Hiram Marcyes was born on September 11, 1844, in Newberg, Maine, and served in the Civil War as a bugler in the Fourth Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Company with the Union army, seeing service in battles from Vicksburg to Sherman's March to the sea. After marrying at the end of the war, he went west to Montana and arrived in Forsyth in 1882, where he opened a general store as railroad expansion increased demand for food and supplies. He also manufactured bricks from local clay and built an elementary school on this site on land he donated, which was named in his honor, while his company supplied bricks for homes and businesses throughout southeastern Montana. In 1905 he began construction of the Commercial Hotel, and he and his wife Louise raised one son and four daughters in the growing community. His public service included work as a constable and justice of the peace, and later election to the state legislature, where he supported the separation of Rosebud County from Custer County. He also organized and played in several local bands, took pride in the Marcyes Family Band formed with his talented children, sang regularly in the Methodist choir, and studied horticulture, planting cottonwood trees in Forsyth as shade trees and windbreaks suited to the local environment. Some of those trees still stand in Forsyth as reminders of his role in the community. He died on March 11, 1913, at age 69 while staying at the Old Soldiers Home, Presido, San Francisco, California.