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Butte Land and Investment Company records, 1886-1969

Overview of the Collection

Creator
Butte Land and Investment Company
Title
Butte Land and Investment Company records
Dates
1886-1969 (inclusive)
Quantity
80 linear feet of shelf space
Collection Number
MC 243 (collection)
Summary
The Butte Land and Investment Company was a real estate, insurance and investment brokerage in Butte, Montana. This collection (1886-1969) consists of business records for the Butte Land and Investment Company and its affiliate companies including the Brooklyn Mining Company; Daly Addition Company; Gibson Ranch Company; Montana Land and Securities Company; Salmon River Mining and Smelting Company; South Park Mining and Realty Company; Washington-Butte Mining Company; and Western Fuel Company. Also included are correspondence and financial records for the Kemper Family.
Repository
Montana Historical Society, Library & Archives
Montana Historical Society Research Center Archives
225 North Roberts
PO Box 201201
Helena MT
59620-1201
Telephone: 4064442681
Fax: 4064445297
mhslibrary@mt.gov
Access Restrictions

Collection open for research. .

Languages
English
Sponsor
Funding for encoding this finding aid was provided through a grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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Historical Note

The Butte Land and Investment Company was the successor to a real estate business started in the 1880s by Simeon V. Kemper to develop farm land he owned on the south edge of Butte, Montana. The company was incorporated June 13, 1895, with the objectives of buying, selling, leasing and improving real estate; platting, developing, and dealing in town sites and subdivisions; erecting, renting, and selling buildings; operating street railways, water works, electric plants and other auxiliary improvements needed for the company's real estate; buying, selling, and leasing mines; loaning and borrowing money; buying and selling securities; and related activities.

The original trustees were S.V. Kemper, J. W. Kemper, and James A. Canty, E. Starrett Shields, S.V. Kemper's brother-in-law, joined the firm as its secretary, a position he continued for many years. In 1909 Simeon V. Kemper's oldest son, William Arthur Kemper, (known as Arthur) gradually began to take over the business. By 1916 he was president of the company with Simeon V. Kemper in semi-retirement as vice-president. The senior Kemper continued to be involved with the company until 1940.

Under Arthur Kemper's management the company expanded its operations into investment and property management. After the Butte mines began to decline in the 1920s, the company's business turned more and more towards managing property for owners who had left Butte. This involved arranging rentals, maintaining houses in repair, and seeking possible buyers. The company also became a mortgage broker, matching borrowers with private mortgage lenders.

The Butte Land and Investment Company had a number of subsidiaries, including the Montana Land and Securities Company (to handle their investment business); the South Park Mining and Realty Company (to develop the South Park Addition); the Daly Addition Company; the Washington-Butte Mining Company; and two mining companies at Contact, Nevada: the Brooklyn Mining Company and the Salmon River Mining Company.

Simeon Vandeventer Kemper was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, on June 21, 1855, the youngest of four children of Thompson and Lucy Ann (Smiley) Kemper. In 1862 the family moved to Kansas, and then to Colorado. Eventually they arrived in Ravensburg, Montana Territory, in 1871. After several years of home tutoring by his older brother James W. Kemper, Simeon entered Helena High School and studied mathematics with the idea of becoming a surveyor. To augment the family's farming income Simeon worked as a miner, carpenter, and sheep shearer. In 1877 he bought 40 acres of land on the outskirts of Butte and began a vegetable farm. However, smoke from the nearby smelters eventually made the farm unproductive. Kemper subdivided the land as the Kemper Addition and went into the real estate business, gradually building one of the foremost real estate development companies in Butte. With his partner W. V. Ladler, Kemper platted the Kemper and Ladler Addition.

Simeon V. Kemper and his wife Sallie B. Shields Kemper had five children: William Arthur (1881-1955), Mary B. (1883-1899), Sallie Virginia (1885- 1950), Helen E. (b. 1892), and Simeon V. Jr. (b. 1895). Sallie B. Kemper died in California in July 1933. S.V. Kemper died December 2, 1946. Simeon's brothers James W. Kemper (1848-1939) and Edward W. Kemper (1850-1931) were also involved to varying degrees in the Butte Land and Investment Company, James serving as president for a period prior to Arthur's taking over. They also had a 640 acre ranch just north of Dillon, which they operated until they left Montana in the late 1910s or early 1920s.

William Arthur Kemper was born in Butte in 1881. He studied civil and topographical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), graduating in 1904. After graduation, he was appointed to a survey team of the United States Coastal and Geodetic Survey working in the Philippines. He spent the next three years there doing survey work and traveling to China. After his return to the United States he worked briefly in New York City and then was hired by the New York State Water Supply Commission to do survey work for the construction of the Sacandaga Reservoir north of Albany. In 1908 he married Constance Richardson, whom he had met while at MIT They moved to Butte where Arthur took over management of the Butte Land and Investment Company. They had two children Richardson Vandeventer "Dick" Kemper (b. 1912) and William Arthur "Billy" Kemper, Jr. (b. 1914). Arthur and Constance were divorced in 1922 and she moved with the two children back to Massachusetts. W.A. Kemper died in October of 1955.

Arthur's sister Helen E. Kemper (b.1892) was a school teacher in Alhambra, California. She traveled extensively on vacations, including a trip to Europe in the summer of 1939 just before the outbreak of World War II. On her return from that trip her ocean liner was sunk by a German submarine, but she was among those rescued. After Arthur's death in 1955 she took over management of the Butte Land and Investment Company with the help of her other brother Simeon V. Kemper, Jr. Simeon V. Kemper, Jr. (b.1895) served in the Navy in World War I and then was recalled to service during World War II. Between the wars he worked for a social service agency in Alhambra, California. He moved to Butte in the 1960s to help his sister manage the business of liquidating the Butte Land and Investment Company.

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Content Description

This collection consists of 4 major subgroups and numerous smaller subgroups.

The largest subgroup consists of the records of the Butte Land and Investment Company (1895-1969). There is extensive company correspondence (1915-1946) by W.A. Kemper and E. Sterrett Shields. Correspondence primarily concerns sale and rental of Butte property, brokerage of mortgages, arrangements for insurance, etc. There is also considerable correspondence concerning general economic and political conditions in Butte, the United States, and the world. Family correspondence is intermixed with the business correspondence. In particular there are long substantive letters between Arthur Kemper and his father S.V. Kemper and his uncle J. W. Kemper concerning the operation of the company and about family matters. Correspondence with S.V. Kemper and J. W. Kemper is the only World War I era correspondence in the collection. Other series in the Butte Land and Investment Company subgroup are financial records (1901-1968); legal documents, including abstract registers (1903-1969), deeds (1895-1965), and mortgages (1899-1927); organizational papers (1895-1966), including an incomplete set of corporate minutes, plus bylaws, incorporation papers and stock books. Also included are a subject file (1900-1917) on a claim dispute over the Butte and Boston placer claim; and miscellany, including advertisement scrapbooks, Butte Merchants Credit Reporting Service flyers, indexes to contracts, lists of lots sold, and lot ownership cards; and a scrapbook of clippings (1920-1960) concerning the company, Butte's economy, the Kemper family, and friends.

Smaller subgroups for subsidiary operations include the Brooklyn Mining Company (1899-1938), of Contact, Nevada; the Butte Coal Company (1916-1917); the Daly Addition Company (1913-1950), the Gibson Ranch Company (1913-1964), a Great Falls real estate company; the Montana Land and Securities Company (1909-1919); the Salmon River Mining Company / Salmon River Mining and Smelting Company (1899-1940), also of Contact, Nevada; the South Park Mining and Realty Company (1911-1926); the State Savings Bank (1894-1905); the Washington-Butte Mining Company (1910-1923); and the Western Fuel Company (1902-1913).

Family subgroups include personal papers (1880-1941) of Simeon Vandeventer Kemper, including legal documents concerning his operation of his Butte real estate business prior to the incorporation of the Butte Land and Investment Company; extensive correspondence concerning his involvement in various Contact, Nevada, ventures including the Brooklyn Mining Company and the Salmon River Mining Company; and considerable personal and family correspondence, often commenting at length on Butte economic and political affairs.

Another subgroup consists of the personal papers (1900-1954) of William Arthur Kemper, including general correspondence with family and friends; financial records of his insurance business; legal documents; and miscellany. In addition a large portion of his correspondence as president of the Butte Land and Investment Company includes personal matters.

Smaller family subgroups include Constance Richardson Kemper consisting primarily of incoming correspondence from her fiancé and later husband William Arthur Kemper, including numerous letters (1904-1906) from the Philippines; Edward W. Kemper (1896-1896); Helen Kemper (1939-1966); James W. Kemper (1889-1939); and Simeon V. Kemper, Jr.\b0 (1943-1967).

There are also subgroups for the families of two business associates: the Charles H. Lawson Family (1919-1939) and Beatrice Bray Purdy Family (1928-1947, 1955).

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Use of the Collection

Restrictions on Use

Researchers must use collection in accordance with the policies of the Montana Historical Society. The Society does not necessarily hold copyright to all materials in the collection. In some cases permission for use may require additional authorization from the copyright owners. For more information contact an archivist.

Preferred Citation

Item description and date. Collection Title. Collection Number. Box and Folder numbers. Montana Historical Society Research Center, Archives, Helena, Montana.

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Administrative Information

Arrangement

Arranged by subgroup and series. Correspondence arranged chronologically then alphabetically by last name. Some material housed in Archvies Map Case and Archives Manuscript Volumes. See inventory below for more information.

Location of Collection

12:7-7

Location of Collection

146:4-3 (volumes)

Acquisition Information

Acquisition information available upon request

Separated Materials

Photographs transferred to the Photograph Archives.

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Detailed Description of the Collection

Detailed Description of the Collection

The following section contains a detailed listing of the materials in the collection

Finding aid prepared by MHS staff
2004

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