Old Missoula

George F. Brooks Is Taken by Death Here  [1940]

Oldest Active Insurance and Real Estate Man in Missoula Succumbs at Home, 82 Years of Age.

In City Since 1881

Varied Career as Rail Engineer, Surveyor, Business Man Ends. Active In Baptist Church Work.

George Frank Brooks, 82, resident of Missoula nearly 60 years, oldest active insurance and real estate man of the city, and a division engineer of the Northern Pacific before the railroad was completed, died Saturday night shortly after 8 o’clock at his apartments in the Wilma building, following a period of failing health. However, he had been up and around and active until recently.

Mr. Brooks had been identified with Western Montana and Missoula since before statehood. He was a native of Massachusetts, born at Boston, May 10, 1858, and fitted for college in the Boston English high school. He graduated as a member of the scientific section of the class, then came West and settled at Missoula.

From 1881 to 1886 he was successively division engineer on the Northern Pacific railway, chief draftsman in the company’s office at Helena and engineer in charge of construction on the Yakima branch. From 1886 to 1887 he was on a ranch in the Bitter Root valley, located on the west side of the Bitter Root river between Florence and Stevensville, where he accumulated large holdings. He was then engineer in the operating department of the Northern Pacific from 1887 to 1890.

Since 1890 and until his death he had been in business in Missoula, real estate, mortgage loans and insurance, and for 45 years his office has been in the First National Bank block.

However, in the succeeding years he devoted more interests to his land holdings in the Bitter Root which increased to 5,000 acres.

For a time he held the office of county surveyor of Missoula county, and after other counties started to be created out of Missoula, he was engaged in survey work in Ravalli, Flathead, Lincoln and Sanders counties.

Mr. Brooks was married at Missoula, June 4, 1885, to Miss Fannie J. Cate. For the last 20 years they wintered each year in Los Angeles or Florida. Mr. Brooks occasionally visited his old home in the East, usually in the winter, owing to the pressure of summer business.

Mr. Brooks is survived by his widow and by a nephew, Reginald Brooks of New York, but who was called here two weeks ago from California.

Mr. Brooks had been a trustee in the Baptist church for 40 years.

The body is at the Lucy chapel . Funeral arrangements have not been made.

The above obituary appeared in The Daily Missoulian on December 29, 1940.

 

A link to a short biography of George F. Brooks appears below. He was a graduate of Dartmouth College in 1881 and came to Montana assisting a surveyor for the Northern Pacific, a Colonel Dodge.

https://archive.org/stream/historyofmontanab02sand#page/n581/mode/2up