- Horses Montana
- [From Montana: The Land and its Peopleby Robert G. Raymer, published by Lewis Publishing Company in 1930, Vol. III, p. 349.]"Andrew J. Mercer has been identified with the stock business and farming in Montana for over thirty years, and has acquired a large amount of property and other interests in Richland County. His ranch and farm are six miles southeast of the Town of Sidney, which is his post office.Mr. Mercer was born at Maryville, Nordaway County, Missouri, April 29, 1870, a son of W. F. and Clarinda (Wilson) Mercer. . . . On account of the unsettled conditions [in Missouri during the Civil War] W. F. Mercer and his four brothers spend the years 1862-63 in Virginia City, Montana. W. F. Mercer in March, 1865 returned to Missouri. . . .
Andrew J. Mercer grew up and attended school in Nodaway County, and in 1891, at the age of twenty-one, made his first trip to Montana, spending a short time in Butte. In 1895 he went out to Wyoming, and worked on a ranch. He accepted horses and cattle in lieu of wages, and thus got his start in the live stock business. During the last two years he was in Wyoming he was running his love stock on the open range. Mr. Mercer in 1901 took a homestead east of the Yellowstone Rover, in what is now Rich-land County, Montana. He has had his home on the farm and ranch ever since except for seven or eight years while in the Town of Sidney. He sold his cattle and horses in 1904, an uring the winter of 1905-06 was prospecting over Northwestern Montana, but eventually decided to remain in Richland County. While he was living at Sidney he conducted a saloon, and he still owns property in that town. His chief interests are four or five sections of land, on which he grows cattle, horses and wheat.Mr. Mercer married in 1913 Miss Florence Kate Gardner. She was born in Croydon, England, was a graduate nurse, and came to America to practice her profession. She was in San Francisco at the time of the great earthquake and fire in 1906. Mrs. Mercer died in 1915, leaving one son, Russell."[From Personal stories]Russell Gardner Mercer, the only child of Andy and Florence Mercer, was born Feb. 5, 1915, in Sidney, Montana. His mother died one month afer his birth, so he was reared on the ranch south of Sidney by his father Andy and a series of housekeepers. Most of his schooling was in Gossett School, a one-room country elementary school nearby. Summer for Russell were spent on the ranch and as he grew older he taught himself to do rope ricks and to ride standing on his bareback horse while performing variou acrobatics. Horses were a natural part of life on the ranch at that time. His father ran 175 head of cattl on the nearly 6,000 acres using a large (60+) herd of horses for ranch an field work. He also leased out a good number of draft horses for the original project of the valley's Lower Yellowstone Irrigation system. The mainstay of the farm was livestock sales and spring wheat. . . .Russell graduated from Sidney High School in 1932 in the depths of the Depression and after graduation was employed by the Holly Sugar Factory when he med his future wife, Mary Alice Hammes. They were married in 1940 and made their home on the farm in the old bunk house in the summertime, renting an apartment in Sidney their first winter while Russell worked at the sugar beet factory. That modest ranch structure was expanded several times as the Mercer family grew, to eventually include seven children.Russell was a very active community member. He was named by Montana Governor Aaronson to the citizen board formed for the "School Reorganization Act," as well as on the citizen panel which convened upon the breakup of the Bell Telephone Company conglomerate. In later years he volunteered as one of three county assessor officers, was also secretary of the Eastside Water Users Irrigation board, and was clerk of the Gossett and Rau School board for over 30 years.Mary Mercer was a community activist in her own right. Always interested in documenting local history, she was instrumental in the formation of the "Mondak Historical and Arts Society" - Richland County's historical association which supports a museum that also functions as a de facto community center in Sidney. She was active on that board of directors for many years. Mary was also deeply involved in securing initial support for the restoration of Fort Union, a historic trading post north of Sidney that is today a major tourist attraction for the Mondak area. After having worked on earlier volumes relating our area's history - "Our Jubilee 1911-1961" (1961), and "Focus on Our Roots," (1981), she was an editor of the 1,078 page book Courage Enough (1975). It contains stories and first-person accounts of Richland County pioneers and their families. . . .For her years of dedicated service to record our area's history, on Mary's 80th birthday, she was given the keys to the city of Sidney by the mayor, and declared Sidney's "official" historian.
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http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/horses-montana-allard/?source=link_fb20120317photo-pod
it's a good article...
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