Miner Patrick Toomey and wife Frances purchased this side-gabled Craftsman style bungalow when it was new in 1907. The home originally featured wood-shingle siding, overhanging eaves with exposed rafter ends, and a left-side front porch with square columns. The Toomeys lived here with Frances’s children from her first marriage and Patrick’s brother Joseph. Mining accidents and lung disease often devastated Butte families. Frances had married her first husband John Lowney in 1893 when she was sixteen. He died in a mine accident in 1903, leaving her at age twenty-six with four children. She married Patrick in 1906 and they had one son Dennis before Patrick died of tuberculosis in February 1915. Frances married Henry Strickling in November. They added three children to the family before moving to British Columbia in 1919. Miner Jack F. Parker and his wife Anna moved to the home in 1920. They raised three daughters and were devoted members of Immaculate Conception Catholic Church. Their daughter Mary Claire, who was editor of the Butte Girls Central High School newspaper, won the national Catholic School Press Writing Contest in 1940.
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