Several newspapers published happenings from the many communities that constituted the land of Powder River County (the southern part of Custer County before March 17, 1919) in the early 1900s. They included The Miles City American and Stockgrowers Journal, the Powder River Examiner and its predecessor the Broadus Independent, which published periodic updates from Kingsley and other communities. We've assembled the various mentions of the founders of Kingsley below.
You can click this link to view and search early editions of these newspapers, made available through the Library of Congress.
1917 - 1920
- Miles City American and Stockgrowers Journal, Cross S Creek: December 13, 1917
- Mrs. George Henning and daughter, Bertha, spent Thanksgiving at H.L. Rayner's, where Mr. Henning and Miss Elizabeth are working.
- Miles City Daily Star, June 4, 1918
- Lee H. Rayner and Elizabeth Henning, both of Kingsley, were united in marriage by the Rev. T.H. Martin at the Methodist parsonage yesterday in the presence of several friends. The young couple will reside on the groom's ranch at Kingsley.
Bill Rayner, born March 16, 1920, with his older sister Dorothy.
- Powder River Examiner, Kingsley: April 10, 1919
- The Kingsley Auxiliary Red Cross have decided to put off the regular meetings until after seeding is completed.
- The two Holcom brothers Warn and Basel have just returned to the country this week. They have been over there mixing it up with Fritz for more than six months. Both of the boys were wounded during one of the drives, but not recovering in time to go back to the front before the war was over. At that Warn returns with two more memories of war than his brother, the two being his dear wife and baby boy.
- Powder River Examiner, Kingsley: April 9, 1920:
- Mr. & Mrs. Lee Rayner are the proud parent of a baby boy born March 16, weighing six pounds. [Named William Herron Rayner, photo at right.]
- Mr. & Mrs. John Whalen were business callers at Kingsley Wednesday to return a sack of potatoes they borrowed last fall. We all agree they are lucky to have them to return.
- Powder River Examiner, Kingsley: June 11, 1920
- Several of the Kingsley people attended the Equity meeting at Olive the 6th. From the Pacific Historical Review December 1945:
The society of Equity, like its short-lived contemporary, the Nonpartisan League, beginning in 1914 swept across the state of Montana like "a prairie fire." Though an outgrowth of the American Society of Equity, the role it performed was shaped more by local and regional than national issues. The society, organized in protest against the unfavorable wheat market, the high cost of farm supplies and consumer good, and the influence of the mining interest in the state government sought relief by sponsoring cooperative marketing and purchasing associations, establishing consumer stores, promoting cooperative credit and insurance programs, seeking lower railroad rates, rectifying an inequitable system of taxation, agitating for other remedial legislation, and courting a militantly organized labor that made a Bolshevik-jittery population quake in its boots. Its membership rose from 200 to 15,000 in 1917, and dropped to virtually nothing by 1920. Success cooperative and crop failures, factionalism, declining wheat prices, and the postwar reaction, helped place the Equity in its grave.
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- Mr. and Mrs. W.W. Jones have sold out and moved to Miles City.
- Powder River Examiner, Kingsley: July 9, 1920
- Frank Watters has returned from Alexandria, Minn., and reports his father still alive but very low.
Click on an image below to read the full column.