Gotfried I. Reiche was born in 1848. He left his home in Ohio when he was fifteen to fight in the Civil War in the 108th Ohio Regiment. He served in several campaigns, first as a drummer boy and later as a corporal. After the war he became an ordained minister. Reiche moved to Montana in 1907. He was elected commander of the Montana Department of the Grand Army of the Republic in 1916. The following year he was appointed Commandant of the Montana Soldier's Home in Columbia Falls, a position he held until 1919. Governor John E. Erickson appointed Reiche to the Board of Managers of the Soldier's Home in 1932, and in 1933 Governor Frank Cooney appointed him Custodian of Records of the Grand Army of the Republic. Reiche was a Mason and was active in the Presbyterian Church. Reiche married Lena Terrell Patenaude Bissonette in 1919. A native of Columbus, Ohio, Lena had, at age 24, married Ambroise Patenaude of Helena. After his death she married 0.0. Bissonette. After she was again widowed she for many years ran a boarding house at 222 Broadway in Helena. In 1919 she married Reiche, one of her tenants. At the time of his death on February 3, 1940, Reiche was one of four surviving Civil War veterans in Montana. Lena Reiche died at the Masonic Home in Helena on January 2, 1961.