LOT Davis Brothers Auction  /  4th Annual Black Friday Weekend Extravaganza  / 

745

Feeley Ranch Co Montana Dining China Plate

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Western Americana Start Price:10.00 USD Estimated At:75.00 - 125.00 USD
Feeley Ranch Co Montana Dining China Plate
A bid placed on our auctions is a legal contract – it cannot be revoked or cancelled for any reason. By registering for our auctions, you grant us permission to waive your right to execute any chargebacks against our company for any reason. Auctions will be sold with and without reserve. If a lot contains a reserve price, it will be clearly noted in the corresponding catalog. All items are sold as is, where is with no guarantees expressed or implied.
ALL SHIPPING IS HANDLED IN HOUSE.
5 1/8" by 7". Chipped. Rare. About 1865, Adam Fleecer located a ranch on the North Fork of Divide Creek at the Continental Divide, a crossing that came to be called Deer Lodge Pass. Mount Fleecer is named for him, and he sold his ranch in 1876 to John J. Feeley. Feeley was born in Athlone City in the Irish Midlands on June 16, 1830. He emigrated to Boston in 1844 as the Irish famine was beginning, and spent the next 27 years in Boston, New Orleans, New York and Missouri before striking it rich in the Highland Mountains south of Butte in the early 1870s. He used the gold he found there to buy the ranch from Fleecer. The Feeley ranch was on the Overland Stage route from Salt Lake City to Deer Lodge and included a well-known lodging house variously referred to as the McKenzie House, 18-mile House, Divide Creek House, and Summit House, but it was probably most commonly simply called Feeley’s. The Deer Lodge newspaper, the New North-West, called it as good a wayside inn as could be found in 1882. A small community grew up there based mostly on ranching. By the mid-1880s, Feeley largely abandoned the hotel business because the railroad reduced the need for a traveler’s rest, but the Utah & Northern maintained a station there. Feeley and his wife, Annie, sold the ranch and moved into Butte in late 1891, but the small settlement thrived and had enough children in 1896 to support the construction of a new school. Previously, the students had to travel 10 miles to Divide, where they made up most of the enrollment. The school became the local polling place, used in the presidential election of 1896. A post office was located at Feeley sporadically from 1888 to 1904. Feeley’s one-room school served the district until the late 1950s, when the enrollment was down to just eight pupils in seven grades taught by Mrs. Juanita Mae Hubber. The school closed in 1962. In Butte, John Feeley lived on Jay Street north of Park between Covert and Oklahoma, a block-and-a-half-long street that no longer exists. He worked as the city jailer from 1892 to 1895 before taking a job as the night watchman for the First National Bank on Main Street at Broadway. Wife Annie died in 1899, and his own failing health drove him to resign the watchman job and relocate to California in 1906 for his health, but he died in Aberdeen, Washington, on April 20, 1906, soon after leaving Butte. The Feeley School, Silver Bow County’s last one-room school, and most evidence of the town are gone today, but the Butte Water Co. built a pump facility near the old railroad station location to support the pipeline from the Big Hole River near Feeley, and constructed a reservoir there as well. Today, the lonely exit sign for Feeley on Interstate 15 is all that recalls Silver Bow County pioneer John J. Feeley.
Sign In to Bookmark Lot