Frank K. Wilson (Butte Hotel founder) biographical sketch — Hennessy's-Centerville location origin

--- newspaper: Printed book page, a cropped excerpt of one biographical sketch (not a newspaper); no title, publisher, volume, page number or date is visible in the image date: unknown (undated excerpt; the text itself places it after 1895) page: unknown (single excerpt, 412 x 643 px; the first line and the last line are complete, no line is cut off at the top or bottom edge) transcribed_by: claude-sonnet-5-5 (Claude Code subagent), 2026-10-04 proofed_by: claude-opus-5-5, 2026-10-04 method: 412 x 643 px JPEG (96 dpi) opened at full size, then cut into six overlapping tiles (about 135 px tall) upscaled 4x with LANCZOS and autocontrast, every line read at that size; the ink profile of the top and bottom edges checked for cut-off lines; metadata.yaml was read first, as instructed, then every word was read from the image --- [Layout: one column of justified book type, four paragraphs, the first line set with the name in small capitals. Line-end hyphenation of the printed lines is not reproduced; the nine words that were hyphenated at a line end (set-tled, gradu-ated, gro-cery, lead-ing, head-quarters, mat-ters, open-ing, con-sequent, Noth-ing) are given whole. Hyphens inside words ("up-to-date", "seventy-eight") are the printed ones.] FRANK K. WILSON, the proprietor of the Butte Hotel, was born at Palmyra, Portage county, Ohio, June 15, 1862. His father, John Wilson, was born in 1827 and when a young man came to Ohio and settled on a farm there. He made a specialty of live stock raising, and until his death in 1891 was actively engaged in that work. His wife, Sarah E. Wilson, still resides in Ohio, the state of her birth. She is now seventy-eight years of age. Both Frank Wilson and his brother Hugh attended school at Valparaiso, Indiana, and the former graduated in 1883. He came directly to Butte with his brother and they started a men's furnishings and grocery business at the place where the Hennessy'sButte: companies, unions & placesHennessy’sfounded 1886The D. J. Hennessy Mercantile Company, Butte’s leading department store. Its 1898 building at Granite and Main also housed the Anaconda company’s offices on the top floor.More in Key terms → store now stands in CentervilleButte: companies, unions & placesCentervilleThe hillside neighbourhood between uptown Butte and Walkerville, built among the mine yards and home to many Irish and Cornish mining families.More in Key terms →. In 1895 Wilson brothers sold out to Patrick Mullens and that same year they bought the ground on East Broadway and began the erection of the up-to-date hotel, which they named the Butte. From that time, this has been one of the leading hostelries of the state, and it has been the headquarters of many notable gatherings. Mr. Wilson is a Democrat and has been prominent in the activities of his party. During the years of 1892 and '93, he was a member of the legislature, and matters of civic interest and import never fail to secure his hearty cooperation. Messrs. Wilson are extensively interested in mining operations in Arizona and California, but they are primarily hotel men, and as such are counted the best in the state. To furnish satisfactory accommodations for transients is important in any locality, but in the West it is of immeasurably more importance than in cities of similar size further east. The constant opening up of new fields of investment here and the consequent rapid development of the country, attract all sorts and conditions of visitors and investors. Nothing is so attractive to the latter as an up-to-date place at which to stop, and those who furnish that are doing a generous share toward adding to the prosperity and to the addition of the desirable new residents of the city. Besides being such excellent business men, Mr. Wilson and his brother are men possessed of the qualities which secure and preserve popularity, and their sociability is one of their notable characteristics.