User:RealMontanaMaven/sandbox

Heading text
Sarah Gammon Brown Bickford (c. 1852-1931) was born into slavery in either Tennessee or North Carolina. In the 1870s she made her way to the Montana goldfields, trading work as a nanny for transport. She ultimately became sole owner of the Virginia City Water Company, becoming the first and only woman in Montana—and probably the nation’s only female African American—to own a utility. In 2012, the State of Montana honored her by inducting her into the Gallery of Outstanding Montanans.

Childhood
Tracing the history of people born into slavery is notoriously difficult. Although some sources point to her birth in North Carolina, other historians have traced her Bickford's birth in Knoxville, Tennessee, to a mother owned by John Blair III, who became wealthy in the California Gold Rush, owned a number of slaves. Blair died in 1863; settling his estate is likely the reason that Sarah was separated from her family. Bickford told people that her parents were sold during the Civil War and that she never saw them again. [3]

After the