Archives West Finding Aid

The L. Christine Bliss Seamans papers include a variety of source material she collected while working on a history of the Huntley Project. Included in the papers are five letters Arthur E. Seamans wrote to his mother while working on a ranch near Forsyth between 1908 and 1909. The letters give information on the working and living conditions in an isolated ranching shack at the turn of the century. Also found in the papers are Huntley Project directories from the mid-1960s, winning essays from the 1958 Pioneer Days Essay Contest, Homesteader Days booklet from 1964, a program from the Ballantine Roundup of 1916, and an article written by Reverend E. E. Pleasant about his time as minister at the Ballantine Congregational Church from 1909 to 1914. He wrote the article in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the church. The bulk of the papers contain 74 pictures of Huntley Project pioneers, schools, and homesteads. The oral history statements compiled by Seamans were actually written essays prepared by her with the assistance of the subjects, and the audiotape consists of recordings made by the subjects as they read the prepared essays aloud. All of the essays are included with the collection and include statements read by Seamans, Wesley Barkmeyer, Josephene Windecker Fitzgerald, Alvin J. Bowman, Hugh Graham, J. Homer Hancock, Veclav Kratochvil, Agnes Kratochvil, Clinton C. Reed, Mary C. Smith, Reanna Bryson Stout, and Mae Waterman. Issues of the Huntley Journal (Huntley, Mont.), The Yellowstone (Ballantine, Mont.), The Gallatin Democrat (Bozeman, Mont.), and The Project Pioneer (Ballantine, Mont.) have been removed from the collection for item level description as serials and are cataloged separately. Also removed were issues of the Home Front News (Huntley, Mont.), a brief mimeograph serial issued during the early 1940s.