American West: 1861-76

Lesson 8: A Home in the West

General Stores and Other Necessary Establishments

What was in the General Store? If you needed to rub it on, pour it in, drape it around, feed the mind or the soul, these and more were in a well-stocked General Store.

Even the homesteader, who might only get into town once or twice a year, came to the General Store. Here, he could not only load up the wagon with supplies, but find out who married whom, who killed whom, who was born or died, or what were the latest political doings back east. If the Indians in the area were getting restless, you’d get the word here.

To be a really upstanding town you also needed a school and a church. Often, one building served both functions until a second structure was erected. A school building wasn’t much use without a teacher. If you were lucky you hired a spunky gal like Angie Brown, who came west to Kansas before moving on to Arizona. One time Miss Brown moved her class into a well to escape the prairie wind that was whistling through her school building - which had previously been a chicken coop. Out in Arizona she held off a mob of Apaches until some cowboys came and saved the day.

Bismarck, Dakota, 1873

Whether or not your school building doubled as a church, you had to have a minister. And he had better have as much spunk as Miss Brown, especially if he came to a local such as Virginia City, Montana. That is exactly where Minister Daniel Tuttle landed when he was designated Episcopal Bishop of Montana.

Tuttle must have been just about as tough as the miners he administered to because, at first, he had neither a school or church building to preside in. Tuttle had to preach in saloons and often had to deal with Sunday-school teachers who gambled or got drunk. But he had an advantage by being in a mining town when his gold-panning parishioners handed over $3,000 for him to build a church.

Every town needed a doctor, especially a place such as Dodge City, Kansas that acquired Doctor Thomas L. McCarty. McCarty had come west from Philadelphia and was on his way to Denver. Lucky for Dodge City, he stopped to visit a relative and stayed.

Doctors on the Plains had their hands full with outbreaks of cholera, gunshot wounds, snakebites and a whole lot more. It’s no wonder many of them became alcoholics. Having to sober-up a doctor when he was needed got so prevalent that the Dakota Territorial legislature passed a law making it a misdemeanor for a doctor, when drunk, to poison a patient. The charge was increased to manslaughter if the patient died.

Hudson's Bay Blacksmith Shop, White Bluffs, Washington Territory

Now, set up a blacksmith and a livery stable in your town and you are there. But you might need an officer of the law.

One of those western towns had quite an assortment of those "necessary establishments." San Francisco was the place, and it was about as far west as you could go. Some folks went East to get out west to San Francisco. One was a lady named Ah Toy from Canton, China. Read her colorful story at:

Ah Toy: A China Blossom in Old San Francisco at: Women of the West by Mary Trotter Kion http://www.mkionwritenow.com/page3.html

The source for this section is:

Wheeler, Keith. The Townsmen: The Old West. Time-Life Books, New York, 1975.

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