Parmly Billings, 1863-1888

Parmly Billings, the first child of Frederick and Julia Parmly Billings, was born in San Francisco in 1863. He grew up in Woodstock, Vermont, the son of a wealthy lawyer, railroad builder, and entrepreneur. The family often stayed in New York City, vacationed at the New Jersey shore, and Julia once took Parmly to hear Charles Dicken's read "one of his charming stories." He attended boarding school at St. Marks School of Boston and St. Johnsbury of Vermont as a teenager. Parmly enjoyed sleighing, ice-skating, bowling, fishing, and hunting with his shotgun.

Much was expected of the oldest son from a wealthy and powerful Billings family. After he graduated from Amherst in 1884, Parmly went to Montana to visit his cousin, Edward Bailey. Frederick and Julia journeyed west to see them and they all traveled together to Yellowstone, Portland, and Seattle. Julia noted in her diary, while passing back through Montana, "Frederick decided to have Parmly stay with Edward and settle on the Montana ranch … we left him a homesick boy, but maybe less-downhearted than I."

In April of 1882 the Minnesota and Montana Land and Improvement Company, founded by his father, Frederick Billings, and other Northern Pacific Railroad officials, platted a new town they named Billings that disregarded nearby Coulson, a frontier settlement already established along the Yellowstone River. The Northern Pacific Railroad tracks reached Billings on August 22, 1882. The sudden growth of the community spurred the name, "the Magic City." The initial promising growth of the city was tempered by uncertainty during the time Parmly lived in Billings (1884-1888).

Baily & Billings Bank, 1886

Parmly and his cousin, Edward Bailey, operated a ranch north of Billings, worked on maintaining the Big Ditch irrigation project, owned a dry goods store, and then opened the Bailey and Billings Bank in 1886. Parmly died at the age of twenty-five from Uremic poisoning (a kidney ailment). He died in Chicago during a rail trip to visit his Vermont family. His father, Frederick, would die two years later.

Parmly Billings, 1863-1888
Letters from the Billings Family Archive

The Parmly Billings' letters were copied with permission from the Billings Family Archive of the Billings Farm & Museum (Woodstock Foundation, Inc.). Parmly wrote over eighty letters to his father, mother, sisters, and brothers, in the four years he lived in Billings, Montana (1884-1888). Parmly's letters resonate with an account of the difficulty faced by the citizens of a fledgling western outpost, as well as his own personal challenge to follow the footsteps of his famous father and make a name for himself.

Thanks to the Billings Farm & Museum, especially David Donath, the executive director, and Esther Munroe Swift, the archivist of the Billings Family Archives, for welcoming staff from the Western Heritage Center to Woodstock, in April, 2001, and sharing the letters and stories of Parmly Billings and Frederick Billings.