LaBonna Lovejoy…Enjoys life immensely

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By Eva Hallam Solberg

Published in PCN January 6, 1982

It was LaBonna’s first day of school. Her mother, behind the saddle, gave her a few riding lessons around the yard, teaching her how to rein Old Sam. Now she was ready to go the three and a half miles all alone. She pointed Old Sam along the “road” cut in the tall grass by Father and his horse-drawn mower, straight to the top of the hill. The winding trail took her to Little Cottonwood School where LaBonna was to experience her happiest childhood years.

LaBonna was the oldest child born to Henry and Clara Christiansen in Mason City, Iowa. The parents of both her mother and father were good friends who came from Germany, perhaps even on the same ship. In 1910 her father and nine other men from Iowa came to Montana for some of the widely advertised free land. The men hired a wagon to take them scouting north and west of Malta for a place to homestead. They made it up Fanning Hill and seventeen miles beyond, before Will Lovejoy, the man who was to become LaBonna’s father-in-law, exclaimed., “This is as far as I’m going!”

It was on that spot that Lovejoy built his claim shack. Most of the town of Lovejoy was built by his oldest son Harry who came to file next to his father’s homestead the next year. The town later claimed a grocery store, men’s department store, pool hall, community hall, hardware store, church, school and post office.

Read the rest of this story & many more in
"Looking Back Again: Life Stories from the Prairies of Montana"
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Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3

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