Archives West Finding Aid

Troy Wallace Duncan was born in Missouri on October 22, 1881 and arrived in northern Montana after 1900. He received his mail at Hill Post Office just south of the Sweet Grass Hills. He worked for Laird Brothers as a camp tender for their sheep herders and his first day book gives entries for personal supplies he bought for the people along the route he traveled to the camps. Duncan married Helen Keith, a daughter of Ina R. Keith, the post mistress at the Alma Post office located in the Alma Cash Store east of the Sweet Grass Hills. Ina Keith was Scotch and had worked as a stewardess on an ocean liner between Liverpool and Cape Town. Her husband Jack left Scotland for the United States sometime before 1900 and drove a herd of cattle to Montana. That year he sent for his wife and in 1903 Helen and her sister joined their parents in Montana. Troy Duncan died on November 3, 1948.

Erwin M. Packer came to Sage Montana from Iowa in 1897 as a ranch hand. He established a homestead claim in 1908 and two years later worked as a locator for other would-be homesteaders. Packer raised and trained work horses on the homestead.

Wilhelm and Matilda Suckow came to the Dakotas from Germany prior to 1884. In that year Wilhelm became a missionary and had extended absences from home thereafter. When the adult Suckow children arrived in Montana, they located their homestead claims with a common corner where they could live adjacent to one another. Martha Suckow married Erwin M. Packer. Their daughter, Dorothy, married John Wallace Duncan in 1946. John was the son of Troy and Helen Duncan.