Noah Armstrong was born in January of 1823 at Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Noah, a student of chemistry, economics, and banking, left his country of nativity and arrived in Minnesota where in about 1853, P. K. Johnson came from Mankato and staked a claim for Noah, on section 33 at the mouth of Swan Creek. Armstrong and Evans Goodrich moved up the next spring and built a shanty on the claim; it was a town site speculation. Others came in and an association of nine members formed under the name of Swan Creek Claim Company. The village of Eureka, covering about 500 acres was laid out and a few improvements made; a saw-mill was started, but the company failed. Hiram Caywood jumped the claim and laid out Eureka anew; this too, failed.  Noah Armstrong, then moved to Blue Earth County, Minnesota, and in August of 1859 was deeded 122.95 acres of fertile farmland. He married Hannah Howd in 1855 by Rev. Thompson at Le Hillier, a small community in Blue Earth County near the confluence of the Blue Earth and Minnesota Rivers. The name Blue Earth is a translation of the Dakota Indian word “Mahkato,” meaning “greenish blue earth.”

The city of Mankato would be “Mahkato” if a spelling mistake made when the name was chosen had not changed the “h” to “n”. The name has remained Mankato ever since. The town of LeHillier is in Southbend Township bordering Mankato. Noah and Hannah had three children born at Lehillier, Emma, born May 27, 1856, Charles W., February 27, 1858, and daughter, Ida, born August 5, 1860. Ida died August 13, 1864 at the age of four years. It is not known whether Noah left his family in Minnesota while he came west to the gold fields, or whether the family stayed behind, but records show that in the 1870 census, Hannah and her children were residing with the “Peck family” who were listed as hotel operators in Lanesburg, LeSueur County, Minnesota. Records also indicate that Noah arrived in Madison County, Idaho Territory (later Montana Territory) some time around 1862 or early 1863.

(Painted by Noah's Daughter, Emma)

It was common practice of the time for men to leave their families behind while they came west and established themselves. It is not clear what brought Armstrong west, but one thing is certain, the war between the north and south was in full swing and many men opted for the promise of striking it rich in the gold fields rather than getting tangled up in a war back in the states. (The author here makes no assertion to Noah’s intentions except that during this period, this was generally a reason for a man to head west to the Territories than to take up arms against a potential brother.

In 1873, Noah formed a partnership with a man by the name of Elias Atkins of Indianapolis, Indiana. This firm was established with their main objective to scouting and developing new mines in the gold fields of the west. They secured the services of B. S. Harvey and Dr. S. C. Day as prospectors. Elias Atkins was a very successful and wealthy saw manufacturer of Indianapolis, Indiana. Atkins was a man with deep pockets and a good business head. It is likely that Elias Atkins was the financier behind the firm of Armstrong, Atkins & Co. with Noah offering his mining and assaying expertise.

Together, the two men had the resources and knowledge to successfully locate and purchase mining properties and acquire ore at a reasonable price from the local miners. Many of the mines located in and around the Bryant District had ore building up on the dumps awaiting shipment which was sometimes costly and difficult given the weather conditions of the area. Hauling ore out was costly and time consuming and with a lack of capitol for the miners, made it an attractive venture for Armstrong, Atkins, and Dahler. For the miners, hauling ore to Glendale lowered their costs and provided much faster revenue returns on their hard work. Early on, ores were shipped by ox-teams to Corinne Utah where the Central Pacific Railroad would then haul to San Francisco to be loaded onto ships en route to Swansea Wales. Prior to the arrival of the Utah Northern in Montana, these factors greatly reduced the profits.

(Hannah Armstrong)

Noah Armstrong also formed a partnership with another man, Charles Dahler of Virginia City. Dahler was a wealthy banker who together with Armstrong, built the Dahler, Armstrong & Co. Sampling Works at Glendale. They filed on this site for their smelter on August 10, 1874. It was recorded on the 28th inst. at Bannack City, Montana’s Territorial Capital at the time. A community of mill workers quickly sprang up and in 1875, a 40-ton lead smelter was built to process the growing production from the district. Armstrong, Dahler & Company continued to enlarge and equip their smelter at Glendale to achieve greater efficiency and profitability. The expanded smelter equipped with a couple water jacket cupola furnaces, one reverbatory furnace and another being built, a couple of 40 ton stamp mills and a roaster oven, all purchased from the Fraser, Chambers & Co. of Chicago, Illinois. The Glendale smelter burned down in July of 1879. The mill reconstruction began immediately.

The plant was rebuilt and enlarged at a cost of about 20,000 and 400,000 feet of lumber was required for it’s rebuilding. The new Smelter was put into operation until 1881, when the Hecla Mining Company absorbed the plant and by 1885, the facility had expanded to three blast furnaces, two crushers, a large roaster, a blacksmith shop, a sack house, warehouses, an iron house, a stable, two powder houses, three coal sheds, an office, an assay office, a flume ditch, a sawmill, a tramway with cars, and five private homes. The partnership between Dahler and Armstrong  lasted approximately two years before being dissolved as in 1877, Dahler was no where to be found on paper nor had invested any money into shares of stock of this newly formed Hecla Mining Company. It is possible that Dahler may have loaned the money to Armstrong and Atkins to finance the building of the smelter at Glendale and may have taken his name off when the debt was repaid, after all, Charles Dahler was indeed a banker. Noah was a man who wore many hats, having involved himself in mining, assaying, banking, merchandise, hardware, and horse racing. Noah was most notably a miner and assayer but would gain national recognition as the owner of “Spokane” the most famous Kentucky Derby winner of the day. After his mining years and horse racing, Noah would take his family to Seattle, Washington, leaving it all behind.

"Spokane"
1889 Kentucky Derby Winner

The famous red barn of Twin Bridges, Montana. This barn was constructed by Noah Armstrong and had an indoor race track. It was here that "Spokane" was born.

This image was painted by Noah's daughter "Emma" above the door to the barn at Twin Bridges. Any evidence of this painting has long since vanished just like the original work of art that hung in the home of Charles and Emma Turner of Seattle. The paining that hung in the Turner home was an original dating to the time period of the 1850s when a limited number of replica paintings were offered.  During the stock market crash, Emma sold this valuable work of art to a Seattle business owner and it was eventually  lost to fire when a young man set fire to the building that housed it. The painting has been gone for decades. The original painting done by Rosa Bonheur  is housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

When Rosa Bonheur exhibited The Horse Fair at the Salon of 1853, her reputation as an artist had been fairly well established by the paintings, drawings, and sculpture she had shown at the annual Salons since 1841, but few of her works attained the dash and grandeur of The Horse Fair, and none received the same acclaim. Vastly admired on the Continent, where it was exhibited in Paris, Ghent, and Bordeaux, the painting was subsequently shown in England and the United States. It has become one of the Metropolitan Museum's best known works of art.

Bonheur began work on The Horse Fair in 1852. For a year and a half, she made sketches twice a week at the horse market in Paris, on the boulevard de l'Hôpital, dressing as a man in order to attract less attention from the horse dealers and buyers. The picture shows with accuracy the trees lining the boulevard and the cupola of the Hôpital de la Salpêtrière nearby.

(Glendale Home)
 

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