Clifton Boyd Worthen was born in Lynden, Washington, on January 30, 1899. He attended the University of Washington and received a master's degree in social studies and education in 1928. His thesis was entitled "The history of Central Montana to 1871." Worthen moved to Montana and taught for 13 years at Fergus County High School in Lewistown and for 26 years at Missoula County High School. During the summers he worked as a fire lookout for the U.S. Forest Service in western Montana. He was a World War I veteran and served as historian for the Missoula American Legion for many years. As an amateur historian Worthen did extensive research on the history of the Judith Basin region of Montana and the mining development in the Maiden-Kendall area near Lewistown. While at Lewistown, Worthen came into possession of a number of original documents created or collected by James Fergus, a pioneer rancher and politician for whom the county was named. The documents had been deposited at the school after the Fergus ranch house had burned. Worthen used the documents in his own research and for teaching until he was contacted by Allis Stuart in the late 1930s who demanded the materials on behalf of Andrew Fergus's widow, Hazel. Even though Worthen gave Stuart most of the Fergus papers, he retained an undetermined amount himself until his death in 1963. In 1969, Worthen's widow, Gladys, turned over the balance to Merrill G. Burlingame for transfer to the Montana Historical Society. Worthen and his wife Gladys were married on December 25, 1922, and had one son and two daughters. Clifton Boyd Worthen died at the age of 64 in Missoula on July 3, 1963.

James Fergus was born October 8, 1813 at Lanarkshire, Scotland. He immigrated to North America at the age of nineteen and lived for a time in Quebec, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota where he built and managed a number of mills and factories. In the 1860s, Fergus became interested in gold strikes occurring in the west and after a brief stay in Colorado, he joined the Fisk expedition to what would become Montana Territory in 1862. Fergus lived in Bannack, Virginia City and Helena where he prospected and held a number of minor governmental offices. With his son, Andrew, he ranched near Helena until 1880 when they bought land in the Judith Basin area and established one of the largest ranching operations in the territory. James Fergus was involved with the vigilante activity of 1884 in central Montana and served as a delegate to the constitutional convention of the same year. James Fergus died in 1902 and his son, Andrew, died in 1928. Shortly after a fire destroyed the family home Andrew's widow, Hazel, temporarily stored some of the salvaged family papers at the Fergus County High School where Clifton B. Worthen worked with them during the 1930s. Mrs. Granville Stuart, who had obtained work through the Federal Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration, contacted Hazel Fergus and arranged to sort and transcribe the family papers for the WPA. This work was carried out by both Mrs. Stuart and Mrs. Fergus primarily in 1942. The transcripts only included the papers in Mrs. Fergus's possession and the ones retained by Worthen were overlooked. Merrill G. Burlingame, in 1943, worked with the administration of the WPA to assume ownership of the transcripts. Hazel Fergus eventually donated her original papers to the University of Montana at Missoula.