Rodger G. Kent was born in Butte, Montana on August 12, 1908. His family moved to Pony in 1911, and in 1914 they settled on a ranch at Varney, south of Ennis. Kent graduated from Ennis High School in 1930 and in 1933 married Ruth M. Althouse of Cameron. In 1963 Kent retired from ranching and moved to Ennis where he died in 1983. Sometime during his retirement, Kent wrote a biographical sketch of a local character who lived in the Madison Valley during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Ike Irish. Kent’s essay draws on his own memories as well as those of his relatives to describe Irish.
The Ike Irish essay is typewritten with extensive penciled corrections and editing marks, likely done by someone other than the author. The essay describes Kent relatives and their encounters with Irish, a description of Irish’s mining techniques, and a vivid retelling of a hand-to-hand fight with a black bear that Irish survived.
This collection is open for research.
An original typescript of an essay by Rodger Kent of Ennis, Montana was donated to Montana State University by him in the winter of 1965.
This collection was processed 2015 September 03