STORY OF BILLY

Untold stories of the homesteading years.

Billy Grows Up in Montana

The struggles of our ancestors, brought to life.
One Montana family’s memories of hardship, kindness, and the work of making a home.

BY BARBARA LAURETTA ANNA STINE

Discover the book

A childhood in Montana. A story that reaches far beyond it.

Before school, Billy had to light the fire that warmed the classroom and haul its water from a well. For adventure, he and his sister Nedra hitchhiked without knowing where they’d end up. Their mother’s rule? Be home for dinner.

In The Story of Billy: Part One, Barbara preserves the hardships, mischief, and small acts of kindness that shaped her uncle’s early life. Meet a boy with a knack for finding trouble, a sister beside him, and a mother working to hold their family together.

Before the uniform and the handshake, there was this family. This is where their story begins.

STORIES WORTH PASSING ONScroll to begin

01 / The book

FAMILY HISTORY · MONTANA

The lives behind our family names.

Before he was Uncle Bill, he was a boy growing up in Montana.

Illness, loss, and repeated moves shaped Billy’s childhood. So did adventures with his sister Nedra, laughter, and kindness from people they met along the way.

PART ONE
Billy Grows Up in Montana

The place that shaped them

The story begins
in Montana.

02 / Behind the story

FROM THE FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHS

Meet Billy, Adelia, and Nedra.

Adelia, Billy’s mother.

The work of keeping a family

Meet Adelia.

A country-school teacher.
A mother finding a way forward.

Adelia supported her children by teaching in one-room country schools. Through illness and loss, she kept looking for a way to care for them.

A LIFE REMEMBERED THROUGH FAMILY STORIES

Growing up together

Billy & Nedra.

Billy and Nedra shared a Montana childhood of adventures and repeated moves. Their stories bring laughter as well as hardship to Barbara’s account.

Uncle Bill and his sister Nedra.

The world they knew.

One-room schools and harvest days. A glimpse of the work and routines of an earlier generation.

One of the one-room country schools where Adelia taught.
Harvesting. A period reference photograph.
Barbara Lauretta Anna Stine, author of The Story of Billy

03 / The author

So their lives would be remembered.

Barbara Lauretta Anna Stine

The stories Uncle Bill and Aunt Vivian shared with Barbara became the starting point for The Story of Billy.

Barbara wrote them down so the lives behind the family names would not be lost.

Inside the book

THE STORY OF BILLY · PART ONE

A passage from the working manuscript

The Birth of Billy

Adelia is expecting Billy. In the family’s cellar, she tends the chicken eggs in a kerosene incubator.

The Hanson family kept their kerosene incubator in their cellar as most families did who lived in town during this time. Adelia needed to turn the eggs several times a day. She stepped onto the ladder going down into the cellar taking one step at a time, holding her kerosene lamp in one hand, while holding onto the ladder with the other hand. But today was different.

It was different because Adelia caught her foot in the hem of her bathrobe, causing her to fall down the ladder and onto the floor of the cellar, landing on her kerosene lantern. The oil from the kerosene lamp started on fire and found its way to her bathrobe, and then to her skin. Adelia climbed up the ladder as fast as she could while she was on fire. She grabbed a blanket to beat the flames out, but the fire continued. Adelia ran outside to roll around on the ground. The flames died out but had already done their damage to her skin. Will asked the neighbors to watch their daughters so he could take Adelia to the hospital in Fort Benton.

While Adelia was in the hospital being treated for her burns, she went into labor. Despite all the distress and trauma attached to her delivery, Adelia delivered a healthy baby boy. Their first baby boy was named after his father, Will. They named him Willard O. Hanson and his family called him Billy.

So, this was the distinctive path of how their only son became the only member of their family to be born in a hospital. Adelia would carry the scars from that fire down the front of her body for the rest of her life.

From Chapter 67 · Barbara Lauretta Anna Stine
This passage is from a draft and may change before publication.

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