William H. H. and Emma Dickinson Papers, 1823-1908

William H. H. Dickinson was born in Ohio in 1840, where he received a business education. When he was twenty years old, he went to Kansas, and served in the Third Kansas Infantry (later consolidated with the Fourth Kansas Regiment to become the Tenth Regiment, Kansas Volunteer Infantry) during the Civil War. He emigrated to Montana after 1868, moving to Fort Peck, Fort Benton, and then to the Bitterroot Valley, where he taught school, mined, and took photographs. In 1872 he was appointed postmaster in Missoula, Montana. He continued in that post, was one of the city's first merchants, and served as school clerk and superintendent of schools.

In 1871, Dickinson married Emma C. Slack, who had come to Montana from Baltimore, Maryland, in 1869. They were the first couple married in Missoula. She taught in Missoula's first public school beginning fall of 1869. She was one of the organizers of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Missoula, and remained active in that organization.

The Dickinsons had three children. Mr Dickinson died in 1910; Mrs. Dickinson died in 1927.