Daniel Webster Tilton
1839-1919

Inducted June 9, 2005

In what would seem to be a remarkable oversight, Montana’s first true newspaper publisher, Daniel Webster Tilton, has long been overlooked for a place in the Montana Newspaper Hall of Fame.

Publisher of The Montana Post, the territory’s first newspaper, from its third edition in September 1864, until March of 1868, Tilton was also Montana’s first commercial printer.

Born in Silver Creek, N.Y., on July 3, 1839, “D.W.” was the only son of John and Angeline Taylor Tilton. When he was between 16 and 18 years old, he was employed in a book and stationery store but was bound for bigger things.

He enrolled in business college in Buffalo, N.Y., and then, with $100 from his father in his pocket, he set out “to make his way in the world.”

Tilton eventually arrived in Denver with $15 to his name, having worked as a railroad clerk and a freighter to get there. He laid bricks for Denver’s first brick building and then went on to become successively a Pony Express rider, a soda fountain proprietor and the owner of a book and stationery store.

Family history includes a story that Tilton once owned a section of what became downtown Denver, but sold it after the Denver Flood because he didn’t anticipate that the city would ever amount to very much.

The discovery of gold in Montana Territory in 1863 led D.W. north. “He loaded a team and wagon with dime novels … and he himself traveled by coach ….The passengers besides Mr. Tilton were two notorious women and a Spaniard. The Spaniard later became a road agent and was shot at Bannack.”

Tilton also took a small hand press to Montana. Soon after his arrival, he used it to print tickets to a dance, making him the first “printer” in the territory.

The Alder Gulch gold strike attracted Tilton from Bannack to Virginia City, where the first edition of the Montana Post was printed on Aug. 27, 1864, by John Buchanan. Following the second edition of the newspaper, Tilton purchased two-thirds interest for $3,000. Benjamin Dittes bought the remaining one-third. The first newspaper office was a log building with a sod roof.

Buchanan, along with the majority of the early settlers in Virginia City, was a Democrat. Tilton, on the other hand, was described by Henry Black, his editor in 1866, as having “principles (that) rested upon the bedrock of Republicanism … when self interest prompted a contrary course of disloyalty.”

It is not known whether Tilton was a Vigilante, but he was a devoted Mason, the organization from which much of the Vigilante membership was drawn. His interest in the Vigilante cause was clearly demonstrated when he published articles by Professor Thomas J. Dimsdale on Vigilantes in serial form in The Montana Post in 1865. In 1866, Tilton published the first book in Montana, Dimsdale’s “Vigilantes of Montana.”

Following a brief marriage to Lizzie D. May in 1865, which ended with her death the following year, Tilton married Elvira Barber in the second Episcopal marriage performed in Montana. The ceremony was performed by Bishop Daniel Tuttle, the territory’s first Episcopal bishop and a friend of Tilton’s. The couple had six children.

In 1868 Tilton sold his interest in The Montana Post to Dittes, who moved it to Helena and continued to publish until 1869.

Tilton became a business partner with his father-in-law, O.B. Barber, until 1884, when the Tilton family moved to Butte. Tilton operated a store on Park Street until 1918 when he and his wife retired to Sheridan, Mont., where Tilton passed away in 1919.

Tilton’s contributions to pioneer journalism in Montana were those of an idealist, summarized well when he wrote, “Good food, decent clothes, a home, pure air and love, these are all any human being needs and no human being should have less.”

Daniel Webster Tilton established a standard for all Montana newspaper practitioners.

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