210 North Jackson Street

Hundreds of hipped-roof cottages like this one—built between 1884 and 1888—line Butte’s streets. The brick walls, front porch, and bay windows (since remodeled) distinguished this house from other simpler, clapboard cottages. In 1890, Pierce Butler, bookkeeper at W. A. Clark & Bros., lived here with travel agent Charles Mather. In 1904-5, widow Sarah E. Jenkins made her home here with her two grown daughters and Austrian cigar maker Isadore Pincus. By 1918, German national Gebert Wehman and his Austrian-born wife Dora lived here. That year, Dora was arrested for failing to register as an “enemy alien.” During World War I, fear of sabotage led the U.S. government to require “all citizens of Germany and its allies” to register with local authorities and carry a pass. Dora had become a U.S. citizen when she married her first husband, but after he died and she remarried Gebert, she lost her citizenship; since women’s citizenship followed their husbands’. These wartime anti-German regulations upset the lives of many peaceful residents and led many German-Americans to hide their heritage and culture.

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