1886-1888 William H. Black. We found it difficult to find information outside of his Sheriff’s duties. (You don’t even want to guess how many W.H.Black were in the country during the years I searched.) William first arrived in Fort Benton in 1882. He worked sheep for John Lesley, and in a few years, he had bought out Lesley to become a Sheep Rancher in his own right. In 1885, William was elected Vice President of Montana Wool Growers. An article described his Sheep Ranch as being on the Muddy. Black was a strong Republican who held several positions in the Republican Party. He was nominated to run for Chouteau County Sheriff in 1886 and won the election with no opposing candidates. In the Fort Benton Paper, The River Press, he stated that he had several good men to manage his sheep ranch while he served the county. Between 1886 and 1888, numerous news articles described his excellent handling of the Sheriff’s job. He captured a murderer from Wyoming, which won much recognition around the state of Montana. He also broke up and arrested a large horse thief ring. After his term of duty, he sold his sheep ranch and moved to Great Falls. During his years in that city, he owned several horses and entered those horses in numerous races, which they won. William was elected President of the Mill and Smelter Men’s Union. In 1896, he was appointed deputy Sheriff of Cascade County. After 1896, the trail ran dry on W.H. Black.
1888-1894--Benjamin Franklin O’Neal was born in 1852 in Gibson County, Tennessee. As he was called, Frank came up the river to Fort Benton in 1882 and settled around Dupuyer. In 1888, he was elected to the office of Sheriff of Chouteau County and served six years before stepping down. He also had a ranch on the river below Fort Benton. During his years of duty, Frank was a busy man with numerous extraditions of Canadian men for several different crimes, with each new extradition requiring a trip by the Sheriff to Helena. He also continued to transport convicted criminals to the penitentiary for crimes such as assault with a to kill, arson, and theft of coal, grain, and pigs from railroad cars. There was a long, drawn-out crime of train robbery in the Malta area, which took several months to investigate before any were arrested. Horse thieves were a frequent issue in the area, and one newspaper article from 1892 reported that stealing 40 horses would draw a sentence of 10 years. In 1889, one murderer was sentenced to hang, but that sentence was converted to a life sentence on the last day before the hanging was to take place. Frank had the task of building the required setting, and then, since it wasn’t needed, he had to tear it all down after he returned from another trip to Deer Lodge. In 1889, there were 10 people on death row, up four since 1888. 1893 brought a time when he was called to Judith and arrested a man who was claimed to be insane. The ‘Fellow was lodged in the county jail a couple of days where his symptoms appeared to be like those of a man who had been on a big drunk.”
The biggest crime of his career was in 1894 when the Sheriff investigated and arrested a murderer. At that time, Fort Benton held its third hanging in less than 40 years of a Norwegian man for callously killing a fellow Norwegian. This was a story in newspapers all over the state and big cities nationwide. One headline read, “He Was Jerked Into Eternity At Fort Benton Yesterday.” After Frank’s duty was completed, he sold his ranch and bought a fuel and grain business, which he ran until he moved to Chinook in 1901. There, he and his future father-in-law bought a hotel together, and in 1902, he married Lena Marsh. They had two daughters and lived in the town of Chinook until they died—Frank in 1929 and Lena in 1962.
1894-1896 George B McLaughlin. He was born in Columbiana, Ohio, but the year was unknown. In July 1891, a brief article was posted that read that a pleasant young man had taken a place on the staff of the River Press. He was nominated in October 1894 to run for office as a Republican against Thomas Clary, a Democrat. The November 14, 1894 election proved George the favorite 662 to 586. George was in the River Press all of the time, most likely because the staff had worked with him those few years. After his brief stint in the law, he moved to Great Falls, where he lived when he was appointed Indian Agent at the Blackfeet Reservation. In the next article in the River Post Dec 1897, George returned from a trip to Dawson City on the Klondike. June 1898, the River reports that George and friends are on the trail again back up North towards the Klondike. In November, the River Press reported that nothing had been heard from George since he left in June. The last article on January 1899, “Ex-Indian Agent George B McLaughlin, and his three companions were murdered a short time ago by Indians at a point several miles beyond Edmonton on the route to the Klondike.”
