Beyond Schoolmarms and Madams: Montana Women's Stories

Ruth Garfield was a ranching wife. Her husband had just been elected to a second term as sheriff of newly created Golden Valley County in 1920 when he was fatally shot. Mrs. Garfield set aside her grief to assist the community and serve out her husband's term. She was Montana's first female sheriff.

Stories like Ruth Garfield's fill the pages of Beyond Schoolmarms and Madams: Montana Women's Stories. The women featured here range from late nineteenth-century indigenous women warriors to twen...