It is said that a picture is worth 1000 words. There’s a photograph in the Adirondack History Museum of a mustachioed man in his 20s bedecked in a suit of work clothes with handkerchief and watch fob. The young man is identified as Ash Leach, who one time worked as a fine stage driver. Ash Leach is actually Ashley Clayton Leach.
There’s more to Leach’s story than just being a stage driver.
Born in Chesterfield in 1857, he was one of a set of twins. Parents Jacob and Mary Taylor Leach had a total of nine children. From Chesterfield the growing brood moved first to Willsboro and then Elizabethtown in 1878. There, Jacob Leach leased the Boquet River Valley farm of former Congressman Robert S. Hale just north of New Russia.
Once at the farm Ashley and twin brother Osmond started working at the wood alcohol factory in New Russia establishing a reputation for a strong work ethic.
Ashley Leach departed the factory and moved to Elizabethtown where he boarded with Fred Brownson and learned the skill as a coach driver with Brownson’s stage line that ran from Elizabethtown to Keene and Lake Placid. He developed into a skilled driver as proven by glowing mentions in the local paper.
In 1881 married Jeanette (Nettie) Brownson, a local school teacher, the eldest daughter of William Brownson who just happened to own a farm north of where the Leach family lived. Jeanette was also Fred Brownson’s sister.
In August 1882 Fred Brownson suddenly died and Ashley Leach, the brother-in-law, assumed management of the stage company.
Things looked promising.
The Leachs had a daughter, Lennah, in February 1883, but Nettie died in December 1886 after suffering a long time from assorted ailments at age 31. With Ashley so involved in the stage line he turned over care of his young three-year-old daughter to an aunt, Marcia Brownson, Nettie’s younger sister by five years.
In 1887 Ashley Leach focused on the growth of the stage line to make it bigger and better. He directed the constructed of an ‘extensive’ barn across from the Windsor Hotel (now the site of Stewart’s) to stable his increasing number of horses, spent $2,000 on two six-horse coaches to go with the two four-horse coaches owned by the company, expanded the line to Saranac Lake and helped support the widening of the road to Lake Placid along the Cascades Lakes.
Unfortunately, Leach, the fine stage driver, was a poor businessman. He overextended himself financially. Creditors soon came calling and Leach had no choice but to sell at auction his stage company with its equipment, horses and facilities, home and personal property.
Before the November 5, 1887 auctions, Leach made Joel Roberts his assignee and departed Elizabethtown. The paper reported the destination as Cedar Rapids, Nebraska, but it turned out to be Butte, Montana in the western part of the state.
At the auction it was hoped that the sales would raise sufficient funds to pay off all the creditors. It failed to happen. The Elizabethtown Post reported “The property did not bring enough to pay creditors by many hundred dollars.”
Some individuals did benefit. Orlando and Smith Beede purchased one of the new six-horse stages and started a stage line between Elizabethtown and Keene Valley where they had a hotel. Brothers Cyrus and George Agnew bought the two four-horse stages and assumed management of the stage line between Elizabethtown and Lake Placid which ran until the early 1910s until they switched to a bus.
But the other creditors had to wait until March 1888 when a judge declared the debts would be paid at a rate of 38 cents per dollar.
As for Ashley Leach, he reached Montana and for the next seven years farmed in the Deer Lodge Valley northwest of Butte. However, the prosperity of Butte grew substantially as large veins of copper were discovered and mined.
Seeing the surge in growth in wealth Leach switched from farming to carpentry and for the rest of his life constructed some of the fine homes in the city and in neighboring Anaconda.
On a personal note, Leach re-married in 1897, taking as his bride Sarah Martha Pryor Bull, a native of Mobile, Alabama. It appears the couple did live together before their marriage as the pair welcomed a daughter, Mary, in 1893.
Though no records have yet been discovered, this marriage ended either by divorce or Sarah’s death for Leach married a third time on March 24, 1917. Mary R. Ruffle was twenty years younger than her new husband, a native of Dunmow, England, who immigrated to Canada.
She crossed into the United States at the border crossing of Sweet Grass, Montana and Alberta on June 16, 1916 and migrated to Butte where migrants were thronging because of the copper boom.
Ruffle met Leach and they started a family immediately, with their first child, Lydia Marion, being born on March 25, 1917, the day after they were married. A son, Ashley Leach Jr. followed on April 10, 1920.
Leach’s greatest accomplishment in Butte was not as a farmer, carpenter or contractor, but being credited as the founder of the Butte Pioneers’ Club.
On August 2, 1924 Leach gathered a group of city officials and long time residents to meet at his residence. He advocated the formation of a club consisting of male and female residents who had lived in Butte for a minimum of twenty-five years. He wanted to “revive and keep alive . . . the memories and traditions of the old West, especially early-day Butte” plus “strengthen the ties between the modern and early day way of life” in the community.”
The idea took hold and in February 1925 the organization was officially created, by-laws passed and officers elected. The local paper expressed the view that the new Butte Pioneers’ Club would “prove a great success and of mutual benefit to the older residents of the city.”
It succeeded in that goal plus raised money for other organizations through a range of activities and remained popular until it dissolved in 2011. All because of the idea spawned by Ashley Leach.
Ashley Leach died in Butte on November 12, 1926 of complications from stomach cancer. Butte recognized his talents in an obituary published in the Montana Standard.
Mary Ruffle Leach never remarried after her husband’s death. She died in 1956 after almost 40 years as a Butte resident. She became a naturalized US citizen on September 19, 1929.
What happened to Leach’s children?
Lennah spent most her life in Essex County. After living with her guardian Marcia Brownson Woodruff, she married farmer Melvin Burpee 1902 and had two children. She died in 1962 having battled illnesses for the last two years of her life.
The Burpees lived in Lewis, NY, Massachusetts,Vermont and on a farm in Reber, NY. In 1925 they moved back to Lewis and opened a general store in town.
Lennah was an active member of the Lewis Congregational Church teaching Sunday school and for twenty years served as church organist.
Mary first married Fred Beaumont, a native of Ontario, Canada and resident of British Columbia in Spokane, Washington in 1910. In 1923 she married William Siegelman and died in Seattle in 1960. She was employed as a telephone operator.
Lydia Marion lived her entire life in Butte. She married Peter Medvit in 1936 and became a widow in 1998. Throughout her life Lydia Marion was very community oriented. She baked extensively and then worked for the Butte school system first as a cafeteria supervisor before retiring as the district supervisor of the hot lunch program. She seemed to be everywhere: 4-H, Parent Teachers Association, Camp Fire Girls, and the local Methodist churches where she sang in the choirs and played the organ. She died at age 93 on January 24, 2011 leaving quite a family legacy of two children, eight grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
Ashley, Jr. also remained in Butte. He served in the US Army during World War II attaining the rank of sergeant. He married Mary L. Fantini in 1954. She died in 1997 and Ashley passed away at age 89 on March 13, 2010.
One photo, and over 1300 words later, the story of Ashley Leach comes alive.
Comments