Grant-Kohrs Ranch Foundation

Researched, authored and posted March 7, 2015 by author Patricia Nell Warren

WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH. Sacajawea is probably the most recognized and remembered Native American woman, with monuments across the country, as well as rivers and mountains named after her. The dramatic story of this Shoshoni woman, who served as guide and interpreter for the Lewis and Clark Expedition, touches that of the Deer Lodge Valley and Grant-Kohrs Ranch. Quarra Grant, her brother Chief Tendoy and her sister Margaret Dempsey (who married Deer Lodge pioneer Robert Dempsey) were evidently descendants of the family of Sacajawea and her brother, Chief Cameahwait.

Ironically, many facts of her life are unknown, or still argued about, including how to pronounce her name, and when and where she finally died. More on the controversy here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacagawea.

Genealogy information from Notes, "A Son of the Fur Trade: The Memoirs of Johnny Grant," edited by Gerhard J. Ens (University of Alberta Press, 2008).

(Photo of Alice Cooper sculpture by EncMstr /Wikipedia Commons)

One of the Grant-era artifacts remaining at the ranch is the old cookstove in the bunkhouse kitchen. According to Con Warren, this was the stove used by Quarra Grant when the Grant family lived in the ranch house. Con’s information came from John Bielenberg. The stove started out in the ranch-house kitchen, then located in the northeast corner of the original house. In 1890, when the Kohrses added the wing, they included a bigger new kitchen and a state-of-the-art new stove. Quarra's stove was still solid and serviceable, so it moved into the bunkhouse.

This probably would have been Quarra’s first experience with a white-man type of stove. Previously she had been skilled at cooking over campfires, using skillets and kettles. When the Grants lived in their Little Blackfoot cabin in 1859, they had a big fireplace and chimney, and she did their cooking there.

Wherever she cooked, Quarra was known for her good bread and pies.

(Photo by Old House Web. All rights reserved.
See gallery of Grant-Kohrs ranch photos there at http://www.oldhouseweb.com/architec…/grant-kohrs-ranch.shtml

Researched, authored and posted January 14, 2015 by author Patricia Nell Warren

CHRONICLE OF A PIE SAFE. In the ranch house, one of the longest-used pieces of furniture is Quarra Grant’s pie safe. It still stands in the kitchen corner where it stood ever since the Kohrses remodeled the house in 1890. Before that, the pie safe probably stood in the previous kitchen, which was located in the north end of the original Grant part of the house.  

Pie safes were stately 19th-century artifacts for food-keeping, that predated the arrival of refrigeration technology in American homes. If you were lucky, you had a cold spring near the house, which you could enclose with a little structure –- the spring-house -- to cool your milk, butter and other perishables. But what to do with your fresh baked goods – pies, cakes, bread, etc? A special cabinet with tightly closed doors was the answer. They kept out the flies, mice and inquisitive pets, but the punched tin insets in the doors and sides allowed for good air circulation around the bakery items, so they could cool effectively and not mildew.

Most American pie safes were usually plain rural items that were crafted from light local woods, like pine or poplar. They had shelves inside, and often a drawer or two. Now and then, for a more aristocratic home, fine hardwood and a fancier styling were used. Often the cabinets were painted red or blue. With time, they were used in households all up and down the eastern U.S., from New England into the deep South, and were carried West with the tide of settlement.

One of the oldest, most historically important American pie safes is an elegant blue one made in the 1820s in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Its original owner evidently wanted to make a political statement, namely support for the Presidential candidacy of Andrew Jackson. The doors feature a punched tin portrait of Jackson, along with punched inscriptions lauding Jackson's military exploits in the War of 1812. Recently this magnificent little piece of history sold at auction for the highest price ever paid for an antique pie safe -- $102,500.

Many historians believe that the idea of a pie safe was introduced to North America by Pennsylvania Dutch immigrants from Europe. The door and side panels could be decorated in all kinds of images, from American eagles to farm animals, flowers and trains. But the doors of Quarra’s pie safe display eight-pointed stars that are typical of the so-called “hex” symbols often seen on buildings, blanket chests and other items in Pennsylvania Dutch culture. These star or rosette motifs are very ancient in European folk-art traditions.

It’s possible that Quarra's pie safe came to the ranch shortly after the Grant family moved into the new ranch house in 1862. Johnny Grant mentions in his memoirs that he purchased some furniture – chairs, etc. -- that had come up the Missouri on a steamboat owned by his friend and colleague Captain LaBarge. The Captain did some freighting business in Deer Lodge in the early 1860s. These furnishings may have originated in St. Louis.

Quarra Grant was famed for her skillful baking. So she surely was pleased to have a pie safe protecting her culinary creations from marauders.

When I was a kid in the early 1940s, and Augusta Kohrs was still living in the ranch house during the summer, that pie safe was still an important item in the kitchen. It always intrigued us children. Augusta's housekeeper Bertha Smith was always baking, and stored the fresh bread and goodies there.

After Augusta passed on in 1945 and the Warren family lived in the ranch house for a short time after World War II, we continued to use the pie safe on a daily basis. After we moved back to the Warren house up the road, the Potter family -- my mom's sister Charlotte and her husband Uncle John Potter and their children -- came and lived in the ranch house till nearly 1950. The Potters continued using the pie safe as well.

So this venerable cabinet saw continuous family use, passing through several generations, for nearly a century. Today it is still in fine condition, and its distinctively decorated tin panels intrigue visitors.

(Photo by Ellen Baumler. Reposted with permission from Ellen Baumler’s popular history blog “Montana Moments” at: http://ellenbaumler.blogspot.com/)

Visit this link to see a photo and some history details of that high-priced Andrew Jackson pie safe: http://antiquesandthearts.com/news/2014/08/05/102500-record-safe-no-pie-sky-nicely-s/209904#.VLYi54rF-pc

Researched, authored and posted January 14, 2015 by author Patricia Nell Warren

Researched, authored and posted by Patricia Nell Warren in 2013.

This rosewood chair was sat on by Quarra Grant, Bannack/Shoshoni wife of Johnny Grant. I let the chair stand for her. No photograph of Quarra is currently available, though I've seen a studio “cabinet photo” that's in a private collection of a former Deer Lodge resident.

Quarra was a handsome woman with chiseled features and wide cheekbones – very like her brother, Tendoy, who was much photographed. Imagine her standing posed beside this chair, wearing a richly tailored Victorian gown, with her dark hair in a period coif. That’s how she was portrayed by the photographer. While many Indians were fighting to preserve their own spirituality and traditions, Quarra made the choice – out of love for her husband, perhaps – to convert to Catholicism and try transitioning into the “white” culture flooding her Rockies homeland.

In his memoirs, Grant describes her spirited outgoing personality. She evidently lit up the house. And she could speak several languages. So she helped make the ranch into the center of hospitality that it was during the Grant era. She was not only a loving mother and good cook, but an intrepid horsewoman.

Many traders took care to marry into influential native families, to proect their business relationship with that tribe. Quarra came from such a family, as Metis genealogists have discovered. Her uncle Snag was Lemhi Shoshoni chief. He succeeded Cameahwait, chief before him, and was a nephew of Cameahwait and his sister Sacajawea. So Quarra was a grand-niece of Sacajawea. Her brother Tendoy succeeded Snag as chief.

Quarra lived in the ranch house only 4 years. When her husband decided to return to Canada, she would have gone with him, putting herself at a vast distance from her Shoshoni family -- a heartbreaking decision. But she died in early 1867, while Grant was making arrangements for the move. She was buried there in Deer Lodge.

The rosewood chair is one of several dining chairs that belonged to her and Johnny, along with a round dining table, a rosewood sofa and a pie-safe. These items are still in the Grant-Kohrs collection.