Women critical to saving Silver State’s history

There was a time not long after the construction of Mormon Station State Historic Park that visitors would knock on the door of the Pink House if they wanted to tour the museum.

Answering the door was Margaret Hume Scott, who was remembered on Saturday for her enthusiasm as an active promoter of Nevada’s oldest town and the Silver State.

Scott and daughter Agnes Scott Train Janssen both served as curators in Nevada museums.

Scott first visited Genoa to visit Agnes and Percy Train after the couple purchased the Pink House, presenter Debbe Nye said.

Train died during the war and Scott and husband Walter stayed with Agnes, who served as one of the Nevada State Museum’s first curators. On Sunday, the state museum minted a coin in honor of Agnes.

While Agnes remarried and moved away from the Valley, Margaret remained, writing columns about the town for The Record-Courier.

In 1947, the Legislature paid to build Mormon Station State Historic Park but neglected to fund its operation.

Scott and other town volunteers stepped up to run the old fort and its museum. Scott was a co-founder of the Genoa Historical Society, which would eventually become the Douglas County Historical Society. She served as curator of the little museum in the days when the former Douglas County Courthouse was still serving as a school.

Scott was one of four women inducted as part of the Douglas County Historical Society’s Women in History Remembering Project on Saturday. Also included were Gertrude Hironymous Dangberg, Anita Ernst Watson and Marion Fay Ellison.

Dangberg was portrayed by Chautauquan Kim Harris, who spilled some tea on the founding of Carson Valley Day.

“Carson Valley Day at its conception is not unique to Minden,” she said. “My brothers, who live in Mason Valley, planned an event called Railroad Day. Their plans were perfect for my husband’s plans to promote Carson Valley. The two events occurred just a month apart. But Carson Valley Day is the event that endured.”

Dangberg was one of the founders of the Carson Valley branch of the American Association of University Women in 1922.

Historical writer Bob Ellison said Marion was critical to preserving documents about pioneer Nevada.

Ellison said that Grace Dangberg recruited Marion to create an index of Nevada’s territorial records, including those from Utah.

“Nevada’s archives didn’t really exist at that time,” Ellison said. “The archives were in an old stone building behind that capital that doesn’t even exist anymore. It leaked water, it had rats and mice, which love leather bound books with velum pages. Nevada’s history was in sort of a state of threat.”

The only living honoree at Saturday’s event was Dr. Anita Ernst Watson, a Douglas County High School graduate, who attended with several members of her family.

Husband Steve Watson said he wasn’t used to talking in what was his study hall when he attended the school.

He read three letters from Watson’s sons.

“Anita Watson is a storyteller, men and women like her have been the ones sitting beside the fire as people gathered around to listen,” said her son U.S. Army Col. Andrew Watson. “She weaves together the disparate threads of historical events into verbal and written tapestries.”