A.C. Graves

Andrew Chris Graves was born on March 12, 1866, in Ringkøbing, Jutland, Denmark. He emigrated to the United States as a young man and spent about three years in St. Paul, Minnesota, before coming west to Montana in 1885. He lived first in Helena, then in the mining camp of Castle, before settling in Harlowton in 1899.

Graves' early interests were in sheep and cattle, and in 1900 he opened a meat market supplying the grading camps working along the Montana Railroad, known locally as the Jawbone. He was reportedly among those present at the sale of the first lots in the new Harlowton townsite on June 10, 1900. He married in St. Paul on August 16, 1905, and returned with his wife to Harlowton later that month.

When the Milwaukee Road arrived a few years later, Graves again contracted to supply meat to the railroad's construction crews, and gave up part of his own ranch east of town for the railroad's right-of-way and shops. Over the next decade he became one of the town's more active business figures: he bought and sold real estate around Harlowton, helped organize the Harlowton Water and Electric Company, served on the city council, held interests in two local banks — becoming president of the First National Bank in 1911 — and had a financial stake in the Musselshell News, later renamed the Harlowton News. In 1906 he purchased a ranch that included the townsite later renamed Shawmut, and held additional property interests around Hedges and Big Elk.

His best-known undertaking was the Graves Hotel. The Graves Hotel Company organized on June 1, 1908, and construction began soon after on a three-story stone building, using stone quarried from a hill behind the site. The hotel opened on June 19, 1909, with a banquet and dance that reportedly ran into the early morning. In 1910, Graves began developing a park at the base of the hill below the hotel, which became the grounds for the first Meagher County Fair that August — land that would later become part of Harlowton's fairgrounds.

Graves was killed in an automobile accident on March 3, 1913, after a day spent loading sheep at the stockyards. Driving home along the old Jawbone Railroad grade after dark, his car went off an embankment and rolled, and he did not survive. He was 47. He was buried initially in Harlowton's old cemetery — now part of the golf course — before his family later had his remains moved to St. Paul, Minnesota.

Sources: “Andrew Chris Graves, 1866–1913,” written by his daughter, Mary Graves Swanz, in Yesteryears and Pioneers. Some biographical details in the original family account could not be independently verified and have been presented here with that in mind.