Mary Phelps Montgomery is remembered for playing a supporting role in the completion of the the Northern Pacific Railroad from Kalama to its terminus at Tacoma in 1873. Telling her tale years later, Montgomery recounted the extraordinary mission she undertook to enable her husband, railroad builder James Boyce Montgomery, to meet payroll and avoid a potential work stoppage as contractors raced to reach Puget Sound by December 1873, their federally imposed deadline. This adventure, however, was just a minor detour in Mary Anne Montgomery's extraordinary life.
Political Bigwigs
Mary Anne (or Ann) Phelps (sometimes called "Mollie") was born in Springfield, Missouri on July 4, 1846, to Mary Whitney and John S. Phelps. Her father was a Connecticut native and lawyer who was a Missouri legislator, Congressman, and Governor of the state from 1877-1881. Mary Whitney, from Maine, was a businesswoman and suffragist.
The slave-owning Phelps had a large plantation near Springfield, Missouri. In a life not short on drama, Mary Anne often related that in 1858, she and her mother rode on a stage coach with transportation pioneer John Butterfield (1801-1869) from Springfield to Tipton, Missouri, meeting the rail head to prove that Butterfield's overland stage line was the superior route for mail delivery. Mary Anne was educated at a private academy in St. Louis in the early 1860s, but returned to find her Springfield home in the center of conflict during the Civil War. Although slave owners, her father and mother were staunch Unionists. Her father, serving in Congress at the outbreak of the war, organized a Union Regiment. Her brother, John Elisha Phelps, enlisted for the North and was brevetted Lieutenant Colonel for his service. Montgomery’s father was named as military Governor of Arkansas for a short time by President Lincoln in 1862.
The Phelps home was near the Civil War battles of Wilson Creek and Pea Ridge. Mary Whitney Phelps became well-known for her care of both Union and Confederate Soldiers at her home during the war. In fact, Congress awarded her $20,000 for her service to soldiers during the war, which she used to fund a school for orphans from both sides of the conflict. On a trip from their home to St. Louis in 1862, Mary Anne and her mother concealed several thousand dollars (amounts vary in different sources) in vouchers for Union soldiers, which they protected from "bushwackers" along the route, pre-figuring Mary Anne’s later role as a courier for funds to pay railroad workers in Washington Territory.
Marrying a Railroad Man
After additional education in New York, Mary Anne returned to Springfield, where she met and married railroad builder James Boyce Montgomery (1832-1900), a widower with one son, in 1866. A Pennsylvanian, Montgomery worked in newspapers and then began building railroads in Missouri, including the Bedford & Hopewell and Philadelphia & Erie lines. He was associated with the Baltimore and Potomac railroad and the Kansas Pacific, among others, and invested $50,000 in Northern Pacific Railroad bonds.
On a trip to explore the Northwest, the couple traveled from their home in Philadelphia in 1870 by rail to San Francisco and then by steamer to Portland. From there they went to The Dalles and Walla Walla, later coming to Olympia, where they rented a house. James B. Montgomery returned to Philadelphia to successfully bid on the construction of the Northern Pacific line from Kalama to Puget Sound, while Mary Anne later established a permanent home in Portland.
James B. Montgomery contracted with the Northern Pacific to build the first 25 miles of line north from Kalama to three miles beyond the Toutle River, beginning in May 1871, to be completed by the fall of 1872. He recalled the task as moving 1 million cubic yards of earth and rock and constructing trestles and bridges. He hired hundreds of Chinese and non-Chinese workers to build the road. Montgomery signed on for an additional 10 miles of the line northward, and then J. L. Hallett built the next 30 miles to Tenino, when Montgomery again took over for the final 40 miles (although a longer mileage figure was given) from Tenino to Tacoma. Montgomery claimed that he was instrumental in the siting of the terminus at Tacoma after he and his wife viewed the site in 1870.
Mad Dash for Cash
Mary Montgomery remembered that she and their children joined her husband at various construction sites during the summer months, living in tents. In July 1873, she was sent by her husband to obtain $60,000 in gold from a Portland bank to meet payroll for the workers, due on Sunday morning. She recounted her mission in the 1940 book Building a State, which commemorated 50 years of statehood. She set off on a Friday on horseback accompanied by two men, including J. B. Montgomery’s chief clerk Ed Bingham, for 10 miles to the construction terminus, where she rode a locomotive to the Toutle River and then a regular train to Kalama, where she caught an Astoria steamer to Portland. She was able to secure the funds from the Cashier of the First National Bank in Portland. On the return trip, assisted by two men, she missed the Astoria steamer and had to take a Dalles boat instead and "walked a plank" from one vessel to another, eventually reaching Kalama, then retracing her steps to the construction camp to safely deliver the funds to meet the payroll.
The Montgomerys returned to Philadelphia later in 1873 and learned that Jay Cooke & Co., financiers for the Northern Pacific, had failed, which suspended work for a time on the construction to Tacoma. The Montgomerys continued to fund the railroad from their own money, but other arrangements were made to complete the line's final 12 miles to meet the December 1873 congressional deadline to connect the Northern Pacific to Puget Sound. The line was declared finished on December 14, 1873. The Montgomerys, owed more than $220,000 for the work, accepted Northern Pacific bonds in lieu of cash and purchased timberlands along the line in the mid-1870s. In the late 1870s Montgomery built a rail line in Oregon's Willamette Valley. In 1883, he contracted with the Northern Pacific to build the line from Portland along the Willamette River to a point opposite Kalama at Goble, where a train ferry connected with the line north, finally linking Portland and Tacoma.
In the Governor's Mansion
After her father’s election as Governor of Missouri in 1876, Mary spent 1877 to 1881 as the official hostess in the Jefferson City Governor’s Mansion. Her mother, Mary Whitney Phelps, declined to live in the Mansion and died in 1878. Montgomery brought her five children to Missouri and give birth to a sixth while serving as hostess (a seventh child was born later in Portland). She is remembered as enlivening the social scene at the Governor’s Mansion while hosting frequent soirees.
In the late 1880s, while J. B. Montgomery continued building railroads, re-channeling on the Columbia and Snake Rivers, building sawmills and steamboats, as well as erecting docks and warehouses at Albina, Oregon, Mary decamped with her children to Europe for their education and to join a cousin who was a minister to Germany after the Montgomery family suffered financial reversals. J. B. Montgomery served in the Oregon Legislature in 1891 for one term.
After time in Europe and Washington, D.C., the Panic of 1893 required the family return to Portland. Mary established the first Oregon chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in her home in 1896. J. B. Montgomery died in early 1900, leaving his wife with a mountain of mortgaged property and debts of $250,000. She and her family economized and, according to her memoirs, repaid the debts.
Still remembered in Missouri, Montgomery was appointed one of the St. Louis Louisiana Purchase Exposition’s "Lady Managers" in 1902. She recalled she was one of the women who lobbied in Washington, D C., for a $5 million federal loan for the exposition, using her contacts there. She spent several months in St. Louis during the fair. The following year, she was an emissary to Missouri from the Portland Lewis & Clark Exposition, and by her account secured $35,000 from the state of Missouri as well as a promise that Missouri would move the Missouri State Pavilion from the St. Louis Exposition to Portland for the fair (Missouri did have a pavilion at the Portland Fair). Montgomery joined other Oregon women to advocate for erection of the statue of Sacajawea in Washington Park during the fair, which still stands.
Prominent in Portland
A prominent Portland socialite, she organized local relief for victims of the San Francisco Earthquake in 1906. Called the "Founding Mother" of the Oregon Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) as well as being a part of other lineage organizations, Montgomery was honored in 1925 by the DAR with a drinking fountain at the location of her former home in Portland at Broadway and Madison. The Multnomah DAR installed a memorial at her gravesite and later relocated the fountain to a downtown site in the 1980s.
With her daughter Mary Montgomery Talbot, Montgomery worked through the Oregon Consumer League for cleaner dairies and better working conditions in laundries, especially for Chinese women workers. Although Montgomery’s mother was an early women’s suffrage activist in Missouri, and her husband a voting-rights supporter, she was a leader in the Oregon Association Opposed the Extension of the Suffrage of Women in the early twentieth century before Oregon’s adoption of women’s voting rights. However, her memoirs credit her with being a Charter Member of the Oregon League of Women Voters, and she is documented as a part of the Republican League of Women Voters in 1920. Some family tragedies marked her later years, but she continued as a frequenter of Portland’s society circles and continued to travel extensively in Europe and on the East Coast.
Montgomery was fond of recalling her connections with famous people, claiming her associations with many dignitaries including General and later President Ulysses S. Grant. Her collection at Yale University of more than 200 letters and autographs of U.S. and European notables attest to that interest. She left a trove of reminiscences documenting her role in Missouri and Northwest history before her death in 1943.
