Showing much good sense, the 24-year-old Silver King Coalition Mine’s Master Mechanic Frank Stone married Park City’s Jeanie Sherman on October 21, 1916. She truly was “the wind beneath his wings.” Jennie, as she was known by many of her friends, was a faithful wife and devoted mother. Esteemed in social and civic circles, she was a distinguished community leader and a role model for young women of her time.
Jeanie Sherman Stone was born in the tiny silver mining camp of Black Pine, Montana on July 14, 1892. The Black Pine Mining Company owned the town, established in 1885, which had a single street with cabins, a boarding house, and mine offices. Saloons and brothels were forbidden but flourished on “Whiskey Hill” just beyond the company’s property line.
Jeanie was the daughter of Fred W. Sherman who designed and operated some of the finest mills in Colorado, Arizona, and Utah including the Daly West and Daly Judge concentrating plants. Sherman, who spent 18 years as superintendent of the Daly West mill, came west in 1880, first engaging in the fur trade and dealing in buffalo hides along the Missouri River.
In October 1899, shortly after Fred Sherman became the foreman of the Daly West mill, seven-year-old Jeanie and her mother arrived in Park City from Montana. The Shermans quickly became prominent in the community. In 1906, the Woman’s Athenaeum Club of Park City hosted the Utah Federation of Women’s Clubs in a two-day gala. The teenaged Jeanie Sherman served as a page for the event, thus beginning an association with the Athenaeum that would last more than 60 years and include a term as president in 1936-37.
Credit: Park City Historical Society and Museum, Women’s Athenaeum Collection
On May 24, 1911, Jeanie Marie Sherman was one of 26 students to graduate from Park City High School. Roger McDonough, who would go on to become the Chief Justice of the Utah Supreme Court, was the class of 1911’s valedictorian. In September, Jeanie left Park City to become a student at the University of Utah. She continued her higher education until being selected by the school board to succeed McDonough as history teacher at her alma mater in 1915.
Jennie’s marriage to Frank Stone and the birth of a son and two daughters cut her teaching career short, but not her dedication to social and civic causes. Mrs. Stone was instrumental in getting members of the Woman’s Athenaeum to cast a unanimous vote to sponsor the local troop of Girl Scouts in August 1937. Jeanie would be an active leader in the Utah Girl Scout movement for the next three decades.
In 1967, a memorial was established in Mrs. Stone’s name honoring her work at Camp Cloud Rim. The Girl Scout camp built by the Works Progress Administration overlooking heavenly Lake Brimhall on Bonanza Flat in 1936. She was a vigorous advocate of all girls of scouting age having the opportunity to spend a week in the spirit renewing tranquility of that mountain paradise.