Seventh Grade Press 5-25-16

ThE mineR

Seventh Grade Press

Volume 1, Number 2

Murder at the creamery

By Kaylee Knight

When our substitute teacher for my English class, Mr. Burrell had started to tell us a story about Pend Oreille County, I was intrigued by the topic and started to look into it a little more and this is what I had found. Mr. Burrell knew Sheriff Tony Bamonte and read the book, Breaking Blue, that was written about him solving the oldest cold case.

Timothy Egan wrote the book where a lot of my information came from, as well as a newspaper article in the New York Times in 1989, “After 54 Years a River’s Quirk Gives up a Clue in a Killing.”

Tony Bamonte came to our class and shared the story first hand, answering all my questions.

In 1935, The Newport City Marshall, George Conniff, was shot and killed while putting three men to a halt while they were robbing the Newport Creamery. A creamery is where the dairy brings all the milk and cream to be made into cheese, butter, and ice cream.

During the wartime and the rationing of some foods, butter was an expensive commodity, and the Creamery burglaries became more

and more common. Tony Bamonte told me the creamery was located across from the old Newport Miner (the loglike building the Hubberts built) and down the oneway street about 200 to 300 feet.

The Spokane Police had started a quick investigation on the murder before shortly passing it on to the Pend Oreille County Police Department. Soon after, Acie Logan, who admitted to some Spokane creamery robberies, was suspected of the murder even though he but denied anything to do with it. Not long after, Sergeant Daniel Mangan arrested Logan and closed the case, making sure no one questioned Logan on the previous crimes.

Although many people suspected that former Spokane detective, Clyde Ralstin, helped with the act, no one. Ralstin hadn’t been arrested due to the code of silence in the Police Department.

The case was inactive until around 1980 when Tony Bamonte, Sheriff of Pend Oreille County, found interest in the case. As Tony Bamonte stepped up to ask the Police Department about the case, they told him there were no employment records for the

officers and the people involved in the case. Soon after former Sergeant Daniel Mangan, 86 years old, reached out to Tony Bamonte, so he could die with a clear conscience. Mangan confirmed the illegal activities Officer Ralstin took part in, including the creamery burglaries. Mangan included that in 1935 he helped dispose of the .32 caliber revolver used in the Pend Oreille County murder, off the Post Street bridge in Spokane.

Tony Bamonte, and the local Treasure Club had gone to the river to retrieve the gun. In 1989 the Spokane River was diverted and they had found the rusted old gun. The condition was rusted but it was the same even though it was in the water for 54 years. The murder weapon is now in a case at Joel E. Ferris Research Room at the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture.

Ralstin, 90 years old, was not arrested for murder right then as Sheriff Bamonte decided to wait for more evidence. About six months later, Ralstin was admitted to the Community Medical Center on January 20 and died there January 23, 1990.

May 25, 2016 |

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Ed i t o r ’ s n o t e

T

he Seventh Grade Press is a series of stories written by seventh graders in Ms. Irene Ewing’s class at Sadie Halstead Middle School in Newport. Each student chose a topic of local historical importance, conducted research and interviews and went through a lengthy editing process.

More than 80 students participated and each one will get a ‘by line’ in The Miner Newspapers. This is the second week of the project.

Check back for the next several weeks for more on local history. See more on page 10A.

Proud of our history Proud of our community Making decisions with tomorrow in mind

Mink farm in Pend Oreille County

By Daniel Dumaw

We had a mink farm in Pend Oreille County. The mink farm lasted over 50 years from what I read on the Newporthistorylink. org. The abandoned farm of several long barns can still be seen today on the northeast end of Davis Lake.

Mr. Kenneth Pennell was a rugged trapper in Alaska. I imagine, if I were trudging through the snow in Alaska to lay down traps, I would get pretty tired. He got the idea of raising minks in the backyard. He thought that would sound like a good idea because he wouldn’t have to walk very far, and he could get more furs quickly.

That’s what Mr. Pennell did.

Ken Pennell moved to Pend Oreille County and started a fur farm near Davis Lake. He had a perfect location with lots of water and nice cool fall weather for the animals to grow nice thick fur.

First he was raising beavers, muskrats, raccoons, and he finally decided on

minks. The mink pelts were worth a lot more money than the others.

Mr. Pennell raised the animals in cages. taking very good care of them.

When the minks had babies, they were called kittens and usually there were between one and ten little ones. The kittens were born in the spring and ready for sale in November when their coats were nice and thick.

The diet for the thousands of mink was horse and fish meat, cereal with small amounts of liver, powdered milk, yeast, and cod liver oil. Mr. Pennell hired workers to help feed the minks daily and protect them from skunks and weasels.

Mr. Pennell raised three kinds of mink. He raised a color of mink that became very popular, nearly white with a faint pinkish cast called pearl mink. He raised another color called pastel that have light brown fur.

Another popular color was kuskokwin which was a very dark brown mink color.

Stones, gems found in Pend Oreille County

By Kayla Carvel

I love Pend Oreille County. I have lived here pretty much my whole life. Stones and gems are a really interesting topic if you ask me. I found out that Pend Oreille County has a history of many stones and gems here.

You can find many stones and gems especially red garnets, quartz crystals and pyrites.

I interviewed my grandpa and he told me almost all gold is formed in quarts. When the gold deposit is found in hard rock, still in the mountain, it is called a load.

Then miners dig into the hill.

Placer mining means the gold has eroded out of the original quartz and found its way down to a creek or a riverbed. Gold is 13 times heavier than the average rock and it finds it’s way to the lowest point on the mountain. This is always a creek or river with snow and rain, always running in the low spot, and miners use gold pans and screens.

People have found quartz crystals in LeClerc Creek.

Placer gold can be found near the southeast corner of section 19 township 39N range 43E, in a draw near Schultz’s Cabin. This was the location of The Schultz Placer.

On the east side of the Pend Oreille River, just below the mouth of the Z Canyon gorge, two and a half miles west of Crescent Lake, is the location of the SchierdSee Stones, 10A

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WE Love OUR COMMUNITY Here is what a mink looks like.

The furs had to be sent to a company that made mink coats, eyelashes, hats, scarves, handbags, slippers, and shoes. At the end of 2009 the fur

sold for $69.

One coat was about 60 minks’ fur.

My info was also from Mrs. McClenny.

There was a ferry at Ruby

By Jacob McDermeit

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Once, in a little town called Ruby, there was a ferry. According to the 1990 BIG SMOKE, the Ruby Ferry was built in 1913 as another way of transportation since the big ferries were being used in the places the little ferries could not go. The ferry was in constant use, except when there was extremely high water. Then it was tied up for a week or two. The Ruby Ferry was used for transportation and carried information about the news in town.

How did the Ruby Ferry run? It was powered by water and drifted along in the currents.

The Ruby ferry was also on a pulley system that you could crank to get the ferry across the river.

When you were on the ferry, you would have five to ten minutes to tell the news to the ferrymen. This was much needed for the poor people who couldn’t afford the newspaper.

During the hunting season, the Ruby ferryman would keep track of how many deer crossed, for the game commission. The first day the game commission opened, they counted seventy deer!

The ferry came to a sad end and was taken out by an ice flow that tipped over the ferry and created a devastating accident. After the accident, a ferry was put in at Blue Slide not far north from Ruby.

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seventh grade press

| May 25, 2016

McClenny a ‘fountain of knowledge’

By Soleil Carter

Mrs. Faith McClenny is a volunteer archivist and researcher for the Pend Oreille County Museum. Mrs. McClenny came to my seventh grade English class and taught us about important Pend Oreille County history facts. She spoke about a hundred and fifty different topics, with pictures and demonstrations so that each of us could choose our own topic. Mrs. McClenny dressed up with an old fashioned dress, a hat and played the part. She volunteered a lot of time to keep the history flowing to the next generations.

I had a cool interview with Mrs. McClenny. I learned a lot. She is a fountain of knowledge. I asked her if she would like to be a kid in today’s world or if she would rather be a kid in her day in age. She said, “There are pros and cons to each time of growing up.”

Mrs. McClenny’s parents ran a sawmill and ranch and her brothers and sisters had lots of chores. Often times she would ride the old work horse out to the woods and help her Dad. He would cut down the trees and the horse would drag the logs to the sawmill.

Everyone helped in the sawmill. Logs would have to washed and then her Dad would saw them into lumber to sell to builders around Newport and Spokane.

Faith was very lucky if she had an opportunity to go into town in the truck because there was barely ever any gas because it was during World War II when gas was rationed.

When the family did go to town they would sell the logs and lumber and cows.

Faith and her sisters sewed their own dresses and helped their Mother with cooking and house work. It was important for a woman to be able to do the “women’s work.”

There was always clothing that needed mending, but Faith and her sisters enjoyed making their own dresses..

It was a treat if they got to order school clothes from the Sears catalog.

Besides sewing, women had multiple jobs to do at their house. Cooking was probably the most important. Her mom would make the best Jello and raised doughnuts. Her family loved the yummy treats.

For a short time Faith McClenny attended the Deer Valley one room school. There were only 12 or 13 kids in her whole school. A Mrs. Nelson was the teacher. It was her first teaching job. Girls wore long skirts to school; never any pants. The teacher had to teach all different grades at once. It is difficult to know that each grade needs to learn from kindergarten through 12th grade. It is also difficult to keep the kids busy when the teacher works with the other grades. There was usually only one blackboard.

Faith was surprised that the school furnished writing pa-

Making butter took a lot of energy in the olden days.

First, after the cows were milked, you would pour the fresh milk in a cool place to let it set. The milk solids would rise to the top after

half a day or so.

The cream was skimmed off and scooped into the butter churn, ready to be cranked by hand for about half an hour.

Eventually, a more modern way to separate

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McClenny, left, works at the Pend Oreille County Historical Society Museum with Alice Warner.

per, books and pencils. Students wrote on erasable slates like little blackboards.

Sometimes students would tease others, like dunking a girl’s braids in an inkwell. With a stretch of ages sometimes behavior was difficult to manage about one room.

When students got into trouble at school, they got into big trouble and were punished at home.

Faith has had a very full life that she is still living. Faith McClenny graduated from Whitworth University with honors and a degree in Elementary Education. She taught elementary students for 30 years all over the place: in Alaska, Post Falls, Idaho, Seattle, Wash., and more.

She taught both in private and public schools. She stands out in our community in a lot of ways. Faith McClenny is a hard worker, she is active, and interested in the community. She is active in church and at the Newport Museum. Faith McClenny has transcribed Braille and worked with visually handicapped students. She recently published a pictorial history book Pend Oreille County by Arcadia Publishing Company.

Faith is amazing. She has a wealth of experience and she is an exceptionally talented lady. Sharing her time so generously with our seventh grade made this Pend Oreille County history project possible. She came to our class many times, found resources for us to research and she answered a lot of specific questions through phone calls and email. We can’t thank Mrs. McClenny enough.

the cream from the milk was developed to make it faster and having less risk of turning sour. A separator appliance was invented.

The separator spun the milk to make the lightweight cream move to the center and run out while the heavy milk moved to the outside of the large bowl and ran out a spout to a lower bowl.

Another way to separate cream from milk is to pour the raw milk in a large crock, let the cream rise to the top, and then pull the spigot at the bottom. The milk drains out first, and then the cream comes out so you have to be quick to catch it by switching bowls.

Pour the cream into the butter churn, add a pinch of salt and spin, turning the handle until the butter is hard and the buttermilk runs out.

You now have butter AND buttermilk.

All butter sold in the United States must contain at least 80 percent milk fat.

Grades, ranging from the best grade AA to grade B are based on flavor, color, and salt content.

Grade AA butter has a smooth, creamy texture and is easy to spread. Grade AA butter is made from

sweet ream and is available in most supermarkets or grocery stores. U.S. Grade B butter can be used by consumers for table use. It is usually made from sour cream and is coarser in texture.

Butter is 100 percent natural. It has a solid, waxy texture and varies in color from almost white to deep yellow. It is often used from cow’s milk but, water buffalo is used in the Indian subcontinent. Until the late 19th century, butter was made by traditional small-scale methods.

This is the new way some people made butter. Go to the store and buy cream.

Put the buttermilk in a container with a tight lid, and add a pinch of salt.

Shake until you can feel the cream harden. At first it is whipped cream or whipped butter, so you keep going until the lump inside is firm enough to be called butter.

The butter will feel like a ball hitting each end of the jar, as you shake back and forth. The liquid will separate and it is called buttermilk.

Separate the milk that is left over and empty it into a cup. It is called buttermilk.

Now, in the jar you have butter.

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Fun stuff to do in early Pend Oreille County

By Blaze Hamilton

A lot of energy to make butter

By Isabella Sherod

ThE mineR

Process makes both butter and buttermilk.

Living in town in early Pend Oreille County meant you could get a bunch of kids together and play ball in a vacant lot or in the cow’s field. In the summer the kids could play baseball.

I’ve heard that somebody usually had a bat and a ball, you could probably find a stick that might work.

The 1925 Montgomery Ward catalog sold an official hard ball for 98 cents. The amateur ball cost 26 cents.

Baseball mitts looked different in the catalog. They are sort of small and sort of flat. They were not very well shaped. In the catalog you could also buy equipment to play tennis, golf and horseshoes.

But if you didn’t live near town, you probably had to hang out with your siblings. You could sleep outside under the stars. Kids didn’t often use a tent back then.

Sometimes people had a neighbor a mile or two away and they usually had kids you could play with. If their parents weren’t working them too hard you could ride your horse over there or meet at a swimming hole.

Most boys liked to fish, swim, and hunt. Kids could go hunting when they wanted, trapping would be fun.

There are all kinds of traps you could set.

No matter where you lived in Pend Oreille County, you probably did a lot of hunting and fishing because there is a lot of water in this county.

For playing indoors, most of the toys were home made. You could play cards, and in the 1930s playing monopoly was invented. Then came other board games, and for sure kids like to talk to their friends.

All the games were fun, life was full of exercise, and people used their imaginations a lot more than today’s society. Would I rather be a kid then or now? Well, I would definitely miss my electronics and fireworks.

Best to avoid bears

By Harley Hall

The most interesting thing about bears is the physical power they exert. A bear can crush a lot of things with just a sweep of their paw. Black bears put out three hundred pounds of force with one paw and a man’s head can only withstand one hundred pounds of force, meaning that the bear would crush a man’s skull. A bear can outrun a horse for 25 meters, so it’s probably not a winning proposition to run from a bear.

Pend Oreille County has mostly black bears. There are also brown bears, cinnamon bears and occasionally a grizzly bear. These mountain bears are strongly associated with forest cover, but they do occasionally use relatively open country, such as clearcuts and the fringes of other open habitat. The statewide black bear population in Washington likely ranges between 25,000 and 30,000 black bears.

As human populations encroach on bear habitat, people and bears have a higher chance of encountering each other. Black bears usually avoid people, but when they do come into close proximity of each other, the bear’s strength and surprising speed make it potentially dangerous.

Most confrontations with bears are the result of a surprise encounter at close range. All bears should be given plenty of respect and room to retreat without feeling threatened.

Normally you should not look a bear directly in the eye because it is a sign of aggression and it will make the bear want to chase you.

The thing with bears is that If you encounter a bear with cubs you should either fight aggressively, lay on your stomach and play dead, or curl up into a ball to protect your vital organs. Spring is the most dangerous time to come across bears. They wake up cranky from hibernation. Bears that you see in Pend Oreille County won’t be aggressive unless the bear is with its cubs. The best way to avoid the bear, so it won’t attack you, is to keep your distance from it and its cubs. Bears, in the fall, are docile because they are putting on weight for the winter. To make sure a bear doesn’t come around you when you are hiking in the high mountains is to sing or make loud noises because then the bear knows where you are. The bear will avoid you then. Make sure you are out of range of cubs and have fun sight seeing for bears.

STONES: Bears spotted while prospecting From Page 9A

ing Placer. This Placer was worked using a dragline dredge and produced some nuggets of gold.

On Sullivan Creek, near Metaline Falls, is the Sullivan Creek Placer. Nuggets up to 2 ounces have been found here. The Chinese miners worked the Sullivan Creek and northern Pend Oreille River.

In section 22 Township 30N Range 44E, is the Sunrise Mine. It was a lode gold and silver mine.

Pend Oreille County Washington have produced over 2,000,000 ounces of the gold, even though Washington has not been a major gold producer.

Sometimes people run into grizzly bears when they’re prospecting. They use skunk oil or even a dead skunk to keep away the grizzlies because bears can’t stand the smell of skunks. So the skunk keeps grizzlies away from the prospectors.