30 YEARS AGO • MARCH 5 18, 1992
COOK HANGS UP APRON
An appreciation party was held at the Thompson Falls Christian Church in honor of Annie Sloan, who has been associated with the Sanders County Sheriff’s Department in various capacities since 1955.
Approximately 90 guests, mostly law enforcement personnel, joined together to say thanks to this dedicated woman who has worked for a total of eight sheriffs in succession since she began washing blankets used by the prisoners when Wally Britton was sheriff in the 50s. She has cooked meals for the prisoners and served as female bailiff for many years.
For this daughter of a Montana pioneer family, it will be a well-deserved vacation, following a lifetime of hard work, dedication and service to her own family and the community.
Annie West married Vern Sloan in Helena, Montana, when she was 18 years of age. Their daughter, Verna, died at the age of six weeks with a throat infection in March of 1931. Vern was working in the mines in Butte when the effects of the Depression hit home. Their second child, Helen, was born in May of 1932. Shortly thereafter, the mines shut down, putting Vern, along with hundreds of other men out of work.
Vern and his father bought acreage at Trout Creek, and the young Sloan family needed an income. He found a job as a mechanic for the west end at a salary of $60 a month. When summer came, he took a job for $90 a month as a lookout, but the job lasted only a month and he was out of work again.
With plenty of cedar left on their land to make shingles and a good market for the product in Butte, Vern decided to purchase a shingle mill. It was located up Mosquito Creek at Belknap and it took Vern and his brothers several days to move it onto their land. Vern, his father and brothers worked hard making shingles.
Finally, they had a load ready to sell. They loaded up a truck with their product and headed for Butte. They got as far as Deer Lodge when the truck broke down, requiring Vern to sell to sell the shingles on the spot to pay for the repairs to the truck. He returned home broke and still in need of money.
“Those were heartbreaking times that truly tested what a man or woman was made of,” Annie recalled, “but there were also some good memories.”
In the fall of 1936, the shingle business was at a standstill. Vern was desperate for money to provide for his family. Although he had never run a sawmill, he reached an agreement with Charlie Pyatt to purchase a mill at Dixon. However, after a trip through deep snow to look the operation over and realizing at this time of year it would take months to get it going, Vern decided to move the family back to Butte and spend the winter with Annie’s parents while he looked for work in the mines.
While in Butte, in May of 1937, another daughter, Annie Mae, was born. By the end of that month, the family was once again packed up and moved to the mill site at Dixon, where the timber was good. They started making a little money. But then when winter set in, the snow became too deep for the men and horses to work. With another baby on the way, they packed up again and returned to Butte to again stay with Annie’s parents. Vern got a job with the W.P.A. and they rented a house, remaining there util the spring of 1940, after the birth of their daughter Vernette.
Wanting a life in the outdoors, Vern and Annie returned to Thompson Falls and another sawmill operation. Annie cooked for the crews, kept house and sewed all her children’s clothing. All the while she was living with her husband and children in logging camps. Annie was determined to keep her little girls in starched dresses with long brown stockings during the winter and white ones when they went to town. “I had a pedal sewing machine and working from material obtained from printed flour sacks, I made all their clothes from panties to sleepwear and even coats.” she related.
Then the Forest Service began selling timber to just the larger mills, making it hard for small mills to keep going. Though he moved his sawmill to different stands, Vern finally sold his mill and got a job working for Brown’s mill on the banks of the Clark Fork River, to provide the family with a steady paycheck.
Though they were raising three children of their own and it took both Annie and Vern’s efforts to keep their family going, they took in four more children. Vern’s sister, Mildred was having difficulty supporting her large family alone, and rather than having her place her four youngest children in a foster home, Vern went to Washington and brought the children home. George Julia, Ann and Robert Rockwell were raised as part of the Sloan family.
To be continued next week
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