Legend has it that the accidental death of a young boy on a mining claim prompted the construction of this boardinghouse circa 1897. Copper miner Alexander Rowe and his wife, Esther, had purchased the lot from wealthy businessman Patrick Largey. The Rowes operated a neighborhood boardinghouse catering mostly to mine workers. Its size and fashionable design, reminiscent of the Georgian style, make this a Centerville landmark. A square plan and five arched windows across the front reveal the Georgian influence while the front porch, an amenity essential to any boardinghouse, features typical Victorian-era ornamentation including original spindlework, curved balusters, and scroll brackets. The Rowes made their home here along with their daughter and several other family members. In 1910, an engineer, a watchman, and an Episcopal clergyman were among the ten boarders. By the late 1930s, the John Downey family was in residence and the boardinghouse was converted to a single family home.
]]>This block was bustling with businesses circa 1895 when bartender Patrick Cosgrove and his wife Mary built this Queen Anne style cottage to replace an older house on the lot. The porch’s Tuscan columns, fancy fish-scale shingle siding, and leaded-glass front window brought style and civility to the block of stores, saloons, and boardinghouses. In 1899, William and Lida Dyer purchased the home. William, a Cornish miner and landlord, had served as a member of the 1889 Montana constitutional convention and in 1900 ran unsuccessfully for the Montana House of Representatives. Lida hosted Florence Crittenton Circle meetings—a national movement to help "lost and fallen" women—at their home. In 1906, the Dyers sold the house for $1,050 to well-known Centerville druggist Albert Doull and his wife Florence. The Doulls raised three children here before selling the property to Michael and Bridgett Cronnelly in 1926. Michael, a deputy sheriff, had saved Hibernian Hall and its occupants in 1923 when he safely removed two lit dynamite sticks from the building during a New Year’s Eve party. The home remained in the Cronnelly family until 1998.
]]>George and Elizabeth Clark, immigrants from Cornwall, England, lived in this hipped-roof cottage for thirty years. George arrived in Butte in 1875, while Elizabeth and their three children followed in 1879. By 1890, the Clarks had settled in Centerville, within walking distance of the Mountain Consolidated Mine where George worked. The family watched Centerville grow from a scattered array of log cabins along muddy pathways into a bustling community of respectable one-story, frame houses, inhabited mostly by Cornish and Irish immigrants. This house was built in 1895, and the Clarks moved here in 1900. By then, George and his sons George, Jr., Albert, and William were all working in nearby mines and Elizabeth was a homemaker. George was well known in the mining community and at the end of his career he was the watchman at the Steward Mine from 1926 to 1930. Miner Alfred Temby, wife Mildred, and two children lived here in the 1930s. In 1941, the Tembys divorced, and by 1945 miner Charles Carlson and his wife Grace moved here. Members of the Carlson family remained in residence until 1992.
]]>Approximately 77 percent of Centerville’s male residents worked in the mines, and William Berryman, who owned this one-story, wood-frame, hipped-roof cottage, was no exception. One of the more common house types in Centerville, these four-square homes cost about $750 to build in 1900. An English (undoubtedly Cornish) miner, William Berryman arrived in the United States in 1879 at age 17. Mary emigrated from England three years later at age 14. The two married in 1890 and purchased the land on which to build this house in 1897. The Berrymans still lived here in 1910, along with their 19-year-old daughter Anne, a music teacher. Centerville’s substantial Cornish population attracted families like the Berrymans. These working-class emigrants from Cornwall socialized together at the Hall of the Order of St. George and worshipped together at Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church, both an easy walk from the Berrymans’. Though its architecture speaks more to utility than ethnicity, the Berryman cottage stands as a reminder of all the Cornish mining families who made Centerville their home.
]]>Beveled lap siding, turned porch supports, and a spindle frieze decorate this functional, working-class residence, built circa 1896. The hipped-roof cottage was home to the Kelly family for over seventy years. Irish miner Cornelius Kelly and his wife Julia owned the home free of mortgage by 1900, but Cornelius did not have long to enjoy his piece of the American dream. He died in 1907 of chronic bronchitis. Caused in large part by breathing the quartz dust produced by drilling and end-of-shift explosions, lung diseases were an occupational hazard. Historians estimate that lung diseases killed between a third and a half of Butte’s hard rock miners. In 1910 widow Julia supported herself and her children—Jerry 13, Michael 12, and Virginia 11—by providing room and board for her brother and brother-in-law. By 1920, “Verge” worked as a stenographer and both Michael and Jerry had become miners. All three lived at home. In 1940, the children still lived with their mother, who undoubtedly relied on their incomes. Jerry was the last Kelly in residence; he sold the home in 1971.
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