Betters' Station

During my last visit to the Mansfield Library Archives and Special Collections, I discovered a newspaper clipping that offered greater clarity on how and when the Betters arrived in Montana from Vermont. The article, from the March 8, 1966 edition of The Missoulian , was primarily about 95-year-old Fannie (Betters) Nettle and her 72-year-old son, Ernest Terry, signing up for the newly created Medicare program and their daily habit of drinking mineral-rich water from Ern's mine in the Wallace Mining District. But this is the part that interested me: With this information, we can eliminate my previous theory that the Betters came to Montana on the Utah & Northern (U&N) Railway. Knowing that Austin came to Montana first, and his family joined him later explains some previously incongruous information. As I noted before , Austin's obituary stated that he came to Montana in 1881, and Fannie said the same thing when Don Omundson interviewed her in 1961. The fact that a letter...

I have a long-overdue update to my January 28, 2024 post about Baker's Station and J.C. Baker : My hunch that the death notice I found for Col. J.C. Baker in the March 27, 1897 edition of The Missoulian  was for a different J.C. Baker was correct. After sharing my post to the  Montana History Consortium Facebook Group , Willis Hintz found the correct notice for me in the May 1, 1895 edition of  The Missoulian . Today, I finally sought out that notice myself and am sharing it with you here: I have not found an obituary for Baker, and  the entry for Warm Springs State Hospital Cemetery at findagrave.com  warns that the cemetery is off-limits to everyone but family members of the deceased. Even family members can only visit with an appointment and when accompanied by a hospital administrator. With the Montana Historical Society reopening, I am going to see if there are any patient records for Baker in their collection of hospital records that can be shared publicly...