Yester Year: The Great Train Robbery Part I
 | Author:
Linda Huth, Broadwater County Musuem Curator
Linda Huth: MT43 News Board Member and Copy Editor |
Yester Year: The Great Train Robbery Part I
Linda Huth
Broadwater County Musuem Curator
This letter from Ira Merritt was sent to Royal Smith. Royal was born in Hassell and was a lifelong Broadwater County resident.
Republic, Washington
July 4, 1964
Dear Royal,
I hope this does not come as too much of a shock to you, but I am finally getting around to writing that letter I promised to write to you several years ago.
As I recall quite vividly I arrived in Townsend, Montana just sixty-three years ago today at about this same time of the day. Of course I wasn’t alone. My father, who had met us in Helena in the wee early hours of the Fourth, my Mother, my brother Jerome and my two sisters, Katherine and Lily were with me. My oldest brother, Cassius who had left Duluth, Minn. a few days ahead of us via a boxcar on the Great Northern, which contained all of our worldly goods and Molly, the old family cow, was in Townsend waiting for us.
I mean to tell you, Royal, there was a real old celebration going on in Townsend that day. I’d like to see another one like it sometime. To a kid from the city of Duluth, Minn., not quite seven years old, it was quite a thriller, a sort of an anti-climax to a real thriller that I witnessed, let us say, from a ringside seat, about two or three o’clock in the afternoon of July 3rd, 1901. That thriller was namely the last train robbery committed by the notorious “Kid Curry” and his band. The scene of the holdup was in the rolling country not too many miles west of Malta, Montana. The Milk River was plainly visible from the train, that is the trees along the north bank and the high, apparently barren, bluffs on the south bank.
The events that took place on that July afternoon so many years ago are almost as clear to me now as though it only happened yesterday.
First the train was stopped and word was sent in that it was a hold-up. Before I go further let me say that we were aboard a Great Northern passenger train in the third or fourth car from the front. Of course a lot of the people got quite excited. I can well remember the porter vanishing and I learned later they didn’t locate him until we got to Havre. The poor fellow had hidden in the ice box and was about done for when they found him.
Jerome and I were sitting in a seat close to the front of the car on the right-hand side where we could see out toward the rolling hills. My mother and two sisters were seated toward the rear of the car. Mother came forward to where Jerome and I were sitting, and had us exchange places in our seat, placing Jerome next to the window and me next to the aisle. She told us to stay put, keep our heads inside and not to try to hide under the seats. She then went back to the girls and we saw no more of her until the show was over. More and more as the years go by, I realize how calm my mother was in the face of danger and hardships.
Almost immediately after the train was stopped, word was sent in for the people to stay inside and no one would get hurt. They backed this order up by keeping up an almost continuous rifle fire along either side of the train. To give you some idea of how close they were keeping their fire to the train, holes began to appear at quite frequent intervals in the wind-boards that were standard equipment alongside of the windows on passenger cars of that era.
A girl about nineteen years old, sitting in a seat just in front of Jerome and I, playing cards with three other people, got curious and stuck her head out of the window. A bullet evidently went whizzing by too close for comfort, she jerked her head back in mighty fast but her shoulder was a little late. A bullet tore through her flesh, missing the bone, which might be considered a lucky break for her. I still remember how the blood spurted out of that wound. Needless to say, that put an end to the card game.
Things were happening fast right about now. Some of them I could see, some I could hear and some of the things I heard about after the affair was over. As I said before, I remember it was as though it were yesterday.
One of the things that I saw and that really stands out was a rider (appearing out of nowhere and riding towards the train). He apparently was not a welcome onlooker. When he got as close as the bandits figured was good shooting range they cut loose on him with their rifles and that cow poke took out of there like a tin canned dog spurred on by a little shot of turpentine in the rear. He later returned with the posse and we got a good look at him and his horse. It was easy to see then why he departed in such a hurry. One of the bullets had grazed the left hip of his horse.
Naturally, the advent of the rider and his quick and safe departure made it necessary for Kid Curry and his cohorts to get through with their main job in a hurry. That was to blow open a safe that contained several thousand dollars worth of National Bank Notes that were en route to a bank in Montana, Helena, I believe.
What I am about to write about now, I did not actually see, but I heard about it right after the hold-up and I know it is authentic.
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PhotoCredit: Photo Credits: Broadwater Bygones
Image 1 Caption: Royal Smith
Photo Credits: Broadwater Bygones
