Person:Franklin Rich (2)

Information from "They Gazed On The Beartooths"; 1995- FRANKLIN W. RICH: One of the "pioneerists " of the old-timers of this part of Montana was Franklin Rich, a native of Potsdam, New York, born Novemberm 5, 1847. He was one of nine teen-age youths who left Canton, New York, to join Jim Bridger as he established the famed Bridger Trail through the Northwest. They reached the head of Bridger Creek and the army stockade in 1866. He stopped when the trail ended at Bozeman and spent several years freighting for the Story interests.

    In the early Dr. Hunter had established a stagecoach stop near what is now

Hunter's Hot Springs. In this famous pioneer family was daughter, Miss Lizzie Rich, to whom "Frank" was married New Year's Eve, 1879, and this union was to produce two sons and two daughters, Clarence, Ernest, Helen, and Olive. Shortly after his marriage the Rich parents moved to Gardiner where he supervised some of the mining operations for an out-of-state mining corporation until 1897. He then accepted employment in Spokane, Washington, until 1916, when he brought his family to the old Haskins ranch and postoffice at Dean. Here both "Dad" and "Aunt Lizzie" died, at ripe old ages. Frank was 82 when he died, May 21, 1929. Mrs. Rich, born in 1848,(Lizzie's birth year is either 1862 or 1863. She always claimed 1862 and said that she was old enough to walk beside the covered wagon that brought her family west from Missouri. Her sister Mary said she was born in 1863 and that she didn't walk, their mother carried her. The Hunter family bible has the a hole in the page where Lizzie's birth year should be, due to it being changed by Mary and Lizzie- from information gathered by Sharon Pohlman 3/29/95) breathed her last on May 24, 1937, aged 89.(Her death year is 1946)