Charles E. and Alicia D. Conrad had three children, Charles Davenport “Charlie” (born in Ft. Benton, Montana, in 1882), Catherine “Kate” Conrad (born in Fort Benton in 1885), and Alicia Conrad (born in Kalispell in 1892).
Alicia Conrad first married Walter McCutcheon, an employee of the Conrad family-owned Kalispell Mercantile Company, in 1914. They had one daughter, Alicia Ann “Timmie,” in 1921. The marriage ended in divorce in 1924. Alicia’s second marriage, in February 1928, was to George Henry Campbell of Great Falls, Montana.The couple remained together until his death forty-five years later.
George Henry Campbell was born in 1890 to Mary L. Wardwell and Charles Henry Campbell of Westminster West, Vermont. Growing up on their ranch near Malta and moving into Great Falls for high school, George graduated from Yale’s Sheffield School of Engineering in 1910 and joined with his father as C. H. Campbell and Son, a central Montana land management firm. Volunteering in 1917-1918 he flew as a pursuit (fighter) pilot in the World War I Nieuport and Spad biplanes of the U. S. Army Signal Corps, Army Air Corps and American Expeditionary Force in France, earning charter membership in the Order of Daedalians and its Montana Chapter. After the war, he returned to the partnership with his father. Alicia Conrad and George Henry Campbell had one son, Charles Conrad Campbell, born in 1928. In 1933 the family moved back to Kalispell, Montana, where Alicia’s hereditary Conrad home was her primary residence until her donation of it to the city as a National Historical Site in 1974, seven years prior to her death at the age of eighty-eight in 1981. George Campbell died in 1973.
This collection includes photocopies of letters written by Alicia Conrad to George Campbell prior to their marriage in February 1928. At the time of the first letter Alicia Conrad was thirty-four years old, from a well-respected Montana family, and a divorcee with a school-age daughter. The tone of her early letters is playful and flirtatious. In a later letter she mentions the stress of her divorce and later still her concern about Campbell's father's opinion of her. According to one letter, even Timmie posed a problem for the couple's happiness as the child misbehaved around Campbell. Still, Conrad expresses great happiness at the developing relationship.
Researchers must use collection in accordance with the policies of Archives and Special Collections, the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library, and The University of Montana-Missoula.
Researchers are responsible for using in accordance with 17 U.S.C. and any other applicable statutes. Copyright not transferred to The University of Montana-Missoula.
[Name of document or photograph number], Alicia Conrad Campbell Letters, Archives and Special Collections, Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library, The University of Montana-Missoula.
Chain of ownership unknown.
Loaned for photocopying by Janyce Taylor, 1989.
This collection was originally assigned the call number SC 353 by the Archives.
This repository also holds Mss 185, the Conrad, Campbell, and Stanford Family Papers, an extensive collection of correspondence, business records, and objects from four generations of a very prominent family in Montana. Series VIII of that collection includes George Campbell's responses to these courtship letters. This repository also holds photographs and oral history interviews with Alicia Conrad Campbell.
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the online catalog. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons, or places should search the catalog using these headings.