Albert DeBorde's brother, Jesse (born October 25, 1838 and died June 1, 1916, buried at York, Montana), was a pioneer and adventurer. He followed the gold fields and came to the Helena area in 1863 or 1864. It is believed he was in the Blackfoot City area which is near Ophir Gulch above Avon. At one time, he packed salt from Salt Lake City, Utah to Helena for the miners by ox-team. Later he was at Jimtown, Montana and sent for other members of his family. The obituary of Jesse will be recorded later and additional facts will be related at that time.
Leon said that Uncle Sol (Thomas Solomon DeBorde, born October 15, 1852 and died June 9, 1927, buried in Keen Cemetery on Duck Creek near Townsend, brother of Albert and Jesse) was the second to come to the Helena area after his brother Jesse, and he probably made a couple of trips. Sarah and John, their parents, came later and then Albert, his wife Louisa Ellen, and their four children came. The fifth child of Albert and Louisa Ellen was born that same year, September 5, 1885.
Louisa Ellen Lane was born in Clear lake close to Sioux City, Iowa, November 1, 1857. She died November 22, 1958 at the age of 101, and is buried in Forestvale Cemetery in Helena. Her father, Elisha, was a musician and made good money playing a violin. She and her father went from Sioux City to Black Hawk City, near Denver, where her favorite Uncle Dut Lane Lived. However, they became afraid of Indians and went back to Homer, Nebraska where she ultimately married Albert DeBorde.
Louisa Ellen told this story that she had remembered happening when she was a small girl. She was living in Denver for a short time and it was in 1865 when she was eight years old that she heard the news of the assassination of President Lincoln. Two years later in 1867, she was in the crowd that welcomed the first railroad train into Dener. A short time later her father moved the family to Grand Island, Dakota County, Nebraska. On December 19, 1877, she married Albert Franklin DeBorde. They ran away from a dance hall to a Justice of the Peace. Her father and two brothers were playing for the dance. Her father played first violin, her brother Caleb played second violin and her brother Dut played bass violin. Strangely enough, Albert drove oxen from Omaha to Denver when he was only 14 in 1862. Of course, that was about 3 years before Louisa Ellen was in Denver. Their families were neighbors around Homer, Nebraska.
Albert and Louisa Ellen made the trip from Logan Valley, near Homer Nebraska to Jimtown, Montana in the spring of 1885. As stated before, they had four small children at the time, and Louisa Ellen was pregnant with Bill. they travelled on the Northern Pacific Railroad on what was known as an immigrant train. The outstanding feature of the train was that the immigrants did their own cooking on the coach and, presumably, looked after their other needs. They got off the train at the N. P. Depot and rode a horse-drawn trolley to the Cosmopolitan Hotel in uptown Helena. In the morning they rode the stagecoach, driven by Court Sheriff, to Jimtown, by way of Canyon Ferry across the frozen Missouri River.
A trip to Jimtown was made on a 1985 mid-summer day by the author. While most things in this history are factual, it seems appropriate to combine a little imagination along with the facts.
According to the school census of August 20, 1897 (a photostatic copy of the school census is included at the end of this history), there were 18 DeBorde children in the school district at that time. There were 9
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