Delphine DeMordaunt arrived in Montana in 1877 with her bartender husband Julius, a charming and well-read Civil War veteran, who subscribed to forty-five newspapers a week. After Julius died in 1902, Delphine applied for a war widow’s pension; that, with the money she earned as a dressmaker at Hennessy’s Department Store, allowed her to purchase this house on contract from the Daniel J. Hennessy estate in 1908. Five-room, hipped-roof cottages with daylight basements and full-length front porches are one of Butte’s most common housing forms. Inexpensive and quick to build, these foursquare homes resemble company housing in southern mill towns and other communities with large working-class populations. Constructed between 1900 and 1908, this brick-veneered hipped-roof cottage looks much as it did when Delphine moved here with her eighty-two-year-old mother. By 1920, her grandson Paul managed a theater, helping to support Delphine and her daughter-in-law Theresa. After Delphine’s death in 1924 at age seventy-one, Theresa—also a seamstress—continued in residence. She remained here until shortly before her death at age eighty-seven in 1964.
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