Alvin J. Lucke was born in Havre, Montana on July 6, 1905. His father, Lou Lucke, had established a successful dry goods store in the town in 1903 and Lou worked for the family business. The Lou Lucke Company became widely known in the early twentieth century as an informal museum of stuffed animals, antique firearms, and other objects collected by the family and permanently displayed in the store. Alvin closed the store and retired from business in 1964, and he died on November 25, 1988.
Andrew S. Lohman was born in Wisconsin on December 7, 1857. He worked as a lumberman and miner in Wisconsin and Colorado before coming to Butte, Montana in 1881. He moved to Chinook in Blaine County, Montana, in 1890 where he established a mercantile business. Lohman successfully operated the business until 1900 when he built a substantial brick business block in Chinook and was elected the town's first mayor in 1901. Lohman died on October 8, 1930.
In the autumn of 1964 Alvin Lucke responded to a solicitation for manuscripts from MSU librarian Minnie Paugh, who had heard of his store's large collection. Lucke's donation included a daybook ledger from the Chinook, Montana mercantile business of Andrew S. Lohman which lists transactions occurring from mid-1893 through the end of 1894. Information includes the name of the customer, list of items purchased, and price. A second ledger daybook is unidentified, but Lucke maintained it came from a logging/sawmill operation in the Little Rocky Mountains. In addition to tallies of logs, cut lumber, and hardware items purchased circa 1919, the book also records cattle breeding notations from 1923. The final item in Lucke's donation is a printed one hundred dollar bond for the Havre Coal Mining Company, 1910.
This collection is open for research.
Two financial daybooks and a printed bond were donated to Montana State University by Alvin J. Lucke of Havre, Montana in September, 1964.
This collection was processed 2010 April 8