A Man Vanished in Newport, and His Family Is Still Looking
Relatives in Missoula appeal for word of E. F. Hartley, a former New Yorker last seen at the Newport Hotel in June — a man who may now be working the woods under another name.
Does anybody know E. F. Hartley? If so they will confer a favor upon his relatives by communicating with J. W. Pearson, care of the Florence Hotel, Missoula, Mont.
Mr. Hartley was formerly a resident of New York, but removed to this locality a year or so ago. He is supposed to have come to Newport about the first of June and stopped at the Newport Hotel. Since that time all trace of him has been lost, excepting that he occasionally comes to Newport for his mail. He was here a week or so ago, but at that time he was not sought by his relatives, who have news of a pleasant character for Hartley.
Mr. Pearson and his wife were in Newport looking for Hartley on Wednesday. It is their belief that he is working at some rancher's or in the woods under an assumed name.
“Since that time all trace of him has been lost, excepting that he occasionally comes to Newport for his mail.”
A century before cell phones and credit-card trails, a man could step off a train in Newport and simply dissolve into the timber — traceable only by the letters waiting at the post office. The appeal ran in the paper because that mail drop was the last known thread connecting Hartley to anyone. Families searching for missing relatives in the rural Northwest still rely on exactly this kind of public notice, now posted to social media instead of a country weekly.
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