When the “Dallas News” was moving into its new home in 1948, a handsome gold-headed cane, with the name “Cornelius Ennis” inscribed on its head, was found in the old building. The News very graciously presented the cane to the city of Ennis, and today it rests in a glass case under the picture of Col. Cornelius Ennis in the Mayor’s office in the City Hall.
 

        When gold was discovered at Alder Gulch, Virginia City, Montana, William Enniswho had been operating a store at Pikes Peak, Colorado came to the gold rush country. He first freighted in Virginia City. Then realizing he needed a home for his family, who were left in Iowa, and feed for his livestock, he came over the Tobacco Root Mountains, a distance of some fourteen miles and took up “squatters rights” on some land in the Madison Valley in August 1863. The Madison River Valley had tall waving grass, and a abundance of wildlife.
 

        The next year he went east and got his family, bringing them west in 1865.

        My grandmother kept the house and looked after the ranch duties while grandfather continued to freight. By 1881 many other people had settled in Madison Valley and grandfather started a small store. In those days mail was brought over the mountains and left at our store by any one who happened to be at Virginia City. Later a post office was established. Grandfather became the first postmaster, then my mother, then I, so that for nearly a century mail has been left at our place—Ennis, Montana. William Ennis was a descendant of John McKee Ennis of Northern Ireland. The name was spelled Innes when the family lived in Scotland.