Frazier Boutelle

Who was Frazier Boutelle?

Frazier Augustus Boutelle served in the US Army for 57 years, fighting in the Civil War and the Indian Wars and working as a recruiter in World War I. In 1889-1890 he was Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park.

Boutelle was born in Troy, New York. His father, James Augustus Boutelle, was from Massachusetts and descended from Revolutionary War fighter Ebenezer Boutwell. Little is known about his mother, Emeline Lamb Boutelle, but by 1871 she was married to E.F. Gordon and living with a daughter in Ontario. James Boutelle relocated to northern California in the 1850s, and lived with his sister, Susan Boutell Messenger Sterling, in Arcata.

In 1873 Frazier married "Dollie", Mary Adolphine Augusto Hayden, at Vancouver, Washington. Dollie was the daughter of Mary Jane and Gay S.B. Hayden, pioneers who left Wisconsin in 1850 for Vancouver. One of Dollie's sisters, Adelle Spaulding, lived in Fairbanks, Alaska, and the two held shares in an Alaskan mine in the 1920s. Frazier and Dollie had one child, Henry Moss Boutelle, born June 17, 1875, at Vancouver.