Old Missoula

Prescotts

C. R. Prescott Resident Here 60 Years, Dies (1939)

Pioneer Missoula Resident Succumbs at Bakersfield, Cal.

Clarence R. Prescott, for more than 60 years a Missoula citizen, died at Bakersfield, Cal., Friday morning at the home of his daughter. Due to poor health of Mrs. Prescott, funeral services will be held there Monday and burial will be in the Greenlawn cemetery there.

Mr. and Mrs. Prescott had gone to California the week before Christmas for their health. They had planned to spend the winter there. He had been suffering from neuritis and had been in poor health for the past two years.

His Survivors.

Survivors include two daughters, Mrs. Robert Ritner of Bakersfield, at whose home he died, and Mrs. Philip Daniels of Denver; two sons, Clarence, Jr. of Missoula, and Ernest, who is principal of a school at Eureka, Cal. He was a nephew of the late Mrs. Kate H. McCormick and of Captain C. P. Higgins, one of the founders of Missoula. Washington J. McCormick is a cousin. Word was sent to Clarence, Jr., who is working with a snowplow crew in the upper end of the Swan river valley and he arrived in Missoula Saturday.

The Prescott place back of the University is a familiar one to all residents of the city.

Born in Michigan in 1862, he came to Montana as a youth in 1877 via stagecoach and on to Missoula the same year. He came to the state to work on a Northern Pacific survey crew, it is reported.

Mr. Prescott had an active career. During his young manhood he worked as a carpenter and miner, and in 1890 he became city marshal. At that time Missoula was a lively and wide-open town, being crowded with a hodgepodge of people and activities – gamblers, Chinese, lumberjacks, miners, variety theaters and saloons going full blast – which fact made maintenance of order and law a particularly difficult problem.

Mr. Prescott was married about 1892 to Julia Marsh in Missoula. In 1896 he began the first of two terms in the assessor’s office of Missoula county. They were followed by a term as sheriff. He was elected to the legislative assembly from Missoula county in 1912 and to the board of county commissioners in 1916. He spent some time in Nevada and Wyoming as a prospector at one period of his career.

The above obituary appeared in The Missoulian on January 29, 1939.

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Julia Prescott Taken by Death

Julia Marsh Prescott, 1004 Francis avenue, long-time resident of western Montana and early-day school teacher, died Wednesday morning at a Missoula hospital where she had been under surgical care since January 18.

She was the widow of Clarence R. Prescott who during the 45 years of his residence in Missoula was chief of police, city marshall, county assessor, county sheriff and a member of the board of county commissioners. He was a Missoula county representative in the state legislature. In the later years of his life he recalled that Missoula “was nothing but a wild settlement of about three hundred people when I arrived. In the year of 1878, Missoula could boast of but one little schoolhouse and five stores,” he had recalled. Mr. Prescott died 11 years ago.

Mrs. Prescott was born in Waterford, Pa., and came to Missoula with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Marsh, while she was a child. In the late 1880s she was a teacher in schools at Frenchtown, Grass Valley and in the Bitter Root.

Survivors include two daughters, Mrs. Robert J. Ritner, Long Beach, Cal., and Mrs. Philip Daniels, Denver; two sons, C. R. Prescott, Jr., Missoula and Ernest Marsh Prescott, Ventura Cal.

She was a member of the Presbyterian church, the Kings Daughters, the Daughters of the American Revolution and the auxiliary to Hellgate post No. 27, American Legion.

Funeral services will be conducted at the Lucy’s Wiskirken & Hayes chapel Saturday at 2 p.m. with Rev. E. Ray Cameron officiating. The body will be sent Sunday by the mortuary to Bakersfield, Cal., for burial.

The above obituary appeared in The Missoulian on February 22, 1951.

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Clarence Prescott dead at 100

By John Stromnes of the Missoulian

Clarence Robert “Bob” Prescott Jr., who quietly tended his garden at the base of Mount Sentinel for the better part of the 20^th century while the University of Montana grew up around him, died Friday at Missoula.

Prescott was born May 1, 1893, in a cabin a few hundred yards north of the historic Prescott House at the northeast corner of what is now the UM campus. In recent weeks, he had been in in Missoula’s Community Medical Center, suffering from bronchitis and pneumonia. He was transferred to a nursing home late in the week, family members said, and died there about 5 p.m. Friday.

His physical health had been delicate the last year, but he retained his mental alertness, sense of humor and good spirits until the end.

“His body was giving out, but his mind was as sharp as ever,” said Jeanette Ritner, a niece by marriage.

On his 100^th birthday, he gathered with a few friends and family members at a Community Medical Center conference room to celebrate. Gardening – a subject always dear to his heart – came up, and someone mentioned a newspaper article that suggested that gardening promoted longevity, and perhaps that was why Prescott had lived to be 100.

Don M. Miller of Missoula, distantly related to Prescott, attended the party and recalled what Prescott said.

“He said, ‘Gee, does the article say what I should do for my next hundred years?’.”

Growing more gladioli would have been a good choice. Prescott’s gladioli were the stuff of legend. For years after his retirement as a county road equipment operator he tended as many as 1,600 gladioli each season. As late as last summer, seated in a chair with an umbrella shading his head, he still managed to tend 600 of the beautiful plants.

“His garden is a perpetuation of his life,” said a nephew, R. P. “Skip” Ritner of Spokane.

Prescott’s huge flower and berry garden beside his home was a source of wonderment and beauty to generations of UM students and Missoula residents.

Prescott, an intensely private man, only once entered public life.

He sought and won election to the Missoula County Commission in 1954, taking office in January 1955. After 11 months, he quit, frustrated by his inability to keep two campaign goals; hold down taxes and prevent the state Highway Department from closing the Van Buren Street Bridge to traffic.

UM administrators had long coveted the Prescott property for parking lots, buildings and as a path for a straighter and speedier paved road around the campus perimeter. Prescott rebuffed many entreaties to sell, but finally in 1955, he sold his home and garden for $60,000. The purchase agreement gave Prescott life tenancy.

Year by year, campus development crept closer to his garden and his home. This year, like Prescott, the university celebrated its centennial.

Now that Prescott is dead, the fate of the Prescott House is in the university’s hands. A UM study committee has recommended an elaborate restoration of the 11-room house, which is on the national register of historic places, complete with suites for visitors and other amenities. Legislative approval would be needed, and so would thousands of dollars in private donations. UM President George Dennison has taken the matter under advisement.

Prescott, a lifelong bachelor, is survived by two nieces, Pat Walker, Long Beach, Calif., and Julie Simpson, Laguna Beach, Calif., and one nephew Robert Prescott Ritner of Spokane. Prescott, the eldest of four children of pioneer Missoula residents Clarence Prescott Sr. and Julia Anne Marsh Prescott, outlived all his younger siblings.

Funeral arrangements had not been made Saturday, but will likely involve only a small, private graveside service, family members said.

“He always said he didn’t want a big funeral,” Miller said.

The above article appeared in The Missoulian on May 16, 1993.

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The Prescott House was restored in 1996 by a donation from Missoula Philanthropists Dennis and Phyllis Washington. After graduating from UM, Phyllis became a grade school teacher at Prescott School in Missoula.

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