In Section 12, Lot 624 of Fernwood Cemetery stands a an aging, time-worn monument whose inscription has long since faded from the stone. Cemetery records list the grave simply as “Ms. Anna Gossert or Gassert”, Grave 3, beside Cooper and Neal family burials and a small concrete lot marker numbered 624.
Old newspapers help restore her identity. An obituary first printed in the Daily Journal of Henderson and reprinted in the Livingston Enterprise of Montana on 19 March 1892 reports that Mrs. Annie Gassert died in Henderson on Saturday, 5 March 1892, “in the 42nd year of her life.” She was praised as a woman of Christian character who died peacefully, surrounded by her husband and relatives, and was buried in Fernwood. The article notes that she was the wife of Mr. Henry (Harry) Gassert, a wealthy and well-known mining man of Montana, and the sister of F. P. Cooper of Henderson. It also records that her grieving husband intended to erect a “costly monument” over her remains, almost certainly the tall stone that now stands unreadable.
Later Montana obituaries for Harry Gassert add that he had first married Mrs. Annie Sweitzer at Butte in the autumn of 1884 and that she died at Henderson, Kentucky, on 5 March 1892. Harry himself died in 1896 and is buried far from Henderson, in Mountain View Cemetery at Livingston, Montana.
So the blank shaft in Fernwood is not an unknown grave at all, but the monument promised in print in 1892, marking the resting place of Mrs. Annie (Sweitzer) Gassert, sister of F. P. Cooper of Henderson and first wife of Montana mining pioneer Harry Gassert.
