George and Louise Henning and Family
George Henning filed on his homestead located just south of the Abbott Homestead in the fall of 1916. He built a small house to live in but did not live there until the summer of 1917. They lived there until 1923 then moved to Miles City, Montana. George and Art Abbott bought the place in 1924. Mr. and Mrs. George Henning had five children: Harry, Ferdinand, Albert, Elizabeth, and Bertha. Albert and Elizabeth, for a time, farmed in the Kingsley area. George's great grandson Darryl Henning remembers that George spoke very little English and mostly communicated in his native language, German.
Harry Henning
Ferd Henning
Albert Henning
Albert Henning married Frances Weymouth in Miles City on March 14, 1919, when he was 22 years old, and she 19. The couple divorced in 1923 in Cass, North Dakota. He then married Blanche Matilda Fitzwater in Billings, Montana on March 4, 1931.
The couple lived in Clark, Wyoming, and moved to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma where Marian Louis was born in 1932. Charlotte Lucille Henning was born in Hamilton, Montana, on May 7, 1938, just 15 months after Al's sister Elizabeth died in the same area - Montana's Bitterroot Valley. Al Henning's family move to Everett, Washington where Al was a millworker (in 1944). His address was listed as 614 Ave A, Snohomish. He died at 65 years of age of hypostatic pneumonia due to a stroke. He was at the Pioneer Nursing Home in Kennewick, Washington when he died.
Elizabeth Henning
Elizabeth married Lee Rayner, homesteading in 1913, and having three of his four children (Dorothy, William, and Ester Mae) in Powder River County. The family moved to Stevensville in the early 1930s, after crops were decimated by drought and insects but before the governmental farm service programs came to the rescue of many a dryland farmer. Their fourth child, Bobby, was born in Ravalli County. Tragically, Elizabeth died in 1937 at the age of 36. Unable to raise his young son, Lee sent Bobby to live with Elizabeth's brother Ferd in California. Click here to learn more about Elizabeth Henning and Lee Rayner and family.
Bertha Henning
Bertha married Howard Welch and later opened a bar in Pony, Montana.