Maynard Hunt: Engineer, Surveyor and Mapper

 

                                                                 Maynard H. Hunt

If you are looking up cemetery plots in the Philipsburg City Hall, Maynard Hunt’s signature, dated 1930, is on the Philipsburg Cemetery plot maps that are hung on swinging doors. Maynard credits the surveyors, Ackerman and Cralle, and the date as surveyed, October 1889. The scale is ten ft. equals one inch, which leads one to believe that Maynard had formal topography and drafting education. 

Maynard Harold Hunt was one of seven children born to William Henry and Lura Jane Jackson Hunt, on July 6, 1886 in Potosi, Wisconsin. He attended grade school and high school in Potosi. Because of his career as an adult it is assumed that he attained an engineering degree before moving to Philipsburg, Montana, and there is a newspaper account “Mr. Hunt, who is attending Bailie’s Commercial College at Dubuque, made a visit home Saturday” detailed in "The Hunt Connection" from the Grant County Herald Newspaper, but there is no date for the article. 

Some time after 1908: “with the building of the Milwaukee Railroad into Montana, William Henry Hunt, his wife, Lura and several of the children moved to Three Forks, Montana where his son Charles and Ben Reynolds had established a hardware business known as Reynolds and Hunt which opened its doors in 1908” states The Hunt Connection, 1980. In 1909 the name was changed to the Three Forks Hardware Company with the following announcement: “W.H. Hunt, the new member of the firm, is a man of sound business judgment." 

It is not known when the Mercantile was sold, but there are homesteads recorded in August, 1913 for Charles and on March 2, 1914, for William Henry Hunt, north of Three Forks in the Crow Valley, according to the Three Forks Herald, March, 4, 1910. 

I am uncertain when Maynard arrived in Butte, but family history states Maynard met Nora Hickey at a dance in the Miner’s Union Hall in Granite; experienced a whirlwind courtship and married her on May 24, 1917, in Drummond, Montana. Maynard continued working in the mines in Butte, Montana, for another year and then moved into the house with Nora and her mother Jane (O’Neil Hickey) and began drafting plans to build a large modern home on the property. These detailed drawings are in the possession of Grand-daughter Camille Engrav Jacobsen. 

Family members believe Maynard worked as a surveyor for the U.S. Department of Interior, Topographical Division while the mapping of the Patrick Quadrangle in the Flint Creek Mountain Range, was being done. This mapping covered the time period of 1895 to 1917 and Maynard had in his possession maps that he had been responsible for completing. Once he arrived in Granite he went to work for the Bi-Metallic Mining Company. He was in charge of all the leasers and drew maps for the company. He also had a history working for Moorlight Mining Company and leased in several mines. 

He and Nora were very social and not a week goes by in the Philipsburg Mail, during their marriage, that an item isn’t included describing a party or social happening at the Hunt household such as: “The next meeting of the Star of Compass will be held at the home of Mr. and Mrs. M.H. Hunt in Kirkville addition”. Maynard was a member of the Masonic Temple and served a one year term on the School Board. 

Nora and Maynard (known to his friends as Mike) had three daughters. Florence Neil (Baker, Engrav), August 22, 1918, in Butte; Norma Jane (Howard) February 9, 1920, in Butte; and Wilma Eileen (Heimark, Christy), June 13, 1930, in Anaconda. There was no hospital in Philipsburg at this time. 

Maynard became ill in May of 1940, with pneumonia and died on the 22nd, at the young age of fifty four, leaving a wife, three daughters and a beautiful log home he had built on Frost Creek. The home is still standing, but has had extensive remodeling done on it,