H.H. Garr
Flathead County
History of Montana, Sanders, 1913

H.H. Garr has been a resident of the state of Montana since 
1886 and has thus seen a full quarter century of development 
in the great Treasurer State of the west.  First as 
superintendent of Indian schools under Major Marcus 
Baldwin he has from that time on held important 
positions under the government or in local politics.  
When he came to Whitefish to look after his ranch 
interests here he was appointed police judge and 
justice of the peace and is now serving his fourth 
term in the latter capacity.

H.H. Garr was born in Elmira, New York on April 9, 
1840, and is the son of Jacob and Euranid (Wittam) 
Garr.  The father was Jacob Gar, the descendant of 
an old German family the first of the name to locate 
in America being George Garr, who came in 1600 and 
settled in Virginia.  The mother of Jacob Garr came 
to America from Holland in 1700 and settled in 
Connecticut where many relatives of the Garr 
name and family are yet to be found.  The 
grandfather of Judge Garr of this review was 
a soldier in the Revolutionary War.  Jacob 
Garr was a well known farmer and builder in 
the middle part of the nineteenth century.  
He died in 1876 when he was sixty six years 
of age, his death resulting from a fall on 
the ice.  The mother, Euranid Wittam was born 
in Connecticut, where so many of the Wittam and 
Garr families are to be found today.  She died 
in California at the age of seventy five while 
her mother lived to reach the age of ninety four.

Judge Garr, as a boy at home, attended school in 
Elmyra and also received some private schooling, 
after which he attended an eastern university for 
some time.  In April 1861 he enlisted in Company F 
of the Twenty third New York Regiment and served 
two years under Captain W.F. Dughdee.  He was at 
the battles of Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg 
and a number of other engagements.  He served 
throughout the term of his enlistment without 
once being disabled or suffering aught but the 
usual discomforts of war attendant upon camp 
life.  After leaving the service he came to 
Fort Wayne, Indiana where he remained until 
he removed to the west in 1886.  In that year 
he settled in Montana on the Indian reservation 
as superintendent of the Indian school on the 
Flathead reservation.  He retained that position 
for a year and a half under Major Baldwin and 
after leaving the government service he removed 
to Great Falls where he assisted in the building 
of the smelter there. He then removed to Columbia 
Falls where he remained until 1906 when he came to 
Whitefish and since that time he has continued to 
reside here.  In addition to his private interests, 
he has been police judge and justice of the peace 
and he has held various other positions of a 
similar nature.

In December 1868 Judge Garr married Mrs. Helen M. 
Hunt of Elkhart and to their union three children 
have been born.  George Garr, the eldest, was born 
in Elkhart Indiana and died in early life.  Ralph F. 
also born at Elkhart is now a resident of Whitefish 
Montana.  He is the father of four children: Myron, 
Helen M., George and Mable.   Mable Garr, the third 
born child of Judge and Mrs. Garr died in early life.  
The wife and mother died on May 14, 1903 while en route 
from California to her home in Whitefish.