Tucker and Branum Homesteads

Tucker Homestead

There is little pictorial evidence to display this week, because traces of the two homesteads have all but vanished, but the stories are interesting and enlightening, and we feel close to them, because we are physically near them; both intersected our little corner of Musselshell County.

From Ohio, William Tucker was awarded his first homestead in South Dakota, but when minerals were discovered on it, the government promptly reneged, confiscated it, and sent the Tuckers packing. It required a good deal of packing, too, for the family included 10 children, "5 of age," he reported on his Montana homestead application. As these shenanigans occurred near the town of Lemmon, it would be fair to say that the Tuckers' first homestead was a definite lemon. The reader must decide to what extent the second one was any better.

No unsuccessful pioneer ever seemed to turn any direction but west, and Will, his wife, and family arrived out on N. Gage Road when he was 56, she, 54. It is unknown just how many children accompanied them, but, eventually, all, including those that had married, came to Montana, and one married daughter appeared in Roundup in the 1940 census. Mr. Tucker built their house in the challenging month of February in the year 1911 and made his initial application in April.

At the date of his receiving the patent on the land, July, 1915, Mr. Tucker reported annual agricultural productivity ranging from 4 acres of corn, potatoes, and garden vegetables in 1911 to 20 acres of wheat and 5 of corn, potatoes, and vegetables in 1915. In that era, before a great drought was about to commence, rainfall was a little more plentiful, and it was about 1000 feet to a spring on the adjoining section from which he could haul water.

Contemporary rancher-farmers will attest to the impossibility of supporting even a family with five children on 161 acres of our local gumbo. Consequently, Mrs. Tucker and the children did much of the working of the land, while her husband spent a great deal of time as a hired hand on bigger operations and as a part of road crews for the County. People that attempt to drive the roads nowadays will wish that he had done a better job on this latter employment or that there had been a horde of men like him. Whereas the man of the house was often an absentee farmer, Mrs. Tucker was away from their empire for just one, single night.

Four hard years after beginning, there were a 2-story house 18' x 24' at the base, a 14' x 16' log barn, a chicken house 12' x 14' of logs, and a 12' x 12' root cellar dug 7' deep originally.

There are so few visible reminders of the Tuckers' tenancy, that we tramped over our land for 6 years before literally stumbling upon it. A good many tree stumps dot the area, but all the logs were plucked by vultures that swept down when the carcass was abandoned. According to Tucker's reports, the entire acreage was fenced, but not two feet of wire remain, and just a handful of rotten, shattered board fragments outline where the small barn or a corral might have stood.

Rusty springs and mechanical parts, shards of broken plates and crockery, and scraps of buckets and cans identify a hillside the family used as its trash site.

The most significant remnant is the root cellar excavation, completely obscured by weeds, though hardly 50 feet from the road. A broken fragment of a wooden gate, which must have served as a door to the storage, is below ground level at one end of the hole.

The date the family surrendered is unknown, but the attraction was again from the tantalizing West. All, including the adult Tuckers and spouses, eventually moved to Oregon, where William died in 1934 and his wife, Eva, in 1935.

Branum Homestead

The Tuckers next-door, homestead neighbor, only a half-mile distant, had filled exactly the same role back in South Dakota and, in fact, had been first to move here. Possibly his relocation, too, resulted from the rescission of his South Dakota grant. Rufus Branum's initial application was 9 May 1910 with final award of the property dated 10 December 1914. He had an age advantage of 11 years over William Tucker and a family size advantage of 4 children to support. The Branums had started west from Missouri to make new lives in what must have appeared daunting landscapes.

Ambitious Mr. Branum drilled a 37' foot well that promptly caved in but piped water when necessary from the same spring that sustained the Tuckers. Withal, the crops were sufficient for a time to warrant a frame granary. His holding was 280 acres, fenced all round, and also included a log home, 16' x 20' with a 12' x 12' lean to; a log barn 18' x 22', a shed for cows 11' x 14', a stone hen house (the limestone here parts conveniently into slabs), a root cellar, and an outhouse.

With so much more land, his agricultural output considerably exceeded his friend and neighbor's. In 1911 he reported 10 acres of corn, 15 of oats, and 10 of wheat; in 1915, 50 acres of fall wheat planted and 35 acres broken in advance of a Spring planting.

When they abdicated, scavengers picked the skeleton thoroughly, and, today, little is visible but the well pipe, the dugout, a chicken house wall, and the odds-and-ends fragments of board and strands of wire. Unknown are when the Branum family threw in the towel and the identity of their next destination, but it would not be surprising if they teamed up once again with the Tuckers.

Eventually the two, failed homesteads became merged into the property of Mr. and Mrs. William Wacker, who, in 1996, sold a fraction more than a quarter section to Mr. and Mrs. Richard Russel of Helena, who had plans to retire here. Tragically, though, their home was still incomplete when Mrs. Russell was found with incurable cancer, and the Stanfels purchased this bit of Montana history in 2002.