SigMT

46 | SIGNATURE MONTANA During this period, rustling of both cale and horses raged. Stuart's herd was to spread out to be thoroughly watched. Livestock was even stolen from corrals. With no law enforcement, Stuart took maers into his own hands. He was not involved in the vigilantes that had cleaned up the Bannack and Virginia City area, but he knew about it. In the same vein as the earlier vigilantes, "Stuart's Stranglers," executed at least 17 alleged rustlers in less than a month. Even with local skepticism about the haste and possible mistakes the vigilantes could have made, Stuart was popular with one group—the calemen. ey elected him president of the Montana Stock Growers Association the following year. Stuart didn't get his "forecasted five or six years." First, drought dried up the prairie grass in the summer of 1886, followed by a horrible winter when many cale died on the snow-blowing, frigid range. Stuart estimated that two-thirds of the DHS herd died. e ranch failed, and Stuart couldn't pay back his loan. Aer Awbonnie's death, Katie, the oldest child, looked aer the children, but she passed away from an illness within seven months. About the same time, Stuart married a twenty-six-year-old white woman, Allis Belle Brown Fairfield, who had taught at the school on the ranch. Conflict soon arose between Stuart's new wife and his children. e older children went out on their own; three children were sent to a Catholic boarding school where they led unhappy lives, and two of them lived with their older sister, Mary, who had married the well-known cowboy, Teddy Blue Abbo. Essentially Granville abandoned his children and moved forward in his life separate from them. In 1891 Stuart's life started looking up. For years he had studied French, Spanish, and Shoshone, of which he was fluent. A working knowledge of Spanish, holding statewide offices, and being a staunch Democrat paid off. President Grover Cleveland appointed him as Minister to Paraguay and Uruguay in 1894. He and Allis enjoyed their stay in South America, a place that Stuart always wanted to visit and perhaps live. e end of a Democratic presidency also concluded Stuart's ambassadorship in 1898. When the two returned to Montana, they lived in Bue, where Stuart eventually became head librarian at the Bue Public Library until 1914 when he retired to the Missoula area to write his autobiography, Forty Years on the Frontier. A young man, John Barrows, who had become a cowhand at the DHS Ranch wrote a glowing description of Granville years later. He wrote that Granville was "an instinctive gentleman, self-educated, well-read, fearless; a man who had married a Shoshone…who held her place in his household as a loved and respected wife and mother—he needed no other qualities to make him my ideal." Not all of Granville's talents were apparent or appreciated in his day. Now we admire him for his involvement in all that was important in Montana from the time he arrived in 1858 until his death in 1918, and his precise documentation of events we now consider Montana history. Mary Stuart Abbott one of Granville and Awbonnie's daughters, married the famous cowboy, Teddy Blue Abbott. Trading post that Granville and his brother, James, owned in Deer Lodge about 1868. A life-long interest in communications made Suzanne Waring first a college instructor and then a writer. She lives in Great Falls and writes about Montana people and their communities. S MT MEMORY LANE

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