Territorial Brand Certificate

A document which was brought to me at the Footprints on the Trail show in Great Falls during Western Art Week.  They asked for Charlie's image of a starving cow by itself, and no brand, since the certificate had the brand specified on the Left. I wish I could find a Territorial Brand Certificate actually utilized before 1889.

J. D. Eastman, Oregon Grape Root Bitters

A Montana Union Railway Bill of Lading

J. D. Eastman of Deer Lodge, Montana Territory, was granted a patent for Oregon Grape Root Bitters in 1886. He sold out to a fellow by the name of J. H. Owings in 1887, as I have  a piece of Owings letterhead dated April 18th of that year. A fascinating letterhead depicting an Oregon Grape leaf:

J. H. Owings letterhead

This is a commissioned piece by a patron who first purchased a National Biscuit Company piece of paper on which I pictured the Uneeda Biscuit Boy back in 2012.

The Steamboat Dacotah

The Steamboat Dacotah

This is a veritable treasure as history goes. The particulars are as follows: Dated the 16th of June, 1881, Montana would not be a state for another eight years. It is a bill of lading addressed to J. H. McKnight who had the trading post at Fort Shaw, West of what is now Great Falls on the Sun River. It was one of three sister steamboats built specifically to haul freight from St. Louis, Missouri, to Fort Benton, Montana Territory. The three sisters boats were the Montana, the Dacotah and the Wyoming.Of those three boats, the Dacotah hauled the greatest tonnage of freight to Fort Benton, and did that on its second trip of the year in 1881 arriving at Fort Benton on the 4th of July.

The Dacotah was actually the 6th boat to arrive at the levee, and the date indicated on this way bill is not the day that it arrived, but rather the day the freight was unloaded. This boat actually belonged to the Coulson brothers, and was not a boat which belonged to T. C. Powers. My assumption is that some of the freight belonging to Powers was put on the landing at Coal Banks, and was then transported to Fort Benton on the Dacotah, thus explaining the reason why this is a Power way bill rather than a Coulson way bill.

Regardless of who this boat belonged to, this image was taken from the only extant photograph of the Dacotah.