Grant-Kohrs Ranch Historic Resource Study/Historic Structures Report/Cultural Resources Statement

C. The Family

"Town is very still and our old ranch don't look like home without you all," wrote Conrad Kohrs in 1881. "It is so still," he continued, "so quite have not been mutch at home, it makes me feel to bad to stay here." [12] This excerpt came from an affectionate letter Con wrote to his eldest daughter Anna. She was with the family in Germany, and he was at home attending to business affairs. The letter illustrates well the strong ties that bound the Kohrs-Bielenberg family at Deer Lodge. While Conrad Kohrs's public image and, to a great extent, his personality as gleaned from his papers, present the picture of a somewhat restrained and controlled man presiding over a rather formal family, letters such as this one balance out the view, revealing a close-knit family living at the home ranch in Deer Lodge.

Kohrs had come to Montana alone in 1862 and begun his career then. Within a few years he had reached the stage where he could help his brothers out, and he invited them to Montana. Apparently the half brothers, John, Charles, and Nicolas Bielenberg, did come out about then, and Kohrs soon had them placed operating his butcher shops throughout the territory. [13] They all stayed on, remaining partners with Con in various business arrangements for most of their lives. He refers to each on occasion as "my brother" in his autobiography. Yet of the three, John was the closest to Con, and after Con and Augusta's marriage, he remained close to both of them. There are references to the relationship of the other brothers to Con and Augusta, such as in the 1881 letter in which Con writes "I have not seen Onkel Nick or Aunt Annie, will try and go up this week." Yet John and Con lived together, probably from the beginning of their partnership. After Con married Augusta, the couple provided a place for John in their home, and he lived with them until he died.

Part of the Kohrs family lived in Iowa, and Davenport remained the home of Con's mother and his stepfather, Claus Bielenberg. Conrad and Henry Kohrs's father had died at their home village of Wewelfleth, in Holstein, in Denmark (soon to become Prussian and then German-owned) when Con was a small boy. Mrs. Kohrs had married Claus Bielenberg later and had emigrated with the family to Iowa.

On trips east family members almost always stopped by Davenport to visit. Con took his fiancee to the home manse to wed her, and Augusta and the children frequently paid prolonged visits there. J. H. Gehrmann, part of the Henry Kohrs family at Davenport, recalled that

Just after my parent's wedding, Conrad Kohrs' family of five was returning from Europe and stopped to visit with his brother Henry. They invited my mother and father to return with them and stay at the ranch until they could get properly settled. As mother said, "Aunt Augusta was like a mother to me and was with me in Walkerville [Iowa] when both boys were born." This close relationship continued throughout our lives. Our second home was the ranch. [14]

The pages of The New Northwest record the visits of the elder Bielenberg to the home ranch in Deer Lodge with some frequency. The local press reported one such trip in 1885:

Mr. C. Bielenberg, of Davenport, Iowa, father of N. J. Johnnie, and Charlie Bielenberg and almost as young-looking as the boys, arrived last Sunday and will spend a few weeks with them. He was here three years ago and has many friends in the community. [15]

So the visits went both ways. Con's autobiography mentions travelling to see his sister in California at least twice, as well, and J. H. Gehrmann noted that

every fall Conrad's sister, Catherine Berwald, [nee Kohrs] packed dried fruit at her home in California to send to Conrad and Henry. This was really the only fruit available in Deer Lodge. The same time grandmother packed Sauerkraut and cut beans or "Snitzelbohnen" packed in salt in special oak kegs for shipment to Montana. These were considered especial treats on the ranch. [16]

Because of the closeness of the family at the ranch house, birthdays and anniversaries received appropriate celebration and recognition. Even the local press took note of the family's warm relationship, noting that "If there is any place our worthy representative [Con Kohrs] would rather be than with his family, we don't think he has found it yet—and don't think he ever will." [17]

The grandest event of that nature had to be the time that Con bought Augusta a house. They had moved to Helena for the winter of 1899 and found that they enjoyed it there. Augusta decided she wanted to live in Helena in their rented home. That was sufficient to prompt Con to action, "So without her knowledge I telegraphed to Mr. D'archeul and bought the house, presenting it to her on our wedding anniversary." [18]

The family showed its happy solidarity in other ways as well. With Con on the road so much, many trips had to combine business and family interests. The family went along whenever possible. An example is the Yellowstone trip in 1883. With horses, a provision wagon, a cook, and assistants, Con, Augusta, Miss King, and the children travelled from Deer Lodge to Yellowstone National Park and leisurely wandered through it for six weeks. The local newspaper note on the story reported that "the family will return by rail from Mammoth Springs. Mr. Kohrs goes to Chicago before returning." [19] This combination of a business and family trip was typical.

The Deer Lodge family cherished its friends too. Their actions upon Tom Hooban's death—transporting his remains to his home in Wisconsin and journeying there for the funeral—testify strongly to their devotion to him. Likewise, the children's governess, Miss Anna King, became virtually a member of the family, accompanying them to Europe and taking trips with them throughout Montana. After Anna King left the employ of the Kohrs to pursue a singing career, she would return for lengthy stays, as she did in the fall of 1884. [20]

Con Warren remembered the family during the summers at Deer Lodge. In the years following Con and Augusta's move to Helena, both Con and Augusta would telephone John Bielenberg at the ranch in Deer Lodge once or twice a week just to see how he was doing. If they hadn't called for a few days, John would call them. They always remained in close contact. In the evenings, Con Warren recalled, "They would sit down and talk for hours on end." Even taciturn John Bielenberg, who seldom spoke except when absolutely necessary, would join in. They would gather in the dining room "in the evenings . . . around the table and talk, talk, talk." Con Warren observed that "they really were a close-knit family. And they had this extraordinary regard for each other." [21]

Con and Augusta and John remained the core of the family, but of course there were the children too: initially Anna Kohrs (born 18 December 1868) , then Katie (Katherine, born 2 March 1870), and finally William or "Willie" (born 1 November 1879) . Anna married first, in 1891. She wedded John Boardman, who eventually became manager of many of the Kohrs and Bielenberg interests. The younger daughter, Katherine, married a physician, Dr. Otey Yancey Warren, a few years later. Dr. Warren died just a few months after the birth, in 1907, of the couple's youngest child, Conrad Kohrs Warren, who became manager and later owner of the ranch.

Con and Augusta's only son, William, died on 20 March 1901, while attending college in the East. Willie's death must have been a major shock to Con and Augusta, but an exact measure of its impact remains unknown. Con Kohrs apparently could not bring himself to mention the tragedy in his autobiography. In as intimate a group as the Kohrs family, any death would be strongly felt. That the first child to die was the only son must have brought even greater pain to Con and Augusta. Family tradition infers that this is so. The only major response to the death in the family that is known for certain is that shortly after William's death, Con, John, and Augusta initiated the construction of the "Wm. K. Kohrs Memorial Library" in Deer Lodge. The building survives today unaltered on the exterior. The stained glass window, donated by John Bielenberg, and the neoclassic lines of the structure, along with the ranch itself, serve as reminders of the Kohrs family in Deer Lodge.

Probably Con, John, and Augusta would not have proceeded along the lines they took in the management and ultimately the disposal of the property they had accumulated if William had not died. Had he lived, he would have been the logical heir and business manager, and the formation of the three landholding companies would have been unnecessary. By about 1903 he would have been ready to begin whatever apprenticeship his father and uncle might have felt he needed. Yet this is speculation, not fact. Suffice it to say that the death of William endangered the continuity of family ownership of the ranch -- this much is fact.

But some continuity did, indeed, prevail through the two sons-in-law, John Boardman and O. Y. Warren. Boardman began helping with the Kohrs and Bielenberg cattle interests in the early 1890s. By the turn of the century he had progressed to even more active participation. In 1900 he took over management of the Pioneer Cattle Company (the DHS Ranch operations) and soon was managing the Redwater Land and Livestock Company, which controlled the Kohrs and Bielenberg eastern Montana cattle interests. [22] Both he and Warren took an active part in politics, as did Conrad Kohrs. It must have been a source of real satisfaction for Con Kohrs to see both his sons-in-law in the state legislature with him. He, Boardman, and Warren served in the state senate, and all pursued active avocational careers in state politics. [23]

Dr. Warren died in 1907, and over the succeeding years the Warren children (Con, Robert, and Anna) and their grandparents and granduncle John Bielenberg became quite close, closer, in fact, than most children are to their grandparents. A photograph dated about 1917 shows Con Warren and his brother at a YMCA "Father-Son Banquet." Con's brother and John Boardman are together, while Conrad Kohrs and Conrad Kohrs Warren are sitting together at a table a few seats away with the other fathers and sons.

This close relationship of Con Warren to the Kohrses and to John Bielenberg may well account for the care and attention that Con Warren and his wife Nell later paid to preserving the materials, buildings, papers, and even many of the original furnishings and equipment at the ranch. Warren, in close and frequent contact with Con and Augusta, who had built up the ranch, felt a kinship to it that would have been denied him in a more routine relationship with his grandparents. In a way this was but a continuation of the close family ties that had bound them all together.

Con Warren carried on the tradition of Kohrs and Bielenberg in at least three areas: He bred fine stock, improving the quality of Montana herds in the process, as did they; he ran the home ranch; and he took time, as did Kohrs, to participate actively in State cattle-growing organizations. He served as President of the Montana Stockgrowers Association in 1950 and 1951 and served on the State Livestock Commission for twelve years, beginning in 1949. Although he was a third generation grandson, he served as the immediate heir of the Conrad Kohrs family in the cattle business. [24]

Introduction
Historic Resource Study | Cultural Resources Statement | Historic Structure Report