Selected Families and Individuals

Notes


Harry K. HARTLEY

info from Warren Williams

The following is from "Taped Interview with Harry K. Hartley, age 86, 410 Adams Block, Deadwood, South Dakota, July 12, 1969" as reported by Lois Wells Wilson and sent to me by Lonnie Demouth McManus in January 2006.

The De Mouth Family


July 12, 1969

We went to the Museum in Deadwood, seeking background information on Carnot and Theodore De Mouth, my great-grand-uncles. The curator, Kathryn, said that the oldest resident lived across the street. She telephoned and he came over to talk with us. He turned out to be Uncle Carnot's son-in-law. What luck! Harry Hartley talked and we taped his memories:

Mr. Frank De Mothe. I knew his name was really Carnot De Mouth but "Frank" was easier to say and he used that name here. Everybody called him Frank De Mothe. He and his brother Theodore, came out here before the Civil War and had the only store in town, and ran the stagecoach line, and supplied the miners, and brought in the gold to the assay office. They both went back home and served in the war of 1861-1865. They then went to Chicago and were in the Great Chicago Fire in 1871. And I guess they came back here right afterwards, before 1876 at least. I don't know the dates now, I don't have them in mind anyway.

And he had this store; as far as I know it was, well, a general store - had furniture and everything else - kind of a bazaar. And the front porch was the stage-coach depot. It was on the first floor of that building across the street. It was called "De Moth's Ark". He did some placer mining and one thing and another at first. Everything in Deadwood dates back to '76. Frank grubstaked a lot of miners. He told me about the little mining claims and how closely they were guarded. People would hear a rumor that some unidentified neighbor was going to start out to a new opening that he had in mind. So they would all watch one another very cautiously and jealously and get ready to follow the other fellow and find out where he was going. Mr. De Mouth said most of these rumors were false. But they would watch one another for weeks at a time, camping beside one another, hoping to find out where gold was to be found. A favorite place was Bear Butte, but they never found any trace of gold there.

That's just a little incident about the mining. I don't think he was connected directly in any mining, financially or anything. Many years later he had a feed store, feed and flour, and was affiliated with the Tri-State people, millers in the locality. Tri-State was, and sti11 is, a large milling concern, now mostly located in Rapid City.

Frank was a Civil War veteran. I believe he was pretty young at the time of the war. But that's about all I know of his early history. He didn't talk about the past very much even as well as I knew him.

He and his wife were buried in Mount Mariah Cemetery. Mrs. De Mothe was. Perla Gilman. The Gilmans came out, not in '76, but maybe '77. And he's the one who engineered and built a great part of the road between Sturgis and Deadwood - the road you may have come over, up through Boulder Canyon. And that was a toll road. He operated that as a toll road there for years.

Now Mr. Gilman's buried up at Mount Mariah, and his wife, Mrs. Gilman, and two brothers of his, all originally in the Gilman lot up there. And when Mr. De Mothe died we buried him in the same lot. And then Mrs. De Mothe, we buried her beside him. Then when Maybelle, my wife, the De Mothe's only child, died, I asked our son and daughter where would be the best place for us to have her buried, and they both wanted her to be buried in the same lot - the lot's rather crowded but she's there. So then, the four Gilmans are up there and Mr. and Mrs. De Mothe, and my wife, my previous wife, Maybelle De Mothe, are all up there in that lot, pretty crowded. Mrs. De Mothe was Episcopal. She belonged to St. John's Guild.

They had perpetual care up there but it was abandoned when they started building a road for tourists down below it. It is actually part of the Homestake mine up there. That hill over there to the right used to be a bald spot but they found a way to grow trees on it. Maybelle got five deeds for houses. Frank and his wife both had a lot of them.

I previously had been very anxious to show friends and distant relatives around the Hills because I like the Black Hills and think a lot of them. I have been in Deadwood since 1910, but last year they wouldn't let me have a license anymore, so it just broke me up, and I said, "If they take my license away, I don't care to live here anymore." Anyway, I had the car, a Buick, which I was very proud of, and gave it to my daughter-inlaw. Our son, Archie Hartley, is now at Colorado Springs, or anyway, in Cheyenne Mountain, where he has his office. He's a representative of the Western Union of NORAD, Combat Operations Center for NORAD. And from his desk out there he has wires directly to the President's office, when he is there. Archie's wife liked the car and would drive us around some, through Colorado, especially. Instead of, well, he always had to go to the mountain every day with the Chrysler, so I asked her if she would like to have my car, and she was very pleased to get it.

I don't know what more to tell you about Mr. De Mothe. The Gilmans' home was directly across the street from our home on Lincoln Avenue. We lived in one of the De Mothe houses up there he had five right there. She died in one of those houses, right across, which has since been torn down. Mrs. Gilman and, I suppose, other Gilmans were born there.

Now that pretty near winds me up. I can't think of anything more. There are little things here that belonged in the De Mothe family. I put them in the museum because people think more of them there.

One is a big copper kettle about bushel size and that is the last thing I brought over here, and I asked Kathryn, who runs this museum if she wanted this old kettle. I don't know of what value it is to a museum. She said yes. I don't know where it is, maybe downstairs in the vault - rather a store room place to chuck things when she doesn't know just where to put them. . . .

Margaret De Muth, eldest child of Jirah and Malinda Carhart De Muth, had her granddaughter, Fay Elsie Lindley, living with her for many years. Fay was overjoyed when Uncle Theo, Margaret's brother came back East from South Dakota on a trip. He had been in Deadwood for many years with his brother, Carnot, who had settled there permanently. Fay asked him all about the wild, wild West and wanted to know if Buffalo Bill had really done all that wild stuff that she had heard' about. Theo said, "Cody was out there a spell, and, being a showman, he had to make things sound exciting, of course." She asked Theo if he had ever had to use a gun. He answered, "I never had to shoot a gun but once." By the time she realized that a good story must have lain hidden behind that answer.. Theo had gone back west to Deadwood and she never saw him again.

Carnot De Moth had sent his sister, Margaret, some commemorative china with scalloped pink borders and, at the center of each plate, an engraving of the Deadwood Stage Coach. On that slim basis, coupled with a few family stories of Carnot's life out there, her great grandchildren convinced themselves and their schoolmates that their greatuncle had been friends with Buffalo Bill and had driven the stagecoach in the picture and had been a pony express rider with Kit Carson. They were sure that he had had to fight off Indians every day of his life. They felt clothed in glamour by the possession of such an exotic relative. When, one day, their great-grandmother told them that greatuncle Carnot was only a quiet businessman, they were stunned and felt quite denuded. It was small consolation to learn that he had genuinely known Kit Carson and that his general store in Deadwood was the stagecoach station.


Perla Maybelle DEMOUTH

Burial info from


Marriage Notes for Harry K. Hartley and Perla Maybelle DEMOUTH-4797

info from Warren Williams


Archie M HARTLEY

This person is dead.


Helen HARTLEY

This person is dead.


Marriage Notes for William West and Sarah STEVENS-6432

by Rev. Ross


Enoch STEVENS

Enoch is a possible son to Thomas and Nancy Elliott Stevens, and possible brother to William (b. 1785).  It is interesting that among his children listed on the 1850 census are 3 sons with the names of his (Enoch's) 3 probable brothers.

Enoch lived in New Annan, Colchester Co., NS before moving to Biddeford, York, Maine, where he appeared in the 1850  and 1860 census.  On the 1870 census he is living in Broolyn, Hennepin Co., Minnesota with his son William.

Per Jane Wille: Enoch was a Ship carpenter.


Dominic SANCLIMENTI Sacramento

The last name was changed by the authorities at Ellis Island from Sanclimenti to Sacramento.


Mary SACRAMENTO

This living person has not agreed to be listed.


Annie SACRAMENTO

This living person has not agreed to be listed.


Orville Dodson RICHARDSON

This person is dead.


Madeline V. RICHARDSON

This person is dead.


Virginia Elaine LEWIS

This living person has not agreed to be listed.


Shirley

This person is dead.


Marriage Notes for Lloyd Graham Stevens and Shirley -6441

After the war Shirley found out her first husband didn't die in combat. So Lloyd and Shirley divorced.

Per Ancestry Family tree of Aude Franklin Lewis


Flossie RACER

This person is dead.