Did you see the article in The Spokesman-Review that included this picture? It was a story from
Medicine Rocks State Park in Montana and was the sad story of
how they've found where a lonesome sheep herder named Herbert Dalton in
1904 carved a likeness of his lost love into a sandstone bluff. He was
from Ireland and, according to the article, "she wouldn't come West."
The carved portrait shows a profile with a "sweeping turn-of-the-century
bun and facing her, a bird in flight offering a delicately drawn
flower." So sad.
I did some looking and did find a Herbert
Dalton, age 33, single, born April 1867 in Ireland, immigrated in 1872
and was naturalized, living as a farm laborer/sheep herder in
Flatwillow District, Fergus County, Montana, on June 21, 1900 (U.S. 1900
census). I did not find him in the 1910 or 1920 census. Nor could I find
him in any online Montana death databases.
Is there a Dalton family somewhere looking for a lost Herbert Dalton?? Do you look for these sorts of things and do they motivate you to go find "the rest of the story?"
