Archives West Finding Aid

Joseph Herbert Sherburne was born December 12, 1851, in Phillips, Maine to Joseph and Betsy Sherburne. At 15 he left school and moved to Minnesota to work with his uncle on the state’s first railroad. Sometime between 1866 and 1876 Sherburne relocated to Arkansas City, Kansas, working as a druggist, miller, and storekeeper. While working as a shopkeeper in Arkansas City, he began trading with multiple tribal groups in Oklahoma to acquire buffalo hides. He then sold the hides in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1876 Sherburne established a trading post, under Federal license, to solidify his business relations with the Indian tribes near Ponca of the Oklahoma Territory. In 1879 Joseph Sherburne married Gertrude Lockley, born in Albany, New York. The Sherburnes began their family at Ponca but encountered several hardships in operating the trading post. After the failure of a cattle ranching venture, Joseph temporarily moved back to Arkansas City and opened both real estate and insurance businesses to pay off his debts. The following spring Sherburne sold his land interests in the Oklahoma Territory to a larger ranching operation, subcontracting to process and market their beef for Indian agencies throughout the region.

The Sherburnes had six children: Joseph Lockely VIII, Frank Ponca, Hazel, Arthur, Agnes and Theodosia.

Joseph Sherburne continued to conduct various trading operations with the Indian tribes of the Oklahoma Territory until 1895. During this period the Sherburnes became friends with Helen P. Clark, a Blackfeet tribal member from Montana who was sent as a government agent to induce the Poncas to accept general allotment to individual tracts of land. Joseph Sherburne made several trips to Montana and eventually decided to relocate his family and business interests to the Blackfeet Reservation. At the time James and Joseph Kipp, Blackfeet tribal members, owned and operated a general store in Browning, Montana. The Kipps' business closed late in 1895 and Joseph Sherburne established a trading post and general store at Browning in the spring of 1896. Gertrude Sherburne and their six children arrived at Browning in June, but only remained in Montana for the summer months. Though Joseph Sherburne hired his nephew, Walter Shepard, to serve as a temporary schoolteacher until a formal schoolhouse in Browning could be built, Mrs. Sherburne relocated the children to a family house in Minneapolis, Minnesota every school year until the early 1900s. She and the children spent their summers in Montana.

Gertrude Sherburne's sister, Louise, lived with the Sherburnes in Ponca, and was married to Henry Howard Arthur, an Indian Affairs clerk. He died in 1901 in Teton County, Montana. She continued to live in Browning and was involved with some of the Sherburne businesses.

Another of Mrs. Sherburne's sisters, Maude, was married to prominent Missoula, Montana, architect A. J. Gibson. Both were killed in 1928 in a car accident.

Fred E. Lockley was Gertrude Sherburne's brother. Their father was a prominent newspaperman in Salt Lake City, Butte, Montana, and Salem, Oregon. Fred followed in those footsteps with a column in the Oregon Journal of Portland, Oregon. He lived in Yaquina Bay, Oregon.

Under Joseph Sherburne’s leadership the Sherburne Mercantile Company grew to become the economic and social center of Browning. The business grew to include real estate, banking, telephone communications, and Northern Pacific Railway commissary supply. The Northern Pacific line had been completed in 1891. The Sherburne Mercantile “loan department” and its assets served as the foundation for the First National Bank of Browning, opened in 1917. Joseph Sherburne was also heavily involved with mineral and oil speculation along the Rocky Mountain eastern front range of Montana. He was an officer of the Swift Current Oil, Land, and Power Company. This company achieved the first successful oil drilling operation in Montana, located in the Swift Current Valley near the lake now known as Sherburne Lake. The Sherburne Mercantile also opened branch stores in Babb, Montana, and in the newly designated Glacier National Park. The majority of Park lands were formerly part of the Blackfeet Reservation and were purchased by the U.S. government in the 1895, justified partly in response to mining claim pressures and partly to supplement the economic resources of the Blackfeet tribe.

Both Joseph and Gertrude Sherburne were actively involved in Browning society and used the mercantile as a meeting place. Browning’s first school was established in the Sherburne’s home, which was attached to the Mercantile. Gertrude organized Montana’s first Red Cross chapter in 1917 and participated in numerous civic events and organizations. Joseph was an active Montana Republican Party supporter and was a member of the Masons. Both were very active in the local Presbyterian Church.

Gertrude Lockley Sherburne died in Browning in 1935. Joseph Herbert Sherburne died in Browning, September 1938. Their oldest son, Joseph (“Joe”) Lockley Sherburne, assumed primary operation of Mercantile operations after his father’s death. Joe was born November 22, 1883, at the Ponca Indian Agency in the Oklahoma Territory. He completed his secondary education in Minnesota and spent his summers helping his father at the Mercantile, working for federal land survey parties along the Montana front range, and making bicycle trips around the Pacific Northwest with his cousin, Walter Sheppard. Joe began a university degree at the University of Minnesota in 1904 but illness prevented him from completing the school year. He returned to Montana and helped with the family business. In 1906 Joe helped open the Sherburne Mercantile branch store in Babb, Montana—at the eastern entrance to the eventual Glacier National Park. He married Eula Churchill, daughter of the Cut Bank (Montana) Boarding School superintendent, in 1908. They raised two children, Faithe and Frederic. Joe expanded Mercantile operations to include insurance, real estate, and bonding agencies.

Over the course of his professional career Joseph Lockley Sherburne served as Manager, Vice-President, and President of the Sherburne Mercantile Company, as President of the First National Bank of Browning, as a member of the Browning School Board, and as an officer/director of the Browning Development Company, the Blackfeet Lumber Company, the Rocky Mountain Realty Company, Montana Citizens Council, Montana Tax Equality Association, and the Two Medicine Oil Association. He was adopted as a member of the Blackfeet Nation and was active with the American Red Cross, the U.S. War Labor Board, the Montana Republican Party, the Browning Methodist Episcopal Church, the Masons, the Shriners, and numerous local civic organizations. During World War II, Joe was chairman of the U.S. “Dogs for Defense” Committee, an organization that coordinated efforts to “draft” civilian dogs into military service and train them as sentries and bomb detectors.

In 1942, the original Sherburne Mercantile building burned to the ground. With building materials unavailable during wartime, the business continued in scattered buildings around Browning. In 1945 the drug, grocery, and dry goods departments of the Sherburne Mercantile were sold to Buttrey’s of Montana, with only the lumber, hardware, and building supply departments continuing under the Sherburne name. Joseph Lockley Sherburne died in Browning, Montana in 1955.