PREFACE

From time to time, there is born a person whose force of personality and character have a strong effect on those with whom they come in contact. Some are larger than the landscape around them, striving for glory and fame; some are quiet in their dealings, going about their business with no concern for personal glory, driven by their conscience to do good things and ready to aid those less fortunate than themselves. Charles Edward Conrad was one of the latter. He sought neither fame nor political office; neither glory nor recognition. In this, he was successful, sometimes frustratingly so, for he often worked in the background, leaving others to take credit for what he did, thus making it very difficult to discern his part in events. Yet, what we do know about him confirms his character and many of his accomplishments. It is enough.

The only previous work on C. E. Conrad was published in 1983 by James E. Murphy, a Kalispell, Montana, attorney. His work, Half Interest in a Silver Dollar: The Saga of Charles E. Conrad (Missoula: Mountain Press) is a flawed work, often self-contradictory, and replete with errors, primarily because he relied heavily upon the memory of Conrad’s last surviving child, Alicia, who was in her seventies at the time, and whose memory was not the most reliable source for those things which had not directly involved her. He did some research, but it was limited. In his defense, I would point out that although he did consult the Conrad collection at the University of Montana, it had only recently been received by that institution and had not yet been fully inventoried or catalogued making access difficult and time consuming. Mr. Murphy’s over-reliance on the memory of an elderly woman who often only repeated what she had been told caused him to commit to print many things which were not factual but represented the family stories. Any researcher worth his salt knows that family stories are very often dead wrong.

Within these pages, I hope to correct those errors which have become canon, to add new information and to better delineate the life of one of Montana’s great pioneers, Charles Edward Conrad of Virginia.

— Richard L. Hardesty