BUTTE, Mont. — It’s no mystery that Butte is a town rich in mining history. But two scholars from Brigham Young University-Idaho say they’re uncovering a form of Butte history that has literally been hanging in the closet for years.
Since January, JoAnn Peters and Jane Sheetz have been traveling to Butte on the weekends meticulously archiving historical clothing and textiles housed in the Copper King Mansion. It all started, Peters said, when she and her husband stayed at the mansion’s bed-and-breakfast and saw some of the historic clothing on display.
So far, the two scholars have cataloged over 2,500 items, some dating as far back as the Victorian and Edwardian eras and hailing everywhere from Butte manufacturers of old to manufacturers in places as far away as Paris and South America.
The diversity in the Copper King’s collection, Peters and Sheetz said, is reflective of Butte’s cosmopolitan past, a time when the city boasted a population of close to 100,000 and attracted immigrants from all over the world who hoped to build a life based on copper.
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Erin Sigl, manager and co-owner of the Copper King, inherited the historic mansion in the 1990s. She currently lives at the mansion with her husband, Pat. Built in the 1880s, the mansion was once home to William A. Clark and boasts a cozy 34 rooms.
The mansion has been in Sigl’s family since the early 1950s when her grandmother, Ann Cote, purchased the home. Sigl grew up in the mansion, moving in with her mother Ann Cote Smith in 1958.
Sigl’s mother is also responsible for amassing the Copper King’s clothing and textile collection, whose oldest pieces date to as far back as the 1840s (as far as Peters and Sheetz can tell) and contain more recent pieces, ranging from the 1920s and ’30s to contemporary times.
Sigl said her mother was a fan of the theater and collected many of the pieces to be worn by actors. Many of the dresses were Sigl’s mother’s, and a few of them were her own, including a silver, satiny dress that Sigl said was one of her prom dresses.
For years the clothing was tucked away in the mansion’s ballroom and closets, some hanging on racks and others folded into boxes.
Friends have asked to borrow some of the items for Halloween over the years, but Sigl said she always turned them down, not wanting the dresses and hats her mother painstakingly collected to get damaged.
Peters, an adjunct professor at BYU-Idaho in Rexburg, where she teaches in the apparel entrepreneurship program, says the collection for her has been a gold mine — or a copper mine, rather.
In addition to cataloging 730 items of apparel, Peters and Sheetz have archived footwear, hats and accessories along with over 600 home décor items.
Peters said her favorite piece in the collection is a 1920s to ’30s sapphire dress, while Sigl said she’s drawn to a bag-sleeve coat, which features billowy sleeves that hang from the arms, giving a kind of wing effect.
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