Biographical Sketches

IRA ALBERT LEIGHTON

DR. IRA ALBERT LEIGHTON, who arrived in Boulder in 1885, became outstanding not only as a physician but as a politician.  He was born in Corinth, Maine, March 8, 1860, of English ancestry; he moved to Pittsville, Maine, in 1865.  His early education was acquired at Kent's Hill Public School and at Bucksport Seminary.  He then studied at Maine Central Institute at Pittsfield and had a four-year course at Westbrook Academy to prepare him for Ann Arbor.  During this period, the young man worked in a shoe factory in Haverhill, Massachusetts.  The factory burned.  He was next at a resort hotel, and was in charge of the first floor when in the Ann Arbor Hospital.  He graduated from the Westbrook, Maine, Seminary in 1880 and read medicine with Dr. W. S. Howe, an allopathic physician of Lewistown, Maine.  He went on to the University of Michigan Medical School and took courses in homeopathic and orthodox medicine, graduating as a homeopathic physician and also in law, in 1885.  He was an interne at the university for a few months but was already interested in the curative qualities of mineral springs; before the year was ended he established himself at Boulder.  There he quickly gained a wide and varied practice.  He traveled over the county and became acquainted with the miners and ranchers, with all of whom he was popular.  He used the springs in the treatment of rheumatism, kidney and skin diseases, and alimentary troubles, and patients came from distant places to try his medical treatments.

He was appointed physician for the state school for the deaf and blind, county physician from 1887 until 1900, and contract surgeon for the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railways.

He was an active Republican in a Democratic county, but he was elected as representative or senator to the state legislature for many terms.  He was active in both houses and was successful in guiding through many important laws.  The best known was the Leighton Law, passed in 1913, which provided for the unification of the state's institutions of higher education into one University of Montana with a chancellor, whose office was to be in Helena, to direct it and to advise the State Board of Education.  Dr. Leighton was a Mason.

His wife was, before her marriage, December 9, 1886, Miss Cora M. Hartell of Kansas City.  One daughter was born to Dr. and Mrs. Leighton.  Dr. Leighton died from cancer at Murray Hospital in Butte on February 2, 1932.

Source: Transcription from the book, Medicine in the Making of Montana, by Paul C. Phillips, published in 1962; located on the website, Hathitrust Digital Library (http://www.hathitrust.org), accessed 15 January 2025.

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