In 1878, his grandfather John Scott Harrison was exhumed from his grave and hung by his neck in a tree near the Ohio Medical College.

In 1885 the family moved briefly to New York City, but had returned to Montana by 1890 when Harrison purchased the Helena Daily Journal.

He became estranged from his father following the latter's remarriage to a much younger woman, Russell Harrison's first cousin Mary Scott Lord Dimmick.

[1] Using the wealth, Russell Harrison invested in the Austin and Northwestern Railway, public transportation systems in Richmond and Muncie, Indiana, and engaged in land speculation in Montana.

His son, also named William Henry Harrison III – who later became a United States Representative for Wyoming – was born in Terre Haute in 1896.