About Town

“Alarming shortage of baby formula,” scream today’s headlines. In some areas of the country, store shelves are empty. Modern-day parents have come to depend on the convenience of boxed or canned products. In the past, parents asked their doctors for a recipe, and made their own formula. In 1907, Dr. Emelyn Lincoln Coolidge wrote a newspaper column for “the young mother … [Read more...] about Harmon’s Histories: Baby formula was once home-brewed using doctor’s recipe

It was described as the “largest and most elegantly appointed boarding house in the Northwest.” Butte’s Hale House, constructed in 1895, offered nearly 200 rooms “for the busy toilers of the great copper camp.” The Anaconda Standard newspaper described it as modern in every way, constructed of brick and stone, with “everything to make it complete in drainage, light, heat … [Read more...] about Harmon’s Histories: Suspicious fires destroy Butte boarding houses; ‘firebug’ never caught

Sylvia Moss believed there was “no other time since the creation of the world that there had been so good a chance for the average mortal to be happy and comfortable as at the present time.” The “present time” was February 1880. Writing for the Rocky Mountain Husbandman newspaper in Diamond City, Montana (a rich placer gold camp along the upper Missouri River), Moss … [Read more...] about Harmon’s Histories: Soaps of yesteryear could clean the skin right off your bones

“Now, parents, is the time for us to decide whether we will risk vaccination with all its attendant dangers ... or rise up in arms, and, united, suppress this evil!” To vax or not to vax? The debate is not a new one. The above quote is from a letter to the editor submitted by a person using the nom de plume Fairness, published in a Missoula newspaper in the fall of 1908, … [Read more...] about Harmon’s Histories: To vax or not to vax? It’s an age-old debate in Montana