The only thing the Herrins and the Burkes had in common was their Irish ancestry. Opposites in most ways, the families nevertheless personified two common threads in the history of the West. As the owner of an iconic Montana stock-raising operation—the famous Oxbow Ranch on the shores of Holter Lake—Holly Herrin ruled with frontier violence and legal action over an empire of cattle and sheep that covered thirty square miles. George Burke was a real estate agent, a sheriff, a game warden, and a civil engineer in a family of professionals—newspaper editors, lawyers, and politicians, including a U.S. senator. The country-mouse Herrins voted Republican, the city-mouse Burkes Democratic. Both patriarchs, fighting with their fists and their lawyers, were active players in the far-reaching dramas and ludicrous comedies that shaped the politics and economy of modern Montana. In 1949 the clans joined their fortunes together when rancher Keith Herrin, Holly’s grandson, married George Burke’s daughter Molly, a wire service reporter. It was a union that produced five girls and one boy—an heir. Twenty years later, the marriage and the Herrin ranches were failing. The story of the Burkes and Herrins has never been told before, and the history they made has been largely forgotten. The Last Heir recounts twelve decades of Burke and Herrin triumphs and tragedies: the story of Montana’s Missouri River heartland, a history seen through the eyes and daily lives of those who lived it.

This book is the answer to the perennial question, "What's out there in the world of genealogy?" What organizations, institutions, special resources, and websites can help me? Where do I write or phone or send e-mail? Once again, Elizabeth Bentley's Address Book answers these questions and more. Now in its 6th edition, The Genealogist's Address Book gives you access to all the key sources of genealogical information, providing names, addresses, phone numbers, fax numbers, e-mail addresses, websites, names of contact persons, and other pertinent information for more than 27,000 organizations, including libraries, archives, societies, government agencies, vital records offices, professional bodies, publications, research centers, and special interest groups.

Robert Rumsey was born in England about 1645. He came to America and settled in Connecticut. He married Rachel Frost and was the father of seven children. Information on many of the descendants of his son Robert is included in this volume. His descendants gradually moved west settling in New York, Illinois, Ohio. Today they live in Illinois, Oklahoma and as far west as California and Alaska.

Collected here for the first time ever are the surviving eyewitness accounts of the Bozeman's Trail's civilian emigrants: twenty-four diaries written during the journey and nine reminiscences prepared afterward. These accounts describe life on the West's last great emigrant trail, the shortcut from the Platte River Road to the Montana goldfields, from 1863 until 1866, when the route was closed by "Red Cloud's War." Ample introductions, extensive annotation, historical illustrations, and detailed maps enrich this oversized, two-volume compendium.