Archives West Finding Aid

Sam Ford (1882-1961) was born in Albany, Kentucky. He graduated from the University of Kansas with a degree in law, and in 1906 he moved to Montana, where he met Mary Shobe (1885-1982), also of Kansas, who had come to Montana in 1887 with her family when her grandfather, Preston Hopkins Leslie, was appointed territorial governor. In 1908, Sam Ford was appointed assistant United States Attorney; he was elected Attorney General for the state of Montana in 1916 and Associate Justice of the Montana Supreme Court in 1928. Ford was elected governor in 1940, and served two terms. He and his wife had four daughters together; later in life, Mary Ford was a member of the original restoration committee for the original governor’s mansion in Helena, Montana.

Betty Ford Jackson was born Clara Elizabeth Ford, to parents Sam and Mary Ford in 1921. She was the second youngest of four daughters. She married Melbourne Jackson (b. 1915), with whom she had four children. She gathered genealogical materials on the Ford-Shobe and Leslie-Hopkins families, from whom she was descended.

Ted James (1918-1995) was born in Sand Coulee, Montana, where he worked in area coal mines before attending the University of Montana. He practiced law in Great Falls after graduating in 1943, and was elected in 1950 to the first of two terms he would serve as Cascade County attorney. He was elected lieutenant governor of Montana in 1964 and served with Governor Tim Babcock. He competed with Babcock for the governorship in 1968, and lost. He was appointed chairman of University of Montana board of regents in 1973, from which he resigned in 1982. James married Mary Margaret Ford in 1945; they were divorced in 1972. He married again in 1973, this time to Lois Davenport, who survived him along with several of his siblings, children, and step-children.

Preston Hopkins Leslie (1819-1907) was born in Kentucky. He began practicing law in 1840, and served as a county attorney, legislator, president of the state senate, and finally governor of Kentucky. He served twice in the latter office between 1871 and 1881. In 1887, he was appointed territorial governor of Montana, and later United States district attorney for Montana from 1891 to 1898. He married Louisa Black in 1841; after her death in 1858, he married again to Mary Kuykendall (d. 1900). At the time of his death, he was survived by five of his children.

John Christopher was born in Austria in the 1860s, and lived in Sand Coulee, Cascade, Montana in the early 1900s. He and his wife, Annie, had seven children, six of whom survived to adulthood. Their grown sons John, Joseph, and Andy Christopher fought in World War I; of the three, only John survived the conflict. John and Annie Christopher’s daughters were named Elizabeth, Susie, and Catherine. Elizabeth Christopher grew up to marry Theodore James, and was the mother of Lieutenant Governor Ted James.