Update, January, 2013:  Earlier this month the new owner of the Borntrager homestead burned the old house down.   It was not in good shape, so the decision is understandable, but it’s sad.  The house was my husband’s grandparents’ house, and was the home where his mother and his many aunts and uncles grew up.    So this post is in memory of the original Mennonite homesteaders and the wonderful house they built and lived in for nearly a hundred years. 

(The following information on the Borntrager homestead is based on the chapter on Mr. and Mrs. Glen Borntrager in the wonderful book As I Remember…Stories of Eastern Montana’s Pioneers, by Mrs. Morris (Glady Mullet) Kauffman.  Vol. 1.  Glen and Cora Borntrager were my husband’s grandparents.)

On an afternoon in September, 1905, 19 year old Glen Borntrager and his father Joe loaded up their wagon in Glendive, Montana, and headed out for Thirteen Mile Creek…