denced the fact that he was a man of the people, and among the most sincere mourners outside of the immediate circle of his relatives and friends, were many of the men who had been asso

ciated with him in the capacity of employees-some as common laborerswho had reason to remember his uniform courtesy and kindness of heart.

EDWARD W. KNIGHT, a pioneer resident of Helena, Montana, and cashier of the First National Bank of that city, one of the leading financial institutions of the West, was born in Madison, Indiana, May 21, 1838. He spent his boyhood in Louisville, Kentucky, and there received an academic education. He attended law school at Louisville and at Philadelphia. He also read law in the office of Judge Samuel T. Hauser of Falmouth, Kentucky, father of ex-Governor Samuel T. Hauser, of Montana, the present president of the First National Bank of Helena; and also at Madison, Wisconsin, in the office of James T. Faulkner, an old Scottish barrister of considerable re

nown in that section. Laying a groundwork upon such solid foundations, young Knight, ambitious, active, persevering, energetic, started upon what promised to be a career of much usefulness, prominence, and successful achievement in the profession which he had chosen for his life work, and in the practice of which his active sympathies and young energies were enlisted. He practiced practiced law with marked success, sowing the seeds of

promising fruition among the fields of his boyish triumphs in scholastic days at Falmouth, and in Covington, Kentucky, and in Cincinnati, Ohio. Some legal matters matters took Mr. Knight to Madison, Wisconsin, shortly after commencing practice in Kentucky. After a period spent in Wisconsin, he returned to his home in Kentucky. Here he was married to a daughter of Judge Hauser, with whom he had read law in earlier days. He came to Helena in April, 1873. He was admitted to practice in all the courts of the territory the same year, and intended engaging permanently in the practice of the law in the then lawless confines of Montana, where the corner stones of the present magnificent system of jurisprudence, which is daily being improved and perfected, had not found even a contemplative reflection in the minds of the most far-sighted men of the times. Events and circumstances, which seem always potent in influencing the careers of most men, had their effect upon Mr. Knight's plans and purposes, and instead of becoming an active practitioner, an indefatigable and tireless ad

vocate, a lawyer of sympathies for the interests of his clients, stronger than the love of pecuniary gain, he became identified with the First National Bank of Helena, first in a clerical position, and then rising gradually and growing with the growth of the institution, he kept pace with its wonderful development, and grasping the financial problems which confronted himself and associates, his activities leveled barriers, hewed down oaks, broadened the narrow trails into open clearings and highways, and pioneered the work of financial progress in Montana. With all her hidden treasures and resources, bursting forth from the earth impatient of restraint and delay-without the financial growth and develop ment which followed rapidly the success of the First National Bank of Helena, Montana would be to-day true to the popular Eastern notion, a country wild and fierce, whose people know no language but the crude provincialisms of the West, no law but mob law, and no sociability but the unlettered hospitality of semi-barbarism.

In all the history of financial institutions west of Chicago, none perhaps affords a more striking instance of unparalleled growth than does the institution which has claimed the best energies and the loyal services of Mr. Knight since his early manhood, and with which he has been prominently identified through all the years of its successful management. No one who has become acquainted by personal observation with the city of Helena,

its institutions and its people, will readily deny the oft repeated assertion that it is the richest city of its size in the world. It is the center of a country richer in precious metals than any region yet discovered since the excitement incident to the gold discoveries in California, in the early part of the last half century. But it required something more than a country teeming with opportunities for unlimited capital to build up such an institution as the First National Bank of Helena. It required executive ability of the very highest order, sound judgment allied with almost infallible financial acumen, and a knowledge of human nature which begot confidence, and warranted it, in men of integrity and in legitimate ventures which multiplied the resources and increased the wealth of the country a thousand fold. In the older communities where banking has become a routine science, the system that has built up the First National Bank of Helena, and become so incalculably instrumental in developing the northwest, would wreck many a financial concern on the reefs of irretrievable insolvency. It is, or rather was, a system that had its origin not in disordered finance and ruined credit, but in the necessities and growth of the West, and required men of rare judgment, men who were at once conservative and liberal, prudent and prodigal, according as their prescience enabled them to judge of the possibili ties of the country and to draw the reins of moderation over the titanic

forces of progress that seemed to lunge and force, regardless of danger lines, beyond the pale of reason and history. In these qualities, Mr. Knight has proved himself an adept. Whatever the credit that may attach to the growth and development of this great institution that is to-day so well known among the financial concerns of the country-and it is no small credit, but a high and jealous honor, to be watched. and guarded and proudly cherishedMr. Knight deserves a good share for whatsoever of instrumentality he may claim for its success during the long period of his connection with the Bank. Its history is in a large measure the history of the development of Montana; its success but a reflex of the growth of the great country tributary to it. Its foundations were laid upon a well-grounded confidence in men of sagacity and integrity, and in turn upon the confidence of those men in the forces and material upon which they were at work evolving wealth and commerce, law and order, out of poverty and inertia, confusion and chaos.

Mr. Knight has been a Democrat in politics-one of sincere convictions upon party doctrines and differencesa Democrat of the Jefferson school. Outside of strict party lines, outside of the respect he entertains for the convictions of others, as he commands respect for his own, he knows, as men not blinded by unreasoning prejudice should know, where partisan convictions end, and where the loyalty and

duty of the good citizen, irrespective of party ties, begin. He has been active in party work, eloquent upon the stump and rostrum in behalf of the principles he has always espoused, whenever his active business duties permitted, and always and at all times, a ready sponsor and defender of his political ethics. He has never accepted office except when forced by friendly pressure into the contest, reluctantly and unwillingly on his part, and in this way he has been chosen to one or two offices. He was the second Mayor of the City of Helena, and has been a member of the Board of County Commissioners of Lewis and Clark County, of which body he is at the present time chairman. In both these positions the community has received his best services, and both offices have been honored and elevated by his election. In his social life, as in his business intercourse, Mr. Knight is genial, kind and affable. He is interested in Helena in many ways, and has been identified with nearly every financial movement of any importance looking to the development of that city. He is also a large owner and holder of Helena real estate.

His family consist, besides himself and wife, of five children: Edward W. Knight, Jr., who is a teller of the First National Bank, Samuel T. Knight, Mrs. Herbert Nicholson, Henry Walter Knight, and Barbour Pratt Knight.

C. P. CONNOLLY.

Such was the sentiment to which Charles J. Hull gave expression in one of his letters to a friend, and it may be regarded as his admonition to his biographer.

Paying due heed to this injunction, and weighing carefully the statement about to be made, the writer feels warranted in making the observation that Charles J. Hull was one of the most remarkable men who have been in any way identified with the remarkable city of Chicago since its history began. In many ways he was a remarkable man; remarkable for his achievements in the way of building up a fortune, in the doing

of

which he overcame, time and again, apparently insurmountable obstacles; remarkable for his accomplishments in the way of self-education and selfculture, and above all remarkable for his broad love of mankind, and for his practical methods of bettering the condition of the lower classes.

He was born March 18th, 1820, in a little building which had been used as a cooper's shop, and which stood on one corner of his grand

Do no man, living or dead, injustice." father's farm, in Manchester, twelve miles east of Hartford, Connecticut. The ancestors of the Hull family in America, came from England in 1675 and settled in New England. Three generations later were born. Robert Hull, who married Sarah Slocum, born on Prudence Island, off the coast of the state of Rhode Island. Her father was a farmer, and is said to have owned the whole island. During the war of the Revolution, he removed his family to the mainland for safety, and the British force took possession of his island home, carried away all the valuable movables, and otherwise devastated it, so that he did not return. Subsequent to to the death of the head of the family the estate was dissipated through the management of one to whom it was entrusted, and Sarah (Slocum) Hull grew to womanhood with great beauty, moral character, strong common sense and natural mental endowments of a high order, but without the culture and education which would have made her nota

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