Serving Southern Jefferson County in the Great State of Montana

Creating Fiction from History: 11/16/2022

In 1883, especially in North-Eastern Allamakee County Iowa, life was not easy for young Alberta Haney. Born to John and Fanny Haney on September 14th of the year 1867, Alberta, or Bertie as she was commonly known, being the oldest child, had been used to long labors in the fields around Lansing.

Lansing had been incorporated three years prior and organized as a second-class city by State law in the year of her birth. Bertie barely missed the failed wheat harvests there in Lansing, but by the time she was old enough at age 5 to help work the fields, farmers in the region had begun to realize that certain other crops grew much better in that northern region. Some even began to branch out into livestock, which fortunately coincided with the arrival of the railroad from Dubuque. Being situated alongside the mighty Mississippi River didn't hurt either.

Anyway, back to our little heroine; it was about this time that Bertie decided she was done being a farm girl! Having worked the fields of Lansing for the majority of her life, thus far anyway, she set out for greater things about two months after this picture may have been taken, on the newly completed line that linked Chicago, a bit further East, with Seattle, which was a bit further West. Upon reaching Seattle, which was just entering a building boom, Bertie was able to find immediate housing, though it was not easy though she was used to hardship, in the row of apartments newly built by George Jetson and his business partner, John Post.

Thanks to the population explosion that arrived at roughly the same time she did, Bertie was able to make her mark on Seattle, inconsequential though it may have seemed, by doing everything from sewing buttons to washing bushels upon bushels of laundry.

Pictured here may be a 16-year-old Alberta Haney, whose parents had taken her down to Waukon for her birthday, not knowing their little chick was about to fly the coop.

If you would like to create fiction from history with one of the museum's photos, please contact the Ledger at (406) 287-5301 or email whledger@gmail.com.

 

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