Gwendolyn Bertie Culbertson

Gwendolyn Bertie Culbertson was the second of the three daughters of Mabel H. Branson and Frank Andrew Culbertson. She was born 3 December 1905 in Placerville, El Dorado County, CA, where her father had been born and raised. Placerville would remain the official family place of residence until she was seven years old. However, it was not a full-time home. Her father often had to take jobs elsewhere. Mining was becoming an uncertain profession throughout the Mother Lode of California. Frank even spent a month as a prison guard at San Quentin in 1906 as a means to get by. When he did get hired at mines, the gigs were not always local. He could usually depend on finding work in Butte, Silver Bow County, MT, but Mabel was reluctant to leave California. When there was no choice, Frank headed off to Butte anyway. Sometimes the family went with him, including a stretch in 1909 and 1910. There had been an interval such as that before Gwen was born. Her sister Ethelyn had been born in 1903 during such a sojourn.

While it served, Placerville was very much home in the familial and emotional sense, a place where the Culbertson roots went deep. Mabel and Frank and their girls -- which came to include another one, Alma, as of 1908 -- were in easy range of relatives, including Gwen’s grandmother Sarah Epley Culbertson. But the bills had to be paid. In the summer of 1913, with the failure of Frank’s final venture in Placerville, the Kirschner & Culbertson blacksmith shop, the family gave up on the community. They moved to Honey Lake Valley in Lassen County, CA. Frank’s uncle, Thomas Henry Epley, had been a noted pioneer of the region and Frank still had contacts there. The Lassen County phase lasted no longer than a few years. (It may have lasted as short as a few months, as Mountain Democrat newspaper articles from December, 1913 mention that Gwen and Alma participated in the Christmas program at Placerville’s Presbyterian church. However, this may simply mean the family had come back to Placerville for the holidays.)

By no later than 1918, the family settled permanently in Butte. Gwen grew up as a Montana girl, and she would remain a resident of the state for the rest of her very long life. This choice contrasted with her sisters, who returned to California in adulthood. Even her mother left to spend her widowhood in Oregon. Gwen attended McKinley Elementary School and Butte High School. At Butte High, she was the senior queen and valedictorian of the Class of 1924.

After graduating high school, Gwen was the among the first group of women to attend the Montana School of Mines, one of Butte’s landmark institutions. She is shown in the photograph below on the far right of the front row as one of the twenty-one co-eds who were enrolled at the School of Mines in the autumn of 1928. Having so many female students -- or perhaps having any at all -- was so novel a circumstance this photograph was published on page one of the 22 September 1928 issue of Butte’s newspaper, The Montana Standard.

Joining the staff of the School of Mines at about the same time that Gwen became a student there was Milton Brown (full name William Milton Brown), who would eventually become Gwen’s husband. Having graduated from the State University of Montana at Missoula, Milt had been hired as an assistant to the university business manager, J.B. Speer. Soon he moved up to a position of greater responsibility. In late November, 1928, the registrar, Agnes Hubbard, resigned her post, and Milt was named her replacement, effective the first of December. Inevitably Milt and Gwen crossed paths, though possibly not until she began working as the secretary of the president of the university.

Milt was a son of Matthew H. Brown and Polly Callaway, both of whom had been born in England. Milt, however, had been born in Butte, coming into the world 17 February 1903. When he had been sixteen years old, he and his parents and his younger sister Thelma had moved to Missoula, where Milt had finished high school and then gone on to the university. In taking a job in Butte, one could say he was simply coming home -- and his parents would eventually return to Butte as well.

Gwen and Milt were married 3 August 1930. Originally scheduled to be wed at the First Methodist Episcopal church in Butte, they made other arrangements when Milt learned that some of his buddies were planning a practical joke that would put him in jail on the day of the nuptials. He and Gwen and his parents took a quick trip to Missoula and took care of the official rites. Those pesky friends had to be content with a reception party on another occasion, after the pair were already legal spouses.

The School of Mines continued to play a huge role in the couple’s lives. Milt spent a full career there as registar. In the 1930s he also took over his old boss’s job and became the business manager. Thanks in part to this steady set of circumstances, Gwen and Milt remained at the same address for decades -- 1325 W. Granite Street. Gwen hosted many a meeting or gathering there of such groups as the Montana School of Mines Faculty Wives Club or the local chapter of the American Association of University Women.

Gwen and Milt were a regular part of Butte area society and were well known and liked in the community. They were blessed with two children, both daughters. The younger daughter went off to medical school in San Francisco, married a doctor, and after his service in the military, settled in California. The older daughter also went through a brief interval out of state as a military wife, but she and her husband echoed Gwen and Milt’s choice of thirty years earlier and chose to keep their roots embedded in Montana. Gwen therefore had the pleasure of grandchildren and great-grandchildren around her during her advanced years.

Gwen was a prolific reader with an unparalleled vocabulary. She enjoyed baking pasties (a traditional miner’s lunchpail item) and saffron bread for her family and friends.

Milt Brown passed away 6 June 1988 in Butte. Gwen survived him by more than fifteen years. She spent the final stage of her life at St. James Healthcare in Butte. She was coming within reach of ninety-eight years of age before she succumbed to a brief illness and passed away 3 September 2003. Her body was interred at the Mount Moriah Cemetery.

Children of Gwendolyn Bertie Culbertson with William Milton Brown

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