Mary Fifer

by Richard I. Gibson

The Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) has its roots in England and Scotland as long ago as the 1500s. The name’s origin is obscure, but most histories indicate that it came from their practice of admitting working-class members – making the organization “odd,” compared to most such groups that really focused on the elite. Alternatively, it may have been that the early Odd Fellows were formed by tradesmen in small trades, not large enough to come together in their own syndicates or unions. The “Odd Fellows” were the ones left out of the bigger guilds. 

Rebekah symbol

The IOOF was established in America in Baltimore in 1819, with a credo based on benevolent fraternity, and the goal of personal betterment for members. They were the first American fraternal organization to admit women (in 1851 – the women’s auxiliary was called the Daughters of Rebekah, and it was not exclusively for women), and later, they were also the first to establish homes for their elderly members and orphanages for children of deceased members.

Montana’s first IOOF lodge was formed in Helena in 1874. The first Butte lodge, Fidelity, was created May 25, 1876, and the second one, Ridgley Lodge, in 1882. The IOOF was not as religious as some such groups – while they adhered to Biblical concepts, Jews such as Butte’s first mayor, Henry Jacobs, were IOOF members (he was treasurer for the group in 1883). The IOOF hall on Broadway Street was built in 1884. 

Mary Fifer (it’s sometimes spelled Pfeiffer) led the creation of the first Daughters of Rebekah lodge in Butte in 1877. The Home Circle Lodge met in a building on Upper Main Street (that would most likely be the 100-300 blocks of North Main today), but “there was not the harmony in the circle which should have been there.” The group disbanded, but Mrs. Fifer again led the way to establish the Miriam Lodge in 1882, this time successfully.

“The life of a Rebekah who lives up to the principles of our order must be as nearly perfect as it is possible to be.” — Mary Fifer, quoted in Anaconda Standard, May 25, 1902.

Mary Dean was born in Virginia February 5, 1843, into a prominent old Virginia family. She married Meredith S. Fifer, son of Missouri farmers of German heritage, two weeks after her 21st birthday, in 1864. Within a year, the newlyweds were heading to Montana with Meredith’s family. Their first daughter was born on the plains of Nebraska in the middle of a 5-month trip that saw many encounters with Indians.  

Old Glory Claim in Centerville is highlighted in yellow.

Meredith’s father established a ranch in the Deer Lodge Valley near present-day Warm Springs, with his sons on adjoining lands. Mary reportedly gave birth to the first white child born in Deer Lodge County. Meredith and Mary moved to a ranch near Anaconda in 1870, then in 1876 they relocated to Butte and Meredith began mining work. He located the Old Glory Mine in Centerville. The Old Glory shaft was just east of Main Street, between Mullins (Mullen) and Pacific Streets. Meredith sold his interest in the Old Glory for $1,150 about 1882 and focused his mining efforts on Bear Gulch (Deer Lodge County) where he had a 5-ton-capacity stamp mill. In 1897 the Old Glory, owned by J. Benton Leggatt, was at a depth of about 500 feet, and employed 20 men mining copper and silver. It was eventually (1910) acquired by the Anaconda Company.

Mary’s main focus in Butte was with the Rebekahs. She was the first “noble grand” of the lodge, and represented Butte Rebekahs at national conventions in Columbus, Ohio, and Topeka, Kansas.

The Fifer home at 207 South Dakota Street (sometimes given as 217, but it was 207, on the southwest corner of Mercury and Dakota) was built in 1887. Mary died there October 13, 1912, and is buried in Mt. Moriah Cemetery. The house, seen in the photo above, was still standing as recently as 1957, but that corner is a vacant lot today.The log cabin in the photo was attached to the house. It may have been the Fifer's original home in Centerville, reportedly the first log house built in Centerville, circa 1876 when the Fifers moved to Butte. I can't verify that this log cabin is that home.

* * *

Resources: Anaconda Standard, May 25, 1902 (source of photo); History of Montana 1739-1885, by Michael Leeson; Sanborn maps; city directories; The Mining Investor vol. 61-62, Nov. 28, 1910; The Mine, Quarry and Metallurgical Record of the United States, Canada and Mexico, 1897, by the Mine and Quarry News Bureau; Mining and Engineering World, Volume 24, Jan. 27, 1906 (source of claim map). Rebekah symbol from IOOF 

West Broadway 1884

from the 1884 Bird’s-Eye View via Library of Congress

By Richard I. Gibson

The south side of the first block of West Broadway includes some old buildings – but only one survives from 1884. The IOGT (Independent Order of Good Templars, an anti-alcohol fraternal organization that admitted women) Hall is the two-story building at right in the illustration here, and it’s the only remnant from that time still standing today. The third floor was added in 1891. Two doors down (off the right edge of the picture), the IOOF (Odd Fellows) hall had its foundation laid by September 1884, and it’s another long-term survivor in this block.

The IOGT hall included a stage in the basement and a dwelling on the first floor. It and the restaurant-saloon in mid-block and the prestigious bank at the corner of Main all had slate roofs, while all the others seen here had wooden shingles. Most of these buildings were “cloth lined,” meaning that their frame walls were insulated only by a lining of canvas. Hart & Lavelle’s livery stable had a basement with stone walls on two sides, and the bank had a stone basement.

The Donnell, Clark & Larabie bank occupied the first floor at the corner of Broadway and Main (where D.A. Davidson is today), with offices above and a barber and bathhouse in the basement where they had their own large boiler. The cornice was metal, probably tin. This building lasted until 1916, and its 1916 replacement was in turn replaced in the 1960s by the building there today.

Robert Donnell was expanding his Deer Lodge bank in 1877, with a new branch in Butte, where the 25x100 lot at the corner of Broadway and Main cost $1,400 on April 18, 1877. Donnell’s clerks, W.A. Clark and S.E. Larabie, took charge of the Butte branch and became the owners when another Donnell venture failed, in New York in 1884. Clark’s fortune began in this bank when he took some mine property, including the Travona, in lieu of loan payments, and an uninterested Larabie took a band of horses in exchange for his half interest in the mines.

Photo by Robert Edwards

Recent (January 2012) construction work from the parking lot at Quartz and Alaska, to Broadway (in front of the IOGT Hall), Park, and Galena streets focuses on a pre-1884 underground water-sewer line similar to the picture here by Robert Edwards. Before mining and building altered the landscape, that line was a flowing stream that came down the hill from the Centerville area, about where Alaska Street is today. South of Granite to Galena, most of that stream had been converted to an underground culvert by Summer 1884, but it was still a ditch or open sewer below Galena Street. North of Granite was a slightly different story—fodder for a later post.