Episode 6 - Gwen Mitchell

Gwen Mitchell taught at the Franklin School

Welcome to Mining City Reflections, where we illuminate the history of Butte, Montana through the stories and observations of 20th century women who lived there. I’m your host, Marian Jensen. The oral history collection in the Butte Archives has preserved the personal recollections of these women in vivid detail. They bring to life the challenges and achievements of the boom to bust town.

No immigrant population made a greater contribution to Butte’s mining industry than the Cornish. They were the first ethnic group that came to the Mining district in large numbers. Hailing almost exclusively from the tin mines in Cornwall, the very southwest tip of England, these skilled contract miners brought their talents, and eventually their families, to the ‘richest hill on earth.’ In this episode we’ll hear from Gwen Mitchell, both sides of whose family were Cornish who had immigrated to work in the mines.

“When we went to high school, we were, you know, from across the track.”

In an oral history taken in 1987 by Montana historian Mary Murphy, Gwen Mitchell provides a detailed description of Cornish life in Butte in the early years of the 20th century. Gwen’s parents had immigrated from Cornwall separately. Her maternal grandfather came first. He was disabled in a mine accident in Bingham, Utah, but sent for his wife and children anyway when Gwen’s mother Winifred was 14. With money from a settlement offered by the mining company, the family opened a boarding house in Butte. And made pasties.

“Certain days of the week, they made hot pasties. And my grandfather took the hot pasties to the mines, you see, because they were right there in Meaderville and many of the men worked in Meaderville, so those men could have hot pasties.”

Gwen’s father, a Cornish miner called John Mitchell, became a boarder at the house at the age of 17. He met Winifred, who worked there, and in a manner frequent on the Butte hill, love blossomed. Three years later, Winifred and John were married. While working as a shift supervisor at the Leonard and the Tramway mines, John, along with Winifred, built a house in the McQueen neighborhood. They raised three daughters including Gwen who was born in 1906. Gwen lived at the house, and worked on the east side of Butte most of her life, but went to town regularly.

“In fact, as children we went to town every Saturday. The Empress Theater wad there on East Broadway and they gave matinees for the children, you know the plays. It was live theater!”

The nearby Columbia Gardens, Montana’s only amusement park, was a fond early memory.

“We’d go out early. My mother and the neighbors were family and we’d go out and get our tables and everything. We youngsters would play and so forth and we’d have our lunch and then they had stoves out there, so we would cook dinner and our dad’s would come out after work. It was a day out. It was beautiful and especially beautiful because, you see Butte - in the early days when the smelters were here, we didn’t have grass, trees, gardens - so the Gardens was really something because it had the natural mountain scenery and then they had beautiful gardens around along with the pansies. They had a butterfly with the pansies and all of that.”

Partially paralyzed by polio, Gwen’s family made sure she was educated so she could be independent. After graduating from high school, she studied to become a teacher, and taught at the Franklin School in McQueen. Many of her students were from immigrant families from Italy, Austria, and what was then called Yugoslavia.

“Well, these children came along and they wanted to learn and their parents wanted them to learn. We helped them all that we could. We didn’t have - I don’t think I had too many that came out from Italy. They were children born in the Italian homes and of course, the grandparents and the parents talked the language but they didn’t teach their children very much of the languages. They wanted them to learn English, so they were very very cooperative. They wanted their children educated and disciplining was not a big problem. If you had any problem and asked for their help, you received it. They were behind you 100%.”

Gwen was devoted to her career as a teacher. In those days that meant she was required to remain single, and so she lived in her childhood home in McQueen until she was 61.

“When I first started to teach, if you married today, you didn’t have a job tomorrow. No married teachers. Of course, if you had children in those days and you had to wash on the wash board and get wood and coal into the stoves and take out the ashes and all of that, there wasn’t much time.”

When the Franklin School had to make way for the Berkeley Pit, she transferred over to East Junior High where she finished a teaching career spanning forty-five years. While Gwen embraced the role of teacher as the moral compass of a community, those years were not without their good times.

“We had parties. We went out sometimes to Anaconda for dinner, or Whitehall, or down to Meaderville. Meaderville was really in its heyday then, so we often went down to Meaderville. Many people in Butte went there. There was no reason that’s you be afraid to go there. The gambling was off in a place and the bar was off in a place and the eating places were, you know, like ordinary restaurants. I can remember walking up Main Street for the last street car or the last bus, and never a word said to me, never. And there was the red light district right, you know, right there. But they really had respect.”

The Cornish were strongly religious and traditionally Methodist, building most of the Methodist churches in Butte. Gwen’s memories of Cornish traditions reflect the depth of her involvement. The Cornish continued their custom of a Harvest Festival to raise money for the care of the church. Despite Butte’s lack of farm produce, the feast was memorable.

“They would go out to the various places, sometimes out to the various farms, to get wheat and apples and things of that sort. Then they solicited the business people down in the wholesale district and they contributed cases of corn or beans or whatever and various things. And they’d get pumpkins from out in the country. They always had a big table up in front, right by the church alter and displayed all of this. Then on Monday evening, they served a roast beef dinner. Well, I guess when they started they had ham and so on, but as I can remember as a child growing up, it was a roast beef dinner with mashed potatoes and gravy, pickled beets, coleslaw, apple pie.”

Gwen eventually became a member of Butte’s Shakespeare Club, one of its numerous women’s groups founded early on to provide an outlet, particularly for women with literary interests.

“A good many of them were teachers, so I was a little hesitant about it. Anyway, I guess I was a little bolder as time went on. I knew the teachers that were in it so that was probably part of the reason that I joined. I didn’t know people, as I say, because I was rather shy about going into new groups. But they were very, very lovely people and very considerate. I enjoyed it very much.”

In her retirement, Gwen devoted many hours to the Methodist Church, including the United Methodist Women and the local unity circle. At age 82, she was still busy helping to plan the Church’s Harvest Festival and make pasties. She also became a charter member of the Montana Cornish Cousins. With a lifelong love for family, gardening and travel, she lived to be 97.

“And I think that you have to set the example. You teach by precept and example.”

Mining City Reflections is a production of KBMF-LP and has been funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Permission for these recordings has been granted by the Butte Silver Bow Archives, the Montana Historical Society and the University of Montana.