Barbara C. Behan, M.A., is an independent researcher in Missoula, Montana. She has researched Montana’s territorial African American communities as a research fellow for the Montana Committee for the Humanities, results of which are forthcoming in the Journal of African American History. She also prepared the nomination for the listing of the Great Falls, Montana African Methodist Church on the National Register of Historic Places.
Millie Ringold (1845-1906)
Millie Ringold was a gold prospector, boarding house proprietor, and long-time resident of the Yogo mining district in the Little Belt Mountains of central Montana. According to the 1900 census, Millie Ringold—whose names are variously spelled Molly, Ringo, and Ringgold—was born a slave in 1845 in Virginia. By the 1870s she … Read MoreMillie Ringold (1845-1906)