[4] His journals and writings have provided Montana and western historians unique insights into life in the Northern Rocky Mountains and Great Plains during the second half the 19th century.

It was in frontier Iowa that a young Granville and his brother James learned to hunt, explore and respect the wilderness.

In the spring of 1852 Granville and his brother James accompanied their father west on the Oregon Trail back to California.

After failing to strike it rich in Sacramento, they moved to Yreka in June 1854 and the Klamath River valley in 1855 in search of gold.

Because of troubles with hostile Rogue River and Klamath Indian tribes in northern California, Granville and James enlisted as scouts in the First California Mounted Riflemen for three dollars a day to fight Indians in the Rogue River Wars in February 1856.

Instead they befriended a former fur trapper Jake Meek who wintered a small cattle herd in the Beaverhead Valley.

On October 10, 1857, Granville and James Stuart and Jake Meek crossed Monida Pass 200 miles north into the Beaverhead Valley and what was to become Montana Territory in 1864.

In the fall of 1860, along with their friend Reece Andersen, the Stuarts decided to move north into the Deer Lodge Valley.

In 1861 the Stuarts decided to settle permanently in the Deer Lodge Valley along the Clark Fork River and Mullan Road.

With the discovery of gold in Alder Gulch in the summer of 1863, most of the inhabitants of the valley moved south to Virginia City including the Stuarts.

In 1864, James Stuart organized a townsite company and employed Colonel Walter W. deLacy to survey and plat a proper town on Cottonwood Creek.

Granville Stuart got his first taste of the Montana Vigilantes in 1863–1864 as the various members of the Henry Plummer gang were hanged in Virginia City.

Stuart's published journals have been relied upon as an encyclopedic reference for information nowhere else obtainable about many facets of western American history.Upon publication of Forty Years On The Frontier, the New York Times wrote: In the end he left a mass of diaries and memoirs, from which a judicious selection has been made by Paul C. Philllps, who has done excellently in correcting his principal's occasional lapses in dates.

Still, lovers of frontier lore should be grateful for the salvaging of so many tales of high emprise which deserve a place in the folklore of America.Granville Stuart was an avid weather observer in the late 1800s for the Deer Lodge area and frequently submitted his observations to the Deer Lodge newspaper, "The New North-West".

-Mr. Granville Stuart returned yesterday from his two week's trip in the mountains, whence he had been to take observations from some of the loftiest peaks in the range.

There is no gentleman in Montana who takes a deeper interest in its welfare, or more pains in gathering valuable statistical information in regard to the climate and resources of the Territory than Mr. Stuart, and we expect to be able to present a graphic description of his recent exploits in our next issue.In 1879, Granville Stuart was working as a bookkeeper in his old friend Samuel T. Hauser's First National Bank in Helena, Montana.

Although surrounded by open range, the ranch was located close to Fort Maginnis which provided both protection from a limited Indian threat but a ready market for cattle.

[7] On August 25, 1897, Stuart was at the side of Uruguayan president Juan Idiarte Borda when he was assassinated in Montevideo by a follower of a rival political group during an Independence Day parade.

[7] At the age of 27, Granville married a twelve-year-old Shoshone Native American girl named Awbonnie Tookanka on April 15, 1862.

Awbonnie bore Granville eleven children—Kate, Tom, Charlie, Mary, Elizabeth, Emma, George, Eddie, Harry, Sam and Irene.

[2] On January 8, 1890, Granville married twenty-six-year-old Allis Belle Brown, his children's former school teacher at the DHS ranch.

At this time Allis prompted Granville to give up his Shoshone Native American children to the local St. Ignatius Mission.

Granville recovered his body at Fort Peck and returned James to Deer Lodge, where he was buried on November 5, 1873.

Stuart had accumulated little wealth during his 40 plus years in Montana and still had some debt problems associated with his friend Sam Hauser.

During his time in Butte, Stuart compiled most of the writings found in Forty Years on the Frontier which Belle was able to see published in 1925.

On the morning of October 2, 1918, "Mr. Montana", Granville Stuart suffered heart failure in his home and died.