Archives West Finding Aid

Laurence Anderson was born in Minnesota in 1911. His family moved to a farm near Circle, Montana, about 1916. At age eight, he began going to a country school, which he attended for the next eleven years. The Andersons were particularly hard hit by the Depression. As a result, Anderson dropped out of college and moved to Pablo, Montana, with his family in the mid-1930s. He was employed by the Work Projects Administration on dam building projects to help make ends meet. By 1941, Anderson was the head cook of the Pablo School hot lunch program. Soon thereafter, he moved to California to seek employment. He married Ella Mae Hall in Long Beach, California, in 1941. Anderson learned the trade of shipfitting and began work in that field until Anderson and his family moved back to Montana so he could enlist in World War II. After they returned to Montana, however, Anderson, was rejected for the service. In Ronan, he worked for the Co-op Creamery, and by 1950, he had moved into carpentry.

Ella Mae Anderson was born in 1918, on a farm near Pablo, Montana She attended school in Pablo and Ronan and graduated in 1936. Upon graduating from high school, she worked in an employment office in Long Beach, California, where she studied bookkeeping. She soon moved back to Pablo, Montana and worked as a cook. She later worked for the Lake County school superintendent and then the county clerk and recorder. The couple had three children. Laurence Anderson died in 1984.