Sarah Bickford

Sarah Gammon Brown Bickford (December 25, 1856 – July 19, 1931) was born into slavery in either Tennessee or North Carolina. In the 1870s she made her way to the Montana goldfields, trading work as a nanny for transportation. She ultimately became sole owner of the Virginia City Water Company, becoming the first and only woman in Montana—and probably the nation's only female African American—to own a utility. In 2012, the State of Montana honored her by inducting her into the Gallery of Outstanding Montanans.

Childhood

Other than being born into slavery, Sarah Bickford's origins are uncertain. Although some sources point to her birth in North Carolina, other historians have traced Bickford's birth to Jonesborough, Tennessee, to a mother owned by John Blair III. Blair made a fortune in the 1849 California Gold Rush and was active in politics, serving as both a state senator and a U.S. Congressman. In 1860, he owned a hotel in Knoxville, where Sarah (also known as Sallie) likely worked. Blair died in 1863; settling his estate is likely the reason that Sarah was separated from her family. Bickford told people that her parents were sold during the Civil War and that she never saw them again.

After the Civil War, Sarah went to live with her aunt, Nancy Gammon, in Knoxville, and Gammon's husband, Isaac, who became the first African American alderman in Knoxville. The "Hangman' building, owned by Bickford in the 1900s. Image taken in 1939. Stephen Bickford died in 1890, leaving Sarah with four children (three girls and a boy) and two-thirds ownership in the Virginia City Waterworks. Sarah took an active role in the business; she took a business class by correspondence and in 1890, she purchased the remaining third of the waterworks, becoming sole proprietor. Bickford was a hands-on manager. She visited every customer and was her own bill collector.