Stover, Raymond M.

Ray and Iona Stover owned and operated a ranch near Oswego, Valley County, Montana. The ranch is part of an area known as the "Big Dry," the focus of large-scale ranching activity in the 1880s. The Big Dry took its name from Big Dry Creek, named by Lewis and Clark in 1806. By the 1870s and 1880s, however, the whole region had taken the name of the creek and much of Garfield County is known as the Big Dry. During the 1930s and 1940s the Stovers corresponded with some of the cowboys who had lived and worked in the Big Dry during the 1880s and 1880s, including Al H. Wilkins, Edward C. "Teddy Blue" Abbott, and Dominick J. "D.J." O'Malley.

Al H. Wilkins was born to Daniel G. and Deborah Starbeck Wilkins in Morristown, Minnesota, in 1863. Daniel Wilkins was a merchant ruined by the Civil War, who became an Indian trader. In 1874 when he was eleven years old, Al Wilkins left Minnesota with his father on trapping expeditions to Canada and northern Montana near Fort Benton. During this time he had both hostile and friendly encounters with Indians, including Gros Ventre and Cree, as well as with mixed bloods. Until 1885 the Wilkins traded with the Indians and put up hay for C.A. Broadwater's Diamond R Freighting Company. Al Wilkins then moved to Livingston where he made his home. He married Mary J. Billman in Gardiner in 1886. They had no children.

...