John Gillie Residence
John Gillie was a long-standing mining engineer for ACM. He was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada in 1858. After graduating with a degree in civil and mining engineering from St. Joseph College (now the University of Ottawa) in 1879, he headed to the western U.S., arriving in Butte in early 1880.
Butte was starting to boom as a copper-mining camp, but companies were more interested in hiring practical miners than college-educated engineers, so he continued west to Phillipsburg, a prosperous silver camp, and found work with the Hope Mining Company. While in Phillipsburg, he met one of the principals in the engineering firm Ringeling & Kellog, which had offices on the second floor of the Chambers Block in Butte. In 1884, after a year in Butte, he moved to the Coeur d’Alene mining district in Idaho, which was rapidly developing as a producer of silver and lead. Returning to Butte the following year, he joined with E.H. Wilson to form the engineering firm Wilson & Gillie, Civil & Mining Engineers, who served mining companies throughout Montana and in neighboring states. Gillie built his house at the southwest corner of Broadway and Excelsior (27 N. Excelsior) in about 1890. It was one of the first houses in Butte built west of Excelsior.
When the Wilson & Gillie partnership dissolved in 1899, Marcus Daly hired Gillie to work as an examining engineer to investigate mining properties elsewhere in the West. In 1900, he was appointed superintendent of the Boston & Montana Mining Company. The following year, after the Butte & Boston (B&B) and the Boston & Montana (B&M) companies were acquired by Amalgamated, the holding company appointed him superintendent of mines for all the Amalgamated companies, which included the B&B, B&M, Anaconda, Parrot, Colorado, and Washoe. Although each company still owned and operated its own mines, Gillie began the process of integrating mining operations on the Butte hill. Gillie’s office was on the sixth floor of the Hennessy Building, along with the offices of the other top Amalgamated officials. When Amalgamated dissolved in 1915, ACM named him general manager of mines, and appointed William B. Daly as superintendent of mines. Gillie retired as general manager in 1924, and Daly took his position. For a couple years thereafter, Gillie held the title consulting engineer for ACM before he retired completely. He died in 1941. The following year, his family donated a Charles M. Russell painting, “The Grey Wolf,” to the Montana School of Mines. Gillie had been on the commission appointed in 1896 to supervise design and construction of the first building at the School of Mines. Other members of the commission were F.E. Sargeant (secretary of ACM), C.W. Goodale (supt. of mines at the Colorado Smelting & Mining Company), W.W. Dixon (ACM attorney), and John H. Leyson.
John Gillie was said to have owned the first automobile in Butte. He and his wife drove it in Butte’s Fourth of July Parade in 1900.
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