Kelsey, Frank T. (Frank Theodore), 1874-1937

Frank T. Kelsey was born in Kansas in 1874 and moved to Montana when he was thirteen years old. He initially worked as a school teacher in Rosebud County, but he eventually filed a desert claim for land along the Powder River is what is today Powder River County. Part of his claim encompassed the battle site of a March 17, 1876 military engagement against the Cheyenne Indians led by Col. Joseph J. Reynolds. Kelsey eventually became a Montana state senator and held a number of other public offices before his death in 1937.

From the guide to the Frank T. Kelsey Papers, 1906-1934, (Montana State University-Bozeman Library, Merrill G Burlingame Special Collections)