First Families of Montana Certificate


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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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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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Origins of Names of Stations and Townsites from Northern Pacific Railway Corporate Records

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I haven't yet been able to return to the Mansfield Library in Missoula, but a helpful employee in Archives and Special Collections saved me a trip. She took a look through the Northern Pacific Railway Company records I mentioned in a previous post and reported that she did not find any references to Wallace, Blossburg, Clinton, or McQuarrie within. She referred me to the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS), which was next on my list anyway. MNHS will digitize records in their collection upon request for a small fee, so last month I ordered the scan of two folders listed in their finding aid as "Origins of names of stations and townsites." My order was delivered digitally today and I am going to share with you what I found. First, an attribution: Most of the pages appear to be part of a typewritten document titled: Northern Pacific Railway The Origin and Historic Significance of the Names of Towns and Stations Located on the Lines of the Railway A Record Compiled by John
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