Missoula City Cemetery tour highlights vaudeville-era figures tied to Gem Theater

During a public tour at Missoula City Cemetery, Susan Wolf, the cemetery’s administrative assistant, led visitors through biographical sketches of vaudeville-era figures tied to the Gem Theater and other Missoula businesses and institutions. Wolf said the tour material drew on newspaper research and correspondence with author Jennifer Toole, whose historical-fiction book Reaching for Reveries incorporates many of the people discussed.

The presentation focused on people who worked in or around the Gem Theater and Missoula’s late-19th and early-20th-century entertainment scene. Wolf described John "Spider" Stett as a bartender and retired boxer born in Ireland in September 1867 who drew frequent newspaper coverage for fights; she said he spent 90 days in jail in 1902 after trying to smuggle saws to other detained men and that a 1901 second-degree assault bond of $300 would equal about $11,401.69 today. Wolf also described Franklin J. Pierce as the Gem Theater owner who…