Archives West Finding Aid

Granville Stuart was born in Clarksburg, Virginia (now West Virginia) on August 27, 1834, and was the son of Robert and Nancy (Currence) Stuart. James was born in the same place on March 14, 1832. Granville and James also had two younger brothers Samuel and Thomas. The family, of Scottish origin, came to the United States in 1775 and is identified with the development of Virginia. In 1837 Robert Stuart moved the family to Illinois, and a year later, to Iowa. Granville Stuart grew up in Muscatine County, attending school and working on the family farm until 1852, when he went to California with his father and his brother James. They remained there prospecting for gold until 1857 when they came to western Montana, then part of the Washington Territory, and settled in Deer Lodge valley, about three miles north of the present town of Pioneer at the mouth of Gold Creek.

Granville and James prospected along Gold Creek from 1858 to 1862. Soon after, their operations caused a gold rush to the area. The Stuart brothers and their large prospecting party helped open up Western Montana to settlers. James Stuart remained in Deer Lodge until 1870, when he was appointed to the post of physician at the Fort Peck agency. He remained there until his death from cancer on Sept. 30, 1873.

In 1863 Granville Stuart moved to Alder Gulch just after its discovery, and entered the mercantile business. In 1865 he sold this business and entered into extensive trading in Deer Lodge. In 1873 Granville sold all of his merchant interests and went back into mining. In 1876 he moved to Helena and became a bookkeeper for the First National Bank. After three years he went onto the cattle business with S. T. Hauser of the First National Bank and A. J. Davis, a millionaire miner from Butte. From 1879-1894 Granville was the controller and manager of this extensive cattle business. The Hauser, Davis, Stuart Cattle Co. came to be known as the "D-S" ranch. In the 1880s Granville represented the "D-S" ranch at the Montana Stock Growers Assoc. meetings. In 1883 the "D-S" range held 12,000 cattle. In 1885 this Cattle co. was worth one million dollars. After 1887 Granville got out of the cattle business, but remained the president of board of stock commissioners in Montana until 1894. In 1891 Granville became a state land agent in charge of 600,000 acres given to Montana by the federal government for school purposes.

Granville married Isabel Allis Brown in 1891. In 1894 he was appointed envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to the republics of Uruguay and Paraguay. He spent four years in South America, exploring the Amazon, and looking for mining prospects. In 1904 Granville was appointed librarian of the Butte Public Library and there he began preparing his journals for publication. In 1916 he was commissioned by the state to write a history of Montana, and he was at work on this when he died on Oct. 2, 1918.

Granville Stuart was involved in politics and served on the territorial council in 1872, 1875, 1879, and was elected president of the council in 1883. In 1865 Mr. Stuart published a book, Montana As It Is, on the geography and climate of Montana. This was the first guidebook ever printed about Montana. He had extensive dealings with the Native Americans of the area, and was concerned for their welfare. In the 1870s he composed a dictionary of the Snake River Indian language. He was concerned about the effects of whiskey trading among the Indians, and the resulting degeneration of their society. Late in his life he expressed concern about the future of the Native Americans on reservations and hoped they would learn farming as a means of self-support.

Mr. Stuart began condensing his journals into a biography later in his life. After his death editors who eventually published his book posthumously continued this work. The end result of this labor was the publication of Forty Years on the Frontier in 1925, in two volumes, edited by University of Montana professor Paul C. Phillips.