Montana historian Brenda Wahler to present on Phoebe Hearst for historic speaker series

'Anaconda's Past' set for June 11 at Hearst Free Library;

Hearst statue to be unveiled June 13 outside the library

The Anaconda-Deer Lodge County Historic Resources Board’s June installment of its "Anaconda’s Past" historic speaker series will be a presentation on Thursday, June 11 about Phoebe Hearst, the noted philanthropist and founder of Anaconda’s Hearst Free Library – where a statue of Hearst will be unveiled in front of that very library two days later.

Brenda Wahler, a Montana author and historian who’s written two books about Marcus Daly, is traveling from Helena to give the presentation at the library on Thursday.

“What I’ll probably do is kind of a overall…version of her life of her life before during and after developing the Hearst Free Library,” Wahler said.

Wahler’s latest book, “Marcus Daly’s Montana Empires: Copper Mining, Racehorses, & Politics” will be on sale and will be available to sign books.

“I’m going to try to give people real complete picture of who she was,” Wahler said. “I’m also going to have some fun with some of the material I learned about her when I wrote my book.”

Wahler’s talk will include a PowerPoint presentation, lots of pictures from her research, and information about places Phoebe Hearst lived, people she knew, and a little bit about her son, William Randolph Hearst, and how he came to be “quite a character.”

Wahler said William Randolph Hearst’s parents weren’t naive about his spending and Phoebe wanted to crack down while her husband, George Hearst, was more of the attitude of “let the boy do whatever he wants.”

Wahler said her research on Phoebe Hearst derives in large part from her research on Daly and in her interest in seeing “how his life intersected with many other people who were quite notable in their time.”

One thing that connects Daly and Phoebe Hearst that Wahler particularly enjoys is a letter she sent from a rail stop in Garrison saying he should be in the penitentiary for his misdeeds. For more information on that, Wahler encourages the public to read her book. 

“Phoebe Hearst was quite interesting to me because she was a woman who had to operate in this very hyper-masculine world – that couldn’t have been easy,” Wahler said.

In addition to founding two libraries – the one here one in Lead, South Dakota – Phoebe Hearst was also the first woman to serve on the board of regents for University of California.

One thing Wahler said she thinks people are going to be particularly interested in how the Anaconda Company and Hearst's shares in the company provided seed money to Phoebe and George’s son, William Randolph, for him to found his second newspaper.

“Because when she sold her shares… to the Anaconda Company, she gave little William an allowance that he took to New York to buy his second newspaper,” Wahler said. “So in many ways the Anaconda Company launched the Hearst newspaper empire. For more on that you can come to the talk.”

Wahler said she has a lot of material on Phoebe Hearst in chapter 11 and 14 of her book.

She said she’s also going to recommend a biography about Phoebe Hearst by a Alexandra Nickliss called “Phoebe Apperson Heart: A Life of Power and Politics” for supplemental reading.

Wahler’s presentation will be Thursday, June 11 at noon at the Hearst Free Library, 401 Main St. The unveiling of Phoebe Hearst’s statue at the library will be Saturday, June 13 at 2 p.m. 

Wahler will also be at the unveiling of the Daly statue outside The Historic Montana on Friday, June 26 for a book signing as well.