uncle John enquired if young Warren had ever butchered beef. No, Con replied, he had not. Bielenberg's exact reply is now lost in mists of the past. But the resulting event began within minutes, as young Warren found himself facing a freshly slaughtered bovine hanging on the Beef Hoist (Historic Structure 40) with a sharpened butcher's knife in his hand. Uncle John pulled the everpresent cigar from his pocket. As he bit off the end, he mounted a nearby fence and settled down for a prolonged stay. Step by step he directed the young man's first experience in cleaning, skinning, and butchering a cow. Con Warren has not forgotten that day. [47]

John remained at the ranch after Con and Augusta moved to Helena, but Augusta continued to look after her bachelor brother-in-law. Not the kind to remember to pick up new clothes when he needed them, he was the recipient of Augusta Kohrs's watchful care in such matters. She would come over and sort through the clothes, deciding what should be discarded, what repaired, and what replaced. She did it until he died in 1922.

As he sickened in the late spring of 1922, the family gathered, and when he died, Augusta Kohrs and the surviving Kohrs children, Anna Boardman and Katherine Warren, were with him. His closeness to them then was as apparent as it had been soon after he came to Montana to join Conrad Kohrs in 1865. [48]

G. Augusta Kruse Kohrs (Born 20 Jan. 1849, Wewelfleth, Prussia: Died 29 October 1945 , Helena, Montana)

"We adored her, and were grief-stricken when she died." [49] This straight-forward tribute from a great granddaughter of Augusta Kruse Kohrs sums up the striking impact she made on family and friends. Augusta's long life bridged almost the entire existence of the Kohrs and Bielenberg home ranch. Her husband had owned the ranch for only two and a half years before she came on the scene, and she saw it grow to its fullest size, be almost all sold off, begin its renaissance under Con Warren's leadership, and be purchased by Warren in 1940. She remained always the grand lady of the ranch and had a dominant part in the collection and arrangement of the home furnishings. Although she married a man whose presence on the Montana scene was great, he never eclipsed her, never relegated her to a second class role in the family. She possessed too much individuality to be overshadowed by anyone.

Augusta first entered Montana as a bride at the age of nineteen. She had been courted in Ohio for no more than two, at the most perhaps three, weeks. Married in Iowa, she soon found herself aboard a river steamer going upstream against the considerable efforts of the Missouri River to push the boat back to Omaha. Thus her first introduction to the rigors of the West came in the form of the dubious pleasure of river boating in the early spring across the high plains. Six weeks on the craft as it inched its way upstream should have been hardship enough. But the next trial came soon afterwards, specifically, her five-day trip in the cold and rain of a Montana spring overland in a wagon to Deer Lodge in the far west of the young Montana Territory. Family legend has it that had she been able to go back East she would have. She could not, of course, and from that time on she served as the home manager for the ranch house and as hostess to its many visitors, involved with an active family and in the comings and goings of her husband and brother-in-law.

Her pictures seem to confirm what the family remembers of her. The earliest known photograph of her, in 1868, shows a lovely young woman of nineteen: proud, erect and direct in look and bearing. This is the young woman who came to Deer Lodge and immediately imposed her personality on the rather informal bachelor's paradise then thriving at the Con Kohrs place. She was, as her husband accurately described her in his autobiography, a young wife with "the German pride in taking care of her own household" [50]

In the next known photograph she was twenty-five years old and the mother of two children, a veteran of six years of dynamic existence in Deer Lodge. By this time, 1874, she had become a major figure in Deer Lodge society, serving on several committees and acting as a hostess to some of the new settlers in the community. [51] She was an uncommonly lovely young woman, sophisticated and beautiful in an equally striking but far less polished land.

Blessed with that rare quality that exists in but a chosen few, she became more attractive as she grew older, as evidenced by her later photographs. And it is the older Augusta Kohrs that we know the most about.

Her tastes and decorative bents are obvious at the home ranch. The collection and arrangement of the furniture, the placement of the pictures, the rugs, and the sofas, all tend to reveal much about the lady during the height of the grand days of Kohrs and Bielenberg at Deer Lodge. Augusta Kohrs chose furnishings directly in tune with the styles dominant in Europe and in the design and style centers of America. She and the family made almost yearly visits East, and there Augusta absorbed many of the main themes of fashion as they were developing. She considered these ideas, and transported her perception of them to her spacious home in Deer Lodge, making it an outpost of fashion. A contemporary described both Con and Augusta and their home as he experienced it in his visits there: "In his house he was at his best. He had the faculty of making you at home. In this he was doubly assisted by his wife. There was no show or display, but everything was solid, substantial, in good taste." [52]

Yet the gracious lady's life as the hostess of the home ranch is known only through knowledge of her life in the 20th century (primarily after Con and John died between 1920 and 1922), of which we know a great deal. Surely the dominant and strong, yet gracious, presence of Augusta Kohrs in the later years of her life mirrored that of the earlier period.

Perhaps one of the most well-established qualities of Augusta's personality was that of loyalty to family and friends. She demonstrated it frequently. In the early weeks of the hard winter of 1887, Augusta showed her concern for a sister-in-law. Con Kohrs reported that "my brother's wife was dying of consumption and my wife was with her during her last days. After her burial we made preparations to return to Hot Springs, and left on January 22nd." [53] Augusta travelled to Iowa to be with many of the women in the family at the birth of their children. [54] Friends, too, came to be close to Mrs. Kohrs, and she often helped at the birth of their children as well. [55]

The ties of loyalty to family remained strong for as long as Mrs. Kohrs lived. After 1900 she spent the winters in Helena, but about six weeks of every summer she stayed at her "home" as she called it, in Deer Lodge, living at the ranch house. But that visit began in June, usually, so that her annual trip down to Deer Lodge on Decoration Day in May was a special one. She would be chauffeured down from Helena, first picking up flowers at the State nursery on the south edge of town. All the family graves—except that of one of Con's half brothers whom she never liked—were decorated. Augusta remembered all the anniversaries and birthdays, too, and decorated the graves appropriately. [56]

Loyalty to family and friends blended with other qualities. Among them was bluntness, for Mrs. Kohrs was direct and plainspoken. In fact, her ability to mix graciousness and loyalty with a directness and forcefulness of speech was remarkable. A young bride once experienced that aspect of the Augusta Kohrs manner.

The young woman had always known Mrs. Kohrs as a dear friend of her mother. Augusta had assisted at the young lady's birth and at her sister's as well. When the women grew older, she spent many pleasant hours at the Kohrs Ranch and with Mrs. Kohrs and Con at their Helena home. Later she and her husband often visited the ranch during the summers when Mrs Kohrs visited at Deer Lodge where the young couple lived. One such day Augusta Kohrs and the young couple were sitting down to Sunday dinner in the ranch house dining room. The table, as usual, was formally set, with china, crystal, silver, and a damask cloth and napkins. The maid served everything but the meat portion, a duty Augusta always reserved for herself. Such was the case at this meal, at which chicken was the main dish. Augusta, serving, asked the young husband what piece of chicken he preferred. "Just anything," came the reply. "Just anything doesn't grow on a chicken," Augusta retorted.

This quality tended to overawe some who knew Mrs. Kohrs. Her somewhat imperious, almost regal bearing, in conjunction with the dark colors in which she invariably dressed, could create a considerable distance between her and others. Yet this facade hid another side of her character—a warmly sentimental one.

By the time grandchildren arrived to enliven Con and Augusta's life, she bore the affectionate family title "Ohma," meaning grandmother in German, by which she was known for much of the twentieth century. [57] And Ohma took extra pains to be kind to friends. A special pattern of china would be matched when Christmas or a birthday occasioned the sending of a gift to a friend. Once her son-in-law John Boardman and a young man fished in the Blackfoot River, north of Deer Lodge, for trout. The young man connected with a good one and proudly brought it in. Not long afterward the young man became engaged to the daughter of a close friend of Augusta. Mrs. Kohrs remembered the event, and commissioned one of Montana's best landscape artists to paint the site. She then presented the young couple with the artwork as a wedding gift. [58]

Philanthropy, too, formed an important part of Augusta Kohrs's life. The private gifts probably outweighed the public ones, considerable though they were. These public donations included the Conrad Kohrs memorial, a $115,000 addition to St. Peter's Hospital in Helena. The extent of the private contributions remains unknown, although it is believed today to have been considerable.

Generally, the private and discreet help Augusta Kohrs provided went to educate the community's young men. [59] One such student became a doctor and saved money to repay Augusta for her assistance to him. He had met the only requirement she placed on the recipients of her largesse, that they write her of their progress and visit when they were home from school. But he wanted to repay the money as well, so he brought it with him when he visited Mrs. Kohrs. Augusta heard the young doctor out and answered: "I never expected the money back. Keep it and get a wife and buy her a house." [60] Reportedly, he did.

Yet the overriding trait in the remarkable character of Augusta Kruse Kohrs seems to have been a vitality of the mind, an awareness of exactly what she was doing when she did it. Actions were not executed on a hunch or without good reason. Her understanding of the arts is an example of this. She had been trained as a pianist, tradition has it, and played acceptably well. Music remained a vital part of her life, and she seldom missed a chance to go to New York for the music season to hear operas, concerts, and the symphony. Yet she did not simply listen, she understood what she heard. She also read about music and the arts, and would present her outspoken views, firmly founded in knowledge, with clarity. It is no accident that she decorated her home as she did. Although as yet we have no documentary evidence, letters or a diary, to prove it, her decorative scheme in the ranch house seems to have been a clear and precise approach utilizing the elements of furnishings style and design that were a product of her age, her German background, and of her visits to Germany in the early 1880s. All these influences were distilled through her own tastes and produced the comfortable parlor, living room, and dining room in which she entertained her guests and discussed current events, politics, art, and music.

One evening she and friends listened to a community concert in Helena. Augusta focused attentively on the well-known pianist and listened to the playing with care. At the conclusion of the work this ranch wife turned to a companion and commented that the artist did not know his Debussy very well.

This lady almost defined the word. She had adapted to a rough pine floor house—the largest in Montana territory, but still an informal dwelling—and quickly made her cultural mark on it. She had developed a sharp and incisive sensitivity to the tastes of her time and their cultural manifestations. Her knowledge of music showed it as did her carefully decorated home. She took her place in the community as the wife of a prominent rancher, legislator, and investor, and moved within that community with both grace and a nonpatronizing noblesse oblige. She managed to present an image almost patrician, yet not snobbish. In all ways, she was the grand mistress of the home ranch of Kohrs and Bielenberg.