Long lost Montana family

by Jamie Patten · Published February 1, 2022 · Updated February 25, 2022

John Talmage has been lost to his family since 1894.

My husband really wanted to try to find him. We are definitely not the first to try, but I was excited that he was excited so we set off to search. The last reliable information we have is from 9 Sept 1894 when John made a surprise visit to his brother’s house in Salt Lake City, Utah. John told him he had secured a job at the Hope Basin Mine in Montana as a carman. He also made “promises of good behavior.”

So my husband and I pulled up Newspapers.com to look for John Talmage in Montana, which I had done a few times before, with no success. This time, though, the first two articles in 1893 caught our attention!

Long story short- We struck gold…when John stole gold! Then he left town and was taken into custody east of Deer Lodge the next day.

But as in all situations, there appeared to be more to the story. He was sent to Deer Lodge district court and I hoped the articles would show the resolution of what finally happened. He must have gotten out because in 1894 he was in Utah.

We started researching the Anaconda mines, the Grand Hotel, the area, any one mentioned in the newspaper articles. There are other Talmages in the area, one was a prominent religious leader, so the paper made it very clear he was not related to that Talmage family, which helped to verify our John Talmage as an out-of-towner, right place, right time, even if he wasn’t making the right choices…

I emailed the Montana Historical Society in Helena, MT to ask about the the articles, the mining records, and State prison records etc. After quite a few emails back and forth, she noticed my mistake thinking it was State prison, but actually John went to district court. She suggested I write to the Clerks of the District Courts in Anacoda and Deer Lodge and provided the web addresses.

I emailed both articles with the following to the clerk of the district court in Deer Lodge:

“On 26 March 1893, a relative John Talmage was sent to Deer Lodge district court on charges of burglary or petit larceny, per the attached newspaper articles. Where and how might I access possible records from that time?”

She was fantastic and a few weeks later had found 23 pages!! of the court record of the incident and mailed it to me. (I paid a small printing fee.) We couldn’t wait for the mail to get here and the records didn’t disappoint.

Most of the pages are judges, witnesses, officers, etc but the last 3 of these pages are John’s personal testimony of what happened, which adds to the picture, but still isn’t entirely clear.

The biggest surprise is how he signed his name!