Old Missoula

The two articles below are taken from the text, “From Wilderness to Statehood – A History of Montana – 1805 – 1900,” by James McClellan Hamilton, published in 1957. The forward in the text was written by A. L. Strand, President of Oregon State College in Corvallis, Or., and the profile of Dr. Hamilton was written by Merrill G. Burlingame, Professor of History, Montana State College, Bozeman, Mt. Before leaving for Bozeman in 1904, Dr. Hamilton was a Missoula school administrator and educator. He may have been more responsible for Montana’s structure of higher education than anybody else.

Forward

One of the oddities of life is that of catching up in age with persons you looked upon earlier as being so much older than yourself. I was a college freshman when I first knew the author of this volume; he was fifty-two. But as the years passed and I found myself occupying the same position of college president in which I had first known him, and with him still on the staff, the differential in ages seemed to all but disappear. Much of this no doubt came from the quality of the man himself, for he stayed young in spirit. He enjoyed an interesting life and had something to share with all ages. His mind had the ability to make a great sweep in the correlation of events, and, at the same time, it had a great capacity for detail. Many was the student or alumnus who discovered, sometimes to his discomfiture, that Dean Hamilton remembered more about him than he, himself remembered.

To few men is given a life so full, so complete, or I believe, so happy, as that of Dean Hamilton; early schooling and undergraduate study in a rural community along the Wabash; “Hoosier schoolmaster” days; the adventure of migrating to a territory in the West soon to become a state; there to make solid friendships to last over half a century, or to be broken sooner only by death; close association with men who were to become historical personalities; professional and scholarly accomplishments widely recognized; a trusted hand in the moulding of a new educational experiment; administrator and teacher in two university faculties; and all the time extending a close and helpful friendship to young men and women, teaching, chastening and inspiring them; a life crowded with lively human relationships, filled with everlasting satisfaction of seeing young people make the most of themselves.

By inclination and experience, apparently James M. Hamilton always had an interest in American History. The Civil War was still being “fought” in southern Illinois and Indiana during the years of his youth and early manhood there. His intimate knowledge of political campaigns and the persons and issues concerned in them was boundless. When he talked of his Indiana years he seemed to know personally such great figures as Beveridge, Voorhees, and the versatile Lew Wallace. Probably his most pleasant recollections were of the surprising number of other great men of politics and letters who had their beginnings along the Wabash in his generation. The Dreiser family, Theodore and Paul, lived in Sullivan County where Hamilton went to school, and at the same time. In the late ‘80’s, for a brief period, Booth Tarkington, George Ade, and the two McCutcheons were students together at Purdue and Hamilton talked about them as if he had been there, too. He knew Edward Eggleston of “The Hoosier Schoolmaster” fame, whose life and peculiarities were one of his favorite subjects.

This happy knack of being associated with the great and near-great followed him to Montana. He arrived in the Territory just in time to be included in the important maneuverings incident to Montana becoming a state. New institutions were being created and other decisions of far-reaching significance were being made. His capacity was recognized at once. As a member of the first state board of education, there is little doubt about his dominance in helping choose sites, the presidents and the first faculties of the four state-supported colleges that were established in February, 1893.

In 1901 he left his position as superintendent of schools but stayed in Missoula as professor of history and economics at Montana State University. He served also as vice-president. But his sojourn there ended in 1904 with his appointment to the presidency of the Montana State Agricultural College, now Montana State College, on the other side of the Rockies at Bozeman. The two institutions were often bitter rivals, especially during sessions of the state legislature, but Hamilton, through fifteen difficult years as president, retained the respect and loyalty of the friends he had left behind on the University campus. In relation to the fancy organization and all the shuffling of papers that go into what some look upon as efficient university administration, President Hamilton must be put down as a poor administrator. He hated those new gadgets of institutional administration known as budgets, for instance, and avoided them as long as he could. He was a scholar and a leader. Of all the men I have known, none could “rise to an occasion” like Dean Hamilton. No situation was too difficult for him to meet, and when he spoke he had something to say.

He had the uncommon good sense to retire as president of the State College at the time the “greater university” was created and Edward C. Elliott came in as the first chancellor of a state system of higher education in America. President Hamilton had a hand in that, too, for he was a close friend of Governor Sam V. Stewart in whose administration the unification had been legalized. In 1919 he went back to teaching and his books, also serving as Dean of Men. This was the time he began in earnest to compile his history of Montana. Its emphasis upon biography and significant and challenging incidents reflecting the growth of a great western state illustrates his outstand quality – he loved people and was, therefore, greatly loved.

A. L. Strand
Corvallis, Oregon
August 23, 1956

James McClellan Hamilton: A Profile

James McClellan Hamilton was born October 1, 1861, in Crawford County, Illinois, not far from the banks of the Wabash River, some thirty miles south of the point where this river begins to form the boundary between Illinois and Indiana. Mr. Hamilton frequently recalled the characteristics of the community surrounding the farm home where he was born: a tiny village, the small school house which doubled for a church, the small steam boats which plied up and down the Wabash between Terre Haute and Vincinnes: not a mile of railroad in the county.

His grandparents on the Hamilton side had come from Belfast, Ireland, and settled at Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. Of staunch Presbyterian membership they had come in the great Scotch-Irish migration which followed the Revolutionary War. His maternal grandparents came about the same time from Germany, with a German Lutheran background, and settled in northern Virginia. Both of these families followed the National Road to the West, settling in Licking County, Ohio. Here his parents, James Hamilton and Mary Burner, were married in 1838.

In another migration westward which began about 1850 so many former residents of Licking County settled in Illinois in the fertile Wabash Valley across the river and north of Vincinnes that the township and school district in which James M. Hamilton grew up were named Licking. James was the ninth of ten children.

He attended the local schools in his early years, but following the death of his father when James was fourteen, he went out to work on the farms of the community and attended school during the short winter terms. When he was eighteen he obtained a certificate and taught in the country schools for three years. He worked his way through Union Christian College at Merom, Indiana, just across the Wabash River from his Illinois home. He was graduated in 1887, and received the Master of Arts degree from the same school in 1890. He was married to Emma Shideler of Merom, June 6, 1888.

Mr. Hamilton served as superintendent of schools in Sumner, Illinois, for two years before coming to a similar position in Missoula, Montana in mid-summer 1889.  His abilities and interests quickly found outlets in the new area which became a State on November 8. When it appeared that the State University system would be created by the 1893 legislature, the Montana State Teacher’s Association instituted a study concerning its form. At the annual meeting in Missoula in December, 1892, the Association strongly recommended a single institution of higher learning as against a division into several units. James M. Hamilton was named president of the Association, and was instructed to lobby in the legislature in support of the single institution.

After hearing the discussion which took place in Helena, Mr. Hamilton, however, threw his weight toward a division of the University into several units. He maintained in later years that this division brought greater support to the system than a single institution would have been able to secure in the complex political pattern which often prevailed in Montana. When the State Board of Education was created in 1893, Mr. Hamilton was named as a member.

In 1901, he became Professor of History and Economics at Montana State University [Missoula], and soon thereafter became vice-president. In 1904, he accepted the presidency of the Agricultural College, now Montana State College. His genial but forceful personality and lack of professional aloofness made him particularly successful in public relations. He secured adequate support in the legislature, and he took an active part in publicizing the work of the College over the State. The student body grew from 278 to 1918, and the major course and administrational pattern was established. Mrs. Hamilton died August 12, 1909. Her interest in the College was such that when a woman’s dormitory was constructed in 1914 it was named Hamilton Hall in her honor.

He gave strong support to the creation of the Chancellor system which was established in 1915, and he steadily urged that it be continued and be strengthened. Sensing the rapid growth which the colleges would make following World War I, he resigned in 1919, at age fifty-eight, and insisted that a younger man assume the presidency. He then became Professor of Economics and the first Dean of Men in the institution. In spite of his dynamic nature and kindly but outspoken manner, he made a full transition to the role of a member of the teaching faculty, offering counsel to the presidents only when called upon to do so.

Mr. Hamilton married Miss Florence Ballinger on August 21, 1918. Miss Ballinger had been a member of the Home Economics staff, and because of her ability and charm and her familiarity with academic customs, she was of great assistance to Mr. Hamilton in the numerous activities which he entered into as he relinquished the presidency the following year.

He maintained a continuous interest in extending his own education, attending institutions where outstanding instructors or particularly useful courses attracted him. He attended Harvard University and traveled in Europe in 1912. As he returned to teaching he reestablished contacts in his field by attending one quarter at Cornell University in 1922, another at the University of California in 1923 and a third at the University of Chicago in 1925.

He was active in wider educational activities in the State and region. He has been the only person to date to hold the presidency of the Montana State Teacher’s Association for three terms, holding that office in 1893, 1922 and 1923. He also served as president of the Inland Empire Teacher’s Association. In 1901, he was named as a member of the State Textbook Commission for a five year term. In 1921, he wrote the Montana Supplement for the Civics text used in the Montana schools.

His strong sense of civic responsibility and his enjoyment of people caused him to support many organizations. He held membership in the Unitarian Church. He took time in an extremely active life to serve in the several offices leading to Master in Bozeman Lodge No. 18 A. F. & A. M., and he was a member of St. John’s Commandery Knights Templar and Algeria Temple, Order of the Mystic Shrine, of the Elks, and the scholastic honor society of Phi Kappa Phi. He was a charter member of the Bozeman Rotary Club to which he gave continuous support. He cherished membership in the Sigma Chi Fraternity and the intimate association which it provided with a group of college men.

The place which Mr. Hamilton held in the life of Montana State College was emphasized when October 18, 1929, was set aside as “Dean Hamilton Day.” This marked his 25th year of service at Montana State College, and his 40th in education. In the evening he was chosen the first president of a newly formed “Quarter Century Club” comprised of College staff members who had served twenty-five years or more. Speaking in response to the numerous congratulatory letters and telegrams which had come from many parts of the Nation, Dean Hamilton commented characteristically:

Some of you folks speak of me as if I were an old man, and I don’t feel old at all. These past 40 years have constituted a fine experience for me, but I am looking ahead to years that will bring more of the same kind of experience; tomorrow is of much more interest to me than yesterday.

At the June, 1930, Commencement, the honorary LL. D. degree was conferred upon Dean Hamilton by Montana State University. He retained his physical and mental vigor and enthusiasm for his work to a remarkable degree. About 1835 he was relieved of some of his teaching duties in order to devote more time to writing. He completed a manuscript of Yellowstone National Park, and the history which this sketch prefaces.

In the spring of 1940, Dean Hamilton suffered a slight stroke, and failed in health rapidly until his death occurred in his home, September 23, 1940. His funeral on September 26, was another occasion of unifying influence when the ceremony was held in the College gymnasium with a full attendance of faculty, students, and large numbers of townspeople and citizens of the State. At his death, Mr. Hamilton was within two weeks of being seventy-nine years of age, and had been continuously engaged in educational work for fifty-three years.

This profile appears in the introduction to “From Wilderness to Statehood,” by James McClellan Hamilton, edited by Merrill G. Burlingame, Professor of History, Montana State College.