Foreword: When a cache of letterheads from Choteau, Montana’s, Club Saloon recently came up for auction, I was struck by the numerous ownerships of that drinking establishment during just fifteen years. The rapid turnover is intriguing, a story told in the stationery the proprietors left behind.
The oldest letterhead is dated Oct. 20, 1899. The saloonkeeper was William E. Jeffrey, whose stationery featured a fancy backdrop, full of curves and splotches. He advertised that “The Club” could provide “wines, whiskeys and cigars.” Jeffery featured the whiskey of Bond & Lillard, a Kentucky bourbon. By 1899 that brand was controlled by Stoll & Co. of Lexington, Kentucky, an arm of the Whiskey Trust. [See post on Stoll, April 23, 2017].
By 1900, ownership had devolved briefly to C. G. Allen who ordered up stationery that proclaimed the the Club Saloon the “Finest Resort in Teton County.” Allen’s tenure at that “watering hole,” must have been short. By October 1901, M. Morrison & Co. was declaring itself the proprietor of the Club.
Morrison was followed only seven months later, by W. D. Hagen. In a note under his letterhead Hagen asked a wholesale dealer for the exclusive rights to sell Perfecto Cigars in Choteau, promising substantial continuing orders in return. In his advertising Hagen claimed exclusivity for Lemp Beer sales. Later, he added his name to his letterheads and the admonition: “A prompt settlement desired.”
William Hagen was a well known figure in Choteau, having served as the Teton County sheriff from 1897 until 1900. In that role he was instrumental in the first known hanging in the county. When the decomposing body of Julius Plath aka Robert Davis, a hand on a local sheep ranch, was found in 1898, circumstantial evidence pointed to a drifter named William Pepo, who promptly disappeared. Sheriff Hagen relentlessly tracked Pepo down to a small town in Washington State and brought him back to Choteau. On slim proof a local jury found him guilty and sentenced him to death. Hagen supervised construction of the gallows and Pepo was hanged, protesting his innocence to the end.
The retired sheriff apparently found that running a saloon was not what he had envisioned. By 1903 new ownership had emerged. Now Taylor & Butler were a partnership operating The Club. Their proprietorship was similarly short-lived, replaced by C. H. Davis. I have seen no letterhead for Davis but in a Choteau newspaper ad of July 1904 he resurrected the slogan about having the “Finest…in Teton County.” He added his own slogan: Call and See for Yourself: We"ll Show You.
Fast forward 10 years, during which time no new letterheads emerged. On December 31,1913, a local newspaper reported: “The Club Saloon property and licenses were sold to J. H. Peters of Great Falls for $5,800 last Saturday.”Period. No indication of who the seller might be. Peters was already running a saloon in Great Falls but may have moved to Choteau with this purchase. He wasted no time in having his own letterhead printed, shown above. He subsequently added H.C. Peters, likely his brother, to Club management.
H.C. Peters was a veteran of the Spanish-American War, probably a member of the 1st Montana Volunteer Infantry. The unit was mustered in at Helena on May 5-10, 1898, leaving the U.S. for service in the Philippines on July 18, 1898. They arrived in Manila, Philippines, on August 24, 1898. While the unit was enroute, the city of Manila surrendered to American forces. An armistice was agreed to between the U.S. and Spain effectively ending the fighting. Nonetheless, the Montana regiment stayed an entire year in the Philippines fighting a Filipino revolt against American rule. The 1st Montana suffered one officer and 20 men killed in action; 9 officers and 111 men were wounded. A medal was awarded to veterans like Peters by the State of Montana.
Despite the frequent changes in ownership, The Club Saloon continued to stay in business. Even National Prohibition and the country-wide ban on selling alcohol apparently could not shut it down. In September 1932 the Choteau Acantha newspaper reported that George Burrell, the crippled proprietor of The Club, had been murdered in the establishment, apparently in the course of a robbery. Burrell had been found strangled to death, a telephone wire wrapped twice around his neck.
Note: My interest in the Club Saloon led me to the books of Nancy C. Thornton, a former Choteau Acantha reporter, who has done historical summaries of the events that through the years made local news in Choteau and Teton County. Her “Tales from Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front” provided the story of Sheriff Hagen and the Pepo hanging.
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