First Families of Montana Certificate


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Facts about how the Betters came to Montana

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A draft of this post has been sitting, mostly complete, since November 2013. Today, I finally put the finishing touches on it and published it. Hopefully, this will spur me to resume sharing the results of sporadic research I have conducted on the Betters in Clinton over the past decade. Ernest Terry and Fannie Nettle aren't in my direct line, but this is one of those cases where I learned about my ancestors through tangential research. Guy Howlett lived next to Fan and Ern when he was growing up, so he was able to tell me quite a few stories about them. After meeting with Guy in Clinton, I decided to do some research on Ernest and Fannie, which turned up this article in the June 2, 1969 issue of the  North Pacific Union Gleaner about Fannie's 99th birthday : The article provided me with a number of gems: Fannie "came to Montana with her family, including her great-grandmother" - This was a completely new revelation to me. While I don't have a name, and I don...
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History of Clinton, Montana

One of the most comprehensive histories of the Clinton area that I have found online is actually from the Montana Department of Environmental Quality. They have a historical narrative about the Clinton/Wallace mining district . 2023 Update: The original link was broken and I couldn't find the content on the current DEQ website, so the link now goes to an archive of the page.
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Before it was Wallace, Montana, it was called Baker's Station

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The oft-repeated history of Clinton, Montana claims it was established in 1883 as a stage stop and post office on the Mullan Road and was initially known as Betters’ Station, named after my great-great-grandfather, Austin Betters. The reality is that Col. J.C. Baker had established a stage station on the Mullan Road in the vicinity of present-day Clinton at least 13 years earlier. Not only that, but the stage stop that became known as Baker's Station was much closer to the Wallace Mining District and the eventual locations of the railway stations for the NPRR and Milwaukee Road than the Betters homestead was. Baker's Station, the Stage Station The earliest mention I have found of Baker's Station in any printed documentation was in the January 20, 1872 edition of The Pioneer , which referred to Col. Baker as "the proprietor of Baker's station on the Deer Lodge road," but it's likely he established his stage station a few years before that. In the 1870 Censu...
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