Old Missoula

Neptune Lynch daughter’s story

Old Days in Montana As Seen by Pioneer Woman – Mary Lynch Boyer

By Ellen Nye

The Pony Express celebration in Missoula and the turning of the clock backward 70 years brings many memories to Mrs. Mary Lynch Boyer, Hot Springs, who is the oldest woman of Sanders county in point of residence. And it is fitting to note that one of her family, Nep Lynch, will take part in the events of the Missoula celebration.

Mary Boyer is the only surviving member of the immediate family of Neptune Lynch, who left Missouri in 1862 and in the early ‘70s settled in Plains, one of its very first settlers. The sons of Nep Lynch served on the pony express of those early days and Mrs. Boyer recalls one wintry trip she and her younger sister took with the brothers when they made the route to Missoula.

In 1876 there was in operation in Missoula a school for the children of settlers, conducted by the Catholic sisters. Since the Lynch children had had few opportunities to go to school, the two sisters were sent up for a year even though they were by now young ladies. The trip, as Mrs. Boyer recalls it, was made on horseback along Indian trails. The party left Plains February 1 and followed the old trail which cuts off at Dog lake as the highway does now, going via Camas Prairie to Perma. Here a stop was made for the night as a snowstorm had started and snow was piling up rapidly when darkness overtook them. They had hoped to make the Antoine Revais ranch on Revais creek near where Dixon is now located. At the Perma river crossing there were canoes and boats on either side.

Stormbound

Because of the storm the party put up for night in a little cabin which first had to be cleaned out for it apparently had served as a barn for livestock. There was food along only for one meal. And in the morning the horses were gone. The snow was some three feet deep and the boys waded all day looking for the horses, the snow having closed over their tracks. One brother went to Revais and brought back welcomed food, for the party had to spend another night in the cabin.

The next day the horses were located well on their way homeward. The next night was spent at the hospitable Revais ranch and another stop was made at the Moreazeau home.

The girls were very happy when they reached the O’Keefe home just out of Evaro canyon, for here the brothers went on with the mail and the girls were left for a few days visit with the O’Keefe girls, Mary, who later became Mrs. Kenneth Ross, and a younger sister, Mollie. Mrs. Boyer speaks highly of the hospitality of the O’Keefe people and says there were always guests about. There were a number of rooms in the substantial log house. One unused room at this time was stored with loose grain. Here Mrs. Boyer laughingly recalls they fished out their clothes when it was time to depart. It seems Mollie had hidden their clothes in the depths of the grain, hoping in this way to make the girls stay longer.

At this time a group of young people came out to the O’Keefe ranch to fetch the sisters to Missoula. They came with a bob sleigh, with lively horses and bells.

Isolated Five Weeks.

Mrs. Boyer says that in the days of her childhood in the Plains valley, a trip was usually made to Missoula by pack train for provisions twice a month. This usually took two days each way, but once Mr. Lynch, her father, and his two older sons were caught in a heavy snowfall and blizzard, and did not get home for five weeks! The family at home were reduced to potatoes and milk.

It is interesting to note the relations of the Lynch family with the Indians who everywhere surrounded them. Mrs. Boyer says that they only feared the outlaw Indian, much as we fear the robber today. Pend d’Oreille Jim, a notoriously bad Indian, at times came to their place and acted strangely, but they always gave him food and he never bothered them. There was a rule in the family that no one was ever to draw a gun on an Indian, or threaten one unless in dire extremity, as this rule was lived up to.

Any Indians who came to their door and seemed to want food and accommodations were treated with hospitality. The esteem in which this family was held is shown in the fact that when the reservation was to be allotted, some of the prominent representatives of the tribes came to them and announced they wished to adopt them all so they could get allotments too. However, this offer was not accepted. When Neptune Lynch died more than 400 Indians crowded into the building to do him honor at his funeral.

First N. P. Passenger.

Not only had Mary Boyer followed the pony express trails in its day but she was privileged to be the first passenger on the newly-laid rails of the Northern Pacific railway in 1883. It was just 51 years ago this June when Mary Lynch and Joe Boyer went up from the little settlement of Horse Plains to the village of Missoula and were married. Their bridal trip was the return journey made on the first train to run over the newly-laid rails. On this memorable journey, in a coach which was little more than a freight caboose, a stop was made at Arlee where the train and crew put up for the night. When Major Ronan, then stationed as Indian agent at the old Jocko agency, discovered the couple at the depot, he invited them to drive home with him in his buckboard as overnight guests, for Mary Boyer and Mrs. Ronan were old acquaintances. Their train trip was completed the next day, and Mr. and Mrs. Boyer have resided in Plains ever since until recently when they moved to Hot Springs for their health.

Mrs. Boyer and Mrs. Ronan had become acquainted in one of the mining camps where the Lynches had been for a time. Mary saw plenty of pioneer mining camp life where “might” was law, and justice meted out by groups of miners. Once she recalls a severe fight in which nine miners were shot dead. Her father helped to bury them.

Freighted to Cedar Creek.

Mr. Lynch freighted for a time. In 1870 he freighted a sawmill for a party to Cedar creek in the Superior district. He took his family and property along, always with the hope of finding the ideal location in which to settle for good. Mrs. Boyer recalls that the difficulties of the trail over the “Mullan road” were great. Often, for brakes in negotiating the hills, a pair of oxen was hitched on the rear of the wagon.

In the Cedar creek locality there was much mining activity and that year the Lynches had a good vegetable garden on the flats where Superior now stands, and sold out at good profits to the miners. As a desirable place to winter his stock, Mr. Lynch had been told about Horse Plains just over the hills. Mrs. Boyer had this to say;

“We went along with father, taking the Indian trail which leads over Patrick’s Knob, and both father and mother were very much impressed with the fine grass country in the Horse Plains valley. As early as 1860, the first white settler to come to the vicinity had been one Charley Kimball, who traded for furs with the Indians. But he got into trouble with them and was killed. It was into his little cabin on what is now known as the Crossen ranch, four miles west of Plains, that we moved and there we lived four years. Father went back to pack what he could of our belongings over the rough trail and my older brothers made a raft and floated some bulky household articles down the Missoula river to us.”

Clark Was Pioneer.

As Mrs. Boyer recalls, the second white man that had come to Plains was Joe Clark, brother to Senator W. A. Clark, and he was a close friend and neighbor to the Lynches, in fact was a suitor at one time for the hand of Mary Lynch. Mr. Clark was in charge of the pony express and he resided in Plains from 1864 to 1878. He was greatly liked by the Indians, and the only unpleasantness he had of any consequence was over his Indian child. He had contracted a marriage Indian fashion but the mother had gone back to her people. The father bargained for the custody of the infant and had persuaded Mother Lynch to take care of the infant for a time. But before this was brought about the baby was kidnaped by his relatives from his Indian nurse, the object being, no doubt, further bargaining. After some stirring experiences the child was retaken in the vicinity of St. Regis and cared for several years by the Indians. As a young man attending school in Portland, Oregon, this son was drowned.

Mrs. Boyer comes by pioneering honestly, for both the Lynches and the Alexanders came of venturesome families. The Alexanders (originally of Virginia) had always been in the vanguard of civilization. When the World’s fair was on in Chicago many years ago some Plains friends remarked on their return that a statue there reminded them forcibly of Mother Lynch. Mary Boyer asked of whom this statue represented and was informed it was Daniel Boone. She remarked this could well be because the Alexanders were close kin to that intrepid and historical character.

Origin of Name.

While the Lynches are great horsemen, the name “Neptune” as a family name recalls the sea. The ancestral home of the Lynches was in Ireland, and the story goes that generations ago a son of a well-to-do Lynch in Ireland had gone to France for his education and there married a French girl. Aboard ship on passage home a child was born to the couple and it was agreed the captain should have him for a namesake. However, that seafaring man, no doubt a true worshipper of the god of the sea, would have the baby named “Neptune” and as a gift took his diamond cravat pin and secured it in the infant’s blanket. One of the succeeding Neptunes was Mary Lynch’s father. As a lad he had come to Missouri and the Neptune diamond has survived all pioneer vicissitudes and is now safe in the keeping of the family of Baby Neptune, the grand-nephew of Mary Lynch Boyer.

Mrs. Boyer has spent most of her 78 years in Montana, having left Missouri as a small child in a covered wagon. Turning backward the clock will certainly recall many thrilling and interesting memories to her and even though she might not be in Missoula during the pony express celebration she will no doubt follow the events of the days through the papers with special fervor.

 

The above article appeared in the Sunday Missoulian on July 1, 1934.

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Neptune Lynch – The information below is taken from the Ancestry.com website

Extracted from “A History of Montana”, Volume 3, page 1300; Tom Stout, editor; copyright 1921

Neptune Lynch, whose record as a pioneer is properly told in this work, was born in County Galway, Ireland, in 1824, and acquired all his education before leaving his native land. He came to this country at the age of fourteen, and leaving Castle Garden rode horseback across half the continent, at a time when there were no railroads, to Roanoke, Howard County, Missouri. There he made his home with his Uncle Lynch to the age of twenty. He then married Miss Elizabeth S. Alexander. They became the parents of five children: Charles A., who is a resident of Kalispell, Montana, and has three sons; James D., who died in Calgary, Canada, thirty years ago; Neptune, Jr., who died at Plains twenty years ago, leaving two daughters and one son; Mrs. Elizabeth Lee Grinnell, who died in Spokane eleven years ago; and Mrs. Mary Lynch Boyer, a resident of Plains, and proprietor of the Hotel Northern of that city.

In 1849, leaving his wife and two children with his uncle in Missouri, Neptune Lynch went by way of Panama to California, and remained in the far West six years. Returning to Missouri, after settling his uncle’s estate he gathered his family around him, and in 1860 started again for the setting sun. His first location was at Denver; in 1862 he removed to Boise, Idaho, and in 1866 came to Montana, first locating at Helena, and for two years farming near the present site of Townsend. In the spring of 1870, following the Cedar Creek gold excitement, he joined that stampede and in November came to “Horse Plains,” now Plains. Here he followed farming and stock raising the rest of his life. The family in the early days had frequent troubles with Indians, and endured many other hardships. One time the household was confined to an unvarying diet of potatoes for three weeks, and were thankful for that. There were no schools nor churches, but despite the lack of such advantages the Lynch home was a very happy one. Neptune Lynch was a democrat in politics and a Catholic in religion. For several years while living in Missouri he studied medicine with Doctor Blake in that state. He obtained a knowledge that was useful to him and his family and to the entire community in Montana. He was able to handle all ordinary cases of illness in his own family, and was the doctor and nurse for all the people who lived in Plains during the seventies and eighties. In 1893 Mr. Lynch was in a railway accident, losing his left leg just below the knee, and suffered a great deal and was never quite the same strong man afterward. He was a rugged character, strong, kindly, sympathetic and greatly beloved by all who knew him. His generosity caused him to divide all that he had.

His death occurred May 25, 1898, as a result of pneumonia, and his widow, who survived him six years, died of the same disease. Her people were Kentuckians, and she was born in that state, going with her family at the age of four years to Missouri. She was a great-grandniece to Daniel Boone. Her grandfather’s name was Sidney Logan and her father’s name John Alexander. Neptune Lynch served for a number of years as postmaster at Plains, finally resigning that office in 1883.