Beaverhead Co. MT Biography - Duke Gist

Submitted by:
Lorene Frigaard
lorfri99@bmi.net





DUKE GIST
“Montana, Its Story and Biography: A History of Aboriginal and Territorial Montana 
and Three Decades of Statehood,” Edited by Tom Stout and published by The American 
Historical Society of Chicago and New York, 1921.  Volume III, Page: 1170.


	Duke Gist is an old timer in Southwestern Montana, has been ranching for thirty 
years or more, and is a former sheriff of Beaverhead County, being one of the best known 
citizens of Dillon.

        Mr. Gist was born in DeKalb County, Missouri, March 7, 1865.  His father, F.M. Gist, 
was born near Plattsburg in Clinton County, Missouri, in 1831.  The Gist family was one 
of the first established in Northwest Missouri in the country long known as the Platte Purchase.  
F.M. Gist was reared and married in Clay County in the same section and spent the greater 
part of his life as a farmer in that and in DeKalb and Gentry counties, Missouri.  As a young 
man he and two other youthful companions started west, reaching Colorado, but one of the 
party was taken ill and F.M. Gist returned with him to Missouri.  He died at McFall in Gentry 
County, Missouri, in 1913.  He was a democrat and for many years a loyal member of the 
Masonic order.  His first wife was Miss Finch.  Her only son, Watt, was a farmer in Missouri 
and died at McFall in 1917.  For his second wife F.M. Gist married Xantippe Gartin, who was 
born in Gentry County, Missouri, and died in DeKalb County that state in 1872.  John, the 
oldest of her children, is a farmer in Bushong, Lyon County, Kansas, and a breeder of Holstein 
cattle; Frank is a Gentry County, Missouri, farmer; Joe is in the mining business in Colorado; 
Duke is the fourth in age; Mary lived on her farm near Emporia, Kansas, widow of Ira Horney, 
who died in 1918; Charles is employed in a mill at Greeley, Colorado; Maggie is the wife of 
Mack Christie, a farmer at McFall, Missouri; and George was a farmer and died at McFall, 
Missouri, in the winter of 1918.

        Duke Gist spent his early life on his father’s Missouri farm and acquired his education in 
the public schools at McFall.  After reaching his majority, seeking the bigger opportunities and 
bigger life of the Northwest, he came to Montana and for two years worked in the mines at Hecla.  
He was then an employee at Glendale of Levi Cartier, a pioneer butcher.  At the end of the year 
he bought the business, and conducted it for three years.  Since then his business interests have 
been chiefly ranching.  He developed a fine ranch of 1,520 acres in the Big Hole Basin of Beaverhead 
County, but sold that valuable property in the spring of 1916.  He is still interested in ranching, 
but since 1909 has made his home in Dillon.  He was elected for three consecutive terms as sheriff 
of Beaverhead County and served for the six years of 1903-1909.  Mr. Gist is a Democrat.  He owns 
a modern home at 116 South Idaho Street.  Fraternally he is affiliated with the Dillon Lodge No. 23, 
Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, Dillon Chapter No. 8, Royal Arch Masons, St. Elmo Commandery 
No. 7, Knights Templar, and Bagdad Temple of the Mystic Shrine at Butte.  He is prominent in Odd 
Fellowship, serving three times as noble grand of Bannack Lodge No. 3, and has been a high priest 
of the Odd Fellows Encampment.  In July, 1904, at Dillon, he married Miss Clara Sharkey, daughter of 
Neil and Mary (McGraw) Sharkey.  Her mother died at Dillon in 1910, and her father is a well known 
rancher of the Dillon community.  Mr. and Mrs. Gist have one daughter, Mary, born August 7, 1905.
-----------------------------------


MONTANA DEATH INDEX 1907-1953:

GIST, Duke
Died:  22 June 1927 at 62 years of age
Index #: Bt 5234