Old Missoula

Half-Century In Garden City For Mr. Barnes

When in New York, back in the Gay Nineties, he was called “Mr. Barnes of Montana” and when in Montana he was called “Mr. Barnes of New York,” after a book popular at that time which was later dramatized. That was only a few years after he had arrived in Missoula on February 4, 1887.

Today he is C. A. Barnes of Missoula in both New York and Montana. Only a few weeks ago he observed the fiftieth anniversary of his arrival here. He was employed by the large manufacturing wholesale and retail clothing firm of A. Schuman & Co. in Boston when he received an offer from the Missoula Mercantile Company in Montana territory, which he accepted. Late January of 1887 found him on his way to the great “Far West.”

All went well on the journey until he passed St. Paul, Minn., when the full force of the famous blizzard of 1886-87 was encountered and tied up the railroad. Five days were spent getting through the blockades. Needless to say, whole snowbound, he often wondered why he had ever left home, and he had a great yearning to be back in Boston.

1,500 Here.

When he arrived in Missoula on February 4, 1887, the town had a population of about 1,500 persons. There were no business houses on Higgins avenue, north of Main street, with the exception of the express office on the Cedar street corner (now Broadway). The Florence hotel corner was occupied by a cattle corral and the sites of the First National bank and the Hammond block (now the Hammond-Arcade) were boulder-strewn.

Front street, east and west, was the principal street. There were no sidewalks, no electric lights, no street cars. It all seemed very wild and woolly to him. Across the river there were only two houses and they were well out toward Fort Missoula. Stage coaches ran up the Bitter Root as far as Grantsdale (there was no Hamilton), down the Missoula river as far as Superior, up the Blackfoot and across the reservation to the foot of Flathead lake.

The Bitter Root valley was the ancestral home of the Flathead Indians and was largely occupied by them. Mr. Barnes recalls the time when the government having concluded a treaty with the Indians, moved the entire tribe to the newly created Flathead reservation. Their passing through Missoula was an interesting and picturesque sight, he said. One of the murals in the Missoula county courthouse by Paxson commemorates the event.

The Missoula Mercantile company store was a one-story building on the Higgins avenue corner of the present site. The corner room was the grocery department, headed by the late Tyler B. Thompson, who was responsible for Mr. Barnes’ coming west. The clothing department occupied a small corner of the drygoods department. Its small stock consisted principally of rough clothing and accessories such as were needed for a frontier trade. Red and blue flannel underwear, heavy woolen shirts, overalls, “dickey” shirts, celluloid collars and cuffs and Stetson hats were the staples.

In the eighties and well along into the nineties, ready-made clothing as it is known today, virtually did not exist. “Store clothes” in those days were for the most part coarse of weave, poorly made and all in all were little more then a body covering, said Mr. Barnes. Of style and fit, there was none. There were no nationally-known firm or brand names. The well-to-do, sports and dandies wore made-to-order clothes.

“Since those days,” said Mr. Barnes, “the clothing industry has made wonderful progress, Materials, patterns, tailoring, fit and style, all have gone through an evolution until now ready-made clothing in the better makes leaves little if anything to be desired in those details.

“Merchandising methods, too, have changed – all in the customer’s favor. Stocks are attractively displayed in dust-proof cabinets nowdays instead of being piled in stacks on counters and shelving. Their height often necessitated the use of a ladder to reach the top garments, from which fact originated the phrase, ‘hand-me-downs,’ which for years was the distinguishing name for ‘store clothes’ in general. Ready-to-wear clothes now are made in such a range of carefully graduated sizes that it is an exceptional customer, indeed, who cannot be well fitted. Prices are marked in plain figures that all may read instead of in code that could mean about anything the salesman thought he could get.

“The evolution that has changed the ‘hand-me-down’ atrocity to the general, scientifically-designed, well-made, ready-to-wear garment we now know has its counterpart in all branches of men’s apparel,” he said. Hats, shirts, neckwear, hosiery, underwear, each has undergone magical transformation. It affords him much amusement to compare the pictures of the styles of yesteryear with those now current. Yet each, in its day, was the latest.”

Mr. Barnes said that it has been his pleasure to see Missoula develop from a pioneer settlement to a modern city and he can see no reason why the development should not continue. In fact, it is his belief that this section is on the eve of its greatest advancement.

 The above article appeared in the Sunday Missoulian on February 21, 1937.

https://www.newspapers.com/image/349321030/

 Cornelius Abbott Barnes died in Missoula on October 31, 1945. He was born in Bakersfield, Vermont, November 2, 1859. He was a member of the Missoula lodge No. 13, A. F. & A. M., Shriners, and a life member of Missoula’s Elks. He was a founding member of the BPOE in Missoula in 1897. He had lived in Missoula since 1887 and worked for the Missoula Mercantile until his death in 1945. He married Anna Berglund in Missoula in 1897. She came to Missoula in 1895 and worked at the Missoula Mercantile when they met. He was survived by Mrs. Anna Barnes and two daughters, Mrs. George (Carolyn) Brobeck of Washington D. C., and Miss Betty Barnes of Missoula, and three grandchildren. Two of his grandsons were in the military during WW2. Only one other person had a longer career with the Missoula Mercantile, C. H. McLeod, the president who worked there 66 ½ years. Mrs. Barnes died in Missoula in 1946. They are buried in Missoula City Cemetery.