Belsami Tetrault was born in Montreal, Canada, in 1852 and came with her family by covered wagon to the Flathead Valley in the mid-1880s. Her husband Joseph, also a native of Montreal, left his family in 1881 to work on the railroad in the United States. Reunited at Fort Missoula in 1885, the Tetraults settled along Whitefish Creek, nine miles north of the present site of Kalispell. There Belsami and Joseph raised their six children and ranched until 1910, when Joseph’s failing health precipitated the move to Kalispell. Widowed in 1916, Belsami remained in town. In 1930, at the age of seventy-eight, the spunky pioneer purchased this lot and built herself a new home, where she lived comfortably with her daughter, Leah Boyd. Belsami died in 1939 at the age of eighty-six. The front-gabled Craftsman style residence has exposed rafter ends and wide eaves supported by brackets, which are hallmarks of this style. The beautifully maintained home remained in the Tetrault family until 1946.
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