Archives West Finding Aid

Daniel Webster Tilton was born in Silver Creek, New York, on July 3, 1839, the only child of John and Angeline Tilton. He studied at the Bryant and Stratton Business College in 1859, and then travelled to Missouri and Colorado. During the gold rush, he was engaged in business ventures, initially at Denver and later at Central City. In 1863, Tilton left Colorado and travelled to Virginia City, in what was then Idaho Territory, opening the town's first store, "D.W. Tilton Co. news dealers, book sellers, stationers, & job printers, Virginia City, I.T." He transported the first hand press to the territory and bought a newspaper, The Montana Post, from John Buchanan for $3,000. Tilton published the newspaper and did other printing jobs (such as an 1866 5,000 copy edition of The Vigilantes) until 1868, when he sold out to Benjamin Dittes. Tilton returned to New York in the winter of 1865, to marry his cousin, Lizzie D. May (1841-1866). The couple travelled to Virginia City the following spring, but Lizzie Tilton died of consumption on October 25, 1866, at the age of 25. Tilton remarried in May 1868, to Helen Elvira Barber (1850-1924) of Pennsylvania, a distant relative of his first wife. In the early 1870s, Tilton joined with his father-in-law, Orlando Beach Barber (1828-1913), to form Tilton and Barber, "wholesale and retail dealers in groceries, wines, and liquors, books and stationery, cigars and tobacco, powder and fuse, & c. & c.," located on Wallace Street. This partnership lasted until 1883. With the decline of Virginia City, Tilton moved his business to Butte in 1884. D.W. Tilton's Book Store, located first at 63 West Park Street and later at 138 West Park, handled job printing, blank books, school books, ink, paper, newspapers, novels, and magazines. Tilton and his wife raised a family of six children: Web, John (1871-1885), Orlando Beach (1876-1959), Charles Lester (1878-1948), Howard Lee (1890-1957), and Helen. Tilton and his sons, operating under the name of Tilton Brothers, maintained business interests in ranching and mining developments, primarily the Highland Mining Company of Butte. O.B. Barber also left Virginia City in the 1880s, becoming proprietor of Valley View Farm of Laurin, Montana. He and his wife Samantha (1830-1899) later owned a ranch near Sheridan and were joined in its operation by their son, Charles W. Barber (1856-1933), and the Tilton grandsons. The ranch remained in the family for four generations, until it was sold in 1973 by Corby H. Tilton. The Tilton family was linked through marriage to the Corby family of Butte. (Edith Lillian Corby, daughter of Joseph and Sena Corby, married Howard Lee Tilton, the youngest son of D.W. Tilton.) Joseph Corby, who was born in 1866 in Pennsylvania, came west at the age of 19, and worked as a hoisting engineer in the Butte mines. He served as an officer of the First Montana Volunteers in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War. In 1906, he attended the Tenth Montana Legislative Assembly as a Republican and then was elected mayor of Butte (1907-1909). Corby died in Butte in 1917. D.W. Tilton spent the last years of his life in Grace, Montana, and on the family ranch. He died in Sheridan on October 15, 1919.