Lillian E. H. Culver was a resident of Lakeview (Beaverhead County) Montana during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Culver's home was on the Montana-Idaho border south of Red Rock Lake. Her husband, William N. Culver, had a mail and freight contract between Monida, Montana and Lake, Idaho. He was also in the cattle business and was away from home a great deal of the time. The Culver family sometimes wintered in Dillon. Correspondence came from William's home in Urbana, Benton County, Iowa and Lillian's home in Haverhill, MA. Friends wrote to the Culvers from Dillon, Twin Bridges, Basic, Monida, Butte, etc. Lillian also wrote short stories, apparently in response to a correspondence course in creative writing.
The files are divided between letters filed chronologically by date, undated and fragmented letters, short stories, and bank statements. The letters scattered as to time and content. It gives impressions of the lifestyle of the area including work, social life, and problems due to climate and isolation. The file of short stories written by Lillian Culver cover diverse topics. The most revealing story was about homestead legal problems.
This collection is open for research.
Letters and literary manuscripts created or collected by Lillian E. H. Culver were transferred to Special Collections from the Museum of the Rockies on March 13, 1985. The original accession number on the set (Letters-65) cannot be documented at the Museum of the Rockies files. The letters were in a little wooden packing box lined with sale notices from Dick Rock's game ranch on Henry's Lake. Apparently Dick wanted to sell the ranch so that he could join the Alaska gold rush. Dates on other paper used as lining were in the 1890s.
In 2024, during condition checking of Museum of the Rockies collections, an empty envelope from 1910 and an envelope and two-page letter from 1912 were found in the sheepherder's wagon. Curatorial staffs' best estimate was that these items were left behind during the 1985 transfer of the rest of the collection to the library. The items were re-integrated into the Culver papers on 2024 July 26.
This collection was processed 2009 April 3
[Creator Name], [Date of Creation], [Brief Description of Object], Folder [#], Box [#], [Collection Name], [Collection #], Montana State University (MSU) Library, Bozeman, MT