Filed Under Havre

John H. Mathews House

Havre Residential Historic District

Distinguished by its bell-cast porch roof, scalloped shingles decorating the front dormer, and classical columns on the front porch, this wood-frame home was built during the Victorian era, sometime between 1892 and 1903. John Mathews, an agent for the Great Northern Express Company, owned the home by 1910. He and his wife, Kathryn, had eight children, only six of whom survived young childhood. The family supplemented its income by taking in boarders, a barber and two of John’s coworkers. Two live-in servants helped Kathryn run the house: Mary Daniels, a forty-two-year-old divorced woman, and Paul Tayimo, a twenty-two-year-old Japanese man. Tayimo was one of over 1,500 Japanese immigrants living in Montana in 1910, most of whom originally worked for the railroads. Kathryn died in 1915, and like most widowers left with large families, John remarried. In 1920, he and Rena, his second wife, lived here with a servant and all six Mathews children, whose ages then ranged from twenty-three to ten.

Images

John H. Mathews House
John H. Mathews House John H. Mathews House (PAc 91-51 Havre R15 F12). Front to side view of the house, facing south to southeast on 3rd Street. B&W. View of the Boone/Dalrymple House to the left in the photographer. B&W. Source: Montana State Historic Preservation Office from the Photograph Archives at the Montana Historical Society Creator: Photographer unidentified Date: Jan. 1988

Location

124 3rd Street, Havre, Montana | Private

Metadata

The Montana National Register Sign Program, “John H. Mathews House,” Historic Montana, accessed March 29, 2024, https://historicmt.org/items/show/650.