One more clue about how and when the Betters came to Montana

I have written previously about my attempts to nail down exactly when the Betters came to Montana and what route they took from Vermont. In that post, I shared an article about Fannie (Betters) Nettle's 99th birthday, which stated that she came to Montana at age nine. If true, that would mean the Betters came to Montana sometime between May 3, 1879, and May 2, 1880, but I have since discovered that I should be skeptical of any facts sourced from an aged Fannie Nettle.

Austin Betters' obituary in the October 9, 1921 edition of The Missoulian states that he came to Montana in 1881. Fannie told Don Omundson the same thing when he interviewed her in 1961. If it was 1881, Fannie would have been 10 or 11 when they took the train to Montana.

A few months ago, I came across this notice in the October 1, 1881 edition of The Butte Miner that included Austin Betters on a list of people with letters waiting for them in the Butte post office. This was a common practice in those days. Home delivery didn't exist. People had to go to the post office to pick up their mail, and post offices would regularly publish lists of people with letters waiting for them in the local paper.

We don't know who sent the letter to Austin. I assume it was a family member, but it could have been official correspondence of some sort. In my opinion, it had to be from someone who knew what Austin's travel plans were and where a letter could be sent that Austin would be able to retrieve.

If the Betters were planning to arrive in Montana by train around September/October 1881, they likely took the Utah & Northern (U&N) Railway. The U&N was a narrow gauge spur off the Union Pacific portion of the transcontinental railroad. The U&N was the first railroad to reach the Montana Territory, which it did on March 9, 1880. When construction stopped for the winter in October, the end of the line had reached Dillon (then called Terminus). Construction continued northward throughout 1881. By September 12, the rails were 12 miles from Butte, and on October 21, passenger trains were running from Ogden, Utah to Silver Bow Junction in the Montana Territory.

While the U&N didn't reach Butte until December, it would have been a "short" stage trip from the end of the line throughout 1881. If the Betters continued on to Missoula County, they probably would have taken the stage to Deer Lodge, then Missoula, or maybe even stopped at Baker's Station. The first property record for Austin in Missoula County wasn't until December 11, 1882, when he purchased a mining claim, so it's possible that they were somewhere else in Montana (even Butte) before settling in the Hellgate Canyon.

An article in The Missoulian in May 1960 about Fannie celebrating her 90th birthday stated that she came to Clinton with her parents on the NPRR in 1883. We know the date can't be right (unless Austin came to Montana first, then went back to Vermont to bring his family out), but is it possible that they took the Northern Pacific, not the U&N? According to "The History of the Northern Pacific Railroad" by Louis T. Renz, Regular trains began running to Glendive from the east on July 22, 1881. By mid-December, they were running into Miles City.

The NPRR started running an "express business" between the east and west termini in 1880, so it would have been possible to take a stage the rest of the way, but it wouldn't have been a pleasant trip from Glendive or Miles City to Missoula. According to Renz, the stage ride between Missoula and Billings in September 1882 was 426 miles and took 83 hours!